Five minutes of QuickBooks read-only and a few quick questions surfaces what a buyer would pay up for — and discount — in your fire-protection business: how much is recurring code-mandated inspection/test/maintenance (ITM) versus one-time install, your NICET-certified depth, and whether the commercial relationships run without you. Preview is free; $499 for the full memo.
Enter two numbers for an instant Fire Protection ballpark. No signup — the real number comes from your books.
We answer each one from your books first — so you fix the story before a diligence team writes the number.
Project installs are lumpy and competed on price. The gold in fire protection is recurring, code-mandated inspection/test/maintenance (ITM) under NFPA 25/72 and monitoring revenue — a project-only installer trades around 4–5x EBITDA, while a book with 40%+ ITM reaches 7–11x and 60%+ reaches 10–13x. Install-heavy revenue gets priced as the more fragile, lower-multiple business it is.
If you hold the key commercial and GC relationships and personally quote the work, a buyer sees the recurring base as owner-dependent. The active consolidators pay the most for an ITM book and a relationship engine that keep producing after you exit — owner-held relationships are the discount they apply.
Fire-protection work requires licensed, NICET-certified technicians, and they're scarce. A buyer prices the risk that certification depth is thin — if one or two people carry the credentials that let you bid and sign off the work, that's a key-man and capacity ceiling.
If a single general contractor or commercial client is an outsized share of revenue, a buyer prices the risk it leaves. Concentration is a flagged discount — even in a trade where the recurring ITM base is otherwise a strength.
Each lever is sized for a typical $3m–$8m revenue fire-protection company, install + recurring itm mix — about $600K EBITDA. Same number whether we frame it as “what a buyer discounts” or “what you keep by fixing it.”
Signing buildings to recurring inspection/test/maintenance contracts under NFPA 25 and 72 — plus central-station monitoring RMR — is by far the biggest value lever in fire protection. Crossing 40% and then 60% recurring revenue is what steps the multiple up toward the platform range the consolidators pay.
adds about 0.5–0.8× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
Build a service/operations layer that holds the commercial relationships and runs the ITM schedule, and grow NICET-certified depth so more than one person can bid and sign off work. A fire-protection business that runs without the owner opens the very active PE buyer pool.
adds about 0.3–0.6× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
Confirming how licensing transfers (and structuring the deal for it), plus clean accrual books that separate recurring ITM from one-time install, let a buyer trust the recurring base and the earnings — protecting the price from a mid-diligence re-trade.
adds about 0.1–0.3× to your multiple · usually takes 3–6 months
Typical impact ranges blended from lower-middle-market transaction data, sub-$50M M&A databases, and observed consolidator pricing in the $300K–$3M EBITDA band. Directional, not a guarantee — your memo computes your actual numbers from your books.
The metrics buyers grade fire-protection companies on. The diagnostic fills the “your business” column from your actual QuickBooks data.
| Metric | Fire Protection benchmark | Your business | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring / contracted revenue | ~40% of revenue | Your data | Higher is better — the top multiple lever |
| Gross margin | ~40% | Your data | Pricing and job-costing discipline |
| EBITDA margin | ~18% | Your data | What flows to the bottom line |
| Healthy customer-concentration ceiling | top customer under 20% | Your data | Above it, buyers price the risk |
| Typical industry growth | ~6% / yr | Your data | Beating it can add to your multiple |
| Typical sale multiple | 3.5–10.0× EBITDA | Your data | Where the bidding starts; the levers above move you up |
Benchmarks are blended industry composites, service businesses $1M–$10M revenue, 2026-Q1 — directional, not a precise bar. Your memo measures you against your own books. Connect QuickBooks to fill in your numbers →
The diagnostic arrives as formats you can actually use, plus a private, scoped link to share a curated package with a specific buyer — you decide, card by card, what they see.
A branded slide deck, ready to present — for the buyer meeting, the lender, or the board.
A written diagnostic that holds up with buyers, yours to edit — plain-English summary, how we rebuilt your real earnings, every add-back listed.
Live formulas, not a dead printout — the path from raw profit to your real number, plus the cash-tied-up scenarios a buyer can stress-test.
Fire protection is one of the most actively rolled-up trades in the country, because code-mandated ITM is durable, recurring, recession-resistant revenue. PE-backed national platforms — Pye-Barker Fire & Safety, Summit Companies, Performance Systems Integration, Impact Fire, Altus — acquire aggressively (fire & life-safety M&A has run roughly 50 deals a quarter). Project-only installers trade around 4–5x EBITDA; recurring-ITM-heavy, platform-ready businesses reach 8–12x and beyond. The ones who pay up want recurring ITM and monitoring RMR, NICET-certified depth, branch density, and a manager-run organization. The memo maps which would actually look at a company your size and how each tends to structure the deal.
Read-only, through Intuit. We never write to your books. About 5 minutes.
Just what the books can’t show — agreements, key accounts, who runs the crews.
Buyer-readiness score, normalized EBITDA, value range and top flags — instantly.
The full engine, all three deliverables, the dashboard and the buyer deal room.
Start with the free preview. Pay once — $499 — only when you want the full memo. No subscription, no per-seat pricing.
Most Fire Protection businesses in the $1M–$10M revenue range trade at roughly 3.5× to 10.0× normalized EBITDA, with a typical deal near 6.0×. Smaller, owner-dependent shops sit at the low end; larger, manager-run businesses with recurring revenue reach the top. Your actual number depends on your books — that's what the diagnostic computes, blending recent lower-middle-market closings, main-street marketplace sales, and academic M&A survey data.
A fire-protection valuation begins where a buyer's QoE team begins: your reported earnings as the starting line. From there, the normalizing adjustments — owner add-backs, family wages, personal vehicles, one-time items — each tied to a specific QuickBooks transaction, producing your normalized EBITDA. Against that we apply a multiple grounded in recent fire & life-safety transactions, a consolidation-hot trade. The single biggest factor is the recurring code-mandated ITM and monitoring mix versus one-time install — it can move the multiple from ~4–5x to well into double digits — alongside NICET-certified depth, customer concentration, licensing transfer, and whether the relationships run without you. Every figure traces back to your books.
Recurring code-mandated inspection/test/maintenance (ITM) contracts under NFPA 25/72, central-station monitoring RMR, NICET-certified technician depth, a manager-run relationship and service engine, branch/route density, and clean books. The diagnostic scores where you sit on each and shows what moving up would be worth.
Sixty seconds. Four numbers. No signup, no email. Just a real answer.