What Is My Commercial Cleaning Business Worth in New Brunswick?

Commercial cleaning businesses in New Brunswick are caught in a peculiar moment. The province's economy relies heavily on forestry, energy, and manufacturing, industries that demand reliable facility maintenance but also face cyclical pressure. At the same time, consolidation in the commercial cleaning sector is accelerating across Atlantic Canada, with regional PE-backed groups and search funds actively hunting for owner-operated cleaning companies they can roll into larger platforms. If you've built a solid cleaning business here over the past 10-20 years, you're sitting on an asset that buyers want, but valuation uncertainty is paralyzing many owners from taking the next step.

What Drives the Value of Commercial Cleaning Businesses in New Brunswick

Buyers evaluating your cleaning business will focus on five core drivers. First is recurring revenue, specifically the percentage of your income locked in multi-year contracts versus month-to-month agreements. A business with 70% of revenue under signed contracts with 12+ month terms is worth substantially more than one dependent on loose relationships. Second is customer concentration: if your top five customers represent more than 40% of revenue, buyers will discount the price because the business feels unstable. Third is owner dependency. How much revenue walks out the door if you leave? If you're the lead salesperson, the main relationship holder with all major accounts, or the only person who knows how to schedule and troubleshoot, the business loses value fast. Fourth is bench strength in operations and management. Do you have supervisors and crew leads who can run jobs without you, or does everything funnel through you? Fifth is growth trajectory and margin consistency. Buyers want to see stable or improving margins year-over-year, not declining profitability masked by volume growth.

EBITDA Multiples: What to Expect in New Brunswick

Most commercial cleaning businesses trade at 4.5x to 6.5x EBITDA in strong acquisitions. The national range is similar, but New Brunswick markets sit toward the middle because buyer competition is real but not as intense as in Toronto or Calgary. A business with 70%+ recurring revenue, solid customer diversity, minimal owner dependency, and consistent 12-15% EBITDA margins will command the higher end of that range, typically 6x to 6.5x. A business with month-to-month contracts, high owner dependency, and 8-10% margins might land at 4.5x to 5x. To calculate your valuation under this method, take your normalized EBITDA (usually last three years averaged, with owner discretionary expenses added back) and multiply it by the appropriate multiple. For example, a business earning $150,000 in normalized EBITDA at 5.5x is worth roughly $825,000. That's the ballpark before debt adjustment and seller financing.

What Drags Your Valuation Down

• Owner as sole salesperson: If you hold 60%+ of customer relationships and handle all new business development, buyers view this as existential risk. They'll either demand a lower multiple or require you to stay on for 12-18 months to prove revenue sticks.
• Verbal customer agreements and informal pricing: Buyers need written contracts showing service scope, pricing, renewal terms, and termination conditions. Handshake deals with long-standing customers create legal and retention risk that compounds into valuation discounts of 10-20%.
• Inconsistent or DIY bookkeeping: If your financials are messy, tax returns don't reconcile to bank statements, or expense categories are vague, due diligence bogs down and buyer confidence drops. Clean, reconciled books for three years are table stakes.
• Key-man dependency in operations: If your best supervisor or operations manager is critical to execution and has no non-compete or employment agreement, buyers assume they'll leave post-deal and discount accordingly.
• Seasonal or lumpy revenue: Commercial cleaning should be relatively stable, but if you have major seasonal swings or one-off project revenue mixed with recurring work, buyers will normalize conservatively or use a lower multiple.
• No documented transition plan: Buyers want to see that you've thought through how you'll hand off the business. If you're vague on this, it signals you haven't really prepared to sell.

How to Get an Accurate Valuation in New Brunswick

Two methods are standard. The EBITDA multiple method, described above, works best for businesses with clear recurring revenue and consistent profitability. The second method, seller's discretionary earnings (SDE), adds back your owner salary, benefits, one-time expenses, and above-market discretionary spending to arrive at a multiple. SDE is common for smaller businesses where the owner is deeply embedded operationally. In New Brunswick, most commercial cleaning businesses $500,000 to $2,000,000 in annual revenue use the EBITDA approach, while smaller operations lean on SDE. To prepare, gather your last three years of tax returns and P&L statements. Normalize them by adding back unusual expenses (one-time legal costs, owner vehicle, excessive travel), adjusting owner salary to market rate if you're paying yourself below or above what a manager would earn, and removing non-recurring revenue. Online calculators and valuation tools are unreliable here because they can't account for contract quality, customer mix, or local buyer activity. A qualified M&A advisor in Atlantic Canada will interview you about your customer base, run a customer concentration analysis, review your contracts, and stress-test your margins against comparable transactions they've seen in the region. That costs $1,500 to $3,500 for a preliminary valuation but prevents you from walking into buyer meetings unprepared.

What Buyers Are Actually Paying Right Now in New Brunswick

Recent transactions in Atlantic Canada show acquirers moving quickly for well-run cleaning businesses. A typical deal closes with 70-90% cash at signing, with the balance either held back in escrow (usually 10% for 12 months to cover working capital surprises and warranty claims) or structured as a seller note. Seller notes are common here, typically 3-5 year terms at 5-7% interest, often subordinated to the buyer's debt. Earnouts based on revenue retention or EBITDA growth are used less frequently in this sector but appear in deals where the buyer is concerned about post-close customer attrition. Most deals include a transition period where you stay on for 60-120 days at a negotiated daily rate to introduce buyers to customers, document procedures, and train the new team. The timeframe for a full sale process, from first buyer conversation to close, typically runs 6-9 months for a well-structured business and up to 12 months if significant clean-up is needed. Competition among buyers for mid-market cleaning businesses in New Brunswick has picked up in the last 18 months, which means well-positioned sellers have leverage. If you can credibly demonstrate 80%+ customer retention post-close and stable or growing margins, multiple buyers will compete for your deal, pushing multiples upward.