Dealsuite published its CEE M&A Monitor for the first half of 2025 this week. It is a survey of 107 advisory firms in the region and it covers the part of the market we work in - companies with EBITDA between roughly EUR 200,000 and EUR 10 million.
The headline numbers.
The average EBITDA multiple slipped from 5.3x to 5.2x.
Deals above EUR 10 million fell from 41% to 31% of the total.
Size drives the price. A company with EUR 200,000 of EBITDA sells at around 4.0x. A company with EUR 10 million of EBITDA sells at around 6.7x.
Sellers attracted on average 5.2 serious buyers per company.
69% of advisers now use AI tools regularly in their process work, and 70% are optimistic about the second half.
A few comments from our side.
The size premium is the number owners most often underestimate. Two companies with the same growth and margins can be worth 60% more per euro of profit if one is 50 times larger. This is why we push clients to think about bolt-on acquisitions before a sale, and why a merger of two mid-sized competitors often creates more value than either owner selling alone.
Five serious buyers per process is healthy. It also means that in a well-run process the seller sets the pace.
The AI figure is the one that has changed fastest. Data room review, contract extraction and first-draft information memoranda are now routine. That cuts the time to a first buyer meeting, but it does not change what the buyer wants to see - clean numbers, a defensible forecast and an owner who knows why they are selling.
If you want to know where your company sits against these multiples, let us know and we will run the comparison.
(Source: Dealsuite CEE M&A Monitor, August 2025)