Training Company Valuation: EV/EBITDA & EV/Revenue

Years of courses go into a training company: approvals won one at a time, instructors qualified, and employers who book again each time their staff’s certificates fall due. When the owner decides to sell, all of that has to become a number, and an owner who knows that number before the first offer arrives can judge the offer on its merits. Training companies with a published EV/EBITDA sold at a median of 11.4x (9 deals) since 2015. The spread is wide. The middle half of the deals that disclosed EV/Revenue sold at between 1.5x and 5.8x revenue (10 deals), so one company’s revenue can be valued close to four times higher than another’s.

We count 193 acquisitions of training companies since 2015, 132 of them since 2021. What a company sells for depends on how many credible buyers compete for it, and 100 different buyers have bought training companies in that time. The deals fall into five categories: safety and first-aid training, offshore and maritime safety training, technical and vocational training, compliance and regulatory training, and management-system and auditor training. This article covers deal figures for each category, what raises or lowers a training company’s value, and who has been buying.

We read these deals alongside our TIC company valuations, because several of the busiest buyers also own inspection and certification businesses. Bodies that certify people against a competence scheme are covered with certification body valuations.

Training Company Deal Multiples

Across the five categories, 20 deals disclose a deal size and 10 an EV/Revenue multiple. Nine disclose an EV/EBITDA multiple, one short of the ten deals we need before showing a range, so EV/EBITDA appears as a median alone.

The medians mix online course catalogs, which need little capital for each added learner, with offshore centers that carry pools and fire grounds on their balance sheets, so the delivery model is the first test of which side of the median a given company is likely to sit on.

The five categories differ in size, in pace and in who buys them.

Safety and first-aid training accounts for over half of all deals, and private equity-backed buyers made 73% of them, the highest share of any category. Owners in technical, compliance and auditor training should start from the all-training median and the drivers below.

We track every training company acquisition since 2015, 193 deals by 100 different buyers, so we know which buyers fit a firm like yours and what they have paid.

What Drives a Training Company Valuation

Before making an offer, a buyer works through the points below, and each one rests on records that a training company builds course by course over several years.

Approvals and accreditations. Regulated courses run under a scheme that approves the training center and often each course. Examples are NEBOSH and IOSH in the UK, GWO for wind turbine work, OPITO for offshore energy, STCW courses approved by a maritime authority, CompEx for hazardous area work. France has CACES and the Netherlands VCA. Vocational providers hold approved-center status with an awarding body, and lead auditor courses are certified under schemes such as CQI and IRCA. Buyers check which approvals belong to the company, which depend on named instructors, and when each one is next audited. A register listing every approval with its scope, site and renewal date answers most of those questions in one document.

The rule behind each course. A course an employer must buy under a regulation, a client contract or an industry scheme is booked whatever the training budget. Show revenue by course with the rule that makes it mandatory, from workplace safety law to anti-money laundering or clinical trial rules, and flag any rule due to change.

Refresher cycles and repeat demand. First aid, offshore survival, wind industry safety, forklift and lifting operator certificates all expire and have to be renewed, and compliance courses are repeated on a cycle set by the employer’s policy or the regulator. The renewal dates are known in advance, so a provider with a large base of certified learners can see much of next year’s demand before the year starts. Show the number of learners due for refresher training in each of the next two years, by course.

Facilities and delivery model. An offshore or maritime center needs pools, helicopter escape simulators and fire grounds, which take capital to build and are slow for a competitor to replicate. An online course or compliance e-learning provider needs content, a learning platform and search traffic, and each added learner costs little to serve. Buyers value the two models on different terms: occupancy and capital spending by site for the first, course completions and the cost of acquiring each customer for the second.

Instructors. The number of qualified instructors sets how many courses a center can run in a week. Buyers count them, look at the share who work freelance and at their approvals by course, and ask how many courses the owner still teaches personally.

Employer contracts and sector exposure. Framework agreements with energy operators, contractors, ports, care providers, banks and public bodies give a training company booked volume, while individuals paying for their own courses follow the job market. Oil and gas, offshore wind, construction, logistics and life sciences each run on their own cycle. Prepare revenue by sector, with the share under framework or account agreements and their renewal dates.

Country rules and regional density. Regulated training follows national law and national schemes, so each course catalog is built for one country’s rules. Roll-up buyers such as Presto expand country by country, buying centers that bring approvals and employer accounts in each region, and a dense network within driving distance of the main employers fits that model well.

Adjacent services. Safety consultancy, statutory inspection, defibrillators or compliance software sold beside the courses are valued by a buyer on their own terms, and TIC groups look closely at any inspection and certification work.

How we present these to buyers. A buyer pays for what it can see and check. Part of our work in a sale is to present the business as strongly as the facts allow: we set out the approvals each course runs under, the rules and refresher cycles that bring learners back, and the employer contracts behind the bookings, and we deal with weak points before a buyer finds them and uses them to lower the offer. A valuation assessment is the place to start, a year or two before a sale.

Who Is Buying Training Companies

Between January 2015 and December 2020 we count 61 deals, and since 2021 another 132. Private equity-backed buyers made 57% of the earlier deals and 71% of the later ones. The busiest year was 2024, with 27 deals. The targets were in 22 countries. North America accounts for 71 of the deals and continental Europe for 70, spread over 14 countries. The UK and Ireland add 41, and the remaining 11 were in Australia and New Zealand, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia-Pacific. The largest single markets were the United States, with 62 deals, and the United Kingdom, with 36.

Five buyers backed by private equity made 57 of the deals. They are the training platforms Presto, 360training and RelyOn, the defibrillator and first aid group Safe Life, and the Health & Safety Institute. Presto made all but two of its 22 in the Nordic countries. Testing, inspection and certification groups, with Apave and SOCOTEC the most active, made 28, among them every auditor-training deal. Each buyer with four or more training deals appears below, with its count in this segment and its other acquisitions in our TIC database.

Which buyer calls depends on what you teach. A workplace safety center in northern Europe is most likely to hear from Presto, and a first aid and CPR trainer from Safe Life. Offshore and wind training centers have sold to RelyOn, 3t Energy Group and Mintra. Technical and vocational providers have sold to RelyOn, Apave and City & Guilds, online course catalogs to 360training, the Health & Safety Institute and American Safety Council, and care-sector trainers to Impact Futures Group. Management-system and auditor training providers have so far sold only to TIC groups. The platforms buy to add sites, courses and learners. The TIC groups buy training to sell to the employers that use their inspection and certification work, and strategic vs financial buyers explains how the two types differ after completion.

One buyer’s offer tells you what that buyer would like to pay. Offers from several buyers, made at the same time on the same information, tell you what the business is worth. That is what a sale process does, and it is the work we do for owners: talk to us before you reply to an approach.

Selling a Training Company: What a Run Process Changes

An approach usually comes on the buyer’s timetable, on the buyer’s terms and with one offer on the table, so an owner who answers it alone is negotiating with one party. A competitive sale process changes that in four ways, and running it is what we do for owners.

Buyers compete in the same round. Since 2021, 71% of training company deals went to private equity-backed buyers, and 100 different buyers have entered the segment since 2015. A training platform such as Presto and a TIC group such as Apave each put their own value on the same company, and bids that arrive together, on the same data, decide where a company lands within the middle half of disclosed deal sizes, $7.4M to $64.6M.

The seller controls timing and information. The timetable, the data each bidder receives and the deadline for offers are fixed on the seller’s side, so the first approach becomes one bid among several and competition sets the value.

Terms are agreed while rival bids are live. Retention terms for your lead instructors, your approval holders and you, the split between cash at completion and any earn-out, the measure the earn-out uses, and how the buyer treats approvals and employer framework agreements on a change of control all shape what the sale is worth to you, and each is easier to move while another bidder is still interested.

The records are ready before buyers call. Buyers will ask for the register of approvals and their audit dates, the learner database with certificate expiry dates, revenue by course family, by sector and by the rule behind each course, the employer framework agreements and their change-of-control clauses, instructor qualifications and contracts, and the condition and lease terms of each training site. A buyer marks down what it has to take on trust, so we put these records together with you before any buyer is approached.

Why Training Company Owners Work With Us

We advise owners on sales with typical enterprise values between $5M and $100M, as partners of the Globalscope network. We also advise serial acquirers, which is how we know the way their offers are built and where they leave room.

Recent transactions

• Advice to Apave on its acquisitions of ISOCERT and De Duurzame Adviseurs.
• Sale of CKSource, the rich-text editor developer, to PSG via Tiugo Technologies, after a global process that drew several letters of intent.
• Advice to Visma on its acquisition of SaldeoSMART.

“We were impressed with Marcin’s negotiating skills and Aventis’ ability to make things happen.”

Sindre Talleraas Holen, M&A Director, Visma

“Aventis Advisors did the heavy lifting so that our management team could stay focused on our business.”

Wiktor Walc, President, CKSource

Talk to Us

If a training platform or a testing, inspection and certification group wants to buy your training company, talk to us before you reply, open your learner data to it, agree a price or sign a letter of intent. Our work is running competitive sale processes for owners: we get the company ready for buyers, take it to the training platforms, such as Presto, RelyOn and 360training, and the TIC groups most likely to pay for your approvals, training sites, instructors and refresher demand, set one deadline for their offers and negotiate the terms through to closing. Write to us at marcin.majewski@aventis-advisors.com. The first conversation is confidential. You can also read about our M&A advisory for testing, inspection, certification and compliance businesses.

Methodology

The figures cover majority acquisitions of training companies worldwide, since January 2015. Each company’s main business sits in one of five categories: safety and first-aid training, offshore and maritime safety training, technical and vocational training tied to a qualification, compliance and regulatory training, and management-system and auditor training. Online course providers are counted alongside classroom and practical training centers. Bodies that certify personnel against a competence scheme are covered on our certification body valuations page, and schools and universities, language and leadership training, IT vendor training, exam preparation with no regulatory driver, public driving schools, learning-platform software, recreational safety courses and health and safety consultancies are excluded.

The deals come from the Aventis Advisors TIC deal database, which combines Mergermarket with acquirer announcements and our own research. EV/EBITDA and EV/Revenue use enterprise value (EV), which is equity value plus net debt; EBITDA is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. Median deal size uses EV where disclosed, otherwise the disclosed deal value, which is the consideration for the stake acquired; stakes of 51% to 99% count only where an EV is stated. Distressed sales, and multiples outside 1x to 60x EBITDA or 0.05x to 20x revenue, are excluded from the multiples. Most private deals close at undisclosed values, so the deals with a published figure are a small sample. A median is shown where at least two deals disclose the figure and, for a category, where it sits inside the interquartile range of all training deals; otherwise the page points to the all-training figure. Ranges are shown where at least ten deals disclose the figure. EV/EBITDA is shown where the multiple or the EBITDA was published by the buyer, the seller, filings or a reputable data source; EBITDA derived from a stated margin is excluded. Each deal is counted under the buyer’s group at the time of the deal, and private equity buyers are private equity firms and the companies they owned then. The buyer table shows each buyer’s owner today.