At GF Data, our mission is to surface the transaction fundamentals that deal-makers rely on. In the recent Fall 2025 issue of Middle Market Growth, we launch a deeper dive into newly tracked deal attributes across the past four quarters.
What’s New and Why It Matters
- Nearly 50% of the 360 deals tracked (Q3 2024–Q2 2025) now include a sell-side quality-of-earnings (QoE) review — a meaningful new dimension of granularity.
- Roughly 30% of transactions took 12 months or longer from LOI (letter of intent) to close — reflecting extended diligence cycles in today’s climate.
- Regionally, the Southeast and Midwest lead all U.S./Canada deal volumes over this period, highlighting geographic concentration patterns.
Key Takeaways
- For deals in the $10 million to $25 million total enterprise value (TEV) range that conducted a sell-side QoE, valuations averaged 5.9x trailing-12-month (TTM) EBITDA, compared with 6.6× TTM EBITDA for those without QoE — underscoring that QoE alone doesn’t guarantee higher pricing in smaller platforms.
- At the larger end ($100 million to $250 million TEV), the value of a QoE becomes more apparent: those deals averaged a full turn higher valuation when a QoE was used.
- Sector and region remain meaningful: companies in the Atlantic East region commanded an average multiple of 8.1× TTM EBITDA, versus just 6.7× in the Southwest.
Implications for Owners, Sponsors & Advisors
- Owners of middle-market companies: The data signals that having a QoE is valuable — especially for larger-scale transactions — but for smaller deals, add-on structure and platform status may outweigh the formal QoE premium.
- Sponsors and financial acquirers: These new fields enable more precise benchmarking. Use them to evaluate closing-cycle risk, geography-based pricing dynamics and transaction readiness beyond just size/multiple.
- Advisors and intermediaries: The new depth of data reinforces the importance of structuring diligence and execution timelines explicitly — the correlation between longer LOI-to‐close times and weaker growth (12.9 % versus 16.2 %) is a caution flag.
As deal structures evolve and buyer/seller expectations shift, having richer, multidimensional metrics is critical. The addition of QoE incidence, LOI-to-close timing and region/sizing overlays gives our contributors and subscribers a more granular tool-set for benchmarking and strategy.
Read the deep dive in Middle Market Growth.