SDE and EBITDA both measure a concrete business’s earnings, but at different sizes — and the same operation carries a different multiple on each, so a quoted multiple means nothing until you know which earnings figure it sits on. Getting that straight is the difference between reading the market clearly and talking yourself into a wrong number. This is general education, not legal, tax, or financial advice; confirm any valuation of your specific business with your own certified business appraiser, M&A advisor, and CPA.
Owners hear multiples traded around — “concrete goes for about three times,” “construction runs closer to ten” — and quietly compare them as if they described the same thing. They do not, because they sit on two different earnings measures. Sort out which measure applies to your operation and what each one includes, and the published ranges stop contradicting each other and start making sense. This guide isolates that one distinction; the broader valuation picture covers every driver behind the multiple.
Two earnings measures, two sizes of business
A valuation multiple has to be applied to an earnings figure, and small-business deals use two.
Seller’s discretionary earnings (SDE) takes profit and adds back the owner’s salary and discretionary expenses. It answers a specific question — what does this business produce for one owner-operator? — because it assumes the buyer steps into the owner’s seat and takes that pay themselves. It is the common measure for smaller, owner-run concrete operations, where the owner quotes, sells, and runs the crews.
EBITDA — earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization — measures earnings with a hired management team already in place and already paid for. It does not add the owner’s pay back, because it assumes the operation runs on managers the owner is not part of day to day. It is the measure larger operations and most private-equity buyers use, because that is the business they are actually buying.
The gap between them is mostly the owner’s compensation. SDE adds it back and EBITDA does not, so on the same set of books SDE is the larger earnings number and EBITDA is the smaller one — a fact that matters enormously once multiples enter the picture.
The trap: the same number twice
Here is the mistake that costs owners the most, and it is easy to make. Because SDE is the larger earnings figure, it carries a lower multiple; because EBITDA is the smaller figure, it carries a higher multiple. The two are two ways of describing the same value, not two different values. Comparing an SDE multiple to an EBITDA multiple as if they were the same number is the single most common error owners make reading the market.
Play it out. General benchmark ranges published by Peak Business Valuation put concrete companies at roughly 2.2 to 3.0 times SDE and roughly 3.4 to 3.8 times EBITDA — the same companies, two measures, two multiples. An owner who hears “3.4 to 3.8 times” for EBITDA and then applies it to their SDE has just overstated the value, because they multiplied the larger earnings figure by the higher multiple. The measures are not interchangeable, and neither are their multiples. A quoted multiple is meaningless until you know which earnings figure it applies to — that is the whole discipline in one sentence.
Which measure applies to your operation
The measure tracks size and how the operation is run. A smaller, owner-operated concrete business — where the owner quotes the work, keeps the general-contractor relationships, and runs the crews — is usually valued on SDE, because a buyer is stepping into that owner’s seat and will take that pay. A larger operation that already runs on a hired management team the owner is not part of day to day is usually valued on EBITDA, because a full management cost is already sitting in the numbers and there is no owner salary to add back.
Plenty of concrete operations sit near the crossover, and they can be framed either way depending on how the owner’s role is treated. That is not a loophole — it is exactly why a professional establishes the measure, and normalizes the earnings to it, before quoting any multiple. The choice of measure is part of the valuation, not a footnote to it.
The scale ladder: why bigger operations carry higher EBITDA multiples
The measure you use is not the only thing that moves with size — the multiple itself climbs as an operation grows, and construction is no exception. Research-style data from First Page Sage for late 2024 shows construction and building-materials EBITDA multiples rising from roughly five and a half times for the smallest firms toward nearly ten times as they scale into a few million dollars of EBITDA. Bigger operations are read as more durable, less owner-dependent, and easier to finance, so buyers pay more per dollar of earnings.
That scale ladder is one more reason not to lift a multiple from a larger operation and apply it to a smaller one. A multiple published for a firm at several million dollars of EBITDA describes a different animal from an owner-operator flatwork crew valued on SDE, and stacking the two produces a number that flatters the smaller operation. Read published multiples as a map of how the market prices size and measure, not as a valuation of your business.
Where the operating model meets the measure
The measure answers how the earnings are counted; it does not, by itself, capture what else carries value. An asset-heavy ready-mix operation holds a batch plant and a mixer fleet that carry balance-sheet value beyond the earnings multiple, while a labor-heavy flatwork crew is valued almost entirely on the earnings the measure produces. So the full picture is two questions stacked: which earnings measure fits, and how much hard-asset value sits underneath it. A ready-mix producer valued on EBITDA still has an asset floor a flatwork crew on the same measure does not. The operating-model asset spread is where that second question lives.
Real numbers, not a chart
Real-World Scenario: Two concrete owners compare notes at a supplier counter. The first runs a small flatwork crew and does most of the selling and quoting himself; his advisor values him on SDE. The second runs a larger operation with a full management team he stepped back from years ago; her advisor values her on EBITDA. The first owner hears the second’s EBITDA multiple, decides his own business must be worth the same multiple times his earnings, and walks away convinced he is underpriced. He is not — he has multiplied the larger earnings figure by the higher multiple, mixing two measures that were never meant to be compared. Same trade, same counter, two measures — and the only way to know either business’s real worth is to normalize its own earnings and apply the multiple that belongs to its own measure.
The point is not that one measure is right and the other wrong — both are correct, each for its size of business. The point is that a multiple travels with its measure, and separating them is how owners lose the plot. Get the earnings figure normalized and the measure right, and a fair multiple produces a fair value.
Turning the measure into a defensible number
Neither measure hands you your number; they tell you how to read one. A certified business appraiser or M&A advisor normalizes your earnings — adding back true owner discretionary expenses for SDE, or setting a market-rate management salary for EBITDA, and stripping one-time items either way — chooses the measure that fits your size and structure, and builds a defensible figure from your real financials. A CPA handles the tax and the normalization, and an attorney handles the structure. The insurance side rides along quietly: clean general liability loss runs and the commercial auto schedule on the fleet are part of what a buyer reads on the way in. For the wider set of drivers, start with what a concrete business is worth; to see who applies these measures, read who buys concrete businesses; and for the cost side of running the operation, see what drives concrete insurance cost. When you are ready to make sure the operation is insured to the way it actually runs, start a quote. This is general education to sharpen the conversation with your own appraiser, M&A advisor, and CPA — not a substitute for their advice on your specific business.