North America · CAD

Business valuation in Canada

Canadian small business valuations follow North American convention: SDE for owner-operated businesses, EBITDA once a management team is in place.

How valuations are quoted locally

Canadian businesses are usually priced on EBITDA or SDE, and results are reported in Canadian dollar (CAD).

  • Share sales are often preferred by vendors for tax reasons; buyers usually prefer asset sales.
  • Provincial differences in licensing, labour and sales tax affect transferability.
  • Bilingual and regional customer concentration is a common value driver in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces.

Who buys businesses here

  • Owner-operators and immigrant investors
  • Regional trade consolidators
  • Private capital for recurring-revenue businesses

What commonly reduces the price

  • Vendor tax planning can materially change the preferred deal structure.
  • Cross-border customer exposure introduces currency and tariff risk.

Whichever market you are in, the underlying discipline is the same: normalise earnings, apply several methods, and weight them by how well each fits the business. See our twelve valuation methods for the full detail.

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