When a group sells or takes on a partner, the price is a multiple of EBITDA — and the multiple is mostly a judgement about how much of the business would survive without you.
Transaction advisors publish ranges for multi‑location dental groups, and in 2026 they run roughly like this. Two to four locations, owner‑dependent: five to seven times EBITDA. Five to nine locations with a partial management layer: seven to ten times. Ten or more with a full, non‑owner management team: nine to fourteen times. Platform‑grade groups above $5M of EBITDA trade at ten to twelve or more (Dental Transitions; Sofer Advisors).
Two things are worth noticing before you place yourself on that ladder. The ranges overlap, which is the advisors telling you that the location count is not what moves the number. And the spread inside each band is two to five turns, which on a group earning $2M is four to ten million dollars. The turns are the whole game.
Provider dependency. A single dentist producing more than about 35% of the group's collections costs one to two turns, because the buyer is pricing the risk that the dentist is you and you are leaving. The fix is slow — associate retention, equity or earn‑in structures, hygiene‑led production — which is why it has to start years before a sale.
Management. A trained, non‑owner management team adds one to three turns. Not a title; a team that runs the group when you take a month off, with the numbers to prove it.
Documented systems and comparable KPIs. Worth one to three turns on their own. This is the one most groups under‑invest in because it looks like tidiness. It isn't. It is the difference between a buyer who can verify your numbers in four weeks and one who spends eight weeks striking things out.
Concentration and leases. A single location above about 40% of revenue, or a below‑market lease expiring inside two years, reduces the range. Unresolved payer audits or open compliance citations can take 5–20% off the price outright.
Before any serious buyer signs, they commission a quality‑of‑earnings review. For a $10–30M deal it typically runs three to four weeks and $12–25K; above $30M, four to six weeks and $25–50K or more; multi‑location valuations complete in four to eight weeks (Bedrock QoE; Sofer). A QoE reads the books. It verifies that reported EBITDA is real, recurring and yours.
It does two things to owner‑reported numbers. It strikes what it cannot verify — undocumented add‑backs, personal expenses run through the practice (commonly $30–150K a year), revenue counted from treatment plans rather than delivered work. And it amplifies every strike by the multiple: at ten times, a struck $100,000 of EBITDA is a million dollars of price. The same arithmetic runs the other way. Verified growth is worth ten too.
A QoE reads the ledger, not the chairs. It cannot tell you that a third of treatment‑plan revenue was accepted and never scheduled, that recall lapsed at one location in June, or that a carrier's payments on six codes have sat below your fee schedule since March. Those things are in the practice record, not the general ledger — which is why a group that runs its own record on one definition, with the rows behind every figure, walks into diligence with the answers instead of the questions.
Comparability is not tidiness. It is price. One definition across every location, a management team that runs on it, and a record that can produce the claim line behind any number — those are worth more at the table than most of what groups spend two years optimising. And they are also, not by coincidence, what makes the group better to run in the meantime.
Write down your group's EBITDA, your largest producer's share of collections, your largest location's share of revenue, and whether a non‑owner runs the group when you're away. Place yourself in the band honestly. Then list the turns you could move in eighteen months.
Inside Vella OS, every location is read on one definition from day one, so same‑store by cohort and verified EBITDA by location are facts before the LOI — not answers you assemble for the data room. The DSO page → · Investment Intelligence →
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