Ep 571 9.5x EBITDA for a Distributor (PE Offered 5x) with Brandon Wade

Brandon Wade was 25 and three years into a career at PricewaterhouseCoopers when his father called to ask if he would come home and help him run the family's propane company in southern Illinois. The business had five employees and was still handwriting checks. Over the next 19 years, Brandon bought his way from 15% of the equity to 51%, grew to 7,000 customers and $10 million in revenue, and built the largest independent propane distributor in the state. 

Propane is about as close to a pure commodity as it gets, and the private equity firms circling the industry priced it that way, at roughly five times EBITDA. In 2022, Brandon sold the operating business to four members of the GrowMark network of farm co-ops for 9.5 times, keeping the real estate for himself.