Fire & Life Safety

Fire and Life Safety Valuation Benchmarks: What Publicly Traded Companies Are Worth

Fire detection, suppression, passive fire protection and life safety compliance are among the most heavily traded sub-sectors in building services. A large part of that activity happens above the private market, between publicly traded groups, meaning companies whose shares trade on a stock exchange and who must report their numbers every quarter. Those numbers are the clearest public read available on what acquirers will pay for statutory, recurring, inspection-led revenue.

What these companies are, in plain English

Every company on this page is publicly traded: its shares are bought and sold on a stock exchange such as the London Stock Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ. Anyone can buy a share, and the law requires these companies to publish their revenue, profit and debt in full. That is why we can show what buyers pay for them.

Your business is almost certainly private: the shares are held by you and perhaps a few others, and nothing has to be published beyond your filed accounts. Private companies sell for less than publicly traded ones of the same type, because a buyer cannot sell the shares on again at the click of a button and carries more risk in checking the numbers. Treat the figures here as the ceiling the market sets, not the price your business would fetch.

What are publicly traded fire & life safety companies valued at?

Publicly traded fire & life safety companies, meaning those whose shares are bought and sold on a stock exchange, are valued at a median of 15.1x EV/EBITDA, across a range of 8.9x to 23.6x, based on 8 companies whose shares trade on a stock exchange, as at 2026-08-14.

Private companies in the same trades sell for less than this. Stock market valuations reflect scale, the ease of selling shares on again and full public reporting, none of which a private seller carries.

Median EV/EBITDA	15.1x
Range	8.9x – 23.6x
Constituents	8

Last reviewed August 2026 by Joe Lewin, Founder and Managing Director, DealFlowAgent.

The publicly traded companies in this sector

Publicly traded Fire & Life Safety companies on stock exchanges worldwide, with reported valuation multiples
	Stock exchange	Market cap					As at / source
Johnson Controls International plc Fire suppression and sprinklers	New York Stock Exchange Ticker NYSE: JCI · United States	Over $50bn	23.6x	4.1x	17.3%	—	2026-08-14 Investor relations
Napco Security Technologies, Inc. Fire alarms and detection	NASDAQ, New York Ticker NASDAQ: NSSC · United States	$500m to $2bn	23.1x	6.8x	29.5%	—	2026-08-14 Investor relations
APi Group Corporation Fire alarms and detection	New York Stock Exchange Ticker NYSE: APG · United States	$10bn to $50bn	20.4x	2.6x	12.8%	—	2026-08-14 Investor relations
Allegion plc Passive fire and fire doors	New York Stock Exchange Ticker NYSE: ALLE · Ireland	$10bn to $50bn	15.2x	3.7x	24.5%	—	2026-08-14 Investor relations
FirstService Corporation Fire alarms and detection	NASDAQ, New York Ticker NASDAQ: FSV · Canada	$2bn to $10bn	15.0x	1.4x	9.6%	—	2026-08-14 Investor relations
Installed Building Products, Inc. Passive fire and fire doors	New York Stock Exchange Ticker NYSE: IBP · United States	$2bn to $10bn	14.8x	2.4x	16.2%	—	2026-08-14 Investor relations
Nohmi Bosai Ltd. Fire alarms and detection	Tokyo Stock Exchange Ticker TSE: 6744.T · Japan	$500m to $2bn	10.0x	1.5x	15.4%	—	2026-08-14 Investor relations
Hochiki Corporation Fire alarms and detection	Tokyo Stock Exchange Ticker TSE: 6745.T · Japan	$500m to $2bn	8.9x	1.2x	13.3%	—	2026-08-14 Investor relations

What owners can learn from this

Statutory revenue is priced differently to project revenue

Publicly traded groups separate mandated inspection and maintenance income from discretionary installation work in their own reporting because the market values the two at different multiples. Private buyers apply the same split.

Contract density beats contract count

Publicly traded operators report route density and revenue per engineer, not just customer numbers. A tight geographic base with high revenue per visit converts to margin, and margin is what the multiple attaches to.

Margin resilience through a downcycle is the headline test

The publicly traded set shows which sub-disciplines held EBITDA margin when construction volumes fell. Those are the disciplines where private multiples held too.

Accreditation is a gating item, not a premium

BAFE, LPS, FIRAS and third-party certification appear in stock market reporting as a licence to operate. Their absence is a discount; their presence is not, on its own, an uplift.

The consolidators in the publicly traded set are the buyers in the private one

The acquisitive names on the table below are the same groups, or their private equity backed equivalents, that appear on a private sale process.

Frequently asked questions

What EV/EBITDA multiple do publicly traded fire and life safety companies trade at?

The table on this page shows the reported enterprise value to EBITDA multiple for each publicly traded company, with the date each figure was captured and the filing it came from. The sector median is stated above the table.

Does a private fire safety business sell at the same multiple as a publicly traded one?

No. Private companies transact at a material discount to publicly traded companies, reflecting size, liquidity, customer concentration and owner dependency. The public to private bridge on this page sets out the discount range and reconciles it against our fire safety valuation guides.

Where does this data come from?

Published annual and interim reports, regulatory filings and market data, each cited against the individual company and dated. It is general information about M&A valuation, not investment research or a recommendation.

Why a private company advisory firm publishes this

DealFlowAgent is a sell-side mergers and acquisitions advisory firm. We act for owners of privately held fire & life safety businesses, typically between one million and fifty million pounds of enterprise value, and we run the sale process from preparation through to completion. We do not advise on shares, we do not manage money, and we have no interest in any company named on this page.

These figures are published because they are the only fully disclosed evidence of what buyers pay for this kind of work. They set the ceiling. What a private owner actually achieves is set by the size, contract quality and management depth of their own business, which is what our sector valuation guides and free valuation cover.

Citing this data and press contact

Journalists, analysts and researchers are welcome to reproduce these figures with attribution. Every number is a dated snapshot of publicly reported company data, not a forecast or an opinion on any share.

How to cite

"DealFlowAgent, Fire & Life Safety public market benchmarks, publicly traded comparable library, market values as at 14 August 2026 and earnings evidence to 19 August 2026."

Please link to this page when the figures are quoted. Source documents for each constituent are linked in the table above.

Press contact and commentary

Joe Lewin, Founder of DealFlowAgent, gives commentary on private company valuation, buyer behaviour and consolidation in building services, facilities management and healthcare. Commentary is confined to private M&A. We do not comment on the merits of any listed security.

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