Magazine & Newspaper Business Valuation Benchmarks

Business owners, prospective buyers, and industry investors rely on a diverse set of financial benchmarks to assess the value of a business. We have compiled data from current BizBuySell listings and sold businesses to provide insight into the business for sale market and important benchmarks for pricing and evaluating magazine and newspaper businesses relative to industry standards.

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Highlights of Magazine & Newspaper Businesses Sold on BizBuySell

Magazine and newspaper businesses sold on BizBuySell include a diverse mix of traditional print publications, hybrid digital media platforms, and advertising businesses that serve both local and niche markets. Common businesses include community magazines and newspapers (often hyperlocal publications serving specific towns or regions), niche B2B publications targeting specific industries like wine and beverage, weddings, and education, and direct mail and advertising businesses that help local businesses reach customers.

Magazine & Newspaper Business Transaction Trends

The median sale price of newspaper and magazine companies sold has been fairly consistent, following a post-Covid drop. Median prices hover above $200k, though these small businesses range in value from as low as $50k to well over $2MM. Also of note is the unusually high median days on market (MDOM) of 317. Compared to the market-wide median of 171 days, magazine and newspaper businesses take significantly longer to sell once they hit the market.

Magazine & Newspaper Business Valuation Multiples

Valuation, or pricing, multiples are financial tools that allow for comparisons between businesses that have different levels of sales and income. They represent the sales price of a business relative to its financial performance, and given enough individual business sales data, they represent what the market is willing to pay for a business given its revenue and earnings.

Valuation Trends

Business values and associated multiples fluctuate over time, influenced by a variety of macroeconomic factors such as interest rates, inflation, consumer spending, and overall economic growth. Magazine and newspaper business valuation multiples are usually fairly consistent, but a surge in average earnings multiples occurred in 2022, driven by unusually low profit margins in businesses sold that year. Prices held fast, skewing earnings multiples.

Earnings Multiples

Earnings multiples represent the value of a business relative to its owner’s discretionary earnings or "cash flow". Arguably the most important valuation metric - as the seller's discretionary earnings will often dictate how much a buyer is able to borrow to finance the business acquisition - most valuations will hinge on a reasonable earnings multiple.

Revenue Multiples

Revenue multiples represent the value of a business relative to its overall annual sales or revenue. In conjunction with an earnings analysis, revenue multiples are commonly used to value a business based on its top line sales.

How to Interpret These Multiples

Recent Listings vs. Sold Businesses

We calculate and provide valuation multiples from two sources: Current and recent listings of businesses for sale, and our database of "comparable" businesses sold on BizBuySell. Multiples based on listing data are usually higher due to owners setting asking prices above what their businesses might typically sell for. This occurs either intentionally as a negotiation strategy, or incidentally due to business owners’ common tendency to overvalue their own businesses. When current listing multiples are lower, that signifies decreasing values or previously inflated values of sold businesses.

Multiples based on comparable businesses - "comps" in business broker parlance - are much more useful as they represent the prices at which businesses ultimately get sold. Business brokers and valuation professionals will always turn to local comps when pricing businesses for sale or evaluating businesses for acquisition. We provide both sets of data at the national level to offer general context. Local business sale comps by sales class suitable for pricing and negotiations are available in BizBuySell's Business Valuation Report.

Quartiles, Median, and Average

No two businesses are identical, and as such, valuation multiples exist in a range. We have carved out four common values within this range: Lower quartile represents the value under which the lowest 25% of valuation multiples fell. Upper quartile represents the value above which the highest 25% of multiples fell. Median is the middle of the range, and average is the mean of the set. Mean is almost always higher than the median, driven by a minority of high volume, high value businesses sold at multiples above the upper quartile.

Businesses with consistent financial performance, above average revenue and earnings, demonstrable growth potential, low owner involvement, unique competitive advantages, and a seller willing to finance will command a multiple at or above the upper quartile. Smaller businesses with thin profit margins, full-time owner involvement, and many direct competitors will trade at or below the lower quartile. Most businesses will fall somewhere in the middle.

Based on this data, half of newspaper and magazine businesses sold for an amount between 1.33- and 2.96-times their annual seller discretionary earnings, with 25% of exceptional, larger businesses trading above this range, and 25% of smaller, less desirable businesses trading below.

Financial Benchmarks

To determine how a business compares in terms of revenue and earnings performance relative to industry peers, it’s necessary to have some insight into industry standards. "Benchmarking" describes the practice of comparing a business’s financial performance to typical industry standards to determine where a business falls relative to other businesses in the same industry. These benchmarks can help guide owners and investors towards appropriate valuation multiples from the range above.

To that end, we have aggregated business financial ranges useful for comparing an individual newspaper or magazine business to the broader industry.

Magazine & Newspaper Business Revenue and Earnings Trends

Median revenue of newspaper and magazine businesses has been somewhat volatile, though generally flat. Owner earnings, on the other hand, has been growing fairly consistently, with the median increasing 50% over the five-year period, indicating improving profit margins of successful newspaper and magazine businesses.

Earnings Ranges

Discretionary earnings (used interchangeably with the terms "cash flow" and seller's discretionary earnings or SDE) is often the crux of business valuations, so it is important to benchmark it relative to similar businesses traded on the market. Below you will find discretionary earnings ranges for magazine and newspaper businesses sold over the past five years, as well as recent business for sale listings.

Revenue Ranges

Sales volume plays a large role in business valuation, as it measures the size of the potential income opportunity for new ownership. It's not uncommon for buyers to select an earnings multiple range based on overall revenue. The table below includes revenue ranges of magazine and newspaper businesses sold over the past five years and recent businesses listed for sale.

How Revenue and Earnings Level Affects Business Values

Clearly higher levels of earnings lead to higher valuations, even given the same multiple. However, valuation multiples also tend to rise with business sales volume. Larger businesses that generate higher sales (and maintain reasonable profit margins) tend to sell for earnings multiples on the higher end. So, a trade magazine publisher with annual revenue of $600k may sell for an earnings multiple close to 3, while a community newspaper publisher with sales of $200k may trade closer to 1.3 times earnings.

This tendency for higher sales volumes to fetch higher valuation multiples is largely driven by the economics of business acquisition financing. Higher volume businesses give buyers more cushion to cover debt service obligations and still have enough left over to pay the new owner a reasonable income.

Sector Comparisons

For a more complete understanding of the market and valuation standards, consider comparisons within the communications and media sector when benchmarking newspaper and magazine businesses. The chart and table below include key metrics from sales of communications and media businesses on BizBuySell between 2021 and 2025.

Compared to other businesses in the communications and media sector, newspaper and magazine businesses tend to be smaller in scale, and so tend to see valuations multiples on the lower end. That said, publishers with larger audiences (and associated sales) can easily see earnings multiples of 3-4 or better, if they can scale revenue up toward the $1 million mark.

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