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Article · Enterprise value

Your Valuation Is Dropping Faster Than You Think

The market prices what a BPO sells, not how much of it. Capacity gets priced like capacity, and adding more of it does not change that.

December 2025 · 3 min read

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Short answer

The market prices what a BPO sells, not how much of it.

A BPO that sells capacity gets priced like capacity, however much revenue it adds. Capacity means people and hours, available for whatever the client asks for, priced by the seat or the hour. A BPO that sells specialized solutions is priced differently, and what you sell is the part you can change.

What can a taxi medallion teach a BPO owner?

Revenue can grow while the market reprices what you sell.

There's a chart that's hard to stop thinking about: the price of a New York City taxi medallion over two decades. It climbed for years. Then Uber launched, and it fell.

What makes the chart unsettling is that taxi drivers didn't get lazier or provide worse service. Many increased their revenue in those early Uber years by working longer hours. But revenue growth couldn't hold the price. The market had repriced what a medallion was worth because the underlying business model had been disrupted.

The analogy goes only as far as one point: revenue and the price the market puts on a business can move separately. A BPO that sells capacity is paid per seat and per hour, so when technology takes over the work, it shrinks the BPO's own revenue.

What does the market pay a BPO for?

What it sells, not how much of it.

Many BPO owners assume that reaching a certain revenue number will get them the valuation they want. Public comps don't support that. Revenue mix re-rates a BPO; roster size doesn't. Concentrix has one of the largest rosters in the industry, and the multiple follows what each firm sells.1

EV / TTM EBITDA. Source: Public BPO Tracker, retrieved October 14, 2026 (Concentrix) and August 12, 2026 (Maximus, EXL). These are public-market prices, not a promise.

The acquirer's view of domain-specialist BPOs is in what Capgemini saw that most BPOs are missing.

What are the two ways a BPO can go from here?

Keep selling capacity, or change what you sell.

If you're a BPO that sells mostly labor, there are really two paths.

The first is to keep doing what you're doing: continue selling labor arbitrage, rely on referrals and brokers, and avoid technology disruption to protect current revenue. Meanwhile your existing clients work out AI on their own. That is the vision gap that's already costing some firms their biggest accounts.

The second is to change what you sell. Partner with AI and automation platforms and deploy the technology, not just sign agreements. Build a real technology strategy, not another vendor-logo wrapper, that bundles technology into your offering.

What does changing what you sell take in practice?

Partnerships that run, a commercial model and a team that sells differently.

This only works if the partnerships are active, not just signed. QA, recruiting and agent-assist are quickly becoming table stakes, not premium add-ons, so start there.

  1. Deploy the technology in your own operations first
  2. Settle the commercial model: reselling, white-labeling or a joint offering
  3. Upskill your team to sell specialized solutions, not seats
  4. Accept that you will bill fewer seats

The third step takes new sales skills, processes and incentives. It is the leap from order-taker to strategic partner.

Next Step

If your board is asking what the business is worth, we can talk it through.

Frequently asked questions

How do we tell whether we sell capacity or specialized solutions?

If the client decides what you do and you bill by the hour, you're selling capacity, whatever your website calls it. Look at what you're actually selling, not just your revenue trend. If your growth still comes mainly from seat count and labor arbitrage, not from a specialized solution for one market and one problem, you're selling capacity.

Does this matter if we're not planning to sell anytime soon?

Yes. Valuation affects more than an exit. It shapes what you can borrow against, what a PE partner will pay for a minority stake, and how your board evaluates you internally.

Can we expect our multiple to reach EXL's?

No. These are public-market prices, not a promise. EXL was a data and analytics firm long before the market priced it like one. The comps show where the value sits, not what any one BPO will be paid.

  1. Public BPO Tracker. EV / TTM EBITDA. Retrieved October 14, 2026 (Concentrix) and August 12, 2026 (Maximus, EXL).
Amanda Quinn, Principal at Evostr

Amanda Quinn

Amanda Quinn is a Principal at Evostr. She is an independent analyst for Fourcasters, was named to ICMI's 2026 Top 25 Thought Leaders in Customer Experience, spoke at and judged awards at Matchboard BPO Exchange 2026, and co-hosts the Build a Better BPO podcast.

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