We analysed all 35,435 active UK plumbing, heating and HVAC companies — 98.7% of which file no profit & loss account — to build the first population-wide picture of what these businesses actually earn.
35,435 companies · extracted 2026-07-24 · dataset v1.0
Key findings
Four benchmarks on this page are worth comparing your own business against: net profit margin, EBITDA margin, revenue per employee, and working capital as a share of revenue. Because most companies here file no profit & loss account, the figures are estimated for the majority — the Method section at the bottom explains exactly how every figure is produced and where each input comes from.
Net profit margin is the share of revenue left after every cost — materials, wages, overheads, depreciation of vans and equipment, interest and tax. It is the bottom line most owners think of as their margin. One caution for owner-managed companies: your own salary and dividends come out before this line, so it understates what the business actually pays you.
How to read these tables: each table shows the distribution of ONE benchmark — its first, bold row. “Typical” is the middle of the pack; only one company in ten sits below the “low end” and only one in ten above the “high end”. The lighter rows beneath are not benchmarks — they are the inputs the benchmark is calculated from, shown so you can see what the businesses at each level look like. Each column describes the same group of companies, so dividing its inputs gives roughly that column’s benchmark figure.
| Measure | Low endP10 | Lower middleP25 | Typicalmedian | Upper middleP75 | High endP90 | Companies |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Estimated net profit margin | −7.6% | 0% | 4.7% | 13.1% | 23% | 19,480 |
| Estimated revenue | £104k | £103k | £140k | £102k | £113k | 19,480 |
| Estimated net profit | −£8k | £0 | £7k | £14k | £27k | 19,480 |
| Measure | Low endP10 | Lower middleP25 | Typicalmedian | Upper middleP75 | High endP90 | Companies |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Filed net profit margin | −3.3% | 1% | 6.2% | 19.9% | 33.1% | 358 |
| Filed revenue | £48k | £865k | £187k | £107k | £83k | 358 |
| Filed net profit | −£2k | £5k | £12k | £22k | £26k | 358 |
EBITDA margin shows the raw operational cash generation of the business — profit before interest, tax and depreciation are taken out — which is why investors and buyers work from it. The trade-off: it ignores depreciation, a real cost in a van-and-machinery trade, which is why the typical net margin (4.7%) sits below the typical EBITDA margin (7.3%).
| Measure | Low endP10 | Lower middleP25 | Typicalmedian | Upper middleP75 | High endP90 | Companies |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Estimated EBITDA margin | −6.4% | 0.7% | 7.3% | 17.3% | 29.5% | 21,292 |
| Estimated revenue | £100k | £122k | £133k | £106k | £119k | 21,292 |
| Estimated EBITDA | −£7k | £1k | £10k | £18k | £35k | 21,292 |
| Estimated EBIT | −£7k | £0 | £9k | £17k | £33k | 21,292 |
A further 13,087 companies have an account-derived EBITDA but no usable revenue estimate, so they are excluded from this table: typically very small businesses filing minimal balance sheets. Their EBITDA alone is typically £0 — nine in ten sit below £15k.
470 companies file a turnover line; 358 file a full profit & loss account — shown here with no estimation. The filed sample is self-selecting and unrepresentative: tiny voluntary filers alongside the segment's largest businesses.
| Measure | Low endP10 | Lower middleP25 | Typicalmedian | Upper middleP75 | High endP90 | Companies |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Filed EBITDA margin | −3% | 2.3% | 10% | 24.7% | 42.8% | 358 |
| Filed revenue | £51k | £178k | £340k | £76k | £83k | 358 |
| Filed EBITDA | −£2k | £4k | £36k | £19k | £33k | 358 |
| Filed EBIT (operating profit) | −£2k | £4k | £35k | £18k | £32k | 358 |
Employee counts are filed by nearly every company, so the headcount side of this benchmark is real filed data even where revenue is estimated. Companies are ranked by revenue per employee; the two rows beneath the benchmark are within-band averages — average revenue divided by average team size returns that band's revenue per employee, so the rows always reconcile.
| Measure | Low endP10 | Lower middleP25 | Typicalmedian | Upper middleP75 | High endP90 | Companies |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Estimated revenue per employee | £26k | £37k | £56k | £87k | £143k | 21,465 |
| Average revenue (estimated) | £70k | £111k | £174k | £381k | £829k | 21,465 |
| Average team size | 2.8 | 3.0 | 3.1 | 4.4 | 5.8 | 21,465 |
| Measure | Low endP10 | Lower middleP25 | Typicalmedian | Upper middleP75 | High endP90 | Companies |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Filed revenue per employee | £14k | £35k | £69k | £143k | £288k | 410 |
| Average revenue (filed) | £24k | £64k | £149k | £4.67M | £12.9M | 410 |
| Average team size | 1.8 | 1.8 | 2.1 | 31.9 | 43.8 | 410 |
A clear pattern in both tables: productivity rises with scale. Companies in the top filed productivity band average 43.8 staff and £12.9M of revenue — £288k per head — while the least productive band averages 1.8 staff on £24k. The estimated population — where 72.6% of companies run teams of one to three — shows the same climb: average team size rises from 2.8 at the low end to 5.8 at the high end. Bigger plumbing businesses don't just add hands — they get more out of each one.
Net working capital — current assets minus current liabilities, straight from each company's filed balance sheet — shows how much capital the trade ties up: a financeability signal for lenders and buyers. Companies are ranked by working capital as a share of revenue.
| Measure | Low endP10 | Lower middleP25 | Typicalmedian | Upper middleP75 | High endP90 | Companies |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Working capital as % of estimated revenue | −14.7% | −2.3% | 7.5% | 23.2% | 46.2% | 21,266 |
| Working capital (filed balance sheet) | −£13k | −£2k | £9k | £31k | £63k | 21,266 |
| Estimated revenue | £90k | £108k | £123k | £134k | £134k | 21,266 |
| Measure | Low endP10 | Lower middleP25 | Typicalmedian | Upper middleP75 | High endP90 | Companies |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Working capital as % of filed revenue | −13.4% | −0.6% | 5.2% | 20.1% | 47.6% | 443 |
| Working capital (filed balance sheet) | −£8k | −£1k | £5k | £26k | £117k | 443 |
| Filed revenue | £66k | £94k | £104k | £135k | £232k | 443 |
Who owns and runs these companies is not published in any filed dataset. We build it from the live director and PSC registers for the 33,626 companies with active officers on record.
| A majority owner runs the business (one director owns 50%+) | 22,890 | 68% |
| Two or more owners run it together | 6,450 | 19.2% |
| The director running it owns a minority stake (25–50%) | 3,210 | 9.5% |
| The owner is not on the board | 622 | 1.8% |
| No registered controlling owner | 509 | 1.5% |
| Under 30 | 1,005 | 3% |
| 30-40 | 7,255 | 21.6% |
| 40-50 | 10,643 | 31.7% |
| 50-60 | 8,063 | 24% |
| 60-70 | 5,223 | 15.5% |
| 70+ | 1,436 | 4.3% |
23,395 companies (66% of the segment) have a single director. Of those, 3,358 have that sole director aged 60 or over — 14.4% of all sole-director companies, and 9.5% of the whole segment.
| Under £100k | 9,114 | 25.7% |
| £100k–£250k | 7,469 | 21.1% |
| £250k–£500k | 2,160 | 6.1% |
| £500k–£1M | 1,441 | 4.1% |
| £1M–£2.5M | 952 | 2.7% |
| £2.5M–£5M | 270 | 0.8% |
| £5M+ | 231 | 0.7% |
| No usable turnover figure | 13,798 | 38.9% |
The 13,798 companies with no usable turnover figure file too little to estimate from — typically a minimal balance sheet with too few line items for our estimation methods to work on. Rather than guess, we publish nothing for them.
| London | 6,965 | 19.7% |
| South East | 5,692 | 16.1% |
| East of England | 3,755 | 10.6% |
| North West | 3,511 | 9.9% |
| South West | 3,050 | 8.6% |
| Yorkshire & The Humber | 2,742 | 7.7% |
| West Midlands | 2,700 | 7.6% |
| Scotland | 2,178 | 6.1% |
| East Midlands | 2,065 | 5.8% |
| Wales | 1,283 | 3.6% |
| North East | 997 | 2.8% |
| Northern Ireland | 487 | 1.4% |
| Unknown | 10 | 0% |
| Under 3 years | 5,015 | 14.2% |
| 3–5 years | 6,013 | 17% |
| 5–10 years | 10,673 | 30.1% |
| 10–20 years | 9,667 | 27.3% |
| 20+ years | 4,067 | 11.5% |
Inputs. Companies House bulk accounts data, the officer register and the PSC register, for every active UK company classified into this segment by our activity model. Holding companies and probable subsidiaries are excluded. 33 companies file consolidated group accounts; their figures describe the group.
Revenue. Where turnover is filed (470 companies) we use it. Otherwise revenue is a model estimate built from the filed balance sheet, cross-checked by an ML model trained on 157,000 UK company-years, labelled high/medium/low confidence; estimates failing the reliability gate carry no point estimate. Across the 35,435 companies that gives: 470 filed turnover, 38 high-confidence estimates, 13,240 medium-confidence, 7,889 low-confidence, and 13,798 with no usable estimate.
EBITDA and the D&A basis. EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) is not a model guess here — each figure is worked out from that company's own filed accounts, in one of three ways: from a full P&L (410 companies), operating profit plus the depreciation charge; from a profit-before-tax reconciliation of the filed balance sheet (16,639 companies), adding back identifiable tax, interest and depreciation; or from the retained-earnings movement between two filed balance sheets (13,638 companies), with the same add-backs. Depreciation comes from the filing where identifiable (11,359 companies); where no charge is identifiable, none is assumed — the EBITDA then carries no D&A add-back. EBIT is the same figure minus the identifiable depreciation charge, so it covers exactly the same companies as EBITDA; for a company with no identifiable depreciation the two are equal.
Margins and working capital. Net profit is the base of the derivation chain above — the filed bottom line where a P&L exists, otherwise the same balance-sheet reconciliation before the add-backs (ML-modelled net profits are excluded from the benchmark). Net margin divides it by revenue; EBITDA margin divides the filing-based EBITDA by the same revenue — an estimate for most of the population, which is why every figure outside the filed tables is marked estimated. Net working capital is current assets minus current liabilities from the filed balance sheet.
How the tables are built. Each benchmark table ranks its companies by the first row's measure; at each point of that distribution (P10–P90) we report the medians of every row for the companies around that point. The first row is therefore the actual distribution, and each column describes the same group of companies, which is why a column's figures reconcile with each other. Medians only, everywhere — with one exception: the two context rows of the revenue-per-employee table are clearly-labelled within-band averages (headcounts are small whole numbers, so medians hide the variation); dividing them still returns that band's benchmark.
Cross-check. For each measure we re-computed the typical (median) figure using only filed accounts — the same definitions as the filed-accounts section, so the filed column below matches the figures shown there. The gaps against the full population are real and expected: the filed sample is small and skews differently from the whole market.
| Measure | Typical, all companies | Typical, filed accounts only |
|---|---|---|
| Net profit margin | 4.7% (19,480) | 6.2% (358) |
| Net profit | £7k (19,480) | £12k (358) |
| EBITDA margin | 7.3% (21,292) | 10% (358) |
| Revenue | £133k (21,292) | £340k (358) |
| EBITDA | £10k (21,292) | £36k (358) |
| EBIT | £9k (21,292) | £35k (358) |
| Revenue per employee | £56k (21,465) | £69k (410) |
| Working capital % of revenue | 7.5% (21,266) | 5.2% (443) |
One-person and family companies dominate this segment; where dividends cannot be separated from retained-earnings movement, derived profit understates what the owner takes out — read the lower half of the EBITDA distribution as profit retained in the company, not owner earnings. Classification is model-based on SIC codes, names and filing text, and SIC self-classification is imperfect. This data should not be used to value a specific company, for lending or credit decisions, or for tax and accounting purposes.
ExitRadar (2026). UK Plumbing, Heating & HVAC Company Benchmarks, dataset v1.0, extracted 2026-07-24. ExitRadar analysis of Companies House filings. https://www.exitradar.co.uk/benchmarks/plumbing
Free to cite with attribution and a link.