65 propane transactions in the trailing twelve months — and one in five wasn't a propane distributor
A complete, categorized record of announced propane industry M&A from May 2025 through August 2026, with seller-advisor attribution and the valuation data that actually holds up to scrutiny.
Compiled August 4, 2026 · Covers LP Gas Magazine's 2025–26 tracking period plus deals announced after its May 14, 2026 cutoff
65
Total transactions identified
60 in the LP Gas tracking period + 5 announced since
52
Retail propane marketer deals
13 were equipment, midstream, transport or advisory
47
Distinct named acquirers
4 transactions had undisclosed buyers
+43%
Growth in tracked deals YoY
60 vs. 42 named targets the prior period
Deal velocity is at a decade high
LP Gas Magazine's archives put the ten-year average at 43 deals per year, with 2018 the previous peak at 54. The 2025–26 tracking period recorded 60 named targets.
Tracked propane transactions per period
Named target companies. Dashed lines show the decade average and the previous peak year.
Decade avg · 43
2018 peak · 54
42
60
2024–25 period to May 9, 2025
2025–26 period to May 14, 2026
One caveat that matters, and nobody states it
LP Gas does not publish a total for either period — the number has to be counted from the list, and the answer depends entirely on your convention. The 2025–26 tracker lists 60 named targets across roughly forty-odd acquirer entries — several buyers made multiple acquisitions, and four transactions had no disclosed buyer at all, so the row count itself depends on how you treat those. The prior period lists 42 named targets. Since that 42 lines up almost exactly with LP Gas's stated decade average of 43, counting by named target appears to be the consistent convention — and on that basis 60 is a record. Counted by acquirer entry instead, this period looks unremarkable. We think the target-count reading is right, but it is an inference about someone else's methodology, not a published fact. Any deal count quoted for this market should come with its counting rule attached; almost none do.
What's actually inside the count
The trade-press tracker mixes retail propane distributors with equipment manufacturers, midstream operators, tank fabricators, and even an M&A advisory firm. For anyone evaluating retail consolidation, that inflates the picture by roughly a fifth.
2025–26 tracked transactions by type
60 named targets, categorized.
Retail propane marketers
47
Equipment & tank mfg.
6
Transport, tech, advisory, c-store
4
Midstream & terminals
3
Retail distribution — the consolidation storyAdjacent industries
Who is buying
Five acquirers accounted for 14 of the 52 retail deals — better than a quarter of the market between them. Private-equity-backed platforms drove the top of the table while the legacy majors were largely absent: Superior Plus, Suburban Propane, and AmeriGas made no tracked retail acquisitions in the 2025–26 period, and AmeriGas was a net seller, divesting its Hawaii assets to Isle Gas — a transaction in the table below.
Most acquisitive buyers, retail propane deals
May 2025 – August 2026, including deals announced after the tracker cutoff.
PE-backed platformIndependent, family-owned or cooperative
The pattern worth noticing
Only nine buyers did more than one retail deal, and three of them are private-equity-backed platforms — holding the top two positions outright. Reliable Energy Partners (Soundcore Capital) launched in November 2025 and closed five acquisitions inside eight months. Meritum Energy Holdings (Crestline Investors) did three. Energy Distribution Partners did two. Everyone else on the list is a family-owned regional or a farm cooperative buying one or two neighbors. There is very little in between, which is the whole opportunity: a fragmented base of sellers and a small, concentrated, well-capitalized set of buyers.
Who advises the sellers
Seller-side representation in this market is concentrated in a handful of boutiques. Where an advisor was publicly named, this is the tally — and it is the closest thing that exists to a map of who controls owner relationships in propane.
Seller-side advisors, by publicly attributed transactions
Deals where an intermediary was named in the announcement. Most transactions name no advisor at all, so this understates true activity.
Structural change in the advisor layer
Matrix Capital Markets Group — long one of the two most established fuels-and-propane advisory shops — appears in this period on both sides: it advised sellers on two of the adjacent transactions, and it was itself acquired by Citizens Financial Group in February 2026. Notably, none of its tracked mandates this period were retail propane distributors. That leaves Cetane Associates as the dominant independent specialist in propane seller representation, and it means the most established competitor is now inside a bank.
Every transaction
Sortable and filterable. Sponsor attribution and seller advisor added where publicly documented; the underlying trade-press listing carries neither.
Acquirer ▼
Target ▼
Location ▼
Type ▼
Seller advisor ▼
Valuation reference
Propane transaction pricing is almost never disclosed. What follows separates what is actually verifiable from what circulates as received wisdom — the distinction matters more here than the numbers do.
Confirmed transaction multiples
Transaction
Price
Implied multiple
Basis
Superior Plus / Freeman Gas (2021)
$170M
~7.7×
BPrice and EBITDA disclosed (grade A inputs); the multiple is our own division, not stated by Superior Plus or any adviser. The $22M is a normalized run-rate estimate, not a clean historical actual.
Superior Plus / Kamps Propane (2021)
$240M
8.9× actual 7.1× forward
BGrade A inputs, computed multiple. The actual-vs-forward spread is why a single "propane multiple" is misleading.
DCC / United Propane Gas (2021)
$145M EV
Not computable
APrice disclosed; EBITDA was not.
Public market comparables
Company
EV/EBITDA
Note
Suburban Propane (SPH)
9.04× / 8.5×
BSources conflict — 9.04× from a data aggregator (Aug 2026) vs. 8.5× LTM from Raymond James (June 2026). Reported unaveraged; the bank figure is the more defensible one.
UGI Corp (AmeriGas parent)
7.09×
BConsolidated — includes utilities and international. Not a clean propane proxy.
Ferrellgas (FGPR)
6.90×
BOTC, post-bankruptcy capital structure. Treat with caution.
Superior Plus (SPB)
6.4–6.5×
BAggregator sources, mutually consistent.
Fuel distribution peer median
8.2× LTM 7.4× 2026E
ARaymond James, June 15 2026. Peer set includes gasoline and diesel wholesalers — broader than propane-pure.
The size-tiered multiple ladder that circulates in this industry is not sourced
A widely repeated ladder — roughly 4–6× for dealers at $500K–1.5M EBITDA, 5–7× for regionals at $1.5–5M, 6–8× above that — traces to marketing content published by an M&A brokerage, with no underlying transaction data shown. Its shape is consistent with the confirmed deals above and with public comps, so it is probably directionally right. But no verifiable pricing exists for any propane transaction below roughly $20M of EBITDA, because none has ever been disclosed. Anyone quoting precise small-company multiples in this market is estimating.
Tank ownership: the value driver everyone agrees on
BCompany-owned or leased tanks above 80% of those serviced is considered a strong position (Propane Resources, via LP Gas).
BThe industry average is roughly 85% company-owned — only about 15% of tanks sit under customer ownership (LP Gas).
BIn a Butane-Propane News survey, 53% of marketers ranked tank ownership the single most important valuation factor — first out of ten.
CNo published source quantifies the discount in multiple terms. The premium is universally asserted and never measured.
What could not be verified
Price per gallon. No credible current benchmark exists publicly. Practitioner sources describe the metric as largely abandoned in favor of EBITDA multiples, because customer mix — residential margins run roughly 40–60¢/gallon against about 20¢ for agricultural volume — makes blended per-gallon comparisons misleading.
Seller financing prevalence and terms. No data found. Frequently described, never quantified.
Whether multiples are rising. No source states a trend numerically. Available commentary points to widening dispersion — premium assets holding strong pricing while weather-affected books transact on more conservative structures with retention- or gallon-based earnouts.
Methodology
Coverage. LP Gas Magazine's 2025–26 tracking period (published May 14, 2026), its 2024–25 period (May 9, 2025) for comparison, plus an independent sweep of Butane-Propane News, PR wires, acquirer press pages, and advisor announcements for transactions after the May 2026 cutoff.
Counting. One row per named target company. Multi-target transactions count once per target. Four 2025–26 transactions had undisclosed buyers and are listed as such. Two prior-period entries reported only aggregate unnamed deal counts and are excluded from the named-target totals.
Categorization. "Retail" means a business whose primary activity is distributing propane to end customers. Equipment manufacturers, tank fabricators, midstream and terminal assets, hauling companies, convenience retail, monitoring technology, and advisory firms are classed as adjacent. This categorization is ours and is not present in the source listing.
Sponsor and advisor attribution. Added from press releases, sponsor announcements, and advisor newsrooms. Absence of an advisor here means none was publicly named, not that none was engaged.
Confidence grades.Averified against a primary source · Bsecondary source or self-reported by an interested party · Cinferred or single unconfirmed source. Deal counts and valuation figures carry grades; no figure here is presented without one.
Known limitations. Announcement dates are not published in the source listing and are omitted rather than estimated. Gallon volumes and customer counts appear only where an announcement disclosed them. Undisclosed transactions — likely a meaningful share of activity in a market this private — are by definition absent.