The company in the article appears to be more of a software company & less of a service company. From the conversations I've had, I would expect to see a valuation in the range of 2-5x the company's earnings.

(The term of art is SDE/Seller's Discretionary Earnings, and is basically the sum of all the money the owners are able to take out of the business, including paychecks and bonuses.)

FEI and other brokers write a bunch about valuing small businesses: https://feinternational.com/blog/how-do-you-value-an-online-...