Airport Secure-Area Specialty Commercial Contractor, Georgia

$20.8M

Revenue

$3.3M

SDE

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Full Editorial Writeup

This is a specialty commercial general contractor operating out of Cobb County, Georgia, founded in 1997, delivering interior fit-out, ground-up construction, and renovation across airport, retail, restaurant, hospitality, medical, office, and public-sector end markets. FY2026E revenue is projected at $20.8M, up 74% year over year, at a 16% adjusted EBITDA margin producing $3.3M in adjusted EBITDA. Blended project margins run 25%, and management reports zero loss-making projects in the company's entire history.

The real asset here is regulatory access, not concrete. The company is pre-cleared, badged, and bonded to build inside post-security environments at major U.S. hub airports, where airport concessionaires award build-out work only to a tiny bench of eligible firms. That secure-area scope earns 28% to 30% gross margins versus 18% to 20% on standard commercial work, a premium set by scarcity of qualified bidders rather than by negotiating leverage. The entity holds airside clearances, badging infrastructure, on-airport staging with airfield access, $10M single-project and $30M aggregate bonding (never once declined), a strong 0.84 experience modification rate, and multi-state licensure across 11 states. Critically, all of these transfer at close with no requalification on a change of ownership.

Demand exceeds delivery capacity. Management estimates $10M to $15M of qualified, bondable work is turned away every year purely for lack of field crews, never for bonding limits. Over 90% of revenue is repeat, core relationships average more than 8 years, the largest account is 25% on a 4-year average, and those relationships sit with procurement departments rather than the owner. The business has never employed a salesperson or run a marketing budget, which means an incoming operator is funding capacity into demand that already exists.

Why we like it

Earnings quality is unusually clean for a contractor: 25% blended project margins, no loss-making projects in the company's history, and 16% adjusted EBITDA margins on $20.8M of revenue. The founder's remaining scope (final estimating and senior client relationships) is already fully expensed at roughly $300K against the $3.3M adjusted EBITDA, so the number is not inflated by owner-labor add-backs. That is a rare thing to see disclosed honestly in this asset class.
The moat is regulatory and structural, not reputational. Airside clearances, badging, $30M aggregate bonding, a 0.84 EMR, and 11-state licensure all transfer at close with no requalification, and national firms won't chase recurring secure-area fit-out while local firms can't post the bond or hold the clearances. Secure-area scope earns 28% to 30% gross margin precisely because the eligible bidder set is short by design.
The customer base behaves like recurring revenue even though it is a contractor. Over 90% of revenue is repeat, relationships average 8-plus years, and the book is held by airport concessionaire procurement teams rather than by the owner. The largest account at 25% on a 4-year average is a concentration flag, but the relationship durability partially offsets it.
Market tailwinds are quantified and funded. ACI-NA cites $173.9B of U.S. airport infrastructure need for 2025 to 2029, up 15.1% over the prior study, with terminal buildings the single largest category at $72.8B and squarely inside this company's scope. This is not speculative demand, it is a funded capital cycle already flowing.
The growth lever is embarrassingly obvious: $10M to $15M of already-bondable work is declined every year purely for lack of field crews. The business has never employed a salesperson or run a marketing budget, so an operator who simply recruits crews and installs a business-development function converts an existing referral pipeline into forecastable backlog.

How to improve it

Attack the field-bandwidth constraint immediately by building a recruiting and subcontractor-depth pipeline. Management already quantifies $10M to $15M of qualified, bondable work turned away annually, so every crew added converts directly into 25%-margin revenue. This is capacity expansion into confirmed demand, the highest-confidence use of capital in the deal.
Install a commercial function within the first 90 days. With no salesperson, no marketing budget, and no business-development role ever having existed, even a modest program aimed at concessionaire owners with live capital plans turns a referral-driven pipeline into a forecastable one and de-risks the revenue concentration.
Reduce the largest-account concentration of 25% by systematically deepening relationships across other hub concessionaires. Clearances are corporate-level and concessionaire relationships are national, so the same playbook can be replicated at any hub where those operators hold leases without new licensing.
Extend across the hub airport network using the existing 11-state licensure and national concessionaire relationships. The clearances and bonding already transfer, so geographic expansion is a staffing and mobilization exercise rather than a re-qualification one, which is far cheaper than entering a new trade.
Redeploy the field organization into adjacent end markets already served: medical facilities, hotels, offices, military installations, and national retail. These are proven delivery categories, so this is capacity redeployment during airport project gaps rather than market entry, smoothing revenue seasonality tied to airport budget cycles.
Formalize succession on the founder's replaceable scope well before his 6 to 12 month transition ends. Bring in or promote a senior estimator and client-relationship lead at the roughly $300K already expensed, and document the estimating methodology to protect the zero-loss project track record.
Tighten working-capital management given the 74% year-over-year revenue growth. Rapid contractor growth strains cash through retainage, progress billing, and subcontractor payables, so build a disciplined billing and collections cadence to fund capacity expansion without over-leveraging.

Diligence notes

Verify the FY2026E revenue figure is genuine backlog and signed work, not a projection. Revenue is described as up 74% year over year with H1 2026 nearly matching all of FY2025, so confirm the growth is contracted work with executed change orders rather than an optimistic forecast, and pressure-test whether the 16% EBITDA margin holds at higher volume.
Confirm the transferability of every clearance, badge, and bond line under a change of ownership. The entire thesis rests on the claim that airside clearances, $30M aggregate bonding, and 11-state licensure transfer at close with no requalification, so validate this with the surety, TSA/airport authorities, and licensing boards directly before signing anything.
Stress-test the customer concentration and the repeat-revenue claim. The largest account is 25% on a 4-year average and over 90% of revenue is repeat, so obtain a multi-year project ledger by client to confirm relationships sit with procurement, not the founder, and understand what happens if a concessionaire loses its airport lease.
Validate the 25% blended margin and zero loss-making project history at the individual job level. Pull the last three to five years of completed-project financials to confirm true gross margins net of retainage, warranty, and rework, since a contractor with literally no losing job in its history is a claim that warrants documentary proof.
Assess the founder-dependency risk despite the reassuring org chart. Project managers, a GM, and field superintendents are said to run daily delivery, but confirm the final estimating and senior client relationships can genuinely be replaced at roughly $300K, and secure key-person retention agreements for the general manager and superintendents.
Model the recession and cyclicality exposure honestly. Airport terminal capital is funded through 2029 per ACI-NA, but retail refresh, restaurant rollouts, and hospitality build-out are discretionary and can pause in a downturn, so understand the revenue split between funded public-sector airport work and cyclical private commercial work.

Source

Originally listed on BizBuySell. View original listing →