Commercial HVAC-R Service Company, 13-Year Massachusetts Contractor

$2.3M

Revenue

$691K

SDE

4.3x

Multiple

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Full Editorial Writeup

This is a commercial HVAC-R service, maintenance, and repair business that has operated across Central and Eastern Massachusetts since 2013. Every dollar of revenue comes from service, maintenance, and break/fix work billed hourly or by quote, with zero exposure to new-construction or installation backlogs. The anchor relationship is a long-standing facility-services partnership with a multi-location national brand, supplemented by direct accounts serving recognizable national and regional retail and restaurant chains.

The financial profile is exactly what you want in a boring, durable service business. Revenue has held in a tight $2.2M to $2.4M band for four straight years, gross margins run a healthy 60% to 70%, and 2025 SDE came in around $690,000 on a lean seven-person operation. Most of the work is repeat business that never goes out to competitive bid, which reflects deep institutional trust rather than price shopping.

What makes this notable is the demand overhang. Ownership is actively turning away new service opportunities, including additional locations from existing national accounts, purely because of technician capacity. That means the growth lever is not marketing or lead generation but simply hiring field staff to capture demand that already exists, a far lower-risk path than most acquisition growth stories.

Why we like it

Earnings quality is strong and clean: $691K SDE on $2.3M revenue is a 30% owner-earnings margin, backed by four years of revenue stability in a $2.2M to $2.4M band. Gross margins of 60% to 70% on pure service work (no installation drag) mean the profit is structural, not a one-year spike.
Durability is real because 100% of revenue is non-discretionary service, maintenance, and break/fix. HVAC-R systems in retail and restaurant locations must run regardless of the economy, and the anchor is a 10-plus year national account relationship where most work does not go out to competitive bid.
The moat is relationship-based and sticky. A decade of institutional trust with a national facility-services brand plus direct retail and restaurant chain accounts creates switching friction, and the tenured field team and long-standing Sales & Operations Manager preserve service quality that these clients pay to keep.
The operator advantage here is unusually clear: the company is turning away business including new locations from existing national accounts strictly due to technician capacity. A buyer who can recruit and onboard technicians converts already-identified, pre-sold demand into revenue without spending on customer acquisition.

How to improve it

Attack the capacity ceiling immediately by building a technician recruiting pipeline. The listing states demand is being turned away, so every hired and productive tech is near-guaranteed incremental revenue at 60-plus percent gross margin. Prioritize this in the first 90 days above all else.
Formalize recurring maintenance agreements with the national and regional accounts. Break/fix is reactive; converting even a portion of these relationships into scheduled preventative-maintenance contracts smooths revenue, increases visit frequency, and raises the multiple on eventual resale.
Say yes to the national account expansion the current owner is declining. These clients have already expressed interest in additional locations and new geographies, so mapping their national footprint and quoting new sites is low-friction, high-conviction growth.
Restaurant and hospitality service is a stated turned-down opportunity. Stand up a dedicated crew or route to capture this recurring maintenance volume, which tends to be high-frequency and equipment-intensive, a natural fit for the existing skill set.
Modernize the go-to-market with a real but disciplined marketing spend. The business runs on a minimal budget managed by a third party, so even modest investment in local commercial SEO and outbound to facility managers could add pipeline once capacity is expanded.
Systematize dispatch, quoting, and technician utilization metrics using the existing CRM. With the Sales & Operations Manager staying on, layering in KPIs on revenue per truck, billable-hour ratios, and callback rates would surface margin leakage and support the hiring plan.

Diligence notes

Concentration risk is the headline item: the anchor national account relationship drives a meaningful share of revenue. Quantify exactly what percentage of the $2.3M comes from the top one, three, and five accounts, and review the contract terms, renewal cadence, and termination provisions.
Verify the SDE build for 2025. Confirm the $691K reconciles to tax returns and bank statements, scrutinize add-backs, and understand how much of the earnings depends on the retiring owner's personal client relationships versus the tenured Sales & Operations Manager.
Test the capacity-constrained growth thesis with real data. Ask for documentation of the specific opportunities being turned away, the national accounts requesting new locations, and current technician utilization, because the entire buyer upside case rests on this being genuine unmet demand.
Assess key-person and hiring risk in a tight HVAC labor market. The four senior technicians and the decade-tenured operations manager are the business, so review compensation, tenure, non-competes, and how realistic it is to recruit the additional techs the growth plan requires.
Confirm the facility and vehicle situation. The location is a tenant-at-will arrangement with no fixed lease, which creates relocation flexibility but also uncertainty; validate the four vans are owned free and clear and assess near-term fleet replacement capex.

Source

Originally listed on BizBuySell. View original listing →