Commercial Roofing Contractor, 70+ Year Lawrence County PA Operator

$2.4M

Revenue

$700K

SDE

2.9x

Multiple

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Full Editorial Writeup

This is a commercial roofing contractor based in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania that has been operating since the 1950s, giving it more than seven decades of continuous trading history in a single market. The business focuses exclusively on commercial roofing work, avoids the low-margin trap of public bid work, and carries a $1.5M backlog against roughly $2.45M in annual revenue. It runs an all-W2 workforce, which matters for SBA financing and for continuity relative to shops that lean on 1099 crews.

What makes this listing unusual is that it is described as absentee-run with the current owner willing to stay on for two to five years. A commercial roofing business generating $700K of cash flow that does not require the owner to be on rooftops or writing bids is rare, and it suggests a functioning management layer and estimator/PM structure already in place. The buyer is effectively acquiring a seasoned crew, a book of commercial relationships, and a pipeline rather than a job the owner has to perform.

Priced at $2.0M against $700K SDE (2.86x) and roughly $530K to $550K EBITDA, this sits in the normal range for a stable, non-bid commercial trades business. The real estate is owned but explicitly excluded from the asking price and valued separately at $125K, so the multiple reflects operations only. SBA approval and seller financing eligibility widen the buyer pool meaningfully.

Why we like it

Earnings quality is solid for the trade: $700K SDE and roughly $530K to $550K EBITDA on $2.45M revenue implies a ~22% EBITDA margin, which is healthy for commercial roofing. The $1.5M backlog covers a meaningful chunk of next year's revenue before the new owner does anything, and the all-W2 structure signals a real business rather than a labor-broker arrangement.
Durability comes from 70-plus years of continuous operation and a deliberate focus on private commercial work rather than public bid jobs. Public bid work is a race to the bottom on price; a shop that has built enough repeat commercial relationships to avoid it typically has stickier margins and repeat reroof/repair demand from the same building owners.
Roofing is genuinely recession-resistant on the commercial side. Water intrusion does not wait for the economy to recover, insurance and code requirements force spending, and deferred maintenance eventually becomes non-discretionary. Commercial owners protect their assets in downturns rather than let roofs fail.
The operator advantage here is the absentee structure plus a seller willing to stay 2-5 years. That combination lets a financial buyer or a nearby roofing consolidator step in without the usual key-man cliff, and it gives a first-time owner an unusually long runway to learn a trade-heavy business before the seller fully exits.

How to improve it

Layer in a recurring maintenance and inspection program billed annually to existing commercial clients. Commercial roofs need regular inspection and minor repair; converting one-time reroof customers into contracted annual maintenance accounts adds predictable revenue and feeds the reroof pipeline years ahead of failure.
Build a systematic reroof re-contact engine using the existing customer history. A shop this old sits on decades of installed roofs approaching end of life; mining warranty and job records to proactively schedule replacement bids can convert dormant relationships into booked work at higher close rates than cold bids.
Add or expand a coatings and restoration line to serve owners who want to extend roof life rather than fully replace. Coatings are higher-margin, faster to execute, and appeal to cost-conscious owners in a downturn, smoothing revenue between larger reroof projects.
Tighten job-level cost tracking and estimating discipline. With absentee ownership, verify that gross margin is being protected per project; installing standardized estimating templates and per-job P&L review often recovers several margin points that leak on a manager-run shop.
Formalize the sales and estimating function so growth does not depend on one estimator. Documenting the bidding process, adding a second estimator, and setting a monthly bid-volume target de-risks the absentee model and creates a lever to grow beyond the current $2.45M ceiling.
Evaluate acquiring the owned real estate at the separately stated $125K to lock in occupancy cost. Controlling the yard and shop protects against a post-close rent squeeze and adds a modest hard asset; at $125K the financing math is trivial relative to the operating cash flow.
Push into adjacent commercial exteriors such as sheet metal, gutters, and waterproofing to increase revenue per customer. Existing commercial relationships and crews create natural cross-sell, raising ticket size without new customer acquisition cost.

Diligence notes

Reconcile the conflicting financials before anything else. The listing shows revenue as $2.45M, $2.4M, and EBITDA as $550K, $530K, plus SDE of $700K; get three years of tax returns and a QoE to confirm which number is real and what add-backs bridge EBITDA to SDE.
Stress-test the absentee claim. Confirm exactly who runs estimating, project management, and crew supervision day to day, whether those people are staying, and what compensation replaces the owner's role; a truly absentee shop still needs a general manager whose loss would gut the business.
Examine the $1.5M backlog contract by contract for margin, deposit status, and completion risk. Verify these are signed jobs with committed pricing, not verbal pipeline, and check that material and labor costs in the backlog reflect current prices rather than stale bids that will erode margin.
Assess customer concentration and repeat-work mix. A commercial roofer avoiding public bids may lean on a handful of property owners, GCs, or a single anchor client; quantify what share of revenue the top five customers represent and how durable those relationships are without the seller.
Verify the workforce and licensing situation. Confirm the all-W2 crews, roofing licenses, bonding capacity, workers' comp experience mod, and safety/OSHA history; labor availability and comp claims are the biggest hidden costs in roofing and can swing the true economics.
Clarify the real estate arrangement and post-close occupancy. Since the $125K property is owned but excluded from the price, nail down the lease terms, rate, and length the seller will offer, or negotiate to buy it, so occupancy cost does not spike after closing.

Source

Originally listed on BizBuySell. View original listing →