Florida Commercial Drywall & Framing Contractor, 22-Year Specialty Trade

$13.2M

Revenue

$1.7M

SDE

6.2x

Multiple

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Full Editorial Writeup

This is a Florida-based specialty trade contractor doing commercial and multi-family framing, drywall, and related interior buildout work across the state. The company sells to developers, general contractors, and construction professionals, and the pitch here is backlog visibility: $23.4M under contract as of the stated date plus $31.8M in new awards running through 2027, for roughly $55.3M in total booked and future work. The business runs asset-light and home-based with a small core team of 4 full-timers and 6 contractors, which means the real asset you are buying is the relationship book, the project management bench, and the labor network that executes the crews.

At $13.2M revenue and $1.73M cash flow, this is a roughly 13% margin trade contractor, which is normal to slightly healthy for drywall and framing where labor is the dominant cost and pricing is competitive. The founding year of 2003 gives it a 20-plus year operating history, and the listing frames it as a growing platform with room to add crews, expand geographically, and roll up smaller trade shops in a fragmented market.

The seller wants qualified buyers only, has explicitly excluded SBA financing, and is pushing a structured earnout, which tells you the backlog and growth story are central to how they want the purchase price justified. Buyers should treat the backlog as the headline but underwrite to realized margin and the risk that these contracts are tied to specific GCs and developers rather than durable, repeatable demand.

Why we like it

Earnings quality is anchored by a real, contracted backlog of $23.4M plus $31.8M in future awards, which gives a buyer rare forward visibility that most trade contractors never have. If those contracts convert at the quoted margins, the first 18 to 24 months of cash flow are largely pre-sold rather than hoped for.
The asset-light, home-based model means almost none of the $10.7M asking price is tied up in real estate or heavy equipment, with only $85k of FF&E included. That keeps incremental scaling cheap: more work mostly means more crews and working capital, not capex-heavy expansion.
South Florida multi-family and commercial construction has been a genuine tailwind, and the company is already embedded with developers and GCs on high-profile projects. Being a trusted drywall and framing sub on marquee jobs is a referenceable moat in a relationship-driven trade.
The market is fragmented specialty trades, which is a legitimate consolidation setup for a PE or strategic buyer. A disciplined operator could bolt on smaller drywall and framing shops at lower multiples and build real regional scale off this backlog as the anchor.

How to improve it

Audit the backlog contract by contract within the first 90 days to confirm which are firm commitments versus letters of intent, and model realistic completion timing and margin per job. The entire thesis rests on backlog conversion, so turning $55.3M of claimed work into a dated, margin-weighted schedule is the single highest-value exercise.
Diversify the general contractor and developer concentration by actively bidding new relationships, because a backlog tied to two or three GCs is a liability, not an asset. Spreading the book across more counterparties protects cash flow if one developer slows or a major project stalls.
Formalize the labor pipeline given the reliance on 6 contractors and only 4 full-timers, since crew availability is the binding constraint on growth in this trade. Lock in subcontractor crews with preferred-vendor terms or convert key leads to employees to protect execution capacity during a scale-up.
Tighten project-level job costing and change-order discipline, which is where drywall and framing margins are won or lost. Installing real-time cost tracking against bid estimates lets you catch margin erosion mid-project instead of discovering it at closeout.
Build a repeatable bidding and estimating function so growth does not depend on the owner's personal relationships. Documenting the estimating playbook and hiring or training a dedicated estimator de-risks the earnout and makes the business transferable.
Pursue the consolidation angle deliberately by building a target list of smaller FL drywall and framing shops that could be acquired at 3x to 4x. Using this platform's GC relationships to feed work into acquired crews is how you create multiple arbitrage versus the 6.19x you are paying here.

Diligence notes

Scrutinize the $55.3M backlog claim hard: get signed contracts, verify the counterparties, confirm pricing and margin assumptions, and check how much is cancelable or subject to developer financing contingencies. In construction, awarded work frequently slips or shrinks, and the gap between quoted backlog and collected revenue is where buyers get burned.
Reconcile the $1.73M cash flow to tax returns and verify owner addbacks, because a home-based, owner-relationship-driven contractor often has personal expenses and owner labor baked into SDE. Understand exactly what the buyer must replace in management and estimating after the owner exits.
Examine working capital and surety/bonding capacity, since a contractor running $13M revenue with $55M of future work needs serious bonding lines and cash to float payroll and materials ahead of progress payments. Confirm current bonding limits and whether they transfer or must be re-established under new ownership.
Dig into customer and project concentration, including what percentage of backlog sits with the top one or two GCs or developments. The 'no SBA buyers' instruction and earnout structure suggest the seller knows the business value hinges on continuity of specific relationships, so quantify that dependency precisely.
Review the 10-person staffing reality against the growth narrative: 4 full-timers and 6 contractors is thin for executing $23M of active work, so confirm the real labor force size, subcontractor dependence, and any key-person risk in project management. Scaling crews is the whole plan, so verify the labor supply actually exists.

Source

Originally listed on BizBuySell. View original listing →