Multi-Trade Facility Contractor, National Account MSAs, Maryland

$10.3M

Revenue

$1.7M

SDE

5.5x

Multiple

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Full Editorial Writeup

This is a Maryland-based multi-trade commercial facility contractor doing north of $10 million in revenue with roughly $1.5 million in adjusted EBITDA (after charging a market-rate GM) and $1.6 million in SDE, averaged over three completed years. The company is a one-call shop for corporate facility teams and industrial sites: buildouts, renovations, repairs, demolition, warehouse conveyance installation, and on-call service across plumbing, electrical, HVAC and general construction scopes. Critically, all work is performed on existing facilities with no ground-up new construction, which keeps the business tied to maintenance and repair demand rather than cyclical development.

The real asset here is the book of master service agreements and vendor prequalifications with national corporate accounts. Approved-vendor status with large national retailers and industrial customers takes years to earn and functions as a moat, since facility teams prefer to route recurring work to a small bench of pre-cleared contractors. The company wins on speed (48-hour priced quotes) and breadth (self-performing or sourcing multiple trades through a single call), serving sites along the East Coast from one leased yard.

Ownership already runs the business remotely and is off job sites, with a long-tenured field service manager handling scheduling, quoting and subcontractor coordination, backed by lead and field technicians and an experienced office manager on accounting and invoicing. The cost base is deliberately light, with field labor and subcontractors flowing through job cost so margins flex with volume. The company owns its fleet of trucks, lifts and loaders outright and leans on a vetted subcontractor bench by trade.

Why we like it

Earnings quality is solid for a contractor: $1.5M adjusted EBITDA and $1.6M SDE are three-year averages, not a single peak year, and the EBITDA is struck after a market-rate general manager, so the number is closer to true normalized profit than most owner-operator construction deals. The light fixed overhead model, running labor and subs through job cost, means the cost base flexes down in a slow quarter rather than bleeding the business.
The moat is the national account MSAs and approved-vendor prequalifications, which the listing rightly notes take years to earn. Facility maintenance buyers route recurring work to a short list of cleared vendors, so being on the approved list is a structural advantage that is very hard for a new competitor to replicate quickly. Fast 48-hour quotes and multi-trade coverage through one call deepen the switching cost for corporate facility teams.
Demand is defensive because the work is repair, renovation, and on-call maintenance on existing facilities, with no ground-up construction exposure. Corporate facilities and industrial sites still need plumbing, electrical, HVAC and conveyance service in a downturn, and dedicated maintenance crews serving energy-sector and industrial customers point to repeat, non-discretionary spend.
The business is already manager-run and genuinely absentee: ownership is off job sites, relocated out of state, and limited to quote approval and key account relationships. For a strategic buyer with an existing technician network, this is an unusually clean operational handoff, and the owned fleet of trucks, lifts and loaders means no immediate capex surprise to run the current book.

How to improve it

Attack the demand you already decline. The listing says requests are turned away for lack of local technicians, especially in the Southeast where existing customers have sites, so standing up even a small regional crew converts captive, pre-approved demand into revenue without new customer acquisition. This is the single highest-return move in the first year.
Activate the idle insulation and roof coating line. The company already owns the equipment and has certified technicians, and current customers are asking for the service, so a dedicated sales effort against existing accounts is high-margin incremental revenue with sunk fixed costs. Measure attach rate on existing MSA customers within 90 days.
Convert dormant approved-vendor status into recurring work. The listing notes approvals already in place with additional national retailers that are not yet generating volume, so a targeted account-management push to those relationships turns paperwork already won into billable scopes. Build a simple pipeline report by national account to track approved-but-inactive logos.
Formalize recurring maintenance contracts. Much of the on-call and dedicated-crew work can be structured into scheduled preventive maintenance agreements billed monthly, which smooths revenue, raises visibility, and increases enterprise value at exit. Prioritize the largest industrial and energy-sector customers first.
Pursue the public-sector work under qualifications already held. State and local facility maintenance contracts are sticky and recession-resistant, and the company reportedly already holds the needed qualifications, so this is bidding effort rather than new certification cost. Hire or assign one person to monitor and respond to relevant RFPs.
Reduce key-person risk on quoting and relationships before close. Ownership still controls quote approval and key account relationships, so document the quoting methodology and introduce the field service manager or a new account lead to top customers during the transition. This protects the MSAs that constitute most of the deal's value.
Tighten job-cost and gross-margin reporting by trade and by account. With labor and subs flowing through job cost, margin leakage hides in individual jobs, so standing up per-job and per-account profitability tracking will surface which scopes and customers to lean into. This also strengthens the financial package for your own eventual exit.

Diligence notes

Verify customer and MSA concentration. The entire thesis rests on the national account approvals, so pull revenue by customer for three years and confirm no single account or small cluster of accounts represents a dangerous share. Confirm the MSAs are assignable on a change of ownership and are not terminable at will on short notice.
Scrutinize the EBITDA-to-SDE bridge and the GM assumption. EBITDA is stated after a market-rate general manager, but confirm whether that GM actually exists and is paid today or is a pro forma adjustment, since a missing GM is a real cost the buyer must fund. Reconcile the $1.56M EBITDA, $1.675M SDE, and $10.3M revenue to tax returns and job-cost records.
Assess the technician and field service manager bench. The field service manager is described as long-tenured and central to operations, so understand retention risk, compensation, and whether the business can function if that person leaves. Separately, map subcontractor dependence by trade to gauge how much margin and reliability sits outside the company's direct control.
Confirm the asset base and lease. Validate the owned fleet of trucks, lifts, loaders and specialty equipment with a condition and lien check, since these support the current book and any expansion. Review the single warehouse, shop and yard lease for remaining term, renewal options, and rent, because the whole East Coast footprint runs from one location.
Test the backlog and revenue durability. On-call and project work can be lumpy, so examine the mix of recurring maintenance versus one-off projects, the current backlog, and quote-to-win rates to understand how much revenue is contractually sticky versus re-won each period. This directly affects how much of the 5.54x multiple is defensible.

Source

Originally listed on BizBuySell. View original listing →