Florida Plastering & Finish Carpentry Contractor

$8.7M

Revenue

$963K

SDE

5.1x

Multiple

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Full Editorial Writeup

This is a 15-year-old Florida specialty trade contractor that does the unsexy interior and exterior finish work on luxury custom homes: metal framing, drywall, stucco, finish carpentry, and stone and Diamond Resin product installation. It serves a narrow but lucrative client base of premier custom home builders, and it has built its reputation on the boring-but-valuable combination of consistent quality, reliability, and on-time delivery. Those three things are exactly what high-end builders pay a premium for, because a blown deadline on a $5M house costs them far more than the trade work itself.

The financials are real and substantial: $8.7M in revenue producing $963K in cash flow, an 11 percent margin that is healthy for a labor-heavy trade. The business runs on a long-tenured skilled workforce, documented operating systems, and management infrastructure, with $1.2M in tangible assets and clean books kept by the same CPA since inception. Weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly billing cycles smooth out the cash flow, which matters in a trade where progress billings can otherwise be lumpy.

At $4.9M against $963K cash flow, this is a 5.1x deal that is SBA pre-qualified with roughly $524K down. The seller frames it as a platform play for an existing contractor wanting market share, a strategic acquirer looking to vertically integrate trades, or a well-capitalized operator. The key constraint is that the buyer must already hold a Florida Building Contractor license, which narrows the buyer pool considerably and is the single biggest gating item on this transaction.

Why we like it

Earnings quality is solid for the trade, with $963K of cash flow on $8.7M of revenue and an 11 percent margin, backed by the same CPA since 2011 and well-organized financial reporting. The mixed weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly billing cadence reduces the lumpiness that usually plagues progress-billed construction work. SBA pre-qualification is a meaningful third-party validation that the cash flow holds up under lender scrutiny.
The moat is relationship-driven and sticky in a way that is hard for new entrants to replicate. Fifteen years of long-standing relationships with premier custom home builders means the work comes through trust and a track record of on-time delivery, not low-bid competition. High-end builders do not switch finish trades casually, because a quality miss on a luxury home is a reputational and financial disaster for them.
The market position is defensible because it focuses exclusively on the luxury, high-end residential segment, where margins are better and clients are less price-sensitive than in production housing. Florida remains a structurally strong market for high-end residential construction driven by in-migration and wealth concentration. The specialty mix of stucco, stone, and Diamond Resin products is more technical and less commoditized than basic drywall hanging.
There is a clear operator advantage for the right buyer, specifically an existing Florida contractor who can fold this in to expand share or vertically integrate adjacent trades. The long-tenured skilled workforce, documented systems, and management infrastructure mean the platform can run without the seller, which de-risks the transition. With $1.2M in tangible assets included, a meaningful portion of the purchase price is backed by real equipment value.

How to improve it

Pull the full customer concentration report in the first 90 days and lock in the top builder relationships with master service agreements or preferred-vendor terms. If a handful of builders drive most of the revenue, formalizing those relationships before the owner leaves protects the goodwill you are paying 5x for.
Diversify beyond pure luxury residential by adding select high-end multifamily, boutique commercial, or renovation work to smooth out the cyclicality of new custom home starts. Residential construction is cyclical, and a downturn in luxury homebuilding hits this revenue line hard, so building a counter-cyclical service mix protects the downside.
Audit the labor model and formalize retention for the long-tenured crew, since the skilled workforce is the actual asset here. Layer in performance pay, apprenticeship pipelines, and cross-training so the business is not exposed to a few key foremen walking out after the sale.
Tighten project-level gross margin tracking and bid discipline by trade segment to identify which of stucco, stone, drywall, framing, and carpentry actually drive profit. Many trade contractors underprice one segment and subsidize it with another, and fixing that mix can add points of margin without adding revenue.
Build a recurring or repeat-revenue layer through warranty, maintenance, and refinishing services to existing luxury homeowners. This converts one-time project relationships into a higher-margin annuity and reduces dependence on landing new construction projects.
Implement systematized estimating and scheduling software if not already in place to increase throughput and bid accuracy as you scale. Capacity in this business is gated by skilled labor and project management, and better systems let you take on more concurrent jobs without proportional overhead growth.
Negotiate the lease early given the November 2029 expiration on the 7,845 SF flex industrial building at roughly $10K per month. Lock in a renewal or relocation plan so a landlord squeeze does not erode margin right after acquisition.

Diligence notes

Verify the cash flow normalization, because $963K of SDE on a $8.7M revenue base in a labor-intensive trade needs scrutiny on what add-backs were included. Confirm owner compensation, any one-time project windfalls, and whether the reported pipeline of bids actually converts at historical rates.
Stress test customer concentration since the business serves luxury builders exclusively. Determine what percentage of revenue comes from the top three to five builders, and what contractual or relational commitment exists beyond the current project pipeline.
Examine the workforce in detail, including tenure, key foremen, wage levels, benefit costs, and any non-competes. The entire value proposition rests on a skilled crew, so understand attrition risk and whether labor is W-2 employees or subcontractors with their own risk profile.
Confirm the Florida Building Contractor license requirement and your own path to compliance before going deep, because this is a hard gate. If you do not hold the license yourself, you need a qualifying agent in place, and that dependency must be locked before close.
Review work-in-progress accounting, retainage, and progress billing to understand the true working capital needs at takeover. Construction businesses can show healthy P&L cash flow while tying up significant cash in unbilled work and slow-paying builders.
Investigate cyclicality and the current state of the Florida luxury residential market, including how the business performed in the 2020 and 2022 to 2023 rate environments. This is a discretionary new-construction-dependent business, and you need to understand how revenue and margin behave when high-end housing starts slow.

Source

Originally listed on BizBuySell. View original listing →