Utility Auditing & Energy Cost Management Firm, Utah-Based, Serves US Commercial Clients

$1.7M

Revenue

$777K

SDE

6.3x

Multiple

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Full Editorial Writeup

This is a tech-enabled energy advisory and cost management firm serving commercial and multi-location clients across the United States. The core service is helping businesses lower their utility spend through three integrated functions: utility bill auditing, energy procurement, and ongoing portfolio management. Clients engage with minimal upfront commitment and are tied in through multi-year contracts, which produces a blend of recurring management fees and performance-based income tied to the savings actually delivered.

What separates this business from a solo bill-auditing shop is the integrated stack. It combines auditing, procurement, and data management under one roof, a set of capabilities usually reserved for much larger firms, and it runs proprietary software that aggregates and analyzes client utility data. That software drives scalable operations, strong client retention, and cleaner reporting. The firm also holds the licensing required for energy procurement, which creates a real barrier to entry versus a generic consulting play.

The business currently runs with minimal owner involvement, operated by an experienced team handling day-to-day work. New client acquisition has been deliberately throttled because ownership has been focused on other ventures, which means the top line reflects a business coasting rather than one being pushed. At $1.7M revenue and $777K cash flow, the margin profile is strong, and the obvious lever is reactivating outbound sales in a fragmented, essential category.

Why we like it

Earnings quality is high at roughly 46 percent cash flow margins on $1.7M of revenue, driven by a services model with light asset needs. The mix of recurring management fees plus performance-based income tied to realized savings means the firm gets paid on outcomes clients can measure, which supports pricing durability and low churn.
The moat is more real than most sub-$2M service firms. Proprietary data software, the licensing required for energy procurement, and an integrated auditing-plus-procurement-plus-data offering combine to create barriers that a solo consultant cannot easily replicate, and multi-year contracts lock in the base.
Utility cost reduction is genuinely counter-cyclical. When budgets tighten, commercial and multi-location operators lean harder into cutting fixed operating costs, so demand for a firm that lowers utility bills often rises in a downturn rather than falling.
The operator advantage is stark: growth has been intentionally limited while ownership focused elsewhere, so a buyer inherits a proven outbound sales motion that has simply been switched off. Turning that back on is a clear, executable path to growth rather than a speculative one.

How to improve it

Reactivate the dormant outbound sales engine in the first 90 days. The listing explicitly says growth was throttled by owner distraction, so rehiring or redeploying a proven outbound motion is the single highest-ROI move, and results should be measurable within a full sales cycle.
Build a formal renewal and expansion playbook across the existing client base. With multi-year contracts already in place, systematically upselling procurement to audit-only clients and adding portfolio management to procurement clients raises revenue per account without new logo acquisition costs.
Productize and license the proprietary software as a standalone or add-on tier. If the data platform is strong enough to power internal operations, packaging it for smaller competitors or in-house energy teams could open a higher-margin, more recurring revenue line.
Introduce or expand performance-based contract structures where clients are hesitant on upfront fees. Aligning fees to realized savings lowers the barrier to close, shortens sales cycles, and increases lifetime value as savings compound across a multi-year term.
Tighten and document the operating team's roles to de-risk the transition. Because the business is already run with minimal owner involvement, formalizing SOPs and key-person coverage protects the going concern and makes future add-on integration cleaner.
Target vertical concentration in specific multi-location categories such as retail chains, franchises, or healthcare systems. Focusing outbound on repeatable buyer profiles improves conversion, sharpens the pitch, and creates referenceable case studies that compound sales efficiency.
Layer in a partnership or referral channel with brokers, property managers, and energy consultants. A fragmented, essential industry rewards distribution, and channel partners can feed qualified pipeline at a fraction of the cost of pure cold outbound.

Diligence notes

Break down revenue into recurring management fees versus performance-based income. The 6.3x multiple is defensible only if the recurring base is durable and predictable, so quantify what share of the $1.7M is contracted versus variable and success-fee dependent that could swing year to year.
Scrutinize customer concentration and contract terms. Confirm how many clients drive the top line, the length and auto-renewal mechanics of the multi-year contracts, actual historical churn, and whether any anchor accounts are up for renewal soon.
Validate the throttled-growth narrative with hard numbers. Ask for new client counts and revenue by year to confirm the business has been flat because sales was switched off, not because of underlying churn or competitive pressure that the seller is reframing as opportunity.
Verify the licensing and regulatory footprint for energy procurement. Confirm which states the firm is licensed in, whether those licenses transfer on sale, and any compliance obligations, since the moat claim rests substantially on this barrier being real and defensible.
Assess the software's true value and dependencies. Determine whether it is genuinely proprietary and owned outright, its maintenance cost, any key developer risk, and whether it would need reinvestment, since much of the scalability and moat thesis depends on it.
Pressure-test the team and key-person risk given minimal owner involvement. Identify who actually runs operations and client relationships, their compensation and retention likelihood post-sale, and whether the absentee model is stable or masks reliance on one or two individuals.

Source

Originally listed on BusinessBroker.net. View original listing →