Well-Established Full-Service Plumbing Contractor, Union Illinois Contractor

$11.0M

Revenue

$1.4M

SDE

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Full Editorial Writeup

This is a full-service plumbing contractor operating across new construction, remodeling, service, maintenance, and repair. It serves a diversified end market spanning residential, commercial, restaurant, hospitality, and industrial clients, which spreads risk across sectors that rarely all soften at once. As a union-affiliated shop, it draws on a certified pool of union plumbers and insulators, which matters for winning larger commercial and industrial work that demands prevailing-wage and licensed labor.

The numbers tell the real story. On $11.0M of revenue the business throws off $1.39M of EBITDA, roughly a 12.6% margin, and adjusted EBITDA grew at a 45.4% CAGR from 2022 to 2025. That is aggressive growth for a trade contractor and warrants close scrutiny, because plumbing shops rarely compound earnings that fast without either a construction boom tailwind, acquisition, or a mix shift toward higher-margin service work.

The stickiest asset here is the client base: repeat clients drove 90% of 2025 revenue, and relationships span the Midwest. That level of repeat concentration signals a trusted, referral-driven book rather than a bid-chasing commodity shop. The business is Illinois-based with leased real estate, so this is a clean going-concern operations purchase.

Why we like it

Earnings quality is anchored by 90% repeat clients in 2025, which means the revenue base is relationship-driven rather than won project by project on low bids. At $11.0M revenue and $1.39M EBITDA, the 12.6% margin is healthy for a union trade contractor carrying prevailing-wage labor costs.
Plumbing is about as durable as trades get: pipes fail, code requires licensed work, and maintenance and repair demand persists through downturns. The diversified mix across residential, commercial, restaurant, hospitality, and industrial reduces exposure to any single sector cycle, so a soft new-construction year can be offset by service and repair volume.
The market tailwind is real infrastructure and facility age plus the ongoing shortage of licensed plumbers. Union affiliation gives this shop preferential access to a certified, deployable workforce, which is exactly the bottleneck that limits competitors from scaling into large commercial and industrial jobs.
The operator advantage is a low-attention path to expanding recurring maintenance. The listing itself flags growing the maintenance contract portfolio off completed new-construction projects, meaning there is a warm base of existing clients to convert into annuity revenue without new customer acquisition cost.

How to improve it

Convert new-construction relationships into recurring maintenance agreements in the first 90 days by auditing every project completed in the last three years and offering annual service contracts. This turns one-time project revenue into predictable annuity income and raises the multiple a future buyer will pay.
Segment the book by margin and pursue a deliberate mix shift toward higher-margin service and repair work over lower-margin new construction. Service calls carry better gross margins and cash conversion than large bid jobs, and the existing repeat-client base is the cheapest channel to sell them into.
Install job-costing and dispatch technology to tighten labor utilization, which is the single biggest cost lever in a union shop. The listing explicitly calls out automation as a growth path, and even a few points of technician productivity flow straight to the 12.6% EBITDA margin.
Formalize sales and marketing, which appears underbuilt given growth has come largely from repeat clients. A dedicated estimator and outbound commercial sales effort can fill capacity gaps and diversify away from client concentration in the Midwest.
Expand geography by opening or acquiring a second service territory adjacent to the current Midwest footprint. The union workforce model and repeatable service playbook travel well, and bolt-on acquisitions of smaller plumbing shops are a proven roll-up path in this trade.
Build a documented recruiting and apprenticeship pipeline through the union hall to lock in labor supply. Since certified plumbers are the binding constraint on growth, guaranteeing headcount is the difference between capturing demand and turning it away.

Diligence notes

Interrogate the 45.4% EBITDA CAGR from 2022 to 2025 line by line. Determine whether it came from organic service growth, a construction boom, one large project, or an acquisition, because a spike driven by a single big job or a peaking construction cycle is not the same durable earnings a buyer should pay a full multiple for.
Quantify customer concentration behind the 90% repeat figure. Repeat is good, but if a handful of clients drive most of that revenue, the loss of one relationship could materially dent EBITDA, so pull a client-level revenue breakdown for the last three years.
Scrutinize the union labor structure, including collective bargaining terms, wage escalators, pension and multiemployer plan withdrawal liability, and any unfunded obligations. Multiemployer pension exposure is a classic hidden liability in union trade contractors and can create a large off-balance-sheet claim on a buyer.
Break revenue into new construction versus service and maintenance, and confirm backlog quality. New construction is cyclical and cash-intensive with retainage and progress billing, so understand working capital swings, WIP accounting, and how much of the pipeline is contracted versus prospective.
Verify owner dependency and the reason for sale, neither of which is disclosed. Confirm whether the current owner is the primary rainmaker on the repeat relationships and whether key project managers and estimators will stay, since the value here is largely relationship and workforce driven.

Source

Originally listed on BizBuySell. View original listing →