Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - Is this cell tower business any good? - Acquisitions Anonymous episode 143

Episode Date: November 23, 2022

Want to receive this listing in your inbox? Signup for our weekly newsletter:https://www.getrevue.co/profile/acquanon-----Michael Girdley (@Girdley), Mills Snell (@thegeneralmills), and Bill D’Alessandro (@BillDA) talk about a 15-year-old Telecom Tower Business in the southeast side of Dallas. We share our perspectives on this business transaction and determine whether we’d buy this or not. The rise of technology is transforming every aspect of society, and in this episode, we will discuss whether the impending technological changes will be beneficial or harmful. In addition, we will discuss the factors that we believe should be prioritized by a buyer.-----Thanks to our sponsor!SMBash.com - Join us in Austin, TX, April 27th - 30th, 2023, for one-on-one interaction with others who focus on buying, operating, and investing in the SMB and Micro-PE space.SMBash is a live gathering of SMB, Micro-PE, and ETA owners, operators, and investors.-----Show Notes:(00:00) - Introduction(00:39) - Our sponsor is SMBash(02:02) - Deal & financials: A 15-year-old Telecom Tower Business(03:43) - What does this company do?(08:47) - Mike’s idea on the deal(11:44) - What do we think of this deal, and why do we hate it?(13:52) - Is this industry in a bull or a bear market?(14:59) - Why would you sell a business which is about to close a BIG contract?(16:23) - Is there an obsolescence risk on the tech side?(18:58) - What should buyers prioritize?(20:07) - How are some investments so profitable? What does this mean for VC & PE investing?(21:06) - What do we think about betting on future tech trends?(23:20) - Is there a bull case for “soon to be obsolete” businesses?(29:30) - We’re looking for B2B service businesses. Send ‘em over!-----Additional episodes you might enjoy:#142 - Should we buy this Crossfit Gym?#141 - A very profitable B2B Internet Business in the Petcare Vertical#140 - Let’s SBA the heck out of this deal - with special Guest Heather Endresen#139 - Will we make bank with a Medical Equipment Supply Company?#138 - See-food but for plants? With special guest Xavier Helgesen Subscribe to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations. For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. I'm Mills Snell, one of your co-hosts. We have an awesome deal today. Despite me absolutely disparaging it as I read it, you'll find that we do get into a helpful conversation. So this is a telecom service-based business. It's about $5 million in revenue, a million dollars in free cash flow. This is like the white whale for searchers and people looking for businesses. It's big enough to have some heft and have margin of safety, but not too big to be acquired by professional buyers already. And we talk, uh, about some kind of macroeconomic trends in this industry. And we talk about businesses in this kind of B2B space along with the challenge to send us some more deals like this. So I hope you enjoy. Thanks. Today's sponsor is Essend Bash. Yeah,

I made it to the conference last year in beautiful sunny downtown Orlando, Florida. It didn't sun, by the way. It rained the whole time. But it was a great conference. So, yeah, they're sponsoring again. And, you know, I think we love that show. I love speaking at it. And I think totally recommend everybody consider going, especially if you're a small business,

owner-operator who wants to think about M&A, you know, it's a great, great conference. So I know you missed it last year. I was super bummed. I tested positive for COVID one hour before I was supposed to get on the flight. And I was like, maybe I could just ignore this, but it was definitely not the case. I got laid flat on my bottom. I liked it because it really opened my eyes up to kind of the future of conferences. Like I think the days of like Web Summit or like Dreamforce are these like huge like giant conferences, like they're so lame. Like I don't think anybody wants to. to go to those. But I think much more intimate type things like with S-M-Bash guys did. Super curated. Yeah. Yeah. You get more focused content around what you're trying to do.

You get people that are much more like, you can have real conversations with people and they can curate who comes. I think all that's really cool. So next April and Austin. All right. Well, we're happy to support them and we want them. So go there. And you can go to S-M-Bash.com. Is that right? S-M-B-S-H.com. Sign up. So tell them we send you. Yeah, and we'll go from there. Audience, please join our newsletter. We're trying to build it, and you can get an email every time we do an episode. And we also share the links to the deals.

Got it. Okay. Or if you have our Twitter profile, you can do it there too. So, yeah, sign up for our newsletter. You could join more than 100 other people on our newsletter currently as we go on a massive march to grow the newsletter. So today, we got a killer deal. Are you guys excited for this Friday?

Bill, are you excited? I am super excited. This one is cool. I've never looked at a deal like this. Awesome. Okay, so cool. So something unique. And Mills,

you're going to read it. So let's go. Yep. Yep. So we'll pull it up on the screen, but this is a telecom tower business with 80% maintenance services, primarily focusing on network overlay operations. This is from the firm advisors.

More to be said about that. Shortly, the price for the business is $3,950,000. Their revenue is about $4,000. five, just under five and a half million a year. And the cash flow that they're saying the business generates is 944,000. So about five and a half million in revenue, about a million dollars in free cash flow. They have 18 employees. It's project managers, construction managers, crew supervisors, some crews, one AR person, one accounts receivable person, one bookkeeper,

and one CPA. The business is located in Mesquist. Texas. Michael, where is Mesquite? It is on the southeast side of Dallas. So you are the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, primarily on the east side to the opposite way from Fort Worth. This telecommunication construction and management company has a primary focus on merging networks and overlaying technology into existing structures, which makes up 80% of their services. They also handle tower erections, site and tower inspections, electrical services. is raw land construction and compound maintenance and repairs, which account for the remaining 20%. They're located in Mesquite.

This business operates out of 6,000 square foot location and currently services 100% commercial clients. Their current team, we kind of went through that already. It's a skilled team. They're able to service the northern and western areas of Texas as well as Oklahoma and Louisiana. They're in the final stages of signing with AT&T. I love when people do stuff like this. And I hate it.

they're in the final stages of signing with AT&T as an active client to begin work by the end of 2022. How much do you want to bet that that contract has not been executed yet and it won't be executed by the end of 2022? Yeah. Can I interrupt? Because this is entirely entertaining. You know, me and Bill, when we read deals, we try to remain some level of objectivity.

At the worst, I'll just complain about the write-up. I love how you just come right out to Kate and you're like, I hate everything about this. There's no objectivity. I'm just going to give you all my bias right now. We're supposed to have a buildup to the big finish here to create a little story. You're just like, okay, here's the ending. I would rather poke holes in it as we go. All right.

So they're actively working with a partnership towards Verizon. No surprise. While there are less than 10 major carriers within this industry, the spotlight has been brought to the top two carriers in the nation, providing that their customer concentration is the keystone to the company's success. I don't actually know what that means. The purchase of this business includes $800,000 worth of assets. The current owner handles general oversight and money management, including approving

large purchases and payroll. He works roughly 25 hours a week and is mentoring a VP and up-and-coming operations manager. Some of his responsibilities could be absorbed by the current AR manager. Seller has offered a one to two-year training. This is good. I like this. Training transition period to ensure this process is as smooth as possible.

possible for all involved. New ownership could expand geographically, sending dedicated teams nationwide. Price at $3,950,000. This telecom company is ready for new ownership to step in and continue the excellent reputation that it's curated since 2009. So the business has been around for about going on 15 years. The current owner is invested in the future success of the business. And to illustrate this point has offered 10% of seller financing and 10% equity role if the buyer desires. This is twice as much as the standard offer with a long-standing and established client base. Yada, yada, yeah, yeah. All right.

You guys know how I feel. Super interesting. It's also interesting the way they describe this because I actually own, I own, I'm landlord for a couple of cell phone towers, like where they've come in and they've put the towers on your property and then they pay you. It's actually really, it's really lucrative as a landlord. Like, you can get thousands of dollars a month triple net, like with no work whatsoever. It's really pretty great.

But it's interesting the way they describe this. Like by and large, my experience with being a landlord for cell phone towers is they have sold most of these big companies, AT&T, Verizon and folks like that, they have sold off their towers to third party companies that are now managing those towers for them. There's reeds that all they do is towers. Yeah. So it's interesting they describe AT&T and Verizon are like their customers. And I guess maybe it's not actually the tower. These guys are just dealing with the equipment. Is that the way I should understand this?

It's kind of hard to tell. That's what I'm trying to parse. So it says that merging networks and overlaying technology onto existing structures is 80% of their services. So I kind of read this as there's a tower and you want to hang more stuff on the top of the tower. You hire these guys and they come in. That's kind of how I read it. Yeah. Because there's the, okay, so now I'm getting my head around it.

There's the tower itself, which is like the physical infrastructure. and the power and then the connection to kind of the backbones of telecom, right? But then there's the actual hardware on there. And each individual company still runs their own hardware on that tower. They're just out of the tower. AT&T is out of the tower business and stuff like that. And they may lease some of that hardware that's, you know, mounted to the towers.

But like, I think what is nice about this business and where they sit in like the path of progress is that that technology is constantly becoming obsolete, like whether it's 3G, 4G, 5G, or just, you know, like greater, you know, efficacy of the technology. They're constantly having to replace it. But then there's also a maintenance component. Like, these things can't just stay up there forever and not be taken care of. Yeah, they can hit by lightning or flooded or whatever. So it is interesting.

You say that about like the upgrade path and all that kind of stuff. So we do have a silent. listening to today's recording and they just texted me and said, my two cents on this deal from my old job, updating and installing 5G on towers was a huge push over the past two to three years. The amount of tower servicing could drop off meaningly in the next two years. In other words, given this business was only founded in 2009,

you know, we may be in a situation here where somebody's trying to sell it right at the very peak of kind of demanded performance if the whole 5G push is going there. I looked at a real estate deal a few years ago that was a piece of dirt with a tower on it with a lease in place. But the lease was expiring. And the cell, you know, the tower, I think it's like American tower is the big one. They didn't want to renew because it was not really like I think as as, you know, more infrastructure gets developed, certain towers become less attractive or obsolete as bigger ones go up and as technology improves.

So instead of like in this case, instead of it being an asset, it was like, this huge liability, like what do you do with this tower on this piece of property and you got to get it down? I would think that this, you know, companies like this, it's probably a very, very small world. You know, once you're in the tower mafia or go to the tower conferences and all that kind of stuff. I think if you're in this world, there's probably a lot of other things you can do. They say that they've erected these things before. They do inspections or electrical work. One of my favorite businesses I've ever looked at provided generators for cell towers and maintain those generators because they have to have

redundancy and backup power. So there's a lot of different things you can do, you know, in and around them. But if you're known for only being the person to like take one thing off the tower and put another on, or if you're known as the guy who just changes the light bulbs or whatever, you know, it may be hard to break into the other verticals here. So it seems like there's sort of like a value stack. You've got the guy who owns the land. And then you've got the guy who owns the tower. And I think that is American Tower, right? Like they're the they're the big roll up. towers. Then you've got the guy who maintains and like climbs up the tower, which sounds like is often hired by either the guy that owns the tower or the other party, which is the carrier,

who leases or owns the equipment on the tower that actually provides service. Am I understanding the right way? It's a complicated value stack. Yeah. And the carrier, the way we're backing into it is the carrier is hiring this company. We think to hang new equipment or maintain the equipment. Yeah, go, we're doing a 5G rollout. Here's the, here's the towers and submit a plan for it and go have your people climb up there and go through that process. But to our, our listeners point, you know, the 5G rollout is, is probably from an infrastructure

standpoint, largely done, at least at this scale. My concern for a company like this is like, yeah, you want to go court AT&T and Verizon, but they probably want to work with as few service providers as possible. And so if they have somebody who's like, hey, we'll, we'll handle the whole state of Texas for you or we'll handle the Southwest for you. You kind of saying, hey, look, we can handle DFW for you and maybe a little bit of Louisiana. It doesn't really add much value to them. If anything, you're just kind of nipping at their heels. To that point, Mills, I would really like to see a path to growth in this business that did not rely on those carriers at all.

Right. I would love to see a business here that like consistently was winning. lower and mid-tier work in their geography, and there was plenty of it, right? You know, I don't want to buy a business that the only way to grow, like, maybe they've tapped out, you know, the little eddies around the large providers that you just described Mills, and really the only way to grow is to win these moonshot deals that are honestly pretty unlikely. So I never love that when I see a sim of any kind and their, and the only growth opportunities

they can point to are big, you know, hunting elephants. I never like that. So there are, I looked up the stats on carriers in the United States. You know, you're a testament to the anti-competitive FTC folks have been asleep at the wheel for the past couple of decades. Three carriers have 99% of the wireless customers in the United States. So AT&T is number one with 44%. Verizon has 32 or 33%, and then the combination of T-Mobile and Sprint. has the remainder. And then there's one additional kind of network that's out there.

So, I mean, I think it points out exactly the problem with the similar problem to, hey, I'm going to bet my whole business on being a supplier to Walmart and Target. You know, when there's only, when they control those channels or in the case of these networks, you know, you have AT&T and Verizon and T-Mobile. They kind of get to tell you what they're going to pay you. Like, it's not like you, it's not like you can go sign up a fourth carrier because it just doesn't exist. I would hope, you know, to that point, Michael, I would hope there's other customers for this business. You know, there's a lot of other stuff up on towers that is not cellular equipment.

You know, there's all kinds of point-to-point networking. You know, there's lots of stuff that goes up there. So I would love to see a more diverse business that's not relying on just one industry. And I would also love to see 10 years of revenue history because to your point about 5G, I mean, it's cyclical, right? this whole industry is kind of, I would think, boom and bust, right? 6G is going to come out eventually and there's going to be a whole deployment phase on that. So you probably want to buy one of these businesses at the trough in between deployment phases

and sell it at the top right after a deployment phase. The cynic in me about this, you know, this like contract thing is, you know, it's like, hey, we're about to sign this deal. I've just seen this so many times where, you know, it's almost like the broker has coached them like, hey, you need to have some like real, you know, tailwind kind of thing that we can, you know, just entice, you know, a buyer with. And I look at it and go, you know, two main thoughts. One, if this is so good and it's going to be so good, why in the world are you trying to price the value of your business without it being baked in? You know, if you wait, like in this

case, if you wait three months, you might have an executed contract. That's where something If you wait six to nine months, you're realizing revenue and growing cash flow off it, that's worth a lot more. But the bigger issue I see is, you know, if you're at $5.5 million of revenue, let's just say, I don't know, optimistically, aggressively, one of these things grows your top line by 30 or 40 or 50% per year for a couple years. That's like a massive operational risk. All the people who are involved in running this business and keeping the trains running on time are not equipped. there's that adage. I think it's a permanent equity thing, you know, like that all the systems in the business, you know, have to break each time the business doubles. And like, I see that as a major operational risk. Like, okay, I don't even get to get in and learn how to run this business

as the status quo and try and grow it at like single digit or just low double digit growth. You're going to hand me something that, you know, I don't believe is actually going to happen. But if it's, if it does, I'm going to barely be able to hold the reins and everything's going a break in my first 12 months of owning it. I view it very cynically for those reasons. So I think I think as the resident nerd on the on the podcast with a computer science degree, I think it's worth talking about the potential technology risk around this. Like where we are having a couple of trends happening. One is like there's a ton of money being thrown into all the low Earth orbit satellites. So, you know, the Starlink stuff, the Bezos Amazon.

version of that. Like the difference between those and like the SAT phones that we had when we were like younger. Did you guys ever use a sat phone? It would take like a second for the signal to get. Yeah, like the briefcase phone. Like you're like, same bond from the 80s. Yeah. So those, the satellite phones like the satellite phones, the way they've historically worked is they put one satellite way up in geostationary orbit, like way, way out there. But that's very different than the low orbit orbit satellites, which are much closer. So the speed of light to go back and forth. and therefore the latency makes doing internet and potentially kind of sell and telecom service over those satellites over Starlink much more approachable than this.

So yeah, you have these towers going on. And that's coming from kind of the top end of a threat to this business. The other end of the threat to the tower business is that you start to see a lot of like the crypto style stuff trying to create alternative distributed networks. So like helium is a good example there. They're in assuming they don't like abscond with all the money to Brazil, like a lot of crypto projects. Like you're seeing them try to create alternative networks of 5G as well that are going to start to eat into what the carriers have. And you're already starting to see some of the carriers back when helium was a bit more like in favor before crypto crashed earlier this year.

And you're starting to see those carriers start to create phones and systems where you can not necessarily use their network, but you can use 5G on some of these alternative networks as well. So, like, yeah, it's not going to happen in the next 10 years, but long-term, like, the telecommunications infrastructure isn't going to look like it is today so much. And for me, that's something I would think about, you know, somebody who likes to own stuff for long-term. So, like, the transition almost from, like, stationary ground-based to things that are a little bit more, like, geospatial.

Yeah, you have the LEO, the lower orbit satellites are potentially a threat at some point. And that's the, I talked to my telecom friends and they're like, yeah, that's realistic. Like, and then I talk to other telecom friends and they're like, it's not realistic. So the jury is still out on that. And some smart listeners may tell us what they think as well. But then there's also like getting eaten from the bottom where like helium and stuff like that, like are starting to create alternative ground-based networks as well. So you're getting basically these, the American Tower business is getting sandwiched from both sides,

potentially by technology over the next couple decades. So, Michael, I hear all that. I think that's super interesting. Let me be a devil's advocate for you a little bit. Does that really matter? Like assuming you get convinced to buy, maybe not this one, but you get convinced to buy a tower maintenance business. And you think, yeah, over the next one or two decades, stuff's going to reconfigure, right,

for sure. But, you know, I'm buying a good business for three times cash flow. Right. This one's priced at four, but three to four times cash flow. I think, I think I've got to, I've got, you know, decent growth prospects in my industry. And I got 20 years to figure that out. Like how much should a buyer really wait, you know, 20 year out disruption, which is really

hard to predict, you know, versus my, I got a near term business case to, you know, I'm getting a fair price. I got a near term business case to grow this business. I don't need to be thinking about 20 years from now. I think there's a good reason to do exactly what you're saying and just ignore it. I just thought it was interesting. It's super interesting. But like, I mean, that's, I think there's a lot of businesses out there today, right?

They kind of fit that, you know, fundamental disruption likely on a 10 to 20 or 30 year time horizon. Well, I mean, it's to expand on your point, like it is a total buyer's trap. And to do, I think there's two buyers traps that I see over and over again. And one is, is that one where you're like, oh, like parking lots are going to be like one of my angel investments that's done really well. Venture investment's done really well. It's in a parking lot technology company. And like part of the reason like it was such a good investment is all the VCs were like, oh, like, you know, parking lots are done because autonomous cars are going to be here in five years because Elon said it's going to happen. Like it was total crap. Like it's not,

you know, it's always three years away. So I think that's one. And then I think the other one that that comes to mind also, besides that, you know, overvaluing the technology threat is like secondarily like just because everybody else got burned in the industry, people stay away from it. And I'll see like people are such heard followers that if something went terrible five years ago, they're suddenly like, oh, no, like that that roll up of survey companies didn't work out. So like, we can't do that. It'll never work. Or that industry is like, that's, it's a, it's totally, it's whatever.

Like, you just shouldn't go there. Like, it's impossible to make money there. And I see that I think you're great about those points. So like talk about, you know, are you talking about me in my industry? Like e-commerce, right? E-commerce has had like the worst 24 months ever went from bell of the ball to not invited to the party, right? Nobody wants to invest in the e-commerce business right now. I mean, there's a freaking, Michael, I saw you get wrapped into some threat on Twitter where some guys like, yeah, this e-commerce thing is stupid.

I don't know why people are buying all these warehouses. Like nobody's going to buy stuff on the internet in the future. And it's like, guys, get off Twitter. Like, look around. Like, e-commerce is going to be a thing. It's just, it's amazing how people try to follow. I remember being a kid, you know, and we own the fireworks business. I remember being a kid and hearing my parents, my grandparents and stuff say,

hey, like, you need to go to school. You need to get some skills other than a future in our fireworks business because we don't know if it's going to be around next year. And we keep selling more and more fireworks. Like you should come out to our warehouse. We have a lot of fireworks. And every year I'm like, who's buying all this stuff? It turns out people really like fireworks and they're liking them more and more.

So yeah, it's exactly right. But I think it presents such interesting opportunities if you can find an industry where it's out of favor because it's just out of fashion. And you'll see PE do this all the time. Like I see PE, like you'll talk to PE people about a specific industry and they know that some roll up from five years ago got totally burned and they all talk. I mean, that's the other thing I've learned that's, that's crazy about private equity is how chatty those guys are. Like, they all just talk about deals all the time and they're all worried about how they look with the other, the other PE managers.

But they'll, like, stay away from something, even if it's obviously an amazing deal, just because they're worried about the optics. It's like, but it presents such an amazing opportunity if you're just like, oh, this is so out of fashion. Like, I'm going to go get into this. So to your point, like somebody who's a smart country and should be putting money into e-commerce now because this is a great time to buy. It's a great time.

Bill, go ahead and give them your. email for those contrarians who want to reach out. You want to reach out. You know where to find me. But like it's it's so classic like in private equity. It's like the private equity, nobody gets fired for buying IBM, right? Like no one gets fired for investing in the hot thing. But like you invest in something that's out of favor and all of a sudden it goes on the portfolio page of your website. And everybody, you know, in private equity, they wear their Patagonia vests and talk at cocktail part. Like, you believe Michael invested in that stupid thing? You know, like, everybody knows that tower service companies are way on the outs. Like, what a moron, right? But, you know, but, you know,

you might do great, but, you know, nobody gets fired for investing in the hot thing. And that's, that's been damn pretty obviously the past few years, I think, in crypto and in venture and a lot of other things. I had this example of that just really quick, like maybe eight or 10 years ago was selling a a sand mine and it was like around the fracking, you know, heyday. And every single buyer we talked to was like, is it fracking sand? Like, can we use it for, he was like, no, it's just regular plain old aggregate, like goes into roads and concrete. And they were like, no, no, all we need is fracking sand.

I'm like, it's in South Carolina. Like, where are we going to frack here? But it was just one of those things. It's like, hey, if it's fracking sand, we'll buy it. But regular sand, no way. So funny. So here's another question I have. I think we've beat this one to death. Why hasn't somebody rolled this up already? That's kind of my,

you know, like, why are we the lucky buyer at this one? Like, this seems like such a recurring revenue thing, like durable type stuff and trading it just over four times EBITO. Why hasn't like somebody created a roll up of these things already? Or why is this deal not part of one? I don't know. I mean, that's like the perpetual question, right, that we always ask. Like a lot of these businesses are, I think a lot of times you seem for sale, right? And your initial SpiteySance goes up and you go, oh, yeah, I've heard of this business being rolled up. Like there's a thesis to roll up this business. I get it.

And then you read the SIM and you're like, oh, because it's not really in that business or it's like just over here on the side or there's something wrong with it. Or it's 75% residential or whatever. And the broker tries to position it as, you know, commercial elevator maintenance like we did on a prior episode that's getting rolled up like crazy. But then we look at the deal. it's like, oh, there's a lot of residential. There's some stuff that's wrong with that. They don't work with the biggest brand or whatever. Or there's a, their big competitor in their territory already got bought and rolled up.

Right. So they can't get bought and rolled. You know, there's like all those types of things where you realize it's not quite on thesis. I think people look at roll-ups kind of homogeneously too, but they're so different. Like the level of earnings of a business and where it fits in whether or not it's a candidate for a roll-up is largely dependent on like how mature the roll-up. is of that vertical or that niche. Like we've talked about it with, you know, vet clinics or, you know, behavioral health. I think we've like we've talked about a few.

Dennis practices, like those are very mature roll-ups and the systems are there and in place to move down the food chain in terms of they can acquire and roll up lower levels of earnings. For a business like this that is probably not a very mature roll-up, the level of earnings has to be incrementally higher because they don't have all the kinks work. out. They don't have a mature process in a system for rolling them up. And especially if it's a service-based business like this, it's got to be of a certain size. I mean, I know that they happen, but, you know, businesses that generate less than a million dollars in EBITDA, and I don't think this business probably actually generates as much free cash flow as they say, they are very, very,

very difficult to roll up if they're service-based. All right. Well, cool. I mean, I think this is a super fun space. I mean, it comes back to kind of what we were talking about in the pre-show, like, how do you identify what services businesses actually have significant moats beyond, hey, I'm a really good operator. And, you know, you develop some established relationships and then how much can you bet on that as a buyer? It's just a fascinating way to kind of think about stuff. Yeah, one more thought about that.

I would put this in the category of businesses that are, you know, are service-based, they're B-to-B, but they deal with big, kind of clunky, sticky. high barrier to entry customers. And I really, really like these, but you have to know that you're going to deal with customer concentration. And the moat is some relational, some kind of historical performance of work together. Like people who service railways, those are incredible businesses. It's like a Wild West because you just cannot get in with the rail company. But there's businesses. There's so many services around rail, but you're going to have one or two customers. And so it scares a lot of, you know, professional buyers away.

Billboard companies are this way. If you do anything service related for billboards, there's just not that many operators. DOT work, municipal work, prisons. Like, you can't just waltz in there like knocking on somebody's door in a B to C or residential capacity. So the, the barriers to entry are higher, but the customer relationships once you have them are more valuable. I would put this in that same kind of category, you know, cell towers or in that same camp that it can be very good, but it can also, you know, theoretically go away overnight because of that customer concentration.

Yeah, Melz, this reminds me of the conversation that you and I have when we were camping a couple weeks ago about kind of how good business can be that maintain heavy CAPEX infrastructure. Like you were talking about the business that maintained all the vegetation underneath the high tension power lines, like all across, I forget which region it was. And what a great business that was, right? I just spit off cash. So I would love to maybe close with a challenge to our listeners. We would love to review and see more businesses kind of in this B2B services,

maintain your CAPX infrastructure category because there's all kinds of different niches. There's all these huge CAPX heavy businesses and need to maintain that CAPX and then don't want to do it. And they contract it out to service providers. We'd love to see more. So tweet us deals in that vein on Twitter. we would love to do more of them. Super cool. All right.

And listeners, so if you would like to see the link to this deal, sign up for our newsletter. You can do that through the Twitter profile for Acquisitions Anonymous or on our, oh, I guess through our Twitter profile is the easiest one on review. Oh, and the show notes too. Yeah. Join the hundreds of other people on our newsletter. And you'll get alerted about every new episode and links to every deal. So super cool one.

And yeah, send us more stuff. Super cool. All right, guys. We'll catch you next week. Great job.