Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - Small Oil & Gas Services Business Deal Review

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

In this episode, the hosts dissect a small Alberta-based distributor of oil and gas measurement tools, revealing a niche but sleepy business that may be just two guys and a warehouse—and whether that’s worth buying.Business Listing – https://dashboard.dealforce.com/deals/profiles/Profile69308.pdfWelcome to Acquisitions Anonymous – the #1 podcast for small business M&A. Every week, we break down businesses for sale and talk about buying, operating, and growing them.Looking to build a professional website in minutes? Try Wix: https://wix.pxf.io/c/6898629/3115214/25616?trafcat=templateHubSpot is the backbone for how businesses scale without chaos. Try them out here: https://go.try-hubspot.com/OeG9Vr💰 Sponsored by:Go High Level – The all-in-one sales and marketing platform built for agencies and entrepreneurs. Automate, manage, and grow your business at https://www.gohighlevel.comViso Business Capital — Get the right SBA loan tailored to your acquisition needs with Heather Endresen’s firm. Sign up for a free live Q&A on SBA loans at https://www.visocap.net and click “Zoom Sign Up” in the top-right corner.This week's deal is a small, decades-old Canadian distributor of measurement and control equipment for the oil and gas industry, based in rural Alberta. The company does about $2.75M in revenue and $208K in EBITDA (possibly CAD), offering pressure, flow, and temperature monitoring tools—plus parts and calibration support—to over 200 recurring customers across North America.Key Highlights:- Revenue: $2.75M | EBITDA: $208K (2026 estimates)- Location: Rural Alberta, Canada; low customer concentration- Likely just 1-2 operators, mostly parts distribution, not services- Potential upside through long-overdue price increases- Brokered by Generational Equity, with discussion on their practicesSubscribe 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 to Acquisitions Anonymous. Today's deal is in Canada. And that caused us to go to some weird places with it. And it was in the oil and gas services industry and specifically technology for that industry. So very interesting deal. Stick around until the end. You'll see what we thought about it. Here's the episode. Acquisition Anonymous. Hello, another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. We don't have 100% beers anymore. And thumbs downing on just the plus inventory line. Big thanks to High Level for sponsoring this video and helping us pay for our editors. High Level is the all-in-one CRM that handles your emails, text, funnels, and more all-in-one place. Think of it like the Swiss Army Night for Small Businesses, and you can try it for free for 30 days at go-highlevel.com slash Michael Gurdley. What I mean? Hopefully Mills will show up. This is going to be a good episode, just you and me.

Bill, I'm curious, how has your life improved being skinny Bill now? How do you feel? I feel great. I mean, so for context, for listeners, I saw my business in April. I started GLP1 in May. I've dropped 30-something pounds since then. I feel great, look great. I feel much more confident. Have you ever heard the concept of food noise?

You ever heard this phrase? No. No heard this phrase. Food noise is the idea that you're just kind of always thinking about what your next meal is. You're always thinking about food. Like, food is just kind of on your mind. like food occupies a large portion of your psyche. I did not realize what a portion of my psyche food occupied until I start taking

a gLP one. I just think about food so much less now. Like it just doesn't occur to me. I like food still. I still eat all my meals and, you know, I enjoy good food and I eat dessert sometimes and all that stuff. But it's just, it just takes up way less of my brain. And that's been a wild change.

Wow. Yeah. Has it changed your habits while eating? And here's what I'm asking. I've been watching that show, my 600-pound life. I don't know if you've ever seen that. I'm not seen it, but I know what you mean. Yeah, it's unfortunately people who are almost always have some sort of childhood trauma, which is causing them to basically eat themselves to death, like it's slow motion suicide. So there's six, 700, 900-pound people with 18 to 36-month lifespans when you get that heavy. But one thing I know, is they will videotape them for the show eating and they all eat like this like there's they're

shoveling huge bites as quickly as possible into their mouth um so i was just curious and it's one of things i've noticed like people who tend to be naturally skinnier and oftentimes healthier they eat more slowly right they're more european with it they're putting a fork down they're taking their time so i'm curious yeah if that the glp changed your behavior while you're eating do i eat slower uh maybe I mean, what I certainly don't do anymore is finish everything that's on my plate, regardless of whether I'm full. That was the thing I didn't realize. Like, and maybe, you know, my parents, you know, like, finish your plate or you're not going to get dessert or whatever. You know, we do that. We all do that to our kids, right? Clean play club, all that stuff.

But I was, I definitely, like, I've developed this appreciation for just how big American portion sizes are. I mean, holy. I had heard that before. Like, I kind of like intellectually knew that. But I have viscerally experienced just how much. much food I am served, way more food than I want anymore. Yeah. That's crazy. Is this deal about food? Thank you. No. It is. The deal I found is not about food, but I think it's really interesting. So let me pitch you on this since I'm in a generational equity kick.

The reason I like generational equity as a source of leads for this podcast is they do a really nice job of writing teasers. Whoever they have writing teasers, they've got the formula down. I think they're really good. I don't know if you have different. So I agree. Mills is like does really does not like General Rational Equity. Some of the coolest teasers we've seen on the show,

I think, have been from generational equity. They do a lot of volume because they have a big footprint. And their teasers are good. So I like doing their deals on the show. So let me put you on this one. It is an industry leading measurement and control solution located in Alberta, Canada. In 2026, they're going to do 2.75 million,

in revenue. I don't know if that's American dollars or fake Canadian money, but one of the two, because the company's in Alberta, Canada. The 26 EBAA is $208,000. And then they have pictures of, like, a guy who is too clean to be working in the oil fields, in my opinion, working out on a pipeline or a refinery. And then some very nice kind of stock photos of measurement tools for petrochemicals, for oil and gas. One of these stock photos is just a caliper measuring the width of a pipe that has already been installed. Like, imagine you just approached a pipe and just measured the width of it with a caliper while wearing a rubber work glove. It's crazy.

You're like, I can compete with this business. I'd just go buy a ruler. Right. All right. All right. This outstanding acquisition opportunity is for privately held manufacturing distributor of measurement and control equipment. serving oil and gas, petrochemical, and processed markets. The company provides instruments for flow, pressure, and temperature monitoring,

plus repair, calibration, and part support for multiple brands of recording equipment. It also distributes complementary oil fuel products for selected EOM supporting customers across North America and key international markets. So I want to dig in on this sentence here because it's the first question we usually ask is, what does this business do? So it says the company provides instruments for flow, pressure, and temperature monitoring plus repair calibration and part support for multiple brands of recording equipment. So what do we think they do?

Or do I need to keep reading? So maybe you keep reading. I mean, my sense is right, you've got a whole bunch of oil infrastructure. You've got pipes full of steam, oil, like all kinds of things. And you need to know the pressure, temperature, et cetera, flow rate inside those pipes. And there are gauges and, you know, all sorts of ways to mess. measure that stuff, both retrofit and original equipment manufacturer, you know, stuff that's built into the pipe or stuff you wrap around the pipe that uses ultrasound. You know, there's all kinds of

ways to measure flow and pressure temperature, et cetera. I think these guys maintain the pressure temperature flow measurement. It's, uh, it says multiple plans of recording equipment. I'm going to assume this means recording the measurements over time. Yeah, was kind of how I heard that. Oh, Mills is here. good because this is an industrial deal mills hopefully you'll know a little bit more than me and michael oh here we go no pressure and it's generalishine equity your favorite broker you know that spot is up for the taking and but if they became a sponsor i would be very nice you would be very it would become your favorite broker instantly well we just said nice things about them before you got on we said that they generally have a lot of volume because they got a lot

of breath and their teaser's usually pretty good yes pretty pretty detailed and i like doing general national equity deals on the show. So they should sponsor our pot. We haven't talked about this in a while, but do you know how they get so many, how many, like they get so many deals. Do you know how? I assume because it was franchised and there's just like a ton of them. No.

They do these seminars where they'll go around from town to town and do like educational, kind of like, have you ever thought about selling your business, like bring your business owner friends? and they will do, like, not quite free, but very, very, very affordable business valuations. And you love the valuation that they give you. Like, it's very exciting. And they're like, if you like this valuation, we could build you a deck and take you to market. And that's like, you know, human behavior.

They're like, well, yeah, okay, like, I didn't think my business could be worth that much. And there's a lot of fees associated with that and not a lot of closings. Really? So they charge you up front. It's not as much a success fee. I'm not sure there is. I mean, they do, they do have incredibly lucrative success fees. They just don't have, you know, statistically they don't have any deals. I've been seeing, this is interesting because it wasn't branded by them, but, um, you know, You know, meta and Instagram goes through waves of what it shows me in ads. For a while, I was seeing like every buy a business ad, you know, Cody, Sanchez and Alex Formos, I've seen every, and then I, then they switched me to, here's how you grow your business.

And by the way, I opened up Instagram like January, you know, January 1st at like 1230 in morning. And at 1159, it was showing me how to buy fireworks ads online. And then at 1230, it started to show me, here's how to. to go to like those like religious retreats where they put you through like a seal boot camp for the weekend. It was convinced that that's what I wanted. And that's all I see.

Like are you trying to find meaning in your life? Come to San Diego and we're going to make you roll around in the sand and go through a transformative experience. Yeah. Oh yeah. And anyway, so last week it started to show me the, hey, do you want to get out of this business you have type ad to come to a luncheon like exactly what you're talking about?

But it didn't say generational equity. It was just unbranded. Yeah, yeah. So that's probably that. They, very well could have been. They, they charge double layman success fees, but the listing agreements are incredibly one-sided. So they will try to charge a success fee, not just based on like the cash at close or consideration at close, but also off of like if you lease your building, back or if you sell your building as part of the transaction.

And they even will try to charge fees off of the cash you take out of the business in conjunction with the closing. Like a, come on. Like the cash on the balance sheet? Yeah. Yeah. That's not all right.

Yeah. Yeah. I've talked to a business owner who I looked at their agreement and they were like, is there anything I can do about this? Because now I'm going to sell. And I, like I signed it. I didn't know any better. You know, I've never done this before.

I just said go negotiate. All right, now I see why they're your favorite business broker. Well, anyway, the teasers are great. Tell me more about the teaser because the teasers are great. Well, they charge a lot of money for them. They better be good. Well, there's certain, I mean, there's certain brokerage sites where, you know, the listing goes up and then three days later it's gone.

So you have to go and download it. Otherwise, it disappears very quickly. Generational equities listings, I can go back to them like three months later and it's still there. So I hear what you're saying. Okay, so back to this oil and gas measurement company manufacturer

in Alberta, Canada, which means it's either in Edmonton or Calgary. One of those is a nice place to live. I'll let you guess which one of this. Okay, the company enjoys a long-stained reputation for quality products and services, technical expertise, dependability, and responsive customer support, built on decades of industry experience and ethical business practice, the majority of businesses from repeat customers and

referrals. They have a diversified customer base, over 200 active and recurring customers with no significant customer concentration. The company-owned facility and well-maintained equipment base provides capacity for future growth with minimal additional capital investment required. The company uses financial statements compiled by an outside accounting firm. The firm has found no material defect in the company's financials. So, yay. There's nothing to see here. It's all very nice.

So what do you guys like about this business? I mean, I like that it doesn't directly depend on the price of oil. You know, it's not, a lot of the oil field services stuff can be very boom or bust, right? Because at certain price of oil, it doesn't make sense to run certain rigs. So I think this is kind of an essential service. Like it's got to be running or you got to be testing your flow and measure your temperature and pressure. I like that it's an essential service. It's also probably a relatively small line item for their customers.

It's the type of thing where they're probably not getting bid out every couple months, right? Because it's just so infinitesimal. It's the type of thing where it's very cheap compared to the catastrophe if you don't do it. and if you do your job well, it's very unlikely you get fired or RFP. So I do like that. Yeah, I agree. I think it's probably like a relatively low cost item on a very expensive, you know, pipeline, right? Or tank or something like that.

I mean, the pictures are, you know, valves, you know, in a pipe network. So my thought is that these are probably not proprietary. they are somewhat interchangeable. But as long as you're doing a good job and as long as you, you know, aren't extracting too high of a margin, it is interesting. They say 2026 estimated revenue. It's January when we're recording this. So why aren't they telling us 2025? I mean, it would be in the SIM, of course.

But I feel like usually when you see estimated revenue for a year, like you start seeing that in like June or July. Yeah. Yeah, that is kind of bizarre. I mean, look, can we also talk about why is it so small? I mean, there's so much the tam of money spent and oil and gas on this stuff, they just throw the money around like crazy, at least here in the U.S. And it's just not very big. Yeah, and the margins aren't that good, which is kind of weird. Well, I don't think they're making anything. Well, they say privately help manufacture and distributor. These are distribution margins, you know. It makes me think. they're buying a bunch of valves and keeping them somewhat close by to the end user because the end user doesn't want to hold them in inventory.

Yeah, but it's weird that says manufacturer, and I was thinking maybe it would be part support. So, like, this is a less good business if it's a, like, a just-in-time distributor of valves or gauges or whatever. It's a better business if we have to do testing and maintenance on the pressure flow systems every 30 days, and we have the contract to do that. And that's what it is. Yeah. You know, the margins will be better.

But you're right, Mills, based on the 10% EBITDA margin, it feels more like a distributor. Hi, Heather here. When I'm not breaking down deals with these guys, I'm helping people get the right SBA loans for their business acquisitions. Because when you're buying a business, the best financing isn't one size fits all. There's the best rate, fastest to close, the specific loan structure that you need, or a little of all of those things. That's why my company, Vizzo Business Capital, works with over 30 different lenders to find you the best funding in less time and with less friction.

So you can focus on the deal. Sign up for a free live Q&A session on SBA loans at Vizoccap.net. Then click Zoom sign up in the top right corner. That's V-I-S-O-C-A-P.net and click Zoom sign up. And I don't think that they are doing any actual, like, service. It's not like call us and we will come use our nays. instruments to check your equipment. It's call us and we'll send you the, you know, they say instruments for flow, pressure,

and temperature monitoring. So I don't think they have like field employees. Maybe they have a technical person who can go out and help, but they're not actually performing a service. You know, I would say if they are performing a service, they need to raise their prices, which is very possible. I mean, it says, which other thing I like about this is says it's decades. Gades old a couple times. Like, it's been around for a while. It's very possible they've never

raised their prices in 10 years. And maybe their costs are creeping up and their margin. They just haven't managed their margin. So maybe they need to pass a big 30% price increase. And then you've got a very different business. I wonder if this is US dollars or Canadian dollars too. It doesn't specify. I mean, this is, I think, it's even worse if it's Canadian dollars. That's 200,000 Canadian is like, what, five U.S. dollars? It would not surprise me if this is a two-person company. Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

I mean, yeah, and each of them taking home 100 grand a year. You have the guy who started it, who, you know, worked probably at one of these calibration, worked at one of these oil companies or one of the calibration companies back in the 80s, and he left, and he's the guy that people call for two or three brands of these, you know,

monitoring equipment that they have out there and recording equipment. And, you know, there's, and then he has an office manager who has been with him since the 80s, and that's probably what's going on. And he's just selling parts for this stuff and just content. That's my guess.

You know what? I bet the moda is here. I bet it's Alberta. I bet it's the, I bet it's in some rural area. And like, they're the ones that serve. whatever installed base there is there.

And like nobody else wants it and they just do it. And it's probably a good business because no one's coming in their niche, you know, because it's far away. And, you know, they clip 200 grand a year of profit distributing these things. And that's kind of what the business is.

And it's two guys in rural Alberta, if I had to guess. I went under L.O.I on a business like maybe six or seven years ago that was a, um, like it was just in time and it was service, but they would do high, hydraulic equipment repair, and it was down in Charleston. So like if you're, you know, a brick

mason on a job site, you have a lift that you're using, like a telehandler. And if it breaks, it's incredibly disruptive and expensive. United Rentals and Herc and Sunbelt, they all, like, maintain their own equipment. But, or, you know, if you're renting one and it breaks down, they just come fix it or bring you a new one and take that one off and fix it. But this company would service people who had their own. And I will say, like, it makes me think of that they were solving such an acute problem for people that the price was less material than their urgency of, like, same day, I need you out here. So it was kind of a very finite resource pool because it was just a couple guys doing the work. But it makes me think, you know, if these guys are, if they have the only part, like within, you know, 500 miles,

there should be, I would think, some rationale behind raising prices, like you said, Bill. Because if the line is down, it's kind of like, you know, just fix it. Like, we don't care. Just get it fixed. Right. I think they got to raise the price here. That reminds me of one of the best businesses here locally that I saw for sale, you know, kind of over the past five years.

It was this, and I don't know if it transacted or whatever, but it was out in a little small town kind of in the middle of the oil field stuff here in in uh in south texas so there's all the stuff out in midland odessa and then there's stuff called the eagle ford south of santonia that's not as productive as midland odessa and the permian but it was near here right and basically what they did was they had a bunch of random oil farm ranch stuff that was basically the stuff that if it broke at your ranch or if it broke at anywhere like you needed it the next day or you needed it right then and so they carried that stuff and then the genius of the whole thing was they were on call 24-7 so you could like call them and somebody would open up the store for you and they would sell the stuff for like 50% to 100% more

then you would buy it from a normal supplier. So they had these massive margins. They were running at like 25% EBITA margins as a retailer, which was crazy because they were just doing this niche where the person had to have that particular thing. You're running an oil well, right? And the pump goes out. You need a pump right then.

Like, you're doing it. So it was a fascinating kind of niche to y'all's perspective. And if this is like that, where it's like something somebody has to have right then and they could get better margin for it, that makes a lot to love about it. it. Do you have to worry, Michael, like, you know, that's a great business until it's not. Like, until how many retailers are doing great until Amazon Prime could deliver overnight in that area, right?

So that's like one of those things that's great and then either some technology or some, the behemoth that won't serve your area suddenly decides to serve your area and then your moat is just gone overnight. That's what we'll worry me. Yeah. I think there are some segments of retail. I think we talked about this, but that are more immune. I think like obscure heavy equipment, you know, parts is one of those that is more immune. The one that I really like in retail that I think we have talked about on the podcast is nurseries. Bought this like microcap stock like probably 15 years ago that ended up doing really well. It's Calloways. They're in Texas, Michael. I think they, might have gotten acquired. They had like these amazing real estate holdings. But like you can't, it doesn't make sense to like buy a fern, you know, on Amazon or on Home Depot online or whatever. Like you go to a store and you also buy like, you know, a 50 pound bag of mulch that like Amazon isn't coming for.

You know, it's a $3 bag of mulch. Mills, I'm so glad you brought this up because I actually think it confirms my point. So yes, on the mulch. Do you know about this business that is near us called fastgrowing trees.com? No. So this business blew my mind. Yeah, it's near. It's in Sharre.

It was headquartered shard for a long time. This business has traded private equity hands like six times or something. I'm exaggerating a little bit. But like it's it's one of those classic businesses that's just a grower and a grower and a grower and a grower. And it changes private equity hands every three years and grows and then changes again. This business is doing, I think it's several hundred mills. billion in sales. It's pushing a billion in sales. Fast growing trees. And they shit, it's what it sounds like, they ship you a tree to your house. Are the trees any more fast growing than any other trees?

I actually don't think so. I think they're just trees. And the back end of it is just a nursery network. And I don't know if they drop ship it from a nursery near you or whatever. Yeah, Michael's got it up on the screen. This is a freaky big business. And so I bet, you know, 15 years ago, Mills, when you looked at this, this business wasn't around because you could not do the logistics on a tree. But like now you can do the logistics on a tree and fast-going trees is coming for your lunch money. And this is a great site. Like you can tell, it's very optimized. The user interface is good.

Like, yeah. The domain is fast-growing hyphen, growing, hyphen, trees.com. Oh, wow. Like, come on. You're telling me you can't find a domain for your business, Mr. entrepreneur. Well, tell that to all the domainer people who are like, I can't call the business that we can't get the domain. The domain doesn't matter. I mean, anymore. It's shipped. It says 22 million trees. I mean, that is bonkers. I told you it's a huge business. The average order value on these

things is like, you know, between 50 and 100 bucks. What is the mode on this business? Logistics. Just like the ability to do it and probably the other and four. Yeah, then, Fort Mill, South Carolina. And probably the back end nursery network, right? They're probably hooked in with all the local nurseries. If I had a bet, and I don't, not familiar enough with this business to know, they're basically order router and all of the nearby nurseries either delivered a drop ship it on that. Which is kind of what like 1-800 flowers is, right? I mean, yes. They're just like, hey, we're going to call the local florists and make their day, you know, by sending them orders and extract half the market.

If I had to guess, this is basically 1,800 flowers, but for trees. That's a good way to put it, Mills. So here's their headquarters. I pulled it up a lot better than their teacher we're talking about. Yeah, their headquarters is a giant nursery. Is that what it is? I can't really tell. Let me see here.

It may just be like a little tiny office building. I'm trying to get it to. Oh, there's this street here. satellite view. Yeah, there's no. This is why you got to watch the show on YouTube because you get to see Michael creep on people on Google Maps. It looks like it's a giant nursery

warehouse. Yeah. So, I mean, maybe they have trees everywhere. Now. Yeah. Like, they do ship trees. I mean, they're definitely shipping a lot of trees like through the FedEx network, which is wild.

Yeah, look how big this is. Holy cow. Go on YouTube, if you're listening to this and look at the fast-growing. trees, headquarters on satellite view. It is impressive. You have a big thing on their website that's like, don't come to our office. Yeah. Yeah, this is crazy.

Well, and at some point we need to do like a logging or some sort of paper mill style business because I think people all equate like wood production as coming out of the Pacific Northwest. And they don't realize that the southeast where you guys live is like the magical place to grow trees. Like all of the wood, the pulp, like how much America does. because the whole region from kind of northern Florida up to up to North Carolina is just insane. Just insane. Well, you would think people would understand because the name of the largest lumber and woodpulp company in the world is Georgia Pacific.

So you would think people would realize that it comes out of the southeast. But yeah. I have a friend who sold, to just further corroborate that point, I have a friend who sold his business for $220 million here in Columbia that they just, made telephone pulse. Just wood telephone poles. You've told me about this, Mills. Yeah. I mean, it's unbelievable.

Which sounds like, you have to like put chemicals in it and like shape it the right way and compress it and chip it and like there's work there for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you guys want to put some closure on this Canadian instrument deal?

We found something more exciting. It's the punchline of this deal. This is a fine business, right? I don't think this is a terrible business. I don't think I'm super excited by this business. It's probably a couple of guys in rural Alberta distributing gauges, and it's going to be $200,000 a year until they raise prices, and then it'll be $250,000 a year,

and it'll grow at inflation. Right? Yeah. I think that's accurate. And this will trade for two to three times EBITDA, I would think. it is it is funny how hard it seems like how much additional friction there is to trade canadian businesses um you just see it over and over again like and especially when i touch people were trying to buy businesses in canada they're just like oh it's really hard

a lot of rain data yeah it's really difficult yeah all right so mills you're uh not getting the teaser not getting the sim i don't think i would on this it just doesn't move the needle no it's just not that excited like you got to be the right buyer here. You got to live in the area. You got to maybe it's a bolt on. You know, there's, this is like your very classic, like boring small business M&A target, right? Yeah. All right. On that note, thanks everybody for being here today. We'll catch you next week for the next episode. See ya. Bye.