Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - The $12M Business Behind Global Car Shipping

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

In this episode the hosts talk about a $12M patented auto transport equipment rental business with $3.4M in claimed cash flow and 95% gross margins—but 6,501 unused shipping cassettes raise a much b...igger question about why such a profitable-looking business is for sale.Business Listing – https://www.bizbuysell.com/business-opportunity/b2b-auto-transport-and-equipment-rental-company-11-global-patents/2545707/Welcome 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/OeG9VrSubscribe for more episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@AcquisitionsAnonymousPodcast?sub_confirmation=1Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.acquanon.com/newsletterSponsors:FRANZY - Thinking about buying a franchise instead of an independent business? FRANZY is a free platform built for acquisition-minded entrepreneurs who want to explore franchise ownership without broker bias. FRANZY matches you with franchise opportunities based on your capital, goals, and lifestyle—and includes free coaching from experienced franchise operators. If you're exploring ETA but want a structured, system-driven alternative, check out https://www.franzy.com/ Mercury - Thanks to Mercury for partnering with me! Mercury gives founders powerful banking, cards, and financial tools built to help businesses operate smarter. Learn more and get started at http://mercury.com/Quiet Light Brokerage specializes in helping entrepreneurs buy and sell businesses with experienced operators as brokers. They offer a free valuation clarity call to help owners understand what their business is worth and how to increase its value before selling. Learn more at https://quietlight.com/The crew breaks down a fascinating 35-year-old B2B automotive transportation and equipment rental company based in Tampa, Florida, with operations across three global locations. The business is asking $12 million on approximately $4.1 million of revenue and $3.4 million of listed seller discretionary earnings, while claiming gross margins above 95%. Its core product is a patented reusable steel cassette system that allows two, three, or four vehicles to be efficiently loaded into standard 40-foot shipping containers. The company has 11 active patents, says its equipment has helped transport more than 2.5 million vehicles across 30+ countries, and makes money primarily through multi-year equipment leases.But there’s a mystery hiding behind those numbers: the company currently has 6,501 fully paid cassettes available for new contracts, equipment originally built for roughly $6.3 million. Why is so much capacity sitting unused? The hosts debate whether the company is simply at the bottom of a cyclical shipping market, facing a new competitor or substitute technology, dealing with expiring or weakened patents, or experiencing a significant decline that isn't obvious from the listing. They also question whether the headline cash flow adequately reflects the business's CapEx requirements and the cost of building a competitive sales organization.🔑 Key Highlights:- $12M asking price: Approximately $4.1M revenue and $3.4M listed SDE, plus claimed gross margins above 95%.- 6,501 idle cassettes: The fully paid equipment was originally built for approximately $6.3M and management believes redeployment could produce more than $3M annually.- 11 active patents: The company has a patented system for stacking and securing vehicles inside standard shipping containers—but the hosts want to know how strong and long-lived that moat really is.- Financing challenge: Seller financing is available, while the specialized equipment could be difficult for conventional lenders to value as collateral.- The big mystery: Is this simply a cyclical business sitting on valuable excess capacity, or have competitors, declining demand, contract losses, CapEx requirements, or substitutes permanently changed the economics?Subscribe to  weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking hereDo 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 contact@acquanon.com

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Starting point is 00:00:00 We'll set acquisition anonymous. We don't have 100% beers anymore. And thumbs downing on just the plus inventory line. One of the biggest risk in entrepreneurship through acquisition is buying a business with fragile systems. Unclear demand are a single owner who holds all the knowledge. Franchising approaches that problem differently. You are buying into an established brand with documented systems, unit level data, and repeatable operating playbooks. The hard part is knowing which franchises are actually worth evaluating.
Starting point is 00:00:30 That's why Alex Moresniak, former CEO of Two-Yea Laundry, built Franzy. Franzy is a free platform that helps acquisition-minded entrepreneurs explore franchise ownership without broker bias. You answer a few questions and Franzy shows you franchise opportunities that align with your capital, lifestyle, and long-term goals. You also get free coaching from people who have actually built and scaled franchise businesses. If you are exploring ETA and want to understand whether franchising fits your acquisition strategy, visit franzi.com. That's F-R-A-N-Z-Y.com. And thanks to them for sponsoring today's episode. 500 episodes later we still start joking around and people go quick hit record hit record we got to get this like it so i guess we're doing something right it's still fun when we initially started we were basically like let's just hit record and figure it out and still 500 episodes later
Starting point is 00:01:16 mills so it's it's friday also so this one always is a little bit goofy heather is is 730 in the morning so she's still getting caffeinated up but the rest of the three of us are halfway through our morning caffeinated and already looking at 5 o'clock. So this should be a good one. What did you find for us today, Mills? This jumped out to me because of the photo. If you're not on YouTube, I highly recommend it. It's a semi-truck with a container, like a Connx container on the back. And there's vehicles loaded into the back of it. Like it looks like it's some kind of specialty like rig, so to speak, inside this Connix to transport vehicles. And it says it's a B2B all. transport and equipment rental company with 11 global patents based in Tampa, Florida. And elsewhere, it said that the business is 35 years old.
Starting point is 00:02:10 So I don't know. Just like businesses like this that are kind of like maybe asset light really are intriguing to me. May or may not be asset light. I haven't read the whole listing yet. So this is on Biz by Sell, one of our future aspiring sponsors. And the asking price on this business is 12. million dollars. They say cash flow, which they list as SDE, seller discretionary earnings, is $3.4 million. And the revenue is a whopping $4.1 million. So this business has like 75%
Starting point is 00:02:45 SDE margins. Net margins. Wow. Supposedly. It's been around since 1991. And it says it's a 35-year-old business with 95% gross margins and three global office locations. Website closers presents a 35-year B-to-B automotive transportation and equipment rental company that has built a patented alternative to traditional vehicle shipping. The business designs, owns, and leases reusable steel cassette systems used to move finished vehicles, semi-knocked-down vehicle kits, and motorcycles inside. standard 40-foot containers. Their system allows vehicles to be secured outside the container, loaded by forklift,
Starting point is 00:03:31 and placed inside in under three minutes, removing the need for internal lashing while reducing loading time and cargo damage. Supported by 11 active patents across key international markets, the company has helped transport more than 2.5 million vehicles across over 30 countries. Whoa. A major OEM program recorded a damage rate of just 0.025% across 118,000 vehicles compared to a 5.2% industry benchmark. The product line uses three standardized base frames that carry two, three, or four vehicles with modular parts that can be adjusted for different vehicle models. Units also collapse and stack to reduce return shipping costs.
Starting point is 00:04:19 35 years old, 11 patents, 95% gross margin, three offices, high capacity facilities, 365 days of transition supports. They're going to help you for a year afterwards and a fully paid equipment fleet. It says they earn through multi-year equipment lease contracts with automotive manufacturers, ocean carriers, and 3PL providers. Enterprise accounts typically carry annual contract values from 500,000 to more than, $4 million. New equipment is generally built only after a two to three year lease has been secured and fabrication costs are structured to be recovered within the first 24 months. Most contracts remain active for four to seven years while one customer relationship continued for more than 11 years. Gross margins have exceeded 95%. A major part of this opportunity is a pool of 6,501 fully paid cassettes in like new condition and ready for new. contracts. Those assets were originally built for $6.3 million and now carry no remaining equipment debt. Management believes redeploying the fleet could generate more than $3 million per year with five commercial opportunities already under discussion. Manufacturing partners in two regions
Starting point is 00:05:35 can also handle multi-thousand unit orders giving the company room to respond as new lease programs are signed. I've read a lot, but there's a lot of growth opportunities here. I think we've kind of hit on the biggest one. They're looking for a buyer to invest in a well-established in highly profitable business, strong growth prospects, compelling opportunity case. Current owners are open to facilitating a smooth transition, providing training and support.
Starting point is 00:06:03 Codename Atlas. This episode is brought to you by a company I genuinely use across every single one of my businesses. It's called Mercury. I've incubated a lot of businesses over the years. A media company, a podcast business, a staffing firm, a quality of earnings firm, and several others, and Mercury has become my go-to banking across all of them.
Starting point is 00:06:20 I've personally been a Mercury customer for more than three years now, so when they reached out about working together, it was honestly a no-brainer. I already used the product, and I recommend it, and I'm a big fan of what they've built. One of the things that originally won me over was just how hilariously easy it was to get set up. When you're starting a new business, you need to focus on actually building the business. Now paperwork, phone calls are figuring out some banking interface that feels like it was designed 20 years ago. Mercury is the complete opposite. Everything is incredibly intuitive.
Starting point is 00:06:49 I can open the dashboard and immediately see what's happening across the business. Review expenses, move money, send ACHs or wires, manage cards and permissions, and just get a really clear picture of where things stand. And when you're involved in multiple businesses at once, having that visibility without adding more complexity is incredibly valuable. Now that I've been using Mercury for a few years, traditional banks honestly feel like going back in time in a bad way. That's why Mercury is one of the few things I set up when building
Starting point is 00:07:15 new businesses. Visit mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC insured bank, banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and column NA members FDIC. Yeah, this business is, if I'm looking at the picture and everything you just said, this business is a set of equipment that sits in what looks like a, well, this is a box fan that they have here, like a 40 foot high cube where you can basically, there's a cassette that goes into that big container and you can double stack vehicles in it as opposed to what people typically do whenever I see a vehicle shipped in a container is it's two vehicles, nose to nose or butt to front, just stacked on the floor of the container. But this appears to be a cassette that
Starting point is 00:07:57 goes into one of those containers. Is that what you think, Bill? Yeah, I think this is some sort of fabricated metal scaffolding type deal that essentially does a couple things. One, it lets you ship cars without damage in a container because they're touting their really low damage rate, which is substantially lower, it seems, than just putting the cars on the floor of the container. And it also allows you to double the capacity of the container because it basically lets you stack the cars on top of each other. So I imagine the value prop here is you go to people who ship a lot of cars and you go, I'm going to cut your freight in half because you're going to ship fit twice so many cars in every box, and I'm going to cut your damage rate by 90%, and you're going to share
Starting point is 00:08:40 a fraction of those savings with me. But I'm not going to let you buy it. You're going to ship, that's how I capture the value. I only lease you the widgets, and that's how I can ensure I can continue extracting part of your savings from you in perpetuity. That's how I read this. Is that about right? That's what I think. What a fascinating business. I do have some questions, though, about shocker, website closers, about the things that they've written here. So this business has $4 million
Starting point is 00:09:13 of revenue, but it also says that their annual contracts are up to $4 million. So scroll down a little bit, Michael, because there's just, what I did appreciate is there's a lot of data, there's a lot of numbers in here.
Starting point is 00:09:29 It says the product uses three standardized base frames that carry two, three, or four vehicles with modular parts that can be adjusted for different size vehicles and the units collapse and stack to reduce return shipping costs. So I imagine that means like once you get there, you take the cars out of the container, you have all this metal scaffolding and you got to get it back because after all you don't own it, you're leasing it. So you got to keep track of it. So you probably are accumulating these things at your destination port or whatever, and then you box them all up into a single container and
Starting point is 00:09:59 send them back. But if you scroll down, the bits about kind of growth and their enterprise accounts typically carry annual contract values from half a million and more than four million. So if I sign a $4 million annual contract value, that doubles my business, or that's the whole business today? I think that this business, like, we're just seeing it, you know, snapshot in time right now. If they have 6,501 cassettes that are available for new contracts, I think we're catching it in a down cycle and they've had contracts, they've had leases expire and they have unused kind of capacity that I think if we looked back at previous years, the revenue was much higher. Which brings a question, why is this not in demand now? Is it, you know, that fewer cars are
Starting point is 00:10:48 being shipped? I doubt that. Is it, is it that there is new technology? Yeah. Yeah, is there a competing technology like this was the best way to go for a long time? And maybe now there something else. That's what I got to believe there's something like that. Why do they suddenly have some more slack capacity and why they want to sell now for only 3x EBITDA? Because this seems on the face of it like a great business. It says they got 11 patents. If they sort of own the market on this type of thing, that's amazing. The other possibilities their patents are almost done, which you would imagine, like once the patents are done, this is just welding some metal. Yeah. Yeah. So I definitely want to deal.
Starting point is 00:11:28 the patent because I don't know how much structural moat there really is in here. The other thing that is coming for this is autonomy. Because when you just tell the cars to drive themselves wherever they need to be, right? And charge themselves along the way that, now you're going to put miles on them and there's wear and tear.
Starting point is 00:11:49 So there may still be demand for shipping cars, you know, even in a world of fully autonomous vehicles. But, and even in a world of fully, autonomous trucks where you can tell all the cars just to get in that autonomous truck and then the truck to go, you still want to jam them in as tightly as possible. So I don't think it would kill that business, but I would think it would be a headwin for business. But a personal anecdote for you guys, you know how I've been Subaru for life for the past 20-something years? Yes. I put down a deposit on a Tesla. Like the full, you should try full self-driving. It's like magic. I do. I do it all the time. I love it.
Starting point is 00:12:26 So cool. Life changing because you feel like you're just getting in a cab. You know, my son and I went and test drove a car, good trust over the cars one Saturday over the summer, and the Tesla was the first thing we test drove. By the time we got to the driving the Hyundai, I was like, why am I touching the steering wheel? Like I was so angry.
Starting point is 00:12:50 I didn't realize like that would be. So anyway, we're almost there, but it's so compelling. Like I'm a superer fan. And I just can't do it anymore because their autonomy sucks. Plus the new outback is terrible. But anyway, definitely. You guys can keep your spaceship cars.
Starting point is 00:13:06 Mills is going to drive his old beater truck until it expires. And then he's going to buy a new one. I have a new one. Oh. I mean, all right. You got another 20 years. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:13:17 This smells back to this deal. Heather, this smells like a company that grew really quickly to build these units out for some contracts. And all those contracts have gone someplace. sells and they're stuck with 6,500 cassettes and like new conditions that are not deployed anywhere. Yeah. I think this is a boom and bust kind of business. But if priced correctly and you could just monetize the long tail and I mean, it's so hard
Starting point is 00:13:43 because this is like a true insider's industry, you know, there's not a thousand decision makers. It's a very small pool and you've got to be in the room. And I think it's a very hard room to get into. you know, in order to get in front of the people making these decisions. But if you're in the room and you go to the conferences and you have these people's phone numbers, I think you could diligence this very quickly and hustle your way into some growth. I mean, profits attract competition.
Starting point is 00:14:12 This business. Unless you have a patent. Yes. But even then, it's going to attract some kind of competition, even if it's a potential substitute or the threat of a substitute. There's no way you keep these margins sustainably over a long period of time. I'm dying to see like 10 years worth of financial history. And I bet, you know, there's no mention here other than the like, hey, it's way in the past, but the CAPEX for this business, you know, you're basically front loading all the fabrication costs. And they acknowledge you, you know, you're making your money back in about 24 months in most cases.
Starting point is 00:14:46 But this is a CAPEX heavy business. And all they're talking about is SDE, not SDE or EBITDA, minus, not just growth. with cap-ex, but also maintenance cap-x, because these things don't last forever. And this is very passive, as close to passive income as we see very often because of the way they chose to lease the equipment only. Why would you sell for $12 million if you're, if you really think you're going to continue to earn $3.4 million a year?
Starting point is 00:15:17 You know, and it doesn't look like a lot of work. If you're going to take that sort of bleeding edge, so to speak, of this business, the tail, it doesn't seem like you would sell for $12 million. I bet this business is on the rapid decline. I bet it's like precipitous. There's got to be somebody worked around their patent or something's going on. I don't know what it is. It's also, this is an interesting nugget here.
Starting point is 00:15:43 They say you could add sales personnel in India, Southeast Asia, and Africa to support new OEM relationships. Like this fits into a weird niche, right? If you're sending a bunch of cars, you don't send them by, container. You do it on the big roll-on, row-off kind of ships, right? Ro-Ros is what they call them. By the way, we've reached the total extent of my knowledge of car shipping. But like, then there's this other end of the spectrum where like people are buying like secondhand cars out of the U.S. and they get sent to India, Southeast Asia, Africa, and all that kind of stuff. It happens like crazy if you go across Southeast, the Southern Pacific, by the way. My wife
Starting point is 00:16:19 and I went there once and we rented a car. It was a Japanese model car. So we had the all the Japanese language in it because the Japanese don't want to drive old cars. So if it's not a new car, they like ship it. So New Zealand was just full of Japanese hammy downs. But it sounds like this business just exists in this weird niche where people are shipping random cars to like these poor countries from wealthy countries where stacking them photo container
Starting point is 00:16:41 is material to the price of that car. So it feels like it's just like a weird niche corner. And with China producing so many cars, I don't know how much that is a growing market. China's just flooding the world with cheap cars these days. So, anyway. Well, I just check Google, and there are two competitors that secure cars for shipping containers. I'm betting one of them is this listing, and the other one looks like it does something very similar.
Starting point is 00:17:07 So that could be the story there. Who is that competitor? When did they come on the scene? Are they cheaper? Whatever. So, Heather, is this one of those, the patents look good on the listing, but in practice, the judge throws them out the court? Is that what we're thinking? Yeah, I mean, patents aren't everything.
Starting point is 00:17:22 It's one design that, you know, is truly yours, but doesn't mean there's not another design. And I guess I would think patents are a little bit under pressure now with AI because you could reverse engineer much easier, faster, come up with a slightly different design. And now you've got your own patent. So I think the moat isn't as good as it used to be on things like that. Hey, everyone, it's Bill. And I want to talk to you about Quiet Light brokerage. I was so psyched when Quietlight agreed to sponsor the podcast because I am a customer. I have used Quietlight to sell three businesses.
Starting point is 00:17:57 And if I were selling an e-commerce or a SaaS business, I really would not consider anyone else. Like I said, I went back to them three times. I work with three different brokers at Quietlight. Had a great experience all three times. Even on one occasion, they found a buyer for a business that I just didn't know it was even going to be possible to sell. So they have pulled rabbits out of their hats several times for me. They've been in the e-commerce and SaaS business brokering game a very, very long time. They really know what they're doing.
Starting point is 00:18:25 They have great reach with both buyers and sellers. And the other thing I really love about Quietlight is all the brokers there are former operators. So you can't just show up and go, hey, I'm a lifetime business broker. I want to work at Quietlight. You have to be a former operator. So they all know what it's like to be in the operator chair. So if you go to Quietlight.com, they have free business valuation calls, which they'll do with you. No obligation.
Starting point is 00:18:47 just tell you what they think about your business, what they think it would be worth, and then what you might need to do to kind of get it ready for market. Those guys over there are great, great SOPs, great systems. I just felt like I was in really good hands all three times with Quietlight. So if you're interested in selling your business, especially in e-commerce or SaaS, hop on over to Quietlight.com, fill out their onboarding form for a free valuation call, and you can tell them Bill or Acquisitions Anonymous, Sentja. Why is this listed by website closers?
Starting point is 00:19:17 I have no idea. I mean, maybe they have a website, but this is... They have a website. It makes, it all makes much more sense. I love the long-term ownership and lease model. The other business that reminds me of this is electric fences, like security for business electric fences. The largest provider, I think in the country, is a company called Amarok that's headquartered here in South Carolina and Columbia. used to be called electric guard dog fence company or something like that, and they rebranded the Amarok.
Starting point is 00:19:51 But you cannot, it's very, very difficult. We had our catalytic converters stolen multiple times out of a bunch of trucks in the middle of the night. And so we went down the route of, you know, installing electric fences and they won't sell them to you. And we're like, no, what's the price to buy? And they're like, well, it'll be like $48,000 over a three-year lease. And we're like, but we want to own them. And they're like, oh, no, you don't. It's really, really complicated.
Starting point is 00:20:15 And we're like, well, we have an electrician on staff. Like, it's not that complicated. We want an electric fence. And they're like, no, we carry insurance in case somebody touches the fence and sues you. And I'm like, we can get that too. I want to own it. They want to not sell it to you. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:28 And there's not that many companies, you know, that do it if you look into it. And it's one of those things where like, I think, you know, there's maybe perceived barriers or, you know, perceived obstacles and hurdles to it. But this is one of those things that, like, I just don't know. it could be that the companies decide, you know what, we want to own this stuff. And we're tired of paying, you know, half a million dollars a year when we could make a just slightly different capital allocation decision. I mean, I want to love this business. It's, I mean, 11 active global patents. Like, it's very interesting. And it, what's weird to me, though, is I wonder if this has not been managed that well in the past because they say that like every time they sign a lease, they build new cassettes. But then they also say they're sitting on 6,500. cassettes in a warehouse somewhere. So, I mean, and I, you know, I got a hand to him. Like, I'm sure it's complicated, right? You get demand in, someone wants to lease them and all your cassettes are out, you know, you're going to build more. But then it contracts and you've got a
Starting point is 00:21:29 whole bunch of cassettes coming back. At the same time, like, maybe this is great. Maybe you're stepping into, you know, a Slack fleet. You don't have to build the cassettes like they did. You don't have all the capax. Maybe these things are fully depreciated, which, by the way, you'll get to depreciate them again because you're buying, you could probably allocate what they want for this business, $12 million. They said the slack cassettes are worth $6.4 million. So like, there's real depreciation here. And you can allocate a lot of this purchase price to the assets. So there's some tax advantages, I would think. I don't think it's probably going to help you get a loan, Heather, because these are sort of weird assets that you can't. It's rolling stock. I know you've taught me that
Starting point is 00:22:13 lenders hate rolling stock. Is this rolling stock? It doesn't have wheels. Well, I don't know. I don't know what you would call this, but it does say seller financing available and didn't say anything else other than that. So that seems like an acknowledgement that might be limited. It's not bakeable. Yeah. This business to me has all the harm marks of a seller who should have sold 10 years ago, is now 73, and has health problems and is being forced to sell and has been making so much money for the past 20 years that they've just like, they're like, yeah, cool.
Starting point is 00:22:46 Like, I've been making $5 million a year for the past couple decades. And when I should have sold a decade ago, I just phoned in rich and haven't been trying very hard. And the business has started to go massive decrease. So I think the whole bet here is if that's the scenario, which to me, this smells exactly like that scenario, is can you turn it around and get it to stop shrinking, right? Like, can you sell and get out in the market and compete? or is that door closed on this business?
Starting point is 00:23:10 Or, Michael, is it not declining? Is it just cyclical? I mean, chipping is cyclical, right? So, like, maybe it's just cyclical and they're at the bottom, and he has to sell, and you're going to walk in look like a genius. And all, because you're going to walk in all of this fully depreciated paid for CAPX, right?
Starting point is 00:23:28 And he is servicing the, you know, he put all the CAPX in, service the debt for, et cetera. If you can come in here with a good structure, then allows you to wait out the cycle. You know, and next time container shipping ramps back up, you're there, you print money, hopefully you retire most of your debt from acquiring the business. You keep your cost low, which you have, the margins in this business are phenomenal. And you just kind of wait out the next cycle and then you do it again. I think you could be creative and you could have a lot of grit and hustle and structure this correctly.
Starting point is 00:23:58 And it could be wildly successful. But there's got to be risk sharing. Yeah, how do I make a deal here? Are you getting any kind of organization, you know, like the margins are so huge. I can't imagine that there's a sales team or, you know, this might be just one guy kind of running it from his computer. And you're not getting, you have to put all that in. If you have to put all that in, then your cash flow is not going to be $3.4 million. You know, you maybe need to bring in another million dollars a year, an expense at least to really have a competitive organization that you could get back on track.
Starting point is 00:24:36 Michael, to your point earlier about this person and maybe their dynamic, it reminds me. I went on a site visit one time to visit a business owner. It was a business located in Columbia, South Carolina, but the owner lived in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. And the site visit, he wouldn't come to town where the business was. He insisted on meeting at his condo, his like penthouse condo at the beach. And he had this giant TV up on the wall of cameras of everything happening in the business. He was also in his 70s.
Starting point is 00:25:04 And at one point in the site visit, he said, I'm going to be really tough to negotiate with. And I was like, oh, okay, well, why is that? And he was like, well, I'm making $750,000 a year. And it's all relative, right? Number wise, but like, it was just funny. But in his mind, he was like, I live at the beach. I live in my penthouse. I monitor the business from my, you know, living room.
Starting point is 00:25:25 And, like, in a way, he's right. Like, that makes him hard to negotiate with because he's like, I could just keep doing what I'm doing if I need to. But everybody faces that mortality. But I mean, that's With the guy who's making money Some boomers watch Fox News 24-7 And some Some watch their business
Starting point is 00:25:42 Stock room. Yeah. Make sure everybody's at that. Well, Mills, I know you're joking around, but like what you have just described, though, I think is one of the fundamental challenges in buying small businesses because you have this sort of adverse selection problem
Starting point is 00:25:57 where you find a marginal business and the seller definitely wants to sell it. But you don't really want to buy it. But then you find a good business that you do want to buy and you end up with one of two problems. Either it's a brokered process and it's an auction and you're going to pay through the nose or you've sourced it proprietarily and you have no gun to his head to make him sell. Right? And so like, and I have been in this chair like just dragged on for quarter after quarter after quarter by a seller who engaged you and said, yeah, I want to sell.
Starting point is 00:26:29 You may have even agreed on price. and then you can get into diligence and there's just no urgency and like God help you with business doing well every quarter the guy's like well you know I think I'm going to renegotiate it can be so hard to force someone to the closing table when they own a good business
Starting point is 00:26:47 I'm dying to know more about this one and I think there is probably a lot more underneath the surface like Heather to your point is there a team or is this just like an amazing hustle and no no shade you know if that's the case for this owner, if they built an amazing business with 95% gross margins, with just heavy CAPEX cycles,
Starting point is 00:27:08 and they acknowledge some debt, but it seems like they've managed it really well for 35 years. But I think you find out a lot within five minutes of getting, you know, the NDA sign and getting the info. And I think this would be a scary buy for anyone who doesn't have some kind of inside connection to this industry. That, to me, is the other scary part.
Starting point is 00:27:33 Like one of you said, it's not going to be very many players who know this space really, really well. And it might be a little scary to come from totally from the outside to buy something like this. All right. What do you guys think? He likes it. I think there's, I think Mikey likes it. I think there's something potentially here. Only Heather will get that joke because it's, what serial was that from, Heather?
Starting point is 00:27:56 Yeah. Life cereal. It was life cereal. Bill and Mills, do you know what I'm talking about? I have seen it because a boomer made the joke and I looked it up. Ouch. Sorry. Heather, I'm in pain for both of us.
Starting point is 00:28:14 I like it. This feels like it's going to be a very binary outcome, but it feels like there is a decent chance there is a nugget of gold here that with the right structuring and the right kind of patience, you can put together a deal that you would really like. shipping autos from the United States to poor countries, which I think is the core of this business, is not going anywhere. It's going to keep happening. And I like it. I think this is one I would talk to. Definitely. And I'll echo you, Michael. I'm in on this one with you. I mean, there's like some obvious
Starting point is 00:28:44 bombs that you have to diligence away, like the expiration of the patent or, you know, maybe all of their contracts are rolling off or maybe someone else has a better mouse trap. But like, if you can diligence away the bombs, like I really want to know, like, truly why is this guy selling? And obviously the best and most morbid reason is he has a health problem or he's getting older or something like that where he just can't go on. And those make the best opportunities, you know, a good business that they just can't go on with. So, you know, if you find that there, I'm fascinated by this business. I would sign the NDA. I'm going to sign the NDA when we get off.
Starting point is 00:29:24 Because, you know, like we do this, not in every case, but probably one out of, of every 20 or 25, you know, it's funny the number of people who listen who are like, have you all bought anything? And I'm like, no, but also, you know, we're probably at the right ratio of like one out of every 500. We should close on something here before too long. We should be getting there. We should find a good one here soon. There's a nugget out there for us. I just know it. But, you know, like, we did that episode that was the cemetery that like was like a bond in perpetuity in Kentucky or West Virginia or something like that. And like it was exactly what we thought it was going to be like. We got a
Starting point is 00:30:02 scan of a legal pad with handwritten notes. Like we signed the NDA on this and there's going to be some hilarious story that comes out of it. And I'm willing to volunteer for a site visit to Tampa to meet this. Oh, that's because it's in Tampa. That's why it's like a suburb of South Carolina. I'll come. Let's go, Mills. Let's do it. Road trip. Love it. Michael can send his jet. He won't come. Just send the jet. Send the jet. Heather, what, did you express your opinion? I would sign the NDA.
Starting point is 00:30:39 I'm very curious. I think it would be fascinating to just get behind all of this and understand sort of what is the story and what is the value here. But I would definitely sign the NDA. It's very intriguing. Heather, financing-wise, like what's your perspective on it? Boy, I just wouldn't know until I saw the multi-year
Starting point is 00:30:57 financials and what kind of forward visibility we have on revenue. It seems like it's probably not bankable. Again, I go by the hint that they say seller financing. So it probably is going to be a tough one to finance, even if you try to go by the value of the cassettes, because what are they worth upon liquidation? I know a lot of people get excited when they see asset value, but especially something unique like this. A bank doesn't want to take that on as their collateral. If this company doesn't have them in use, how is a bank going to liquidate it? So I think it's a tough, it's a tough one for a bank, probably. I'm very curious what this company's balance sheet has looked like over time. Is it one of those old school businesses that just has a
Starting point is 00:31:46 ton of cash in AR? And like, they acknowledge some debt and that these are paid off, which kind of hints that maybe that's not the case. But like these are the types of businesses that have been like completely underutilized from a capital efficiency standpoint. And like survivorship bias, like they're doing great. So like not to knock them that hard. But a lot of these businesses could really benefit from like shrewd use of, you know, the right capital vehicle. And they just are like, we pay cash for everything. I like it. Let us know what you find out, Mills. Yep. I'm doing it right now. Invite me to cancel. All right. Let's wrap this up before Mills gets too excited. So if you guys like this one and you can see kind of the fun deals that we do in Acquisitions Anonymous. We have done 500, geez, 500 other episodes
Starting point is 00:32:32 by this point. And you can find them all on our website at ACQUanon.com. And you can also get an email list. So if you don't have time to listen to two episodes a week, which is what we publish here on YouTube or podcast apps, you can also just get the summaries email to you and dip in when you read something that you want to hear more about. So hop on our website. You can also find all of us on X or you can find the pod at ACQ, you and on on X. Come tweet us. We're pretty active over there as well. So with that, we'll see you on the next episode of Acquisitions Anonymous.

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