Nobody dreams of owning a porta-potty company.

That is precisely why it traded at 2.96x.

Consider the actual asset. A standard portable restroom costs about $1,150 new. It rents for $135 per month on a construction site. It pays for itself in 8.5 months and then produces revenue for 8 to 10 more years with a weekly pressure-wash as its only maintenance.

We recently connected a buyer with a portable sanitation company running 1,180 standard units, an events division, and a growing handwash station line. Eight buyers passed. Two of them told the broker, verbatim, that they "couldn't see themselves in this industry."

Their self-image cost them a business with a 2.21x DSCR and a 6.5-month payback on invested cash.

Business: Portable restroom and sanitation rental company

Sale Price: $2.9M (including full unit fleet and 6 service trucks)

Annual Revenue: $2.4M

EBITDA: $980,000 (40.8%)

Multiple: 2.96x EBITDA

Fleet: 1,180 standard units deployed, plus restroom trailers and handwash stations

Customer mix: 71% construction (multi-month rentals), 29% events and municipal

Employees: 12

Why eight buyers passed:

Revenue breakdown:

Standard unit rentals (1,180 units × $135/month × 12): $1,911,600

Event rentals and restroom trailers: $322,000

Handwash stations and holding tanks: $166,400

Total: $2,400,000 ✓

Per-unit economics:

Unit cost new: $1,150

Monthly rental: $135

Monthly service cost (weekly cleaning route, allocated): $38

Monthly gross margin per unit: $97 (72%) ✓ (($135 − $38) ÷ $135 = 71.9%)

Payback on a new unit: $1,150 ÷ $135 = 8.5 months ✓

Useful life: 8 to 10 years

Every incremental unit is a machine that returns its cost inside a year and then prints for a decade. Growth capex in this business is not a burden. It is the single highest-ROI use of cash available to the owner.

The cyclicality objection, tested against the actual book:

41% of construction units sat on infrastructure and data center projects with 12 to 30 month timelines, funded and permitted. The municipal and events book (29% of revenue) is counter-cyclical ballast. During diligence, the company's worst revenue year in the past decade was down 6% from its best.

Purchase Price: $2,900,000

Cash at close (10%): $290,000

Seller note (10%): $290,000 at 6.0%, 5 years

SBA 7(a) loan: $2,320,000 at 10.5%, 10 years

Debt service:

SBA monthly: $31,305

Seller note monthly: $5,607

Total monthly: $36,911

Annual debt service: $442,937 ✓

Cash flow after debt:

EBITDA: $980,000

Debt service: ($442,937)

Net cash flow: $537,063 ✓

DSCR: $980,000 ÷ $442,937 = 2.21x ✓

Cash-on-cash: $537,063 ÷ $290,000 = 185.2% ✓

Payback: 6.5 months ✓

Months 1 to 6: Chase the data centers

Two hyperscale data center campuses broke ground within 60 miles. The buyer put a dedicated account manager on general contractors and won site sanitation packages totaling 340 units on multi-year deployments.

Months 4 to 18: Reinvest cash flow into fleet

Deployed $410,000 of operating cash into roughly 350 new units and 2 luxury restroom trailers. At $97/month gross margin per standard unit, the new standard fleet alone contributes over $395,000 of annualized gross margin once deployed.

Months 8 to 24: Take price on events

Wedding and festival trailers were underpriced 20% against the market. Repricing plus weekend minimums lifted the events line from $322,000 to $610,000.

Where it stands at month 24:

Revenue: $4.2M

EBITDA: $1,790,000 (42.6%)

Value at 3.8x: $6,802,000 ✓ ($1,790,000 × 3.8)

And the consolidator objection resolved the way it usually does: United Site Services' regional office has already made an unsolicited inquiry.

Eight buyers couldn't get past the product. One buyer looked at a rental fleet with 8.5-month unit paybacks, 72% unit margins, and contracted multi-year deployments, and recognized the best reinvestment economics he'd ever seen at this price.

At The Continental, we source the businesses your ego filters out before your calculator gets a chance.

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