285-Unit ATM Portfolio, 15-Year Northeast Florida Route

$680K

SDE

3.7x

Multiple

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Full Editorial Writeup

This is a Northeast Florida ATM route of roughly 285 terminals placed across active merchant locations, throwing off about $680,000 in annual cash flow. The economics are simple: merchants let the operator place a machine, the machine charges a surcharge on every withdrawal, and third-party vendors handle the cash replenishment and physical servicing. The owner's job is portfolio management, processor oversight, and vendor coordination, which the listing says can be run entirely remotely.

The density is the story here. A large concentration of the terminals sits in and around the Jacksonville metro, with placements in Jacksonville Beach, Orange Park, Atlantic Beach, Ponte Vedra Beach, Saint Johns, and the Yulee/Fernandina Beach area. Geographic clustering makes vendor routing cheaper, oversight easier, and future infill placements more efficient than a route scattered across disconnected markets. The seller claims roughly 15 years of location presence, meaning many of these placements are seasoned rather than freshly signed.

What a buyer is really acquiring is an installed network with historical cash flow, transferable vendor arrangements, and existing processor relationships, not a startup that has to knock on doors to place machines one at a time. At $2,485,545 against $680,000 of cash flow, this is a 3.66x multiple on a fully vendor-loaded, remotely managed cash stream. The seller is retiring and offers 90 days of transition support, with no owner financing on the table.

Why we like it

Earnings quality is genuinely passive if the vendor arrangements hold. Cash loading, maintenance, and field servicing are outsourced, so the $680K is closer to true owner-benefit cash flow than a business where the owner is also the operator. That makes this one of the rare SMB deals where absentee ownership is the actual model, not a marketing claim.
The moat is diversification and inertia. With roughly 285 terminals across a broad merchant base, no single machine or location sinks the number, and 15 years of placement history plus reliable uptime makes merchants unlikely to swap operators. Displacement is a slow, one-location-at-a-time grind, which protects the installed base.
This is recession-resistant by nature. ATM surcharge revenue tracks foot traffic and cash usage at convenience stores, bars, and retail, which do not vanish in a downturn and often benefit as consumers lean on cash. Regulatory enforcement against noncompliant cashless ATM models is a tailwind for compliant traditional operators like this one.
Geographic density is a real operator advantage. Concentration in the Jacksonville metro lets a buyer add terminals inside the existing footprint, renegotiate loader and service costs at scale, and tune surcharge pricing without building new vendor infrastructure. The bones for incremental expansion are already in place.
The multiple is reasonable for a truly hands-off cash flow stream. At 3.66x on outsourced-service cash flow, you are paying a services-business price for something closer to a managed portfolio. If the transaction-count and surcharge data hold up, the risk-adjusted yield is attractive versus operator-intensive SMBs at similar multiples.

How to improve it

Audit surcharge pricing terminal by terminal in the first 90 days. Higher-volume locations can often absorb a 25 to 50 cent surcharge bump with minimal transaction attrition, and even modest increases flow almost entirely to the bottom line given fixed servicing costs.
Renegotiate the third-party loader and maintenance contracts once you understand the true cost per terminal. Vendor spend is the single largest controllable expense on an outsourced route, and consolidating volume or re-bidding the service agreements can meaningfully lift net cash flow.
Identify and cull the bottom decile of terminals by transaction count. Low-volume machines still incur loading and service costs; either relocate them to higher-traffic merchants or retire them so servicing dollars concentrate on productive placements.
Use the existing vendor and processor infrastructure to add placements inside the current footprint. Because loading routes and merchant relationships already exist, each new terminal in the Jacksonville metro carries low marginal setup cost and adds incremental cash flow.
Upgrade aging or non-EMV-compliant hardware proactively. Modern terminals reduce downtime, cut service calls, and keep you compliant, and reliable uptime is exactly what keeps merchants from switching operators.
Build a simple portfolio dashboard tracking transactions, surcharge revenue, uptime, and cost per terminal at the machine level. This turns a black-box route into a managed asset and surfaces underperformers and vendor overcharges quickly.
Pursue tuck-in acquisitions of smaller local routes now that you have a management system and vendor base. The ATM industry is fragmented with retiring operators, and bolting on nearby routes spreads fixed oversight costs and compounds cash flow.

Diligence notes

Verify the $680K cash flow with 24 to 36 months of processor settlement statements, not seller estimates. Pull transaction counts and surcharge revenue by terminal so you can see concentration, trend, and any recent decline hidden inside a portfolio average.
Scrutinize the merchant placement agreements. Confirm how many are under written contract versus handshake, what the terms and expirations are, whether they are assignable, and how revenue shares or rent-to-merchant arrangements affect net margin.
Confirm the third-party vendor arrangements truly transfer at closing and at what cost. The entire absentee thesis depends on the loader, maintenance, and cash-replenishment relationships surviving the sale, so review those contracts, pricing, and any change-of-control clauses.
Assess the machine fleet condition and EMV/compliance status. Determine the age of the terminals, upcoming replacement capex, and any exposure to cashless-ATM enforcement, since deferred hardware spend can quietly erode the cash flow you are underwriting.
Check the cash logistics and float requirements. ATM routes require significant working capital to keep machines loaded, so quantify the cash float, insurance and armored-carrier costs, and any exposure to cash-in-transit theft or shrinkage.
Validate the roughly 15-year operating history and reason for sale. The seller cites retirement, which fits, but confirm there is no clustered lease loss, merchant churn, or vendor price increase looming that would undercut the historical numbers post-close.

Source

Originally listed on BizBuySell. View original listing →