Jacksonville ATM Portfolio, 286-Unit Third-Party-Loaded Route in Florida

$685K

SDE

3.6x

Multiple

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Full Editorial Writeup

This is a 286-terminal ATM route concentrated in the Jacksonville, Florida metro, generating $685,439 in annual cash flow and offered at roughly $2.5M, a 3.65x multiple. The defining feature is the operating structure: cash replenishment, machine servicing, and field support are all handled by third-party vendors under transferable contracts. A buyer is not personally loading machines or building a service network, they are stepping into an already-managed, largely hands-off income stream with two full-time staff and no physical facility, warehouse, or vehicle to carry.

The portfolio has roughly 15 years of established location presence spread across Jacksonville proper plus surrounding submarkets including Jacksonville Beach, Orange Park, Atlantic Beach, Ponte Vedra Beach, Saint Johns, and the Yulee/Fernandina Beach area. Revenue comes from surcharge fees at active merchant locations, diversified across 286 sites so no single machine or placement carries the business. Geographic concentration makes oversight, vendor coordination, and future placements more practical than a route scattered across unrelated regions.

The seller is retiring and the sale is driven by personal timing rather than declining performance. The ATM market is fragmented with no dominant operator, and location-level displacement is uncommon when service stays consistent. Regulatory enforcement against cashless ATM operations is a current tailwind for compliant traditional retail ATM operators, which supports the near-term durability of the placed base.

Why we like it

Earnings quality is clean and largely passive: $685K of documented cash flow from 286 diversified terminals with only two employees and no facility overhead. Surcharge income is small-ticket and recurring across a broad base, so no single merchant or machine represents concentration risk that could crater the number overnight.
The moat is placement and continuity, not technology. Fifteen years of established merchant relationships across 286 sites, combined with transferable third-party loader and vendor contracts, means a buyer inherits the hard-to-replicate part: the physical footprint and the operating infrastructure that keeps machines fed and serviced.
Market tailwinds favor compliant retail ATM operators right now. Regulatory enforcement against cashless ATM operations is pushing volume back toward traditional surcharge terminals, and a fragmented market with no dominant player means displacement at the location level is rare when service stays consistent.
The operator advantage is real for a strategic buyer. An existing ATM operator can bolt this route onto current loader and processor relationships, strip duplicate overhead, and immediately gain scale in a defined metro rather than building placements one merchant at a time.

How to improve it

Run a full surcharge audit across all 286 terminals in the first 90 days. High-traffic locations are often underpriced on surcharge fee, and even a $0.25 to $0.50 lift on top-decile machines flows almost entirely to the bottom line given fixed loader costs.
Rank every terminal by net contribution and cull or relocate the bottom performers. Machines that barely cover their loader and service cost drag margin, and redeploying those units to higher-traffic sites within the existing footprint improves route-level efficiency without new capital.
Renegotiate the third-party loader and vendor contracts at scale. With 286 terminals under one buyer, there is leverage to compress per-machine loading and service fees, and shaving even a modest percentage off vendor cost directly expands cash flow.
Densify the existing footprint with targeted new placements. The metro concentration and in-place loader infrastructure make incremental placements near current sites cheap to service, so a disciplined sales push for new merchant locations compounds cash flow on existing overhead.
Upgrade or replace aging terminals selectively to reduce downtime and support EMV and contactless. Machine outages are lost surcharge revenue, and modern units cut service calls while enabling higher-availability locations that merchants prefer to keep.
Build a simple performance dashboard tracking uptime, transactions, and surcharge revenue per machine. Route economics are entirely a numbers game, and tight monthly visibility lets an operator catch declining locations early and reallocate before revenue leaks.

Diligence notes

Verify the $685,439 cash flow with processor settlement statements and bank deposits over at least 24 months. ATM income should be fully traceable through the processor, so demand raw transaction and surcharge reports per terminal rather than a summary spreadsheet, and confirm the definition of cash flow is net of all loader, vendor, and processing fees.
Scrutinize the merchant location agreements and their transferability. Confirm how many placements are under written contracts versus handshake arrangements, what surcharge splits or rent the merchants receive, and whether any large locations can terminate or move to a competitor at will.
Confirm the third-party loader and vendor contracts actually transfer at close and lock the pricing. The entire passive-ownership thesis depends on this infrastructure staying in place, so review the contracts for change-of-control clauses, term length, and any pricing resets that would hit margin post-close.
Analyze transaction trends per terminal to detect declining machines. Cash usage is in secular decline in many segments, so pull multi-year volume by location to separate the regulatory tailwind from underlying erosion, and identify whether the top locations are stable or fading.
Assess compliance and regulatory exposure directly. Confirm all terminals are EMV compliant, ADA compliant, and properly registered, and understand the seller's claim about cashless enforcement to gauge how much of the recent performance depends on a tailwind that could shift.

Source

Originally listed on BizBuySell. View original listing →