Myrtle Beach ATM Portfolio, 250-Terminal South Carolina Route

$814K

SDE

3.5x

Multiple

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Full Editorial Writeup

This is a 250-terminal ATM portfolio spread across South Carolina, with concentration in Myrtle Beach plus placements in Charleston, Columbia, and surrounding markets. The core asset is a fleet of cash machines installed at active merchant locations, generating surcharge revenue every time a customer withdraws cash. The listing reports $814,285 in annual cash flow at a $2,850,000 asking price, a 3.5x multiple.

What makes this notable is the operating structure. The machines are third-party loaded and professionally managed, so the buyer inherits an existing infrastructure for cash replenishment, machine servicing, and field support rather than personally driving a route with a duffel bag of twenties. Only two full-time employees run the operation, and the seller positions it as fully passive. The value sits in the installed terminal base, the merchant relationships, the operating history, and the transferable loader and vendor infrastructure.

The portfolio is diversified across roughly 250 placements, so no single machine or location carries the business. This is a scale-and-continuity play best suited to an existing ATM operator seeking bolt-on volume or an investor who wants cash flow from an established route rather than the grind of building one placement at a time. The seller is retiring, and the exit is framed as personal timing rather than any deterioration in performance.

Why we like it

Earnings quality is straightforward and hard to fake: surcharge income posts every time a customer pulls cash, and $814K in cash flow spread across 250 terminals means no single point of failure. This is transaction-based recurring revenue, not project work or one-off sales, which is exactly the profile you want for a debt-serviceable acquisition.
The moat is placement and switching friction. Merchant relationships and physical terminal installs are sticky because a store owner rarely rips out a working machine to swap operators, and building a comparable route from scratch takes years of door-knocking. The buyer is acquiring density and relationships that cannot be quickly replicated.
Cash access is durable through downturns. When the economy tightens, cash usage does not evaporate, and tourism-heavy coastal markets like Myrtle Beach keep pulling foot traffic through retail and hospitality venues. This is closer to a utility than a discretionary consumer product.
The operator advantage here is that the hard part is already done. Third-party loading and servicing infrastructure transfers at close, only two employees are needed, and the seller stays through a 90-day handoff. An existing ATM operator could fold this into their route and strip duplicate loader and processing costs immediately.

How to improve it

Run a full surcharge audit across all 250 terminals in the first 90 days. Coastal tourist locations can typically support higher withdrawal fees than the current settings assume, and even a $0.50 bump per transaction on high-traffic machines drops almost entirely to the bottom line.
Pull per-machine transaction volume and rank every terminal. Underperforming units in low-traffic placements should be relocated to higher-footfall merchants or retired, while the top decile of machines deserves reliability investment to maximize uptime and revenue capture.
Renegotiate the third-party loader and vendor contracts now that you control scale. The seller likely accepted legacy pricing, and 250 terminals gives you leverage to compress per-machine service and cash-in-transit costs, which flows straight to margin.
Add placements around the existing footprint using the loader infrastructure that already covers these routes. Incremental machines in Myrtle Beach, Charleston, and Columbia carry near-zero marginal servicing cost because the trucks are already driving those corridors.
Review merchant revenue-share splits and rent structures at each location. Some placements may be overpaying the host merchant relative to volume, and repricing or renewing those agreements protects the surcharge economics as terms come up.
Build a real-time monitoring dashboard for machine uptime and cash-out events. Downtime is lost revenue in this business, and faster fault detection plus proactive replenishment on your busiest units directly lifts transaction counts.

Diligence notes

Verify the $814,285 cash flow with 24 to 36 months of processor settlement statements, not seller summaries. Surcharge revenue is fully traceable through the processor, so demand raw transaction and settlement data per machine to confirm the number and check for any recent volume decline.
Scrutinize the merchant placement agreements: term length, exclusivity, revenue splits, and cancellation rights. If a large share of cash flow sits with a handful of hosts on short-term or terminable contracts, that concentration and churn risk changes the multiple you should pay.
Confirm the third-party loader and vendor relationships actually transfer at close and on what terms. The entire passive thesis depends on that infrastructure continuing, so get the loader contracts, pricing, and any change-of-control clauses in writing before you commit.
Assess the age and condition of the terminal fleet and any looming EMV or compliance upgrade requirements. A wave of mandated hardware replacements across 250 machines could be a six-figure capex surprise that the current cash flow does not reflect.
Check terminal count and revenue distribution for hidden concentration. The listing says no single machine is the whole business, but verify the Pareto curve, because if 20 percent of terminals drive 60 percent of cash flow, the real risk profile is narrower than 250 units implies.
Understand the cash float and working capital requirements. Even with third-party loading, someone funds the vault cash in the machines, so confirm who owns the float, how much capital is tied up, and whether that obligation transfers to you at close.

Source

Originally listed on BizBuySell. View original listing →