Most U.S. plants are small. Census CBP 2023 still showed 284,452 manufacturing establishments, 68.4% with fewer than twenty people (Source: Census CBP). A ten-person CNC cell is normal. It is not a tombstone.
What do buyers actually underwrite on a shop floor?
They underwrite the quote desk, the certificates, the top accounts, and whether the iron is yours. Customer-owned fixtures do not travel as if they were seller assets. Leased VMCs do not either. Analyzing the machine list is the buyer extract. Orderly liquidation value is the vocabulary.
Main Street manufacturing in the 2021–2025 BizBuySell sold set still cleared at 2.75x median SDE (Source: BizBuySell). A job shop with the owner on the first-piece inspection often lives in that room. A product company with a manager and a catalog may not.
BLS OEWS May 2025 median annual pay was $58,750 for machinists and $53,750 for welders (Source: BLS OEWS). Use those figures when you staff a replacement memo. Do not multiply them by a headcount and call the product enterprise value.
| Shop fact | How a buyer prices it | How a seller misprices it |
|---|---|---|
| Owner is the programmer | Discount for key-person risk | “I will stay six weeks” as if that erased it |
| One OEM is 32% of sales | Lower turn, earn-out, or walk | “They have been loyal since 2004” |
| Customer-owned dies | Not in the asset stack | Adding them to a wish-list total |
| 2008 VMC, no probe | OLV may already beat earnings | Asking a growth multiple on tired iron |
| AS9100 or ITAR cell | Process premium if transferable | Assuming the cert walks without work |
When does the iron floor beat the earnings story?
When the serialized list, appraised on an orderly-liquidation premise, plus clean net working capital, exceeds the size-band earnings value. Then you are in an asset-aware deal. The OLV / FMV estimator teaches the premises. It does not invent a 2014 Haas number.
SBA 7(a) still lives inside a $5 million standard maximum and a 10% injection (Source: SBA). A shop priced as if it were a search-fund median will not package.
Why the CNC hub exists instead of a generic “plants are plants” page
CNC machine shops own the process language: first-article, CMM, lights-out, medical or aero certs, Swiss versus VMC mix. Valuation still wants the size band first. The FAQ index only routes the search query.
A plating neighbor is not your comp. A proprietary-product neighbor is not your comp. Job shop versus product company is a different FAQ for a reason.
Utilization at the Federal Reserve’s 76.0% manufacturing print and an ISM PMI of 54.6 describe the climate around the file. They do not price your fourth-axis tombstone.
How do certificates and lights-out stories change the shop number?
A transferable AS9100 or ISO packet can support a better room than a shop that let the cert lapse in the year it decided to sell. Buyers pay for a process they can run on Monday. They do not pay for a binder that expired in March. Put expiration dates in the first room. Put the registrar’s name. Put the last nonconformance that actually mattered.
Lights-out is a utilization story, not a multiple by itself. If the fourth-axis cell runs unattended because the work is proven, say so with hours and scrap. If “lights-out” means the owner hopes to buy a robot after close, that is a capex request. Do not hide it inside a growth turn.
Swiss versus VMC mix changes the buyer set. A medical Swiss house and a jobbing VMC house are not comps. The CNC hub exists so those process words stay attached to the file. Do not let a generalist flatten them into “machining.”
Customer-owned tooling sitting on your floor is a diligence landmine. Mark it. Photograph the tags. Do not let an appraiser add a customer’s die to your OLV. The floor test only works if the list is honest.
A second-shift that exists only on the org chart will die in quality of earnings. Headcount you cannot staff at BLS-shaped wages is not capacity. It is a hiring problem the buyer will price.
What should a shop owner put in the first data room?
Three years of tax returns and interim financials. Trailing-36 sales by customer. A machine list with serials, year, control, hours if you have them, and liens. A list of customer-owned tools. Certificate numbers and expiration dates. Whether the real estate sells.
A shop is a process plus a list plus a book. Price all three. A pretty spindle count without a recast is a rumor. A pretty recast without an honest list is a rumor that will meet an appraiser. The CNC owner page keeps those three piles from collapsing into one adjective.
Jason Taken is a business broker. He will not appraise a pallet pool. He will tell you when the floor is doing more work than the P&L. Educational information only. After the CNC owner page, the path is a confidential intro call.