Business brokers in Melbourne and Brevard County
Brevard County has an economic base unlike anywhere else in Florida. Most of this state runs on tourism, construction, and retirees. Melbourne runs on aerospace and defence—and that changes what your business is worth, who is allowed to buy it, and how the sale has to be structured.
The Space Coast economy
An economy built on primes and the companies that supply them
L3Harris Technologies is headquartered in Melbourne and is among the largest private employers on the Space Coast. Northrop Grumman operates a 109-acre campus adjacent to Orlando Melbourne International Airport, and its Project Magellan brought roughly 1,000 jobs and a $61 million capital investment to the area. Embraer builds executive jets in Melbourne and runs its primary US engineering centre there, supporting the Phenom and Praetor lines alongside the C-390 and A-29 defence programmes. Collins Aerospace has engineering and manufacturing operations in the county. Blue Origin employs close to 4,000 people across eleven Brevard and Orange County sites and works with around 500 local suppliers.
Healthcare is the county’s other large employment base. Health First is Brevard’s largest hospital group, operating four hospitals including Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne—the county’s largest at over 500 beds and home to its only Level II trauma centre. Orlando Health also operates a Melbourne hospital on North Wickham Road. Between them they support the same second-order businesses as any major health system: medical office buildout, equipment service, staffing, and facilities trades.
That supplier number is the one that matters most to a business owner. The primes are not acquisition targets. The supply chain around them is: precision machining, sheet metal and fabrication, cable and harness assembly, electronics, testing and calibration, tooling, industrial services, specialty logistics, and the commercial trades that keep those facilities running.
What we sell here
What we most often sell in Melbourne
Ordered by what the local economy actually supports.
- Precision and contract manufacturing—the core category in Brevard County
- Industrial distribution and supply—serving aerospace, defence, and facilities
- Electrical and specialty contracting—including commercial and industrial work on campus facilities
- Transportation and specialty logistics
- Commercial services—facilities, maintenance, and building trades supporting a large industrial employer base
Note what is not at the top of that list. Melbourne is not a market where residential home services dominate the transaction flow, and a page that led with HVAC would be describing somewhere else.
Local transaction data
What Brevard County businesses have sold for
We looked at over 200 closed business sales recorded in Brevard County over the past decade. Brevard’s business-sale market skews smaller than Southwest Florida’s, with about 59% of recorded sales under $500,000 in annual revenue.
| Annual revenue | Median multiple |
|---|---|
| Under $500,000 | 1.65× SDE |
| $500,000 – $1M | 2.00× SDE |
| $1M – $2M | 2.16× SDE |
| $2M – $5M | 2.34× SDE |
Among businesses earning $300,000 or more in owner earnings, the county median was 2.30×, across over 25 recorded sales.
The manufacturing sales in that set included machine shop and aircraft products businesses—the supply-chain profile described above, changing hands locally.
Deal size has been rising. Median revenue among recorded sales moved from about $395,000 across the full period to roughly $520,000 in the past five years, which matches what we see in Southwest Florida.
One thing local sale records will never show you: larger Brevard businesses, and certified aerospace suppliers in particular, tend to sell to strategic acquirers in private processes that never appear in a listing service at all. If your business fits that description, no local average describes what a buyer would pay for it.
Deal mechanics
What buyers examine in a defence-adjacent business
This is where a Brevard County sale differs most from the rest of Florida, and where most of the value is won or lost.
Customer concentration is the first question
A machine shop with a large share of revenue from a single prime is a different asset from one with five diversified customers, even at identical earnings. Concentration is not automatically fatal—programme-level contracts with long remaining life are underwritten quite differently from purchase-order work—but it will be modelled hard, and it usually shapes the structure of the deal more than the headline price.
Certifications are transferable value
AS9100, ITAR registration, NADCAP where applicable, and specific prime approvals are assets a buyer is genuinely paying for, because rebuilding them takes years. They need to be documented, current, and clearly transferable under the deal structure you choose—an asset sale and a stock sale do not treat them identically.
The buyer pool is narrower than usual
Where work touches export-controlled technical data or requires cleared personnel, foreign ownership is effectively off the table and some domestic financial buyers will screen out too. A smaller pool is not the same as a weaker price—strategic acquirers in this space pay well for qualified capacity—but the process has to be run toward the right buyers rather than broadly.
Programme risk cuts both ways
Long-cycle contracts give unusually good forward visibility, which supports value. They also concentrate risk in programme continuation decisions that neither you nor the buyer controls.
And the buyers themselves skew a particular way. Mostly strategic consolidators—aerospace and defence manufacturing groups buying qualified capacity, certifications, and skilled staff, in a segment that has seen steady consolidation. Behind them, private-equity-backed precision manufacturing platforms, which behave similarly but push harder on management depth. Notably less common here than in Miami or Orlando: international buyers, for the export-control reasons above.
How we work
How we work with Melbourne owners
We are based in Southwest Florida, on the opposite coast. We are not going to present ourselves as a Brevard County firm.
For a Melbourne engagement the process runs primarily remotely—document collection, financial normalisation, buyer screening, and negotiation are handled that way as standard at this deal size, by every advisor working in this market. We travel to Brevard County for the parts that genuinely require being there: the initial site visit, and management meetings with serious buyers.
If you want an advisor who will drop by monthly, we are the wrong firm. If you want one who understands what an AS9100 certification is worth in a negotiation and how to handle a customer-concentration objection, distance is not the relevant variable.
FAQ
Questions Melbourne owners ask
Does customer concentration make my business unsellable?
No, but it changes the deal. Expect it to affect structure—a larger earnout or escrow component—more than the headline multiple. Buyers underwrite contracted, programme-level revenue very differently from repeat purchase-order work, so how the relationship is documented matters as much as the percentage.
Can a foreign buyer acquire my business?
Where your work involves export-controlled data or cleared personnel, generally no. That is worth establishing early, because it defines the buyer list before outreach starts.
Are my certifications part of what I am selling?
Yes, and they are often a meaningful part of the value. How cleanly they transfer depends on deal structure, which is one reason the asset-versus-stock question deserves attention early rather than at the letter-of-intent stage.
Do you know this market, given you are based in Southwest Florida?
Fair question. What we bring is transaction expertise in industrial and manufacturing businesses and a buyer network that is national rather than local—which for a certified aerospace supplier is more relevant than proximity, because the likely acquirer is not in Brevard County either.
Start here
Thinking about selling your Brevard County business?
Start with a confidential conversation and an honest read on your value, your likely buyers, and your timeline.