21 Sep Acquiring Minds: Buying a $12.5M Contractor to Create 1,000 Jobs
Today’s guest could have built his career anywhere. After leaving Puerto Rico for 12 years to study engineering at Carnegie Mellon and law at Penn, Manolo Diaz Corrada came home to buy Bonneville Group, a telecom, electrical, and IT contractor doing $12.5m in revenue and on track for $14m this year. But Bonneville’s revenue history would give any buyer pause. After doing around $12m in the 2010s, it collapsed to $2m in 2021 when Puerto Rico halted construction during Covid. Manolo had to convince lenders to look past that volatility. Traditional search funds wouldn’t back a Puerto Rico-only search, and 20-some banks passed before he secured an SBA approval from a Tennessee bank and used it to win a conventional loan from a Puerto Rican bank. Manolo’s ambition isn’t measured in dollars. It’s 1,000 jobs in Puerto Rico over the next 45 years. Here he is, Manolo Diaz Corrada, owner of Bonneville Group.
