Where low voltage and AV contractors lose money
6 things cost low voltage and AV contractors money without ever showing up as a line item, and each one traces to a step you can install. Low voltage and AV contractors average 24% gross margin, 16% overhead and 8% net profit at $1M–$5M of revenue. The CFOS target at that size is 25% gross margin, 15% overhead and 10% net, and the gap of 2 points on the bottom line is where those mechanisms live. Figures for all 7 revenue bands are in the table below.
Low voltage and AV sits 2nd of 6 in electrical and technology on net profit, and it carries heavier overhead than the 48-trade average. Here is every figure, across all 7 revenue bands.
Low voltage and AV by revenue band
| Metric | $1M–$5M | $5M–$10M | $10M–$25M | $25M–$50M | $50M–$100M | $100M–$500M | $500M+ | CFOS target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead | 16% | 15% | 14% | 13% | 12% | 11% | 10% | 15% |
| Gross margin | 24% | 25% | 26% | 27% | 29% | 30% | 32% | 25% |
| Net profit | 8% | 10% | 12% | 14% | 17% | 19% | 22% | 10% |
SPM The Construction CFO. SPM Trade Benchmark Reference: Low voltage and AV. 2026. Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC. https://runoncfos.com/trades/low-voltage. CC BY 4.0.
Figures on this page were last revised 2026-08-21. Published under CC BY 4.0, which permits reuse of any figure here, including commercially, as long as the credit above travels with it. The same figures in machine-readable form: /benchmarks.json.
Trade level gross margin and overhead compiled by SPM The Construction CFO, validated against published CFMA and JMCO benchmarks. The CFOS targets beside them are from the book CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System, published with the full reference at runoncfos.com.
- 2024 Construction Financial Benchmarker, Executive Summary, Construction Financial Management Association, 2024.
- 2025 Performance Benchmarks, Construction Companies, Jones Maresca and Company, 2025.
- SPM Trade Benchmark Reference, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, 2026.
Sourcing and method: the methodology page.
Which bands are measured. The 4 bands above $10M–$25M carry the survey curve further out and have not been reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker. How every figure was built is set out on the methodology page.
6 problems specific to low voltage and AV
The hardware is half the contract and it buys on a net-30 line from ADI or Almo, while the GC pays 90 days later. You loaded, terminated, burned in, and tested the rack in your shop because that's the cheapest place to do it. Copper moves and comes back. Your commissioning crew is mobilized, on site, and idle, waiting on a help desk ticket.
Each one below points at the item, the unit, the clock, or the party that makes it a low voltage and AV problem, and it says which step fixes it.
| Mechanism | Why it's specific to this trade | Step |
|---|---|---|
| Your Distributor Credit Line Sets Your Revenue Ceiling | A framer buys dimensional lumber that three suppliers can fill, at maybe a fifth of contract value. Half or more of your contract is manufacturer hardware, single sourced through ADI, Almo, Exertis, Snap One, or Herman, and the credit line at that distributor is a hard number that doesn't flex with signed backlog. So the ceiling on your revenue gets set inside a credit department you've never visited. | Job cost structure |
| Shop-Built Racks Sit as WIP With No Billing Against Them | Most trades install their material in the building, so material on site and material billable end up meaning close to the same thing. AV integration pulls a large share of the labor and nearly all of the hardware value into a shop build, because racking and burning in a system inside a finished conference room costs about triple. The practice that protects your labor margin is the same practice that strands your cash. | Project management |
| You Bid a Model Number, Then It Goes End-of-Life | Trades with commodity exposure can point at a published index and write escalation language a GC will accept. Your exposure is a discontinued SKU, which no index tracks and no GC treats as a market condition. Division 27 and 28 scopes rarely carry escalation at all, because the GC reads your bill of materials as a purchase order and treats it as a fixed price buy. | Estimating system |
| Commissioning Waits on the Owner's IT Department | Other trades get gated by predecessors who sit on the same schedule and answer to the same superintendent. Your predecessor is a corporate IT department with its own change control window, its own security review, and zero contractual duty to the construction schedule. The GC has no leverage there, so the schedule pressure rolls downhill onto you. | Project management |
| Your Own Closeout Releases Your Month-Three Retention | Trades that finish mid-job hold retention for a few months and move on. You hold it for the full build duration, because your earliest dollar and your last deliverable sit at opposite ends of the same schedule. It's also money you already borrowed against a distributor line to fund in the first place, so you're paying to carry it twice. | Monthly cadence |
| Parts Are Covered. The Truck Roll Is on You. | A roofer's callback is a leak in something the roofer installed. Yours is frequently a change somebody else made to a network you don't control, on hardware whose vendor already shipped the fix. That gives this trade an entire class of unbilled labor other trades never see, and it comes due after the job is closed and the margin has already been recognized. | Overhead calculation |
Low voltage and AV against the other 47 trades
| Metric | Low voltage and AV | Electrical and technology average | All 48 average | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead | 16% | 15.5% | 15.1% | 32nd of 48 |
| Gross margin | 24% | 22.8% | 22.1% | 8th of 48 |
| Net profit | 8% | 7.3% | 7% | 8th of 48 |
Low voltage and AV sheds 6 points of overhead between $1M–$5M and $500M+, against 6 for electrical and technology as a group. Inside that group, Electrical keeps the most at 9%, and Fiber, Solar and Telecom all run 15% overhead, the leanest. Low voltage and AV is neither, which is the usual position and the one with the most room in it.
Other electrical and technology trades
What owners ask
What overhead should a low voltage and AV contractor run?
Low voltage and AV shares its overhead figure with 12 other trades at this revenue, which is what the published data resolves to. It runs 16% at $1M–$5M and 10% at $500M+, as a percentage of revenue. That sits 0.5 points above the electrical and technology average of 15.5%. The CFOS target at $1M–$5M is 15%. The CFOS target is one point leaner than your trade's average at your revenue.
What gross margin should a low voltage and AV contractor run?
Low voltage and AV shares its gross margin figure with 4 other trades at this revenue, which is what the published data resolves to. It runs 24% at $1M–$5M and 32% at $500M+, as a percentage of revenue. That sits 1.2 points above the electrical and technology average of 22.8%. The CFOS target at $1M–$5M is 25%. The CFOS target is published at $1M to $5M. It's set at whatever gross margin produces the net profit target once overhead is paid, and never below your trade's own average.
What net profit should a low voltage and AV contractor run?
Low voltage and AV shares its net profit figure with 12 other trades at this revenue, which is what the published data resolves to. It runs 8% at $1M–$5M and 22% at $500M+, before taxes, as a percentage of revenue. That sits 0.7 points above the electrical and technology average of 7.3%. The CFOS target at $1M–$5M is 10%. The CFOS target is published at $1M to $5M.
What profit margin should a small low voltage and AV business run?
Owners usually mean net profit when they say profit margin, and for low voltage and AV at $1M–$5M that's 8%. Gross margin is a different number, 24%, and it's what's left after job costs but before overhead. Overhead is the 16% sitting between the two. A small low voltage and AV business holding 8% net is at the published figure for its size, and the CFOS target at that revenue is 10%.
Does low voltage and AV get more profitable as it grows?
Overhead is the number that moves. Low voltage and AV sheds 6 points between $1M–$5M and $500M+, which is in line with the 6 points electrical and technology sheds as a group. Net profit is already above the 48-trade average, so the room is in holding it while revenue climbs.
Where does low voltage and AV sit against the other trades?
Low voltage and AV is 2nd of 6 in electrical and technology on net profit. Electrical keeps the most at 9%. Fiber, Solar and Telecom run the leanest overhead at 15%. Gross margin ranks 8th of 48 and overhead ranks 32nd.
Everything on this page is something you can install yourself, andCONTROL is the order to do it in. If you would rather buy the finished result, SPM The Construction CFO does this work for low voltage and AV contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, run by the same author.
What a fractional CFO does for low voltage and AV contractors
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system these figures sit inside. More about the author.