A defensible 2025 annual range for one Always Best Care Senior Services single-unit franchise is approximately $87,000 to $269,000 in Owner Discretionary Profit, with a central modeled figure near $180,000. The franchisor reports Gross Sales and Owner Discretionary Profit margins, not these dollar profit amounts; the dollar figures are derived from compatible single-unit cohorts in the 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document.
This earnings range is not a dollar-value Item 19 financial performance representation by ABCSP, LLC. It combines same-cohort Gross Sales and Owner Discretionary Profit margins disclosed in the 2026 FDD. Actual results can differ materially by local demand, caregiver wages, client mix, licensing, sales execution, owner involvement, manager compensation, financing, and the number of Assigned Areas operated.
All single-unit median Gross Sales multiplied by the disclosed median Owner Discretionary Profit margin.
Owner Discretionary Profit margin for the 13 single-unit franchisees operating for at least one year.
The FDD-reported median for the full 13-franchisee single-unit cohort.
Ten were in operation for six or more years; three were in operation for one to five years.
Royalty plus Advertising Fund contribution on applicable non-skilled-nursing Gross Sales, before fixed local advertising and technology costs.
How much may a single-unit Always Best Care owner earn annually?
The strongest defensible answer is a derived Owner Discretionary Profit range of about $87,000 to $269,000 for calendar 2025, with approximately $180,000 as a central analytical marker. This applies to the single-unit franchisee format represented in the 2026 FDD, not to each territory inside a multi-unit portfolio.
The range is deliberately wider than a single “owner salary” number. Item 19 reports cohort-level Gross Sales and cohort-level Owner Discretionary Profit margins. It does not report the average or median dollar amount of Owner Discretionary Profit. Multiplying compatible values creates a reproducible estimate, but it does not convert the result into an official franchisor-reported dollar profit.
The markers use disclosed Gross Sales and Owner Discretionary Profit margins from three compatible single-unit cohorts.
Interpretation: These are cohort-based analytical markers, not probabilities, guarantees, or the minimum and maximum results experienced by individual franchisees. Source: 2026 FDD, Item 19, pages 42–43; calculations rounded to the nearest $1,000.
The same FDD reports median single-unit Gross Sales of approximately $1.02 million, but that is client-service revenue before payroll, recruiting, insurance, office costs, royalties, advertising, technology, and other operating expenses. The earnings estimate comes from applying the separately disclosed Owner Discretionary Profit margin—not from treating sales as owner income.
What does the FDD’s Owner Discretionary Profit measure actually include?
Officially, the 2026 FDD defines Owner Discretionary Profit as Net Profit plus compensation or another financial benefit realized by the franchisee’s owner. For the 2025 single-unit population, this is an official margin measure; the dollar estimates in this article are derived.
The FDD defines Net Profit as Gross Sales minus all expenses reported by the franchisee, including royalties and other franchisor fees. Therefore, Owner Discretionary Profit is broader than residual business profit. It may combine operating profit with the owner’s salary or benefits and should not be described as passive income or after-tax take-home pay.
- Gross Sales
- Total receipts from services, subject to the FDD’s limited exclusions. It is revenue, not owner earnings.
- Net Profit
- Gross Sales minus all expenses reported by the franchisee, including royalties and other franchisor fees.
- Owner Discretionary Profit
- Net Profit plus owner compensation or another owner financial benefit. It can include both return on capital and value paid for the owner’s work.
- Personal take-home pay
- Not disclosed. Personal taxes, entity structure, distributions, retained cash, and financing principal depend on the individual owner.
How do the official margins differ by ownership structure?
The official 2025 averages were 17.1% for single-unit franchisees, 11.8% for multi-unit franchisees, and 12.2% for the combined population. These are per-franchisee portfolio measures, not per-territory margins, so the multi-unit result cannot be divided or multiplied mechanically to estimate one Assigned Area.
The chart preserves the FDD’s single-unit, multi-unit, and combined franchisee populations.
Interpretation: Single-unit franchisees reported higher average and median margins than the multi-unit population, but the single-unit sample was much smaller. Source: 2026 FDD, Item 19, pages 42–43.
How were the conservative, base, and upside earnings figures calculated?
The calculations are derived from three single-unit FDD cohorts for calendar 2025. Each uses a Gross Sales statistic and Owner Discretionary Profit margin from the same ownership format and operating-age cohort; no external industry margin is introduced.
| Analytical marker | FDD cohort and inputs | Formula | Derived annual amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | Single-unit, 1–5 years; average Gross Sales $535,185; average margin 16.3%; 3 franchisees | $535,185 × 16.3% | $87,235 |
| Base | Single-unit, 1+ years; median Gross Sales $1,020,454; median margin 17.6%; 13 franchisees | $1,020,454 × 17.6% | $179,600 |
| Upside | Single-unit, 6+ years; average Gross Sales $1,564,111; average margin 17.2%; 10 franchisees | $1,564,111 × 17.2% | $269,027 |
Calculation definition: derived annual Owner Discretionary Profit = cohort Gross Sales × cohort Owner Discretionary Profit margin. Figures are rounded only after applying the full disclosed inputs.
- The conservative and upside figures are age-cohort markers, not observed minimum and maximum owner profits.
- The base figure pairs two medians, but the product is not the FDD-reported median dollar Owner Discretionary Profit.
- The FDD does not disclose each franchisee’s dollar Owner Discretionary Profit, so the calculation cannot reproduce the true average or median owner dollar result.
- No personal income tax, financing principal, acquisition debt, or return on initial investment is calculated.
How does owner involvement change the earnings result?
Owner involvement changes the meaning of the number more clearly than the available evidence changes the dollar estimate. Officially, the FDD permits either full-time personal oversight or a trained full-time manager, but Item 19 does not separate owner-operated and manager-run profit results.
If the owner directly oversees the business, Owner Discretionary Profit may include salary or benefits paid for that work. If the business is manager-run, manager compensation remains an operating expense before Net Profit. The residual amount available to the owner may therefore be lower, even when sales are identical.
- Full-time owner-operator
- The owner personally oversees operations. A portion of Owner Discretionary Profit may compensate the owner for management labor rather than represent passive business profit.
- Manager-run owner
- A manager who completed the franchisor’s training must devote full business time to operations. Manager wages and payroll burden reduce residual profit.
- Minimum staffing structure
- The FDD requires at least two full-time staff members, including either the owner or a manager, focused on marketing/client solicitation and caregiver recruiting, hiring, and scheduling.
- Quantified owner-role gap
- Uncertain. Item 19 does not report owner hours, owner compensation, manager compensation, or separate margins for owner-operated and manager-run businesses.
Do not add a generic manager salary to the FDD-derived range and call the result profit. A valid owner-operator benefit calculation requires the actual local manager compensation that the owner replaces, confirmation that the owner is performing equivalent work, and a P&L showing that the manager cost is otherwise included. Current location-specific wage data can be checked through the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics tables.
Which franchise fees affect earnings, and are they already included?
The disclosed Owner Discretionary Profit margin is intended to be after all expenses reported by the franchisee, including royalties and other franchisor fees. Therefore, the following recurring fees should not be subtracted a second time from the FDD-derived earnings figures.
| Recurring obligation | 2026 FDD term | How it affects interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Royalty | Generally 6% of Gross Sales, subject to escalating minimum royalties after month 3. | Included in the FDD definition of Net Profit when reported on the franchisee P&L. |
| Skilled Care Royalty | 6% of private-pay skilled nursing Gross Sales; 4% for Medicare or another non-private payer source. | Service mix can change the effective fee rate and operating cost structure. |
| Advertising Fund | Greater of 2% of applicable Gross Sales or $300 monthly; $100 monthly for each additional franchise agreement. | Percentage applies to Gross Sales excluding Skilled Nursing Services. |
| Local advertising | $800 monthly; one amount for a multi-franchise owner rather than $800 for each business. | A fixed burden that matters more at low revenue. |
| Technology | $175 monthly, plus $35 monthly for each additional territory as it opens; annual increases of up to 5% are permitted. | Small relative to payroll, but recurring and territory-sensitive. |
The initial investment of $89,725 to $145,900 in Item 7 is not an annual operating expense and is not subtracted from one year of Gross Sales. Debt service on any financed investment must be analyzed separately from operating earnings.
How reliable is the $87,000 to $269,000 range?
The evidence confidence is MODERATE: the calculation uses current, same-brand FDD figures with compatible single-unit cohorts, but the dollar profit amounts are derived and the single-unit sample contains only 13 franchisees.
The 2026 FDD says 66 franchisees supplied usable P&L statements and were continuously open throughout 2025: 13 single-unit and 53 multi-unit franchisees. It excluded 17 franchisees that opened or were purchased during 2025 without a full year of operation, two that ceased operations, and 35 that did not provide requested information or had irregularities in their reported information.
- Small single-unit sample: the one-to-five-year subgroup has only three franchisees, so its $87,235 marker is especially sensitive to individual results.
- Selection and reporting risk: 35 franchisees were excluded for missing or irregular information, which may affect representativeness.
- Geographic ambiguity: the Owner Discretionary Profit tables do not expressly state whether Canadian operations are included or excluded. The same Item 19 separately identifies a small Canadian component in systemwide Gross Sales.
- Accounting variation: “all expenses reported” does not establish a uniform treatment of owner pay, interest, depreciation, capital expenditures, or other discretionary classifications across every P&L.
- No company-operated benchmark: Item 20 reports zero company-owned outlets at year-end 2025, so there is no corporate-unit earnings comparison.
- Per-owner versus per-area: multi-unit figures reflect each franchisee’s portfolio of Assigned Areas, not a normalized per-unit result.
What does Item 20 add to the earnings analysis?
Item 20 officially reports 291 franchised Assigned Areas and no company-owned outlets at December 31, 2025. During 2025, 22 franchised outlets opened, six were terminated, and 27 transferred to new owners. These counts do not prove profitability, but they help a buyer identify current and former franchisees for interviews and show that the FDD’s operating population is entirely franchise-owned.
What should a buyer verify before relying on this earnings range?
A buyer should treat the range as an underwriting starting point, not a forecast. The most important verification is to reconcile actual franchisee P&Ls to the FDD’s Owner Discretionary Profit definition for the buyer’s intended state, service mix, owner role, and number of Assigned Areas.
- Request the written substantiation supporting Item 19 and ask how the 66 P&Ls were reviewed, normalized, and selected.
- Confirm whether the Owner Discretionary Profit sample contains only U.S. franchisees and obtain a U.S.-only breakout if it does not.
- Ask single-unit franchisees to separate owner salary, owner benefits, distributions, retained earnings, interest, depreciation, and capital spending.
- Compare franchisees with one to five years of operation against those operating for six or more years; do not rely only on the combined average.
- For a manager-run plan, obtain local market compensation for the required full-time manager and include payroll taxes and benefits.
- Test caregiver wage rates, overtime, workers’ compensation, insurance, client acquisition cost, unfilled shifts, and client concentration.
- Review Item 20 contacts, including transferred and former franchisees, and ask what caused sales or margins to differ from the Item 19 figures.
- Model interest and principal payments separately; do not confuse pre-tax Owner Discretionary Profit with cash remaining after debt service.
What is the most defensible owner-earnings takeaway?
The strongest defensible annual figure for a U.S. buyer evaluating one Always Best Care Senior Services Assigned Area is an FDD-derived Owner Discretionary Profit range of roughly $87,000 to $269,000, with a central modeled result near $180,000. The range is not an official dollar earnings claim; it is derived from official 2025 single-unit Gross Sales and Owner Discretionary Profit margins.
The most important earnings driver is the ability to build and retain a sufficient client base while controlling caregiver labor and recruiting costs. The largest unresolved uncertainty is how much of Owner Discretionary Profit represents residual business profit versus compensation for the owner’s own full-time work, compounded by the small 13-franchisee single-unit sample. Before relying on the range, a buyer should verify Item 19 substantiation, obtain U.S.-only cohort clarification, and reconcile several current franchisee P&Ls to the intended owner-operated or manager-run structure.
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