Tripled Revenue. Line of Credit Untouched. Then We Handed Over the Keys.

Company

NUU Mobile Corp.

Location

Irving, Texas

Industry

Consumer electronics

Engagement

5 years, fractional CFO & outsourced accounting

Revenue

$20M → $60M+

Line of credit

Never drawn

Ended with

In-house CFO & accounting team

The Challenge

NUU Mobile sells unlocked Android smartphones, tablets, and accessories out of Irving, Texas. Founded in 2012, the company built its position on GMS-certified devices that work with every major US carrier and carry no carrier bloatware. When we came in five years ago, revenue was around $20 million and climbing fast.

Fast growth is a good problem that produces bad finance. NUU had outgrown the support it had — and had overcorrected in the other direction with a full SAP implementation: enterprise ERP cost and complexity at a company that didn't yet have the scale to justify either. It consumed money and attention and returned very little of both.

Underneath the system problem sat a harder one. NUU was really two businesses sharing one set of books — a B2B line and a direct-to-consumer line, blended inside a single entity. Different margins, different working capital cycles, different economics, all reported as one number.

What We Found

Growth in a hardware business is a cash flow problem before it's anything else. You buy inventory in containers months before you sell it, at consumer price points that don't leave much room for error. Tripling revenue means roughly tripling the inventory you're financing. A phone company can be genuinely profitable and still run out of money.

So the questions that mattered weren't the ones the P&L was answering. Which products actually made money after landed cost, freight, returns, and warranty? Which channel? How much cash would the next step of growth consume, and in which month? None of that was visible.

The conventional answer to a cash squeeze like this is a line of credit. We went looking for a different one.

They didn't need bigger systems. They needed the right ones — and books that could answer a question.

What We Did

1. Replaced SAP with Zoho

Right-sizing, not downgrading. SAP was costing far more than it returned at NUU's stage, so we migrated the company to Zoho — matched to the business it actually was — and redirected the savings toward work that produced value.

2. Designed the accounting processes and the month-end close

A close is a process, not an event. We built the sequence, the ownership, and the controls, so that numbers arrived on a predictable schedule and could be trusted when they did.

3. Made profitability visible during the growth

We built reporting that showed margin by product line and by channel, after the costs hardware businesses tend to bury: landed cost, freight, returns, and warranty. Growing is only good news if you know which parts of it are worth it.

4. Managed cash through the growth

We forecast the working capital that growth consumes and built the budgets and operating plans around it, so inventory buys and expansion decisions were sized against real cash rather than optimism.

5. Funded the growth from the customer side, not the balance sheet

NUU's large enterprise customers needed devices, and they needed a supplier who could reliably deliver them. That's leverage, and it converts into working capital.

So instead of borrowing against inventory, we restructured the payment terms. Rather than paying in full on delivery, the customer paid an agreed percentage of the order up front, at commitment. NUU used that money to buy the phones. The balance came due on delivery, as it always had.

That one change moves cash to the front of the cycle. Normally money leaves for the factory, sits in production, sits in transit, sits in a warehouse, and only returns after the sale — and someone has to finance the gap. With a partial prepayment, cash arrives before the outlay instead of months after it. The gap doesn't get financed. It gets closed.

6. Split one company into two

The B2B and direct-to-consumer lines became separate legal entities. We ran the finance side of the separation: systems for each, separated accounting, and standalone financials for both — so each line could be operated, measured, and eventually sold or spun off on its own merits.

7. Took the company to audited financials

We designed the processes, documentation, and controls to withstand outside scrutiny, and carried NUU through to a completed audit — the point at which a company's numbers stop being an internal opinion.

8. Supported the capital raise

When NUU was ready to bring on additional investors, we helped the company find investment bankers and provided the financial preparation and support the process demanded.

9. Then we replaced ourselves

We transitioned NUU to a full-time in-house CFO, a controller, and an accounting team — handing over a finance function built to keep running without us.

The Outcome

Revenue grew from roughly $20 million to over $60 million across the engagement, and NUU landed on the Inc. 5000 three years running — climbing to #1,376 in 2024 — independent confirmation of a growth curve we helped finance and control rather than merely watch.

It did all of that without ever drawing on its line of credit. In a business where growth consumes cash by design, a facility that sits unused through a tripling of revenue is the detail a lender or an acquirer notices — because it means the growth funded itself.

The company is audited. Its two business lines are separate entities with their own systems and standalone financials, each able to be run and valued on its own. And its finance function is in-house, staffed, and operating.

That last part is the one we're proudest of. A fractional CFO who becomes permanent has, in a quiet way, failed. The job is to build the thing that outgrows you.

The Takeaway

Growth hides problems the same way a downturn exposes them. Rising revenue papers over a system that costs more than it returns, a close nobody trusts, and two different businesses blended into one set of books. The bill for all three arrives later, usually at the worst possible moment — during an audit, a raise, or a sale.

And when growth needs funding, debt is the default rather than the only option. If your customers need what you make, some of that working capital can come from them. It's cheaper than a bank and it strengthens the relationship instead of encumbering the company.

It's also worth asking what your finance function is supposed to become. If the honest answer is "an in-house team running an audited company," then the outside help you hire should be building toward its own exit from the first week.