Polar Tint and FDD Item 19: What the Earnings Disclosure Actually Tells You

What Item 19 is — and why most FDDs leave it blank

The FTC Franchise Rule permits but does not require franchisors to make Financial Performance Representations (FPRs) in Item 19 of the Franchise Disclosure Document. A franchise system can publish nothing in Item 19 and still be a fully legitimate, registered franchise — many do exactly that.

But the rule is asymmetric. A franchise that publishes nothing in Item 19 also cannot legally share any earnings information outside Item 19. Sales reps, brokers, and development executives are prohibited from telling prospects what existing locations earn unless that information appears in the FDD. So an Item 19 that contains an actual financial performance representation is a transparency signal worth reading carefully; an Item 19 with nothing in it means the franchise is effectively asking you to invest without earnings data.

Polar Tint's current FDD includes an Item 19 financial performance representation built on the two affiliate-owned shops operating in Las Vegas. The disclosure is voluntary, the underlying data is auditable, and the substantiation is available to prospects on written request as required by the FTC Franchise Rule. The figures themselves arrive with the full disclosure document after a prequalification call — see how qualification and financing work.

What the disclosure actually covers

The reporting businesses are affiliate-owned, owner-operated Polar Tint shops doing business as LV Pro Tint in the Las Vegas area — the Summerlin and Henderson locations. The reporting period is the most recently completed fiscal year. For each shop, the FDD discloses gross sales, cost of goods sold, and the resulting gross profit, plus a combined view across both shops.

The FDD defines its terms precisely. Gross Sales is the actual gross revenue from the sale of approved services and products. Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) is the expense the reporting businesses incurred to produce and purchase those approved services and products — and because Polar Tint sources film and coatings manufacturer-direct through affiliate Glacier Manufacturing, that input cost is purchased at wholesale rather than through a distributor markup. Gross Profit is gross sales minus COGS.

The actual dollar figures and the disclosed margin are stated in Item 19 of the current FDD, not on this page — that is the only place a franchise can legally put them. What you should take from the disclosure is the shape of the model: a service business whose cost of goods on tint, film, and coatings is a relatively small input cost, with the remainder of each ticket carried through to gross profit before royalty and operating expenses — and Item 19 is where that gross profit is actually quantified.

What the disclosure doesn't (and can't) cover

Three honest caveats apply to any Item 19 reader. First: the affiliate-owned shops in the table do not pay royalty fees or other franchisor fees, because they're owned by the franchise company rather than by independent franchisees. The disclosed gross profit is therefore pre-royalty. A franchisee would deduct an industry-competitive royalty and a national brand fund contribution below gross profit, then operating expenses and overhead, to arrive at net operating income.

Second: the two reporting businesses share consolidated financials and overhead that may differ from your operation. Your results will vary with territory characteristics, marketing execution, service mix (how auto tint, ceramic coating, and PPF balance out), lease economics, operator effort, hiring quality, and local competitive dynamics. Item 19 reports what these shops did — not what your shop will do.

Third: the disclosure is a snapshot of two shops in one metro for one fiscal year. It is not a forecast and not a guarantee. The FDD carries the standard FTC language that some outlets have achieved these results and that your individual results may differ — language prospects should take seriously rather than read past.

The levers that actually move your number

Because Item 19 reports the affiliates' result and not your projection, the useful question isn't "what's the number?" — it's "what drives mine?" Five levers do most of the work. Service mix and attach rate: Polar Tint runs six revenue lines — auto window tint, residential window film, commercial window film, paint protection film (PPF), ceramic coating, and vehicle wraps — and a shop that attaches ceramic or PPF to a tint appointment books a higher-value ticket per car in the bay than one selling tint alone.

Labor model: Polar Tint is owner-operator-first, and an owner in the bay (or closely managing it) runs a materially different cost structure than an absentee setup carrying a full hired crew. Local pricing: every service is locally quoted and priced to the local market, so the same ticket varies meaningfully by metro. Bay utilization and ramp: revenue is a function of how full your bays stay and how quickly you reach steady volume after opening — typically a few months, not overnight, supported by the 65-hour training program (40 classroom + 25 on-the-job) at our Henderson, NV HQ, virtually, or at another location we designate.

To model your own scenario, pair two FDD sections. FDD Item 7 gives you the investment range and its components; Item 19 gives you the affiliates' financial performance. Together they let you build a realistic case for your market and your labor model — see the investment overview and the why-this-category breakdown for how the pieces fit.

How to read the calculator on this site

The Investment ROI calculator on the /investment page is a modeling tool, not a financial performance representation. It is built so that every margin assumption traces to either an FDD-disclosed figure or an operator-supplied input — no industry-typical placeholders, and no average-of-averages applied to make the picture look more favorable than the disclosure supports.

Below the gross profit line, the calculator deducts a combined royalty and brand fund contribution and your own entered operating expenses to arrive at modeled operating income. The ticket figures pre-loaded on the service-line sliders are illustrative defaults only — not FDD-disclosed averages and not promised prices. Every Polar Tint service is locally quoted, so you should replace those defaults with your own market's pricing before reading anything into the output.

Treat the calculator as a worksheet: it shows how the levers interact, but the authoritative numbers are the investment components in FDD Item 7 and the financial performance representation in Item 19 of the current FDD. Start a conversation through the application to receive the disclosure document and model your real scenario against it.