Sunset Coast Advisors · Methodology v1.0 · Data through 2026-07-10
The GovCon IQ Market Score.
A public contract-risk benchmark for the federal it services mid-market, computed exclusively from public federal award data. No surveys. No self-reporting. No way to buy a better number.
Overview
What the Market Score measures
The Market Score is a 0 to 100 composite of five contract-risk dimensions, computed for every firm in a defined cohort from FPDS-sourced award records published on USAspending.gov. It answers one question: how durable is this firm's federal revenue base?
Because every input is public and externally observable, a firm does not need to participate, subscribe, or respond to be scored. Every firm meeting the cohort definition is scored on identical terms.
The bright line
The Market Score is computed from public data only. Nothing a firm submits, purchases, or engages changes its public Market Score. Sunset Coast Advisors separately offers a paid GovCon IQ diagnostic that assesses dimensions public data cannot see; its output is a separate, private instrument and never alters the public number.
Who is scored
Release 1 covers the Federal IT Services Mid-Market: firms with at least $50M cumulative in-scope prime obligations, FY2023 to FY2025 under NAICS 541511, 541512, 541513, 541519, where in-scope obligations must be at least half of the firm's total federal prime contract obligations (the firm is primarily an IT services business), and with total annualized federal prime obligations at or below the cap of $500M total annualized federal prime obligations (parent-consolidated). Entity resolution: each recipient maps to one consolidation parent from its current award-file registration; financial sponsors (private equity fund managers, asset managers) are never consolidation parents.
This is a census, not a sample: every entity meeting the stated bounds in the FY2023 through FY2025 window is included, 419 firms in Release 1. The cohort definition, thresholds, and window are frozen per release and versioned with the methodology.
Methodology
Five dimensions, published weights.
| Dimension | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Recompete Exposure | 25% | How much of the last three fiscal years' obligations sit on contracts whose full period of performance, including all options, ends within 18 months of the data vintage, blended with reliance on unexercised option value. |
| Momentum | 25% | Obligation trajectory across FY2023 to FY2025, blended with the share of revenue on newly started awards. New entrants are treated as high momentum and flagged in the confidence grade. |
| Customer Concentration | 20% | Herfindahl-Hirschman concentration across awarding sub-agencies, blended with the single largest agency's share of obligations. |
| Set-Aside Dependency | 15% | Share of obligations awarded under any small-business set-aside competition type. The public score treats all set-aside programs identically. |
| Vehicle Concentration | 15% | The largest single contracting channel's share of obligations, where a channel is a parent IDV when one exists and the standalone contract otherwise. |
Each dimension is percentile-ranked within the cohort, scored so that higher means healthier, and combined using the weights above. Inputs are winsorized at the 5th and 95th percentiles where noted in the technical appendix. Weights are judgment-set, disclosed, and stress-tested: we re-tier the full cohort under 500 random weight perturbations of plus or minus 20 percent and publish the share of firms whose tier is stable. Full formulas and a worked example ship with each release.
Tier bands
Fortified
Top quartile
Stable
50th to 75th percentile
Exposed
25th to 50th percentile
Critical
Bottom quartile
Public releases name the Fortified 50: the fifty highest-scoring firms holding confidence grade A or B, excluding probable unconsolidated sibling entities. All other scores are private and available only to the firm itself through the claim process. We do not publish bottom-tier firm names.
Confidence grades
Clean attribution: no joint-venture entities in the rollup, under 10% of obligations missing period-of-performance end dates, at least three fiscal years of history, and five or fewer UEIs in the corporate family.
One attribution caveat present (joint venture in the family, missing end dates above 10%, short history, more than five UEIs, or a probable unconsolidated sibling family). The score is published with the caveat noted.
Two or more attribution caveats. Scores are computed but excluded from named rankings. Firms with no FY2023 or FY2024 obligation base are treated as new entrants: scored, never named.
Accountability
Correction policy
Named firms are notified before each release with their scorecard and five business days to flag attribution errors. Substantiated corrections are applied before publication; post-publication corrections are logged in a public changelog with the affected release. Methodology changes only occur at version boundaries, never within a release.
Scores describe federal prime contract risk profiles derived from public data as of the stated vintage. They are not credit ratings, valuations, or investment advice, and they do not assess a firm's commercial revenue, classified work, or subcontract positions. Sunset Coast Partners entities invest in the government services market; that interest is disclosed here and governed by the separation described above. Sunset Coast Advisors is retainer-based. No success fees. Not a broker-dealer.
Claim your scorecard if your firm is in the cohort: composite score, tier, all five dimension results against cohort medians, and confidence grade.
Market Score · questions
Straight answers.
- What is the GovCon IQ Market Score?
- A 0 to 100 composite of five contract-risk dimensions, recompete exposure, momentum, customer concentration, set-aside dependency, and vehicle concentration, computed for every firm in a defined cohort from federal award records on USAspending.gov. It answers one question: how durable is this firm's federal revenue base?
- Can a firm change its Market Score?
- Only by changing its federal contract base. The Market Score is computed from public data only. Nothing a firm submits, purchases, or engages changes its public score. Sunset Coast Advisors separately offers a paid GovCon IQ diagnostic; its output is private and never alters the public number.
- Who is in the cohort?
- Federal IT Services Mid-Market: firms with at least $50M cumulative in-scope prime obligations, FY2023 to FY2025 under NAICS 541511, 541512, 541513, 541519, where in-scope obligations must be at least half of the firm's total federal prime contract obligations (the firm is primarily an IT services business), at or below $500M total annualized federal prime obligations (parent-consolidated). Release 1 scored 419 firms.
- Are bottom-tier firms named?
- No. Public releases name the Fortified 50, the fifty highest-scoring firms with confidence grade A or B. All other scores are private and available only to the firm itself through the claim process.