Pest Control Meetings at Dusk in Singapore
In my last Weekly Commentary I said that I would be trying hard to write on a weekly basis… and then I disappeared for five weeks (my lame excuses to follow). I guess even I dramatically underestimated how busy it was going to be this M&A season.
Labor day (early September) officially marks the start of pest control M&A season in North America and it’s begun as the busiest one I’ve seen in my 15 years in the industry. Transaction multiples have continued to edge higher. Every time I think we hit a top…. well, we don’t.
Right out of the gate, three PCT Top 100 companies are already under LOI and this morning we closed a transaction with ServiceMaster that would have been in the 80’s on the PCT Top 100 had the company reported. That transaction will be announced next week and with it comes with some interesting learning opportunities for all of us, which I’ll discuss next week.
On Monday, we advised on the sale of Guaranty Pest Elimination to Modern Pest Services, which is Anticimex’s largest acquisition in New England since the acquisition of Modern. The target operates in four states and will help Modern accelerate growth in New England, more on that below. [Read more…]
Pest Control M&A Weekly Commentary – October 1, 2018 – All Eyes on Rollins: The ROL Complex and Asset Prices in the Pest Control Industry
Consultants and business advisors love to use witless cliches and platitudes. Not only that, when they utter this crapola, they say it as if it’s deep insight or profound, original thought.
I know this because I, like you, am forced to attend stupid seminars and conferences in order to rack up professional continuing education credits.
PestWorld is coming up in less than a month. If you want to hear some nonsense, just show up and listen in on some of the mind-numbing BS seeping through the hallowed halls of PestWorld business educational sessions. You’re guaranteed to hear some pencil neck, standing in front of a circa 1991 powerpoint presentation, spouting such drivel as, “If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
Or better yet, you’ll hear something like, “Run your business every day like you have to sell it tomorrow”… or is it, “run your business like you’ll never sell it?” Who knows. I guess it depends on who’s talking. Of course, after delivering that line of cheese, the speaker will pause for a second, scan the crowd with that little smirk on his face. In his mind, he’s serving up a platter of profound business wisdom akin to delivering a modern-day version of the Sermon on the Mount. [Read more…]