In this week’s commentary, we’ll be discussing:
- Market Overview – 15 May 2018
- Anticimex’s acquisition of Killingsworth Environmental in Charlotte
- Potomac’s new European HQ in Switzerland
- Meetings in Madrid in May
Pest Control M&A Market Overview – 15 May 2018
Valuations remain frothy as consolidation continues across North America. We suspect that this will continue throughout the summer, although we are accelerating going to market. That means that all of our clients that are interested in selling in 2018 / early 2019, will be brought to market over the next 60 days. I see that the risks of delay are continuing to build.
On May 9th, we closed the Anticimex acquisition of Killingsworth Environmental. As typical of the current market, this was an extremely competitive bid process. We did invite some private equity money to the party, but as per usual, the bid was with the strategics.
For those of you who are considering wading out into the market, keep in mind that more times than not, it’s impossible to determine who the highest bidder will be at the onset of the process. We’re only five months into the year, we’ve closed over $100 million in global pest control transactions in the last four months (a total of 8 transactions) and on five of those eight transactions the ultimate winner of the process surprised me … and I do this every day. Maybe surprise is a strong word, but bottom line, I can never be sure at the beginning of the process who the ultimate acquirer we be, so be careful about dealing with only one acquirer.
On May 1st, we closed PCT Top 100 transaction with Rentokil that won’t be announced until later in the month. Again, this process was highly competitive and the high / low bid spreads with the Big 3 at the final round of process was 8%. In a subsequent commentary I’ll talk about the bid spreads and what kind of information we can glean from them.
ServiceMaster continues to up their ante in the commercial side of the business with its acquisition of Cooper Pest Solutions of New Jersey, which closed on May 15th.
We’re finally about done with our 2018 Pest Control Valuation report which will be released soon. Subscribe below to get on the list and we’ll make sure you get a copy of it.
Anticimex Acquires Killingsworth Environmental
This was a very interesting transaction and I will go into further details on it in an upcoming weekly commentary. For now, you can learn a little more here.
Potomac opens New European HQ in Geneva, Switzerland // Private Receptions in June 2018
With two of the largest pest control companies in the world hailing from the European continent and almost half our business coming from Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East, we’ve set up our new European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
We’ve been fortunate over the last six months to have quite a few visitors from the the industry. In fact, we’ve met more clients over the last six months in Geneva than I think we have anywhere else. In late June we’ll be hosting a private reception with senior executives of a few of the global firms who are actively targeting growth in Europe as well as the emerging and frontier markets.
Two of our favorite visitors in December were Scott Stevenson (Modern Pest) and Ryan Bradbury (Viking Pest Control), of Anticimex North America. Thanks for making the trip guys, we loved having you.
Meetings in Madrid – 25th through 29th of May 2018
Finally, we’ll be in Madrid, Spain the weekend of the 25th meeting with Spanish and Portuguese pest control firms. We’ve got one more open slot, so if you’re interested, contact ericka.andes (at) potomaccompany.com and let us know.
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