PCO M&A Specialists, William Blair collaborate on Pest Index

Dan Gordon, CPA

PCO M&A Specialists, a division of PCO Bookkeepers, has teamed up with equity research house William Blair & Co. to create the William Blair/PCO M&A Specialists Monthly Pest Index.

“This index is a collaboration between the fundamental research and insights from the Blair team and the hard data from PCO M&A Specialists’ sister firm, PCO Bookkeepers,” Dan Gordon, CPA, managing partner of PCO Bookkeepers and PCO M&A Specialists, and the financial columnist for Pest Management Professional magazine, explained in a news release. “The index tracks industry growth, supported by historic data and vetted by Wall Street experts.”

The index, which is available at SellMyPCOBusiness.com, debuted Sept. 29 with August data. It tracks the monthly performance of 140 privately held pest control companies across 30 states, with combined annual 2019 revenue of $320 million.

William Blair Equity Researchers’ Tim Mulrooney and Sam Kusswurm will issue a monthly report on the index, summarizing the results and other factors that affect the U.S. pest control industry, such as seasonality and weather. The purpose of the report is to track the performance of several pest markets. In addition to a total U.S. Pest Control, the researchers will track the Residential Pest Index, the Residential Door-to-Door Pest Index, the Commercial Pest Index, the Wood Destroying (Termite) Index and the Bed Bug Index.

“Our data is compiled by our internal experts, who have more than 25 combined years of M&A experience across multiple industries, including more than 100 transactions with market values totaling $45 billion,” Gordon said. “The historic data and reports pulled from our PCO Bookkeepers’ client records provide strategic buyers and PMPs looking to sell with the components that are most important to building their models, including tracking of customer growth, retention and the all-important recurring revenue, as well as selling, general and administrative costs they can use to build their profitability analyses.”