Pest control is one of the better-documented corners of Main Street M&A, for a specific reason: Rollins, the publicly traded parent of Orkin, buys smaller pest control companies constantly, and as a public company it has to disclose acquisition terms in SEC filings. That gives buyers something rare in this size range — real, verifiable numbers instead of a rule of thumb someone heard secondhand.
Two real transactions, shown plainly
In 2004, Rollins acquired Western Pest Services for $110.0 million in cash. Western's prior-year revenue was $72 million. That's a computed multiple of roughly 1.5x revenue.
In 2008, Rollins acquired HomeTeam Pest Defense from Centex for approximately $137 million. HomeTeam's prior-year revenue was $134 million — a computed multiple of roughly 1.02x revenue.
Two data points from the same acquirer, four years apart, and the multiple moved by nearly a third. That alone is worth sitting with before treating any single "pest control trades at X" figure as gospel.
Worth being honest about the gap here too: Rollins has made larger, more recent acquisitions — Northwest Exterminating in 2017, Fox Pest Control in 2023 — where the company disclosed a purchase price but didn't cleanly disclose the target's revenue in a way that supports a clean computed multiple. We're not going to manufacture a number where the disclosure doesn't support one. That gap is itself useful information: even in a well-documented industry, most of the real detail still isn't public.
The smaller end of the market looks different
Rollins' deals are $70–130 million transactions — nowhere near the size of business most first-time buyers are looking at. At the Main Street end, BizBuySell's five-year closed-transaction data for pest control businesses shows a median sale price of $249,000, at an average of 0.99x revenue and 2.40x SDE. That's a meaningfully different multiple than the Rollins deals, and the difference is mostly about size and buyer type, not really about the industry itself — institutional buyers pay differently than an individual operator financing a purchase with an SBA loan.
Where the multiple actually moves
Pest control businesses have real recurring revenue — quarterly and monthly service contracts — which is the same dynamic that drives alarm company valuations higher than a pure project-based business. Industry advisory sources put well-established platforms with 80%+ recurring revenue and low customer churn toward the higher end of a roughly 6x–9x EBITDA range at scale; businesses with less than about 40% recurring revenue tend to sit lower in that range, even at similar size.
The lesson carries over from what we've said about alarm companies: don't apply one blended multiple to the whole business. Figure out how much of the revenue actually renews on its own without new sales effort, and weight your valuation toward that portion being worth more per dollar than one-off or project work.