Rollins, Inc. (ROL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Rollins Inc. 2024 Investor and Analyst Conference. My name is Lyndsey Burton, and I'm the Vice President of Investor Relations for Rollins. This morning, you'll be hearing from members of our leadership team. Following their presentations, all of our presenters will be available for a question-and-answer period. Before I turn it over to Jerry, I'd like to remind everyone that today's presentations made by our team include forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the factors identified on this slide and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Today's presentations also include certain non-GAAP measures. Reconciliation of these measures can be found in the appendix of today's presentation, which will be posted to our website. It's now my pleasure to introduce our President and CEO, Jerry Gahlhoff.

Good morning, everyone. Let me start by thanking each of you for joining us. Our team is very excited about the opportunity to tell our story. Today, we're going to talk about why Rollins is a premier and leading provider of pest control services in our industry, and how we will embrace the art of change to extend our leadership position in a growing market that is supported by attractive fundamentals. There are 5 main points we hope to leave you with today that reinforce why we believe we are positioned to continue our long track record of success. First, we are a scaled player in the core North American pest control market, which is the largest market globally. Our scale and brand strategy enable us to leverage a number of distinct competitive advantages to extend our leadership position and deliver exceptional financial results. Second, we operate in a large and highly fragmented industry with significant runway for growth that has been accelerated in more recent years by a number of structural tailwinds. Third, we invest in our business to drive growth, both organically as well as through disciplined and strategic M&A. Fourth, we strongly embrace our culture of continuous improvement and productivity that will be enhanced by our efforts to modernize certain aspects of our business. And finally, our financial performance will continue to compound earnings and cash flow, while our disciplined approach to capital allocation will create substantial shareholder value. So to set the stage, if I was going to give the elevator pitch for Rollins, this is what I would say. We compound cash flow by growing and acquiring market-leading pest control businesses. We find the very best stand-alone businesses, fund their growth and generate attractive returns on our investments. We do this with a people-first, customer-centric mindset that is the foundation on which our financial engine is built. This is what we've done for decades, and what we will continue to do as we live out the next chapter in our company's success story. But before we talk about where we're going, let's talk briefly on where we've been. Rollins has a proud history of success. The book in front of you today is a well-documented account of Rollins' history, beginning with its founding through about [ 2010s. ] It's important to study this history and acknowledge the many victories, experiences and lessons learned on our path to the present day. The culture and values that were infused in the company at our start are as relevant now as they've ever been. And they will continue to play a central role in our decision-making and actions as we move forward. An important part of our history is our track record of success and the consistency that has been a hallmark of our financial performance for decades. We've built a market-leading platform that delivers above industry growth, profitability and free cash flow generation. We enjoy a recession-resilient business model that has performed consistently through various economic cycles. We have economies of scale and an economic engine that allows us to invest in our future while returning capital to shareholders. And while we are proud of our success, we believe the best is yet to come. While a deep appreciation of our history is important, we must also be open to change. We must seek to evolve our business to keep pace with the change in expectations of the customers we serve while staying true to who we are and what we stand for. In the words of Marshall Goldsmith, what got you here won't always get you there. Embracing the art of change is about balancing the tension between our past success and ambitions to be even better in the future. Today, we're going to explore what this looks like for Rollins as we embark on writing the art of change volume 2. When we talk about the art of change, we aren't talking about a dramatic shift in approach. Our mission is the same, to create loyal customers by consistently delivering essential pest control services to protect their health, property and brand reputations, while rewarding shareholders with attractive returns. What continues to evolve is how we balance a decentralized model and the entrepreneurial spirit that makes our multi-brand approach so successful, while also harnessing the scale of Rollins in a way that benefits our collection of brands. We now challenge ourselves to build better support capabilities as a parent company so that our teams can focus on what they do best, growing their businesses and taking care of our customers. Our curiosity inspires us to better leverage the vast amounts of data and market intelligence existing across our portfolio to provide actionable insight and learnings for all of our brands. These weren't relevant ideas 15 years ago when the business was largely Orkin and a couple of other key brands. But as our business has grown and evolved, our mindset has done the same. To that end, earlier this year, we introduced 4 strategic objectives aimed at driving increased focus and alignment throughout our operations. People first, customer loyalty, growth mindset and operational efficiency. These objectives help us prioritize key initiatives and associated KPIs across our enterprise that will fuel growth and foster continuous improvement throughout our business. For people first, we are proud of the tenure and experience in our team as well as their engagement level and commitment to our company. While overall retention has been healthy, there is opportunity to drive improvements in the retention of our newer employees, specifically those who are with us for 6 months or less. We are making positive strides here by enhancing our training and onboarding programs to address key milestones in the initial days and weeks that a new team member is with us. Safety is another key initiative when it comes to putting people first. There is nothing more important than ensuring that our people make it home safely at the end of the day. And we have implemented new tools and training to reinforce our safety culture here at Rollins. We are encouraged with the improvement we have seen in our driver safety scores. Since we implemented a phone-enabled application that tracks driving habits, scores them and identifies coaching opportunities when needed. We know that when you put people first, this positively impacts the way our people take care of our customers and ultimately builds exceptional customer loyalty. For this reason, we continue to invest in the training and development of our people, while also working to make every customer interaction seamless, easy and consistent. We will leverage technology to enhance our customer interactions as we continue to build out an omnichannel experience. Our customers reward our commitment to customer loyalty with best-in-class customer retention rates and a growing customer base, but we are always striving for more. This is the foundation of our growth mindset. In addition to growing our base of customers, we're focused on increasing our depth of relationship with them. We have made significant progress in bundling our cross-selling and services to earn more of our customers' wallet. But with an average number of services per customer of less than 2 today, there remains significant opportunity. We incentivize cross-selling behavior from our team members and continue to develop new tools to educate customers on our one-stop shop capabilities across a comprehensive portfolio of whole-home protection services. Another aspect of growth mindset is how we align ourselves from an operational perspective to capitalize on opportunities we see in the marketplace. This is reflected on our branch strategy, which favors smaller, more nimble branches with close proximity to our customers. As you'll hear us talk more today about how -- and you'll hear us talking more today about how we're thinking about the branch of the future. Our growth mindset is also at the forefront of actions we are taking to structure our business to accelerate commercial growth in targeted verticals, which Pat will share more details on in his presentation. And finally, as a complement to our growth mindset, our dedication to continuous improvement in operational efficiency is another key tenet of our strategy. You'll hear this message reinforced with examples throughout many of the presentations today as we are constantly striving to improve our service levels by optimizing and modernizing our business. As you can see, all these strategic objectives build on one another to create a winning formula that benefits our team members, our customers, our business and our shareholders. This winning formula also enables us to capitalize on the attractive market dynamics that exist in the core U.S. pest control market. It's estimated that the global pest control market served today is over $20 billion, and we believe this has considerable runway to grow much larger over time. We've analyzed data from a number of third-party sources and based on various factors and underlying assumptions, you could get to a potential long-term market opportunity that ranges anywhere from 2 to 4x of what is being served today. Our market has also enjoyed a consistent and healthy level of growth over a number of years. Against this backdrop of a healthy underlying market, Rollins has grown at a rate that has more than doubled the market over the last 15 years. The key takeaway is that we play in a large, fragmented and growing market, supported by secular tailwinds that should drive increased penetration of pest control services over time. First, climate and environmental factors continue to be supportive for pest control. According to the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, 2023 was the warmest year in the history of recordkeeping dating back to 1850. Warmer temperatures and extended seasons are fantastic for pest activity. Second, favorable demographic shifts are supportive of underlying demand in the pest control market, increasing population density and urbanization trends, coupled with higher levels of global travel and trade breeds more pest activity and more opportunities for new pests to enter non-native environments. Many of the household pests we encounter today weren't originally native to the geographies where they now flourish. Third, a growing middle-class population and a generational shift from a DIY mindset to a do-it-for-me one should provide medium- to long-term support for the pest control industry. According to a survey from the Professional Pest Management Alliance, 45% of millennials indicated they are likely to hire a pest service on a regular basis in the future. This is higher than the 37% of Gen X and 30% of baby boomer respondents, respectively. As millennials become a larger percentage of homeowners, their preference for do-it-for-me services compared to older generations and their ability to access these services much more seamlessly through search and online connectivity should serve as a tailwind for the industry. Additionally, lifestyle changes such as the rise of outdoor living spaces and the increased level of pet ownership should also drive increased needs around pest control. And finally, the regulatory environment and evolving standards around sanitation, coupled with the high cost of failure associated with brand and reputational damage for a business with a pest problem further emphasizes the essential nature of our services. Public awareness around the threat that pests can have to our health and well-being is most certainly on the rise as well. These risks -- the risk that pests can pose seem to make the headlines on an increasingly regular basis. And let's face it, as our quality of life continues to improve, the thought of sharing our space with unwanted guests like roaches and mosquitoes is less and less desirable. So while we play in a large and fragmented market with attractive long-term growth drivers, we believe we have a number of distinct competitive advantages that position us well in the market. Everything in our business starts with our people, and the culture of excellence that they embody. Our 20,000 team members are our greatest asset, and investing in them has been key to our success from our earliest days. This is further complemented by our exceptional leadership team, many of whom joining me today and the extensive experience that each brings to their respective roles. We've been at this a long time, and our experience matters. This experience ensures we don't make unnecessary changes and enables us to continue to grow in a very attractive pest control market. Next, our leading portfolio of pest control companies gives us a unique position and scale benefits in our markets. The combination of Orkin and our strong group of regional brands enables multiple bites at the apple with potential customers and provides opportunity for additional cross-sell activities. Third, our reputation as an acquirer of choice gives us an advantage when it comes to executing our M&A strategy. I am proud of the track record we've built by successfully acquiring a number of high-quality businesses through the years and successfully bringing them into our world-class portfolio of brands. Often a deal comes to us because an owner already has a relationship with us as our operators have extensive experience, relationships, and peer networking throughout the pest control industry. People choose to sell their business to us because of our commitment to take care of their people and their brand. All of this positions us well with potential sellers that share our philosophies and values. Fourth, we use a variety of methods to acquire new residential customers and add to the depth of relationships with our existing customers. Digital marketing, cross-selling, service bundling and door-to-door sales enable a balanced and disciplined approach to customer acquisition. We also have important relationships with the homebuilding and real estate market communities through brands like HomeTeam and Northwest. We're able to successfully capitalize on this multichannel approach to drive customer growth. Technology is an integral part of our business strategy as we prioritize capabilities that help us best serve our customers. Over the years, we have invested in proprietary systems that reduce friction points for customers, drive efficiencies in our business and help our team members work more effectively. And finally, our financial engine of compounding cash flow to reinvest in growth, coupled with a strong balance sheet and disciplined approach to capital allocation enables industry-leading financial performance and value creation. What you will hear from the team today is how we intend to leverage these advantages to drive continued profitable growth, extend our market leadership and deliver the exceptional financial performance and return profile that has differentiated our company for decades. Following my remarks, Pat Chrzanowski will provide an overview of the unique growth opportunities that the scale of our Orkin business affords us. Our CFO, Ken Krause, will then be joined by a panel of a few brand leaders to discuss the inherent advantages of our multi-brand approach and the impact it has in building our reputation as an acquirer of choice. Then Cam Glover, who leads our marketing efforts for Orkin will highlight the benefits of our balanced and disciplined approach to marketing and customer acquisition across our portfolio of brands. He will also discuss the power of the Orkin brand and the advantages this provides. Next, Renee Pearson, our Chief Technology Officer, will discuss technology as an enabler in our business and the opportunities we have to drive significant improvements throughout our operations by leveraging technology more efficiently. Then Ken will conclude our formal presentations with a discussion of our financials and opportunities for continued improvement. We'll then wrap up the day by taking any questions you may have. Before I turn it over to Pat, I want to thank you again for joining us and for your interest in our company. I know you will walk away with a strong understanding of our powerful model for shareholder value creation and further conviction in our belief that for Rollins, the best is yet to come. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to the President of Orkin U.S., Pat Chrzanowski.

Well, thank you, Jerry, and good morning. I'm looking forward to our time together and sharing some of Orkin's history, culture, growth and our plans for the future. Orkin was founded by Otto Orkin in 1901 and 60 years ago this year, in 1964, Rollins acquired Orkin and what the media dubbed the deal that captured the imagination of Wall Street. Harvard Business Review documented it as the first-ever leveraged buyout because Orkin was more -- was worth more than 6x that of Rollins. Throughout the years, while we've changed how our brand looks and some of our service offerings, we remain the industry-leading pest control company at our core, or as we like to say, the Best in Pests. It's truly a privilege to serve our customers and our commercial and residential services protect our customers where they live, work and play. We remain optimistic about the market's opportunity for growth, and we are committed to living out our ethos, which guides us as our North Star, and I'm excited to share more about that with you today. Earlier this year, we rolled out what we referred to as Orkin's ethos, which is centered around fostering a winning culture at Orkin by clearly articulating what we stand for. In other words, Orkin's ethos digs deeper into our purpose, our mission, our vision and our values. Orkin's ethos guides us in communicating the why we come to work, asks us how we are different from other service companies and challenges us on what we do to embody these values each and every day. Our ethos guides us as we personify and aspire to shape the Orkin of the future. Our mission is that we deliver peace of mind that only a service-minded Orkin Pro can provide. As the industry leader for nearly 125 years, we have an unwavering commitment to providing thorough pest control application and treatment methods. We maintain long-standing public health, education and community partnerships, and we have an unwavering commitment to our customers with the Orkin Guarantee. Our service is backed by award-winning training, and I'm very proud to mention that our training department has won Training Magazine's top training award 18 times since 2003. And by the way, we're the only pest control company on this prestigious list. Supporting our mission are 5 core values, providing the foundation of our ethos. Our core values are anchored around safety, professionalism, empathy, integrity and innovation. I'm particularly pleased with how quickly Orkin's ethos has been embraced and adopted across all levels of our organization, primarily because Orkin's ethos articulates much of what has been a part of our culture for decades. As we make our way through today's presentation, I'm confident that you'll see Orkin's ethos front and center guiding everything we do. Orkin's corporate locations are geographically organized into 5 divisions that span the entire country. These divisions are led by leaders with more than 200 years of combined leadership experience at the multiunit operational level. Each division has an average of 7 regions, and each of these regions are comprised of 10 to 12 branch operations. That's 40 regions with nearly 400 branches nationwide protecting where our customers live, work and play. Additionally, we have 48 domestic franchises across the country that complement our corporate structure. And generally, these locations operate in smaller markets and benefit from a more local feel. I'm proud to share with you that in January, we created our sixth division to focus solely on our B2B business while expanding our commercial footprint. Historically, these dedicated commercial branches were embedded within the other divisions, but now these operations can be more focused and strategic in their growth efforts. We see significant advantages to further position Orkin as the commercial leader in this space. Our internal estimates show that B2B pest control market has a multibillion-dollar growth opportunity. There are many areas that make Orkin stand out in our industry, and I'd like to take some time to discuss a few of our competitive advantages, beginning with proprietary technology. Our customers' experience starts with a proprietary sales application known as home suite for residential services and biz suite for commercial. These platforms assist our field-based sales force in creating custom proposals tailored for each of our customers' needs. Our customers then benefit from a top-tier routing and scheduling program that helps efficiently and effectively schedule routes so we can optimize on several fronts, including time, fuel, mileage and more. Our commercial customers benefit from our Orkin InSite platform, which is a comprehensive customer portal that provides service data and analysis about their pest control program. Renee will be covering more about that later in detail. Our best-in-class sales team is driven by a nationwide network of call center agents who work for Orkin's customer contact center. And in addition, we have nearly 1,500 outside sales representatives who do a fantastic job of both acquiring new customers and increasing the average value of existing customers by bundling solutions to best protect customers' homes and businesses. We also have the benefit of having a nationwide network of more than 75 entomologists who help solve pest problems for our customers and assist in educating our team members in the field. Additionally, our team benefits from cross-brand leadership and expertise, making no pest problem too big for us to solve. All of our Orkin Pros receive a minimum of 160 hours of training before they hit the ground running, and this ensures they are equipped with the tools and knowledge to solve customer problems from day 1 in the field. We view training as a powerful tool for enhancing employee retention because it not only helps with skill development, but it is also paramount with career progression and job satisfaction. Beyond these competitive advantages mentioned, our brand reputation remains our biggest competitive advantage. Not only is the power of the Orkin brand well known, but it is also trusted by many. We are very proud of our average Google Star Rating of 4.7, which illustrates the commendable job our Pros are doing in the field. We also have processes in place to make sure that we're delivering on our customers and the promises we make to them daily. We regularly solicit Net Promoter Scores after services to determine how likely a customer is to recommend Orkin to a family member or a friend. This continuous feedback loop allows us to identify strengths as well as areas of opportunity to improve overall customer satisfaction. Keeping our competitive advantages in mind, I'd like to turn our attention to how Orkin is addressing the 4 strategic pillars Jerry mentioned earlier, beginning with people first. Within this area, there are several initiatives to ensure we attract, hire and retain the most talented workforce in the industry. As a veteran myself, one hiring initiative on which I'm particularly proud is our military veteran hiring initiative we announced late last year. We've committed that by our 125th anniversary in 2026, our goal is to double the number of military veterans in our workforce. We also remain dedicated to inclusion and leadership development. An example of this is through a newly launched business resource group called the Women's Impact Network. The purpose of this group is to support the advancement of women within Orkin through mentoring in both personal and professional development. Through the support and guidance of Rollins, our employees have several leadership development programs available for our high-potential leaders. One of these is a 12-month program focused on training mid-level leaders across the organization who will lead multiple business units and are preparing to lead at that level. This year, we have nearly doubled our investment in class size with the goal of creating a stronger leadership pipeline that supports our growth strategy. Additionally, we have leadership programs available for our frontline branch and service managers as their readiness is critical for both employee and customer retention goals. Our people-first strategy also positions our teammates as growth drivers for the business. We provide attractive growth-based compensation plans that are aligned with our strategy and their roles. All roles have opportunities to increase compensation through our robust commission and bonus structure. Recently, we deployed a challenge across the organization known as built for growth. This challenge is a company-wide initiative aimed to energize our team members and get them thinking about every aspect of their role with a growth mindset. Being built for growth is focused on improving performance with key targets like start rates, expanding the depth of relationships with current customers and optimizing route efficiency, to name just a few. With safety as Orkin's top value within our ethos, we are laser-focused on making sure our team members make it home safely each day or as we like to say, your most important destination is your last stop. We have many tools and resources in place, including driver safety technology to monitor our teammates' driving. Regularly reviewing these driving scores is embedded in the culture of our branch operations. We have continuous safety training with monthly safety toolbox talks, assigned e-learning training and safety tips at the start of every meeting. Our executive leadership team and Rollins Safety Council have a steadfast commitment to supporting our teammates' safety. The next strategic pillar to which we're aligned is having a growth mindset. Earlier, I talked a little about our new commercial division, which is a core component of our overall growth and market expansion strategy. This new structure aims at helping us capitalize on the significant multibillion-dollar estimated growth opportunity in the commercial market. In addition to restructuring our divisions, we also reorganized and expanded our national account structure to help better serve and partner with those businesses. We are currently in our second phase of this restructuring and are identifying branches with a high concentration of B2B customers so we can split these branches to create additional dedicated commercial operations. And during the third phase, we plan to create a second commercial division, optimizing leadership span of control while positioning ourselves for future growth. In short, our experience tells us that smaller armies move faster and help us win more business. Another opportunity for growth is offering additional value-added service offerings that increase customer value and deliver peace of mind. At the outset of our customers' relationships, we begin with a best-in-class inspection from the roofline to the foundation to help determine the best integrated pest management approach to providing whole-home protection. We partner with our customers to couple these services to their general pest control and encourage our sales and service teammates to bundle based on a thorough inspection. The more value-added services our customers have, the more likely they are to remain a customer. We offer in-house financing, which continues to be a differentiator from our regional competitors. We continue to evaluate our branch footprints to determine where operations can better serve current and future customers by being closer, and we see many advantages to splitting branches and regions. The first is better span of control for leadership to keep a pulse on what's happening in their markets. One example of this is a region that we recently split. They were operating with single-digit annual revenue increases. But after the split and adding more branches across the regions, revenue increased by approximately 15%. We have aggressive plans in place to continue these branch splits to better serve our customers. And another advantage is -- you know what, I think we are goofed up here on the speech. Let's keep coming up. All right. Stop right there. Come on back down. I'm sorry, you all. In the past 5 years, online searches for pest control or exterminator near me have increased approximately 40%. So additional locations also provide opportunities for career development, leadership opportunities for our teammates which feeds back to our people-first strategy. Moving to the next pillar, I'd like to spend some time talking about where we are with improving operational efficiencies. From a routing and scheduling perspective, our efforts have helped to save over 73 million miles, $16 million in associated fleet costs and more than 2.5 million hours of drive time for our Orkin Pros. I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention how we are using artificial intelligence to help leverage operational efficiencies. We recently adopted AI technology to help in several areas of our business including self-service appointment scheduling, intelligent call routing, natural language processing and predictive responses. Additionally, we're using AI to develop and deploy the redesign and more personalized experience for users on orkin.com and on Orkin's my account customer portal. I'm proud of Orkin's sustained commitment to our environment and to the communities where we provide service, our routing and scheduling efforts coupled with our fleet strategy are keeping environmental stewardship top of mind. We will continue adding hybrid and electric vehicles to our fleet as availability increases. Today, 15% of Orkin's fleet is comprised of hybrid vehicles, and we are also transitioning from gas-powered to electric-powered mosquito equipment. And finally, I'd like to close our time together by sharing a few efforts of which I'm especially proud. The first is our OrkinServes program, which is our employee-volunteer initiative that affords employees an opportunity to give back to the communities in which they live, work and play. Each year, Orkin branches across the country set aside time specifically for giving back to their local communities. Last year alone, nearly 1,700 Orkin teammates volunteered their time at 275 OrkinServes community events across the United States. Our teams are very creative and generous in their efforts to serve their local communities, and I can't help but brag a little bit about our team members' excitement about doing more as this program grows each year. Another effort that hits close to home for me is our partnership with the American Red Cross. The American Red Cross works tirelessly each day to supply 40% of our nation's blood supply. If like me, you've ever had a close friend or a loved one with a need to receive a blood donation, you understand how important that partnership is. At Orkin, we believe that mosquitoes don't deserve a drop, which is why we partner with the American Red Cross to help save lives on 2 fronts. Since 2020, coinciding with our mosquito season, Orkin has donated over $0.5 million to the American Red Cross. In addition to encouraging the public to donate blood and providing Orkin customers and teammates opportunities to give blood. Our goal is twofold, to help boost our country's blood supply while protecting people against the public health threats of mosquitoes. This year, we will be launching our fifth annual Mosquitoes Don't Deserve a Drop campaign, and we are looking forward to continuing and growing this partnership in the future. I hope our time together -- that you've learned a little bit more about Orkin and our people, our ethos, our future forward growth strategy, and how our alignment with Rollins' strategic vision will set the stage to be built for growth for many years to come. Thank you. And now to introduce our multi-brand approach, let me turn it over to Ken Krause.

Good morning, everybody. Great to see so many familiar faces in the crowd today. Before I start on the brand strategy, if I could, just for a moment, just summarize some of the things that you heard from Pat. Our people are engaged, they're focused, and they're very much aligned with our incentive compensation structure, clear down through the organization, which makes it a little bit easier to drive the strategy forward and execute successfully on those 3 key pillars that Pat had talked about. First and foremost, that commercial focus, the tremendous opportunity we have in the commercial area. The second area was the residential area. For those that are hockey fans, we have 9 shots on goal essentially with a homeowner and it makes it a really compelling story for us when we go into the home and able to provide those levels of services. And then last but not least, our brand strategy with smaller armies moving quicker, splitting branches, we're really seeing tremendous results there. It's really exciting, and I'm really looking forward to it. And as Pat had indicated, Orkin was acquired over 60 years ago. We continue to be very acquisitive since then building a very strong portfolio of brands that are focused on providing exceptional customer service. Whether it be our acquisition of Orkin Canada back in 1999, and we'll talk about that one in a little bit, or HomeTeam that we made in 2008 during the great financial crisis or Northwest in 2017, we have a really strong track record of acquiring very attractive brands, investing in them and then catalyzing significant growth in those models. In fact, we've invested over $1.2 billion in M&A over the last several years. And we see a tremendous opportunity as we think about the future and investing in growth through M&A. We compete in a very attractive, a large and a fragmented market. In the U.S. alone, we have well over 20,000 competitors that range in size. They range from under $1 million in annual revenue to well in excess of $1 billion in annual revenue. So it's a very fragmented and attractive market for us. And many of these players that are competing in this market are differentiated in terms of service offerings as well. Some are focused solely on commercial services. While the majority have a strong residential focus. Some are very much like us. We serve both commercial and residential customers. We've been successful, growing through M&A and are oftentimes referred to as what we call the acquirer of choice. We get that reputation due to our focus on preserving brands and onboarding new teams. And you'll hear about that as I go through the panel here in a little bit. Our focus on investing in our new team members is incredibly important to us. But we also are focused on keeping many of the brands that we acquire intact after the acquisition. You'll hear from a few of our brand leaders here shortly when I welcome them to the stage, we'll be discussing a number of things. We'll talk about how we invest in the growth of the acquired brand. You're going to hear from Northwest about how we've realized very balanced growth across M&A and organic activities. So we buy these platforms and then we provide capital that we can continue to grow these businesses. And we have a playbook. That playbook is working. We see continued opportunity to continue to execute on this strategy going forward. The playbook is focused on finding targets that we can partner with and grow. As I indicated earlier, our markets are fragmented, and this provides us a significant amount of runway to grow through acquisition. As a result, we have great discipline, and we can execute with great discipline and do not need to have any single opportunity, a really valuable position to be in. It helps us remain committed to our strategic rationale and ensure that we pay a fair value, a fair value for our acquisitions, both from a seller's perspective, but also from our own shareholders' perspective. We have a very healthy pipeline of opportunities. And as we evaluate them, we highly value the culture of the team we're acquiring. And you're going to hear a lot about culture when I bring my colleagues to the stage. Quite frankly, it's a threshold criteria for us. Once we're comfortable with the strategy and the culture of the potential partner, we pivot quickly and look at these acquisitions through 5 key financial criteria and metrics. We look at acquisitions first with a focus on growth. We ask ourselves whether or not the business can be accretive to our organic growth, can we invest in the growth of the business, and can we catalyze even stronger growth going forward? It's easy to grow a business in the first year or 2, or it's easier -- I shouldn't say it's easy, but it's easier. But when we look beyond that, the question is how does the business perform longer term. Is it going to accrete to our organic growth profile? Secondly, we look at the margins. And we ask whether or not we have an opportunity to accrete the margin profile through the acquisition. We want to buy businesses that can drive an improved margin profile for us. Third, can we realize earnings accretion in the first year. When we acquire a business, we focus on and ask ourselves, does the business take more capital? Is it more capital intensive? Cash generation is critical to us. And we want to make sure we're buying businesses that don't dilute our cash conversion and growth-related metrics. And last but not least, we focus on ROIC. And we ask whether or not we can exceed our cost of capital by the third year of the acquisition. As we consider our Fox acquisition from last year, our second largest acquisition in our history, we're seeing very solid returns. After buying the business for just over 13x, we're seeing year 1 performance at under 10x EBITDA. We're very much on track or ahead of schedule in substantially all categories that we hold ourselves accountable to. As we transition into our panel discussion, we're going to talk about our brands and what differentiates us. But we'll also talk about how we're positioned to continue to drive future success in these brands. I want to highlight 3 key things. First, we realize and appreciate the importance of having both national as well as local brands. You heard from Orkin, you heard from Pat at Orkin. You'll soon hear from Rob at Orkin Canada and how important the national brand is with many of our customers in that country. You'll also hear from HomeTeam as well as Northwest. HomeTeam is very much a national brand that serves new homebuilders. While Northwest is our local or regional brand that we see most often in the Southeastern United States. These brands give us what Jerry often refers to as the second bite at the apple with customers. And it also provides customers optionality for those that prefer to shop local. Second, our brands provide us multiple channels. You'll hear about how Northwest uses billboards. You'll hear about how HomeTeam is working with homebuilders and how Orkin Canada uses television advertising, especially during the NHL playoffs to drive awareness. And you heard about cross-sell when Pat was on the stage previously, but you'll hear about it again with our brands. Northwest will talk about the importance of green solutions and others will discuss the importance of mosquito service and the demand we're seeing and the strength of that business. So now if I can ask Brady, Rob and Jeff to join me on the stage for the panel discussion.

Great to have you guys up here with me and discussing all the great aspects of our business and the things we're focused on. And if we could just start with HomeTeam. Brady Camp heads up our HomeTeam business. Brady has been the President of HomeTeam since 2016, I think he succeeded Jerry. Didn't you...

That's right. That's right.

And so it's great to have Brady with me on stage. Brady is also involved and overseeing the Fox acquisition. And so as many of you know, we acquired Fox a little over a year ago now, and we put Brady in charge of that acquisition. Could you give the group an update in the audience, an update on how well -- or how the acquisition is going, Brady?

Right. That's exciting. You heard Jerry talk about some of the strategy, how we select acquisitions. And it does start with people. And when I got to visit last year, it's been a little bit over a year, first time visiting Fox. I was quite amazed at the culture, how similar it was to HomeTeam's and how important people were. So it got me really excited because that's kind of the culture at HomeTeam that we have. And it made it easy for me to make that transition, obviously, to work with people that are really people focused. And I would have to say at this point, the way they develop and train their people and their culture, I actually -- sometimes I was thinking am I visiting HomeTeam again? So it was very encouraging, and it was very exciting. And what we've been able to do working together with HomeTeam and Fox, to be able to share best practices, we're both very heavily residential, were both like door-knocking companies to grow our business. And the expertise that Fox has also on the door-knocking sales is exceptional. So we've been able to actually cross-train each of our sales departments to leverage the close rates and help us, as we'll talk a little bit later, about capture. But I would have to say at this point after a little bit over a year is Fox has definitely exceeded my expectations both in revenue and margin that I'd never thought we would be at this point.

That's great to hear. And you hear about people, our people focused culture. We see it firsthand when we look at our brands with HomeTeam and with Fox. And that business at HomeTeam, just transitioning a bit into the HomeTeam, that's a tremendous business. And when you look at that business, it's very much like the business that you referred to as a razor-razorblade system where you put in a system in a home that system will reside in that home for the life of the residents. But what happens at times is people move, as we all know, people move from a home and -- but those tubes stay in. And so you're focused on a concept called capture. I was at a sales team meeting in March, and it was capture, capture, capture. And so maybe if you could give the group an update and some insight into what that means, Brady.

Some of you have learned probably, from the overhead, about the Taexx. And I'd have to say, in my 40 years, being in this industry, I've never seen something that with the innovation that has come along since the Taexx system and delivery system. It's just fascinating. We've installed over 2 million of these installations. And it's turned into quite a game where we have to figure out how to get more capture, how to get more sales reps and balance that, but we've created our own lead source. And when I look back, I've been in this industry so long, I've just never seen such a lucrative and predictable business model. It's just fascinating to see. But with that installation you sometimes forget we do thousands of these installations. We're in thousands of subdivisions. And what that does -- I started as a technician. So I can't even imagine what it's like. Some of our technicians never leave a subdivision, where our builders -- this is a standard feature. This isn't like somebody choosing if they want to put it. The neighborhoods are thousands of subdivisions with our system in that. So that capture, capture, capture is key to us because we create our own lead source, we're predictable. One thing about -- I would have to mention about that is the productivity of technicians not leaving. They're so productive. They're efficient, they're effective. Now obviously, a lot of you know the importance of revenue growth and margin and improvement. And when you're going to almost every home in a subdivision and you see the productivity and what it does to your margins, it's phenomenal. It is phenomenal. So capture, capture, capture is where we're at. If we, at HomeTeam continue to focus on these 2 million tubes and we're -- thousands every year we're adding, just increasing 10% to 15% more capture, we will create within HomeTeam a top 20, 25 pest control company within our own organization. So it's a fascinating model.

Yes, it's tremendous. And you always talk about the focus on how you get the results. Oftentimes, it's not what the result is, but it's how you focus on getting the results. And again, when I was with you earlier in the year, I couldn't help but feel the culture in your organization. Could you just give the audience an update and some insight into what your culture is built upon?

Right. I think -- I think I've matured over the years, still growing in this business. And most companies are just focused on revenue and profits and margin. And for me, I've learned that it's even more important on how you got there. And when you start really focusing on your people and their training and the culture, and at HomeTeam, I have to say our culture, our foundation, and we use the word -- is -- a servant leadership. And what that is, is both corporately, regionally at the branch level, it's continuously talking about our values. Our #1 value is people focus, and our second one is commitment to serving others. And it goes right along with our servant leadership mentality and culture, but you really have to walk the walk. You don't want something on the wall and mission statements and people don't live it. And I think we've done a really good job. We see it in our employee satisfaction surveys. When you have 90% of your employees saying they are highly engaged, it's amazing what they will do as far as for the customer, for each other, to go above and beyond to help others win. And as we get better at that, I sleep really good at night not worrying about revenues and profit because we have such a highly engaged workforce, they go above and beyond for each other and the customers. And that is the real driver of HomeTeam and Fox. And we also have that driver in Rollins, being people focused. And it's a game changer to focus on that, and we get the results. I sleep really good at night.

Yes, that's good to hear, Brady. But the engagement level is incredibly important. You can't get those results without people wanting to come to work each and every day to serve the customer, and you see that firsthand in your business. If we could transition over into Orkin Canada, Rob Quinn is with us. Rob has been with us for over 2 decades. He joined the company through the acquisition of Orkin Canada. Orkin Canada is the #1 pest control service provider in Canada. It's focused primarily on commercial services, not as much on the residential side. It's got an incredible strong customer and employee retention. And it really does a nice job at leveraging the brand, but it also has a unique culture as well. And so when we look at, Rob, your culture, and you joined us through acquisition, why don't you talk a little bit about what that was like and how the -- what the culture is built upon?

Sure, sure. So very similar to Brady's group, the leadership team in Orkin Canada embraces. We've been modeling servant leadership for many years. And what we find with that is it allows our people to feel comfortable to come to us and try to push our company forward in a positive manner. And as leaders, we don't always have the greatest ideas but boy do our people ever have great ideas. And with us being in our position if we can bring those ideas to life, you create a workforce that is totally engaged in that business. And what we find is that when people are engaged and happy, they're very productive. And we're seeing a shift in that B2B customer where they want to partner with a service provider that treats their people properly. Because at the end of the day, they know that service person coming through that front door is going to give them a remarkable service. And that just -- again, we know that if we can keep our people engaged our employee tenure continues to rise. And if we keep our people, our customer retention is always there.

Yes. That retention levels are very healthy with the customers as well as on the employee. They go hand in hand. And when we look at your business, commercial is a big focus for us. And we've started to talk a lot more about commercial services with our investors and with our stakeholders. Could you just give the group a little bit of insight into what makes commercial so attractive?

Right, right. So for us, it is very attractive. That recurring model, it's 100% recurring. And when you live in a country that's covered with snow for 3 to 4 months of the year, that recurring model throughout those winter months allows us to stay strong and allows us to grow. And that's key. Our customers need us, and we're in their locations on a monthly basis. And at the end of the day, we're protecting their brand. In this day and age of social media, a commercial brand can take a hit very quickly. And I always brag to our people we're not only protecting our customers' brand, but we've got a brand there to protect as well. And that's where that partnership is created. And then through time, that partnership turns into a relationship. And that's the key, creating that relationship with the customer. And then what do you get from that? You get customers that have been with us for 8, 10, 12-plus years. Like just this past week, I was fortunate enough to attend a retirement celebration with one of our Orkin Pros, and he's been with us for 40 years, and as we were reminiscing, he had mentioned to me about the customers that he serviced today that he had when he started in 1984. So that's pretty cool.

Yes. It's a great business and a great example of how valuable that business is. When you look at your business, we also are focused on organic growth, but as well as M&A. And we've started to step up the M&A investments we're making in your region. And maybe if you could just give the group, some insight and an update on that.

Sure. So we really started to focus on this a couple of years ago. And at the start, it was a lot of networking, getting into industry functions, conferences, educational sessions. And it wasn't just to go out to say, "We want to buy." It was to get out to show people who Orkin Canada was, what our values were. Get them to know myself as well, what I stood for. And -- because remember, when we typically make these acquisitions, we're talking a lot of the times to a husband and wife that have poured their life into that business. And we need to respect that. As you mentioned earlier, Rollins purchased PCO services back in '99. I was with PCO. And I had only been with the company for 5 years, and I remember that feeling of uneasiness. But to this day, I still remember when the Rollins family and the Rollins leadership came into the meet and greet and assured us we would be safe and the benefits that they would bring. 25 years later, we're still here. So yes...

Proof is in the -- proof is in the pudding, so to speak, right?

So I take those experiences and apply those today. When we're meeting people, I just go back to those days when I was in their seat, and it makes a difference. And the last 3 deals we've made, Orkin has been the only company at the table so that tells me we pay a fair price, but more importantly, that ownership, those sellers, they trust us with their company and their people.

The seller equation very much includes price, but it also includes how we treat people and brands. And that's a perfect segue into Jeff Dunn's area with Northwest. Jeff is a Co-President of Northwest. Northwest is our Southeastern brand that we acquired back in 2017. We've seen tremendous growth come through that model, 3 to 4x the revenue we acquired in 2017 is what we have today. And we've enabled that growth through both M&A but also organic growth. And we'll explore that a bit. But before we do, Jeff was part of the acquisition. Jeff was at Northwest. He's been with Northwest for over 2 decades. And so he joined us through that acquisition. Could you just give us some insight into what it was like to be acquired by Rollins, Jeff?

Yes. First, it's an honor to be here to represent the extraordinary teammates at Northwest. When we were acquired back in 2017, we were very much a family-owned business. And the Phillips family sought out Rollins. And Jerry was our leader at that time, and Jerry said, "Trust us. We'll give you autonomy. You guys can be Northwest, we'll provide resources so that you can scale." And 6.5 years later, we've more than tripled our revenue. We've got opportunities for our teammates that we would have never had before. We've done 15 acquisitions since becoming a part of Rollins. So it's been an incredible experience. And I think one of the advantages we have when we do acquisitions now is we have the empathy. We've been through it. We were excited, but nervous, optimistic, but skeptical, and we can tell that story to that prospect that's looking to sell his business.

That's phenomenal. And part of that story includes your culture. And when I come to Northwest, I certainly feel a different culture. Why don't you give the group an update and some insight into the culture at Northwest and what that means?

I appreciate you saying you can feel it because we talk with that with our leaders. Each service center has its own culture, and if not intentional, it can drift and get away from the vision that we want for our teams. So we're very intentional about it. It doesn't just happen. We put a name on it each year. So this year, it's called For in '24. So it keeps it very simple for our leaders. We're for team, for customers, for community and for growth. So when we're concentrated on creating extraordinary experiences for our leaders and they for their teammates and they for their customers, it makes a great formula. The community piece is probably what brings us together most. We have teammates who look to do service out in the community. We get out there together. It connects our teammates. It connects our teammates to the purpose of Northwest, connects us into our communities as well. The growth piece is a nonnegotiable. We will grow, but we believe that, that growth begins first with the individual. So Rollins has lots of leadership development resources that we're privy to and that we get to share with the companies that we acquire, and it's definitely a force multiplier for good. But, yes, the culture is so important. And with our acquisitions, they go well because of our teammates at our teammate support center. They are there to support the acquisitions. And without that, these acquisitions would not go as they do, but it's the power of the people there.

I'll never forget when I joined the company back in 2022, I met with Gary Rollins. And one of the first things he said to me was we're a people company. We're a people-focused company. And it just resonated with me, and you can hear it here today. The other thing that maybe we can explore a bit Jeff, in your area, which is unique, is the demand we're seeing from sustainable or green solutions in Northwest. Primarily your -- it's your primary service offering, if I remember correctly. And so maybe if you could just provide the group a bit of an update there.

Yes. So we've led with green services for a while in our service offerings to our customers. And we see that they continue to ask for more green services. So we're able to bundle those green services together and our team is hard at work innovating those services, coming up with more that we can package together. And we learn from each other. We're all friends up here, but we're competitive with each other. Our teammates are competitive with each other. So we share best practices. One thing we're proud of is with our homebuilders, we started doing Taexx. We've learned from Brady and his team, too, we're able to go out there offer that and then that's a chance to sell additional green services like Ken was talking about.

That's fantastic. Thanks, guys, for being with me today and sharing a bit about your businesses. I really appreciate it, and it was super helpful. Thank you.

That's great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to take a break, a 15-minute break, and we'll start back promptly at 10:20. Enjoy the break. [Break]

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back Lyndsey Burton.

Hi, everyone. We are planning to restart our conference and webcast. Please take your seats. And now I'd like to introduce our Vice President of Marketing for Orkin USA Cam Glover.

Good morning. Over the past 2 decades, I've had the privilege of contributing to Orkin's position as the brand leader in the pest control industry. I'm here today to talk to you about the strong foundation that Rollins has built and how we have positioned ourselves for sustained growth. I'd like to spend a little more time talking about how our portfolio brands are designed to maximize revenue by capitalizing on key geographies, operating in unique verticals, leveraging different marketing strategies and expanding our geographic footprint. While our focus is always on pest control, there is a uniqueness across the family of brands. We categorize them into 4 different areas. You heard Pat talk about Orkin's national footprint, but we also have a collection of brands that have a strong regional presence. Clark is concentrated in California, Western and Waltham are in pockets of the Northeast. OPC is in Kentucky. And as you heard from Jeff Dunn, Northwest Exterminating is a leading brand in the Southeastern United States. Second, we have brands with a specialized focus. Trutech and Critter Control operating in the nuisance wildlife space and are the 2 largest brands in this area. IFC is in the food protection business and focuses solely on serving commercial customers. IFC helps protect their customers' brand reputation and plays a key role in the safety of the food, our families eat. The third category are brands that sell through unique channels. Brady talked about how HomeTeam has built its impressive business by partnering with homebuilders to implement pest control through a novel application of tubing that is installed into the walls during the new construction process. And the latest acquisition, Fox Pest Control, built their business with feet on the street, adding route density with new customers through door-to-door sales efforts. Lastly, there are international brands, most of which leverages the significant brand equity of the Orkin name. Across our Rollins family of brands, each team leverages different marketing strategies and tactics to drive sales growth. These advertising investments are allocated differently across our brand portfolio, depending on each brand's go-to-market strategy. Here, you'll see an overview of several of our brands and the varied allocations for marketing investments. Brand A, for example, leans most heavily on performance marketing, while Brand C has a more even split between performance and brand building and Brand F is primarily investing in B2B marketing efforts. This enables a balanced and disciplined approach to acquiring customers and insulates Rollins from being overly reliant on any given channel in order to acquire new customers. As a family of brands, our marketing teams routinely share best practices and market intelligence, and we're excited at the opportunity in front of us when we establish a data foundation that will enable us to extract a single version of truth when analyzing prospect and customer data across the organization. For nearly 125 years, Orkin has stood as a bastion of reliability in pest control, safeguarding customers with an unwavering commitment to rid homes and businesses of pests. As such, we have a deep bench of brand assets that our competitors simply cannot match. The red diamond logo, the Orkin Pro, our iconic uniforms and our standardized fleet are not just symbols, they are the embodiments of trust and quality in pest control. I'll spend the next few minutes talking about how we leverage the power of the Orkin brand. In this category, awareness equals credibility and credibility equals trust. This is why the Orkin Pro is such a strong brand asset. You aren't just hiring a pest control service, you're inviting a stranger into all areas of your home or business to treat for pests, and you can't trust just anyone with that responsibility. According to YouGov, a leading company for international data and analytics, Orkin's fame, which is defined as a percentage of people who have heard of the brand, is the highest in our industry. While many pest control companies battle at the bottom of the purchasing funnel, the strength of the Orkin brand allows us to be highly efficient with our performance marketing efforts. As an example, 50% of Orkin's customers that joined us last year did not consider another provider in their search for pest control. Said another way, half of our customers came directly to us. Simply put, the awareness and credibility that exists with the Orkin brand serves as a shortcut to decision-making. Orkin's marketing plan prioritizes digital media, taking cues from shifting consumer behaviors. Just 5 years ago, 50% of our advertising plan was directed to more traditional media. Today, the brand building plan is over 90% digital, which allows for more precise targeting and the ability to shift spending and optimize our investments. In other words, our media plan has built-in agility and flexibility. This data dynamic forms the foundation of our marketing approach, which is centered around the customer. We are thinking about our marketing efforts in 2 ways. The first is designed to build the brand to maximize future demand and the second is designed to capture the present demand by winning the battle for people actively searching for pest control. We aim to maximize productivity through automation and leveraging the suite of analytical models that balance daily rigor, and our longer-term strategic vision. This helps identify interest and affinities, local and regional preferences, purchasing behaviors, social activities and more. Then we layer in research, demographic and household data to create as close to 1:1 marketing as possible. Our analytics models provide short-term evaluations and daily readouts focused on paths to conversion and multitouch attribution. This, coupled with our ongoing measurement plans ensures we maintain proper attribution tracking and provides us with a cohesive measurement plan. These models also allow in-market testing to determine incrementality and successful tactics. We believe our team's analytical rigor is an engine that helps drive business growth. We take a full funnel strategy to capture and convert demand. We want to build brand connections by driving awareness and familiarity of Orkin services to win more than our fair share. National cross-channel videos, such as linear cable, streaming video and YouTube allows us to accelerate awareness and reach our audiences at scale. We have an engaged and compelling advertising in market ahead of peak season on highly endemic sites, targeting homeowners to build awareness and drive consideration. On our website, we put the unique value proposition of the Best in Pests and Reasons to Believe at the forefront to personalize and convert website visitors. Vigilant and rigorous performance marketing efforts within paid search, SEO and through affiliates are focused on -- to efficient -- focused on efficiently capture new customers searching for pest control. Throughout this journey, we also leverage digital, social and video extensions, surrounding our target audiences across their various screens and making connections with our category of intenders. Like our consumer audience, we take a similar approach with B2B audiences to help them know, consider, purchase and continue to do business with us. In the awareness phase, we are leveraging paid and earned media, LinkedIn social media network, online search and educational resources such as videos and targeted webinars. Once a business moves into the consideration phase, we target them with service specific campaigns and prospect e-mail marketing to nurture them. Through the lead nurturing process, we provide further sales materials and equip our sales force with industry toolkits and service refreshers to optimize their success in making the sale. Once a customer, they'll receive regular education and cross-sell e-mails to help keep them engaged and at the forefront of what their business needs from a brand-protection perspective. In 2022, we launched our current advertising campaign called the Best in Pests. It is centered on the idea that in the vulnerable moment of needing pest control, you don't just need anyone. You need an Orkin Pro. A pro trained like nobody else backed by nearly 125 years of experience and powered by solutions grounded in science. A pro you trust will get the job done because when it comes to pests, there's nothing like being the Best in Pests. Now I'd like to be -- like to take a couple of minutes to share a few highlights from this highly successful campaign. [Presentation]

After launching this campaign, research shows that 84% of homeowners exposed to the creative had a more positive impression of the Orkin brand after viewing. This campaign was also the announcement of our shift to referring to our technicians as the Orkin Pro, elevating the position both internally and externally and instilling an extra level of pride with our frontline employees. As you just saw, one of the videos featured a wrong pro, who is a professional Irish dancer, a real professional Irish dancer. This commercial is named by iSpot.tv, as one of the top 20 funniest creatives the year it was introduced. Most importantly, coupled with effective media plan, this campaign has helped drive a 15% increase in brand awareness and consideration with our target audience. In addition to paid media, the power of the Orkin brand affords us significant earned media exposure. Not only are we known as experts in the field of pest control like businesses and consumers, the media also gives us this authority. For those unfamiliar with the term earned media, it is publicity or exposure gained through nonpaid means such as pitching our expertise with journalists across well-known news outlets and content publishers. Last year, Orkin was quoted or featured in articles and publications that resulted in almost 30 billion impressions. Obviously, this is significant and was 5x greater than our nearest competitor. I have another video for you. Here's a fun recap showing some of the earned media exposure that our top cities list have generated over the past few years. [Presentation]

The Orkin brand affords us significant online cloud as well. Search engines and consumers alike, the orkin.com is an authority on pest-related information. years of extensive search engine optimization work has resulted in orkin.com having the highest domain authority score, the greatest number of referring domains and the largest share of site traffic in the pest control industry. As you've probably gathered, we are laser focused on the efficiency and effectiveness of our marketing activities. From a performance marketing perspective, we actively manage our investments and focus acutely on increasing our return on ad-spend or ROAS. The team continuously evaluates performance data, which informs our marketing investments to ensure we acquire the most profitable customers. Once someone makes it orkin.com or our call center and then becomes a customer, we remain focused on the experience. We have implemented online chat to help the residential buyer make an informed decision, especially those who prefer chat over a phone call. We also make e-commerce available for these buyers, and we are continuously testing and revamping this function to make it both easy and informative. Our online customer portal, my account on orkin.com allows customers to keep track of past and upcoming service visits, make payments and adjust their scheduling for their specific needs. Our brand also gives us permission to greater -- to gain a greater share of wallet with customers and we establish trust very early on. Once we start with a core service offering, customers are more willing to add additional services once they've been delighted with the level of service they're receiving. As Pat mentioned, another successful approach has been to bundle common services, such as pest control and mosquito from the outset of the relationship. We look for ways to increase their value and stickiness with the brand by offering complementary offerings and solutions such as mosquito service, termite service and a variety of our ancillary services like insulation, moisture control and gutter protection. In addition to providing an educational content to reinforce the importance of ongoing pest protection. We also have a robust pricing and analytics discipline, which helped us strategically approach pricing from various angles, while considering various factors such as customer profile, geography, cost to serve and other influencing factors. In our short time together, I hope you've been able to gain a better understanding of how Rollins' multi-brand, multichannel marketing approach helps drive our success. Between the power of the Orkin brand, a disciplined approach to our marketing investment and a focus on building and deepening customer relationships, Rollins and the Orkin brand are poised for ongoing success. Thank you. And now it's my pleasure to introduce our Chief Technology Officer, Renee Pearson.

Thank you, Cam. Good morning. Our executive team has shared great insights and opportunities for the company and our brands, many of which are enabled by technology. So although not a technology company, technology is a key enabler in achieving our business strategy. To start, let's review our approach and technology investments. Our technology investments are integrated into the business strategy and tied to key objectives. Investments have clear business outcomes, a focus on capabilities that strengthen our service and experiences for our customers and better serve our employees. And instead of trying to keep pace with the latest trends, Rollins drives technology innovation in anticipation of customer demand and business goals. For example, Rollins recently made a commitment to invest in BOSS capabilities that mature both internal employee and customer experiences. A baseline of current KPIs was captured with the creation of a full business case, taking into account all aspects of technology, data, business process and projected outcomes to develop an ROI. This business case and investment will be monitored during and post implementation to measure business value realization and impact. Understanding this approach, let's review key technology initiatives aligned to our business objectives of people first, customer loyalty, growth mindset and operational efficiency. You heard Jerry speak earlier about the history of the Rollins platform, which covered brand acquisitions over the years. Each acquisition brought its own technology, naturally expanding the technology footprint and increasing the complexity at Rollins. In the past, we've always ensured that brands were secure, and completed data integration for reporting and [ month-end ] close needs. Acquired brands then continue to operate with their existing technology, consolidating and rationalizing when an opportunity arose versus planned out at the time of acquisition or close. Allowing brands to continue with their existing technology minimized any disruption to the brand and allowed them to continue to run their normal processes and technology post-acquisition. Over the past year, the acquisition integration approach has shifted. We have greater focus and efforts on rationalizing and standardizing technology capabilities especially when a technology is not brand differentiating. Simplifying the technology footprint will provide the foundation for a more seamless onboarding, greater collaboration across the company and truly harness the power of our multi-brand approach. And with Rollin's continued growth, we can maximize our size and scale to gain greater efficiencies. A technology onboarding playbook will provide a structured approach and plan to consistently apply once a deal is closed. The goal is to minimize the length of time, complexity and duplicate capabilities and spend exist, and accelerate the onboarding to standard services and enterprise applications. A plan and playbook will drive discipline, focus and consistency to achieve cost savings and efficiencies that much sooner. Also, process standardization of already acquired brands will create more opportunities to rationalize applications. We have already realized significant cost savings in software licensing when leveraging Rollins' size and negotiating on behalf of the enterprise versus a single brand only. Finally, we are building out Rollins technology shared services. Where technology is not brand differentiating, for example, infrastructure, mobile device management, networking, we want to reduce costs and align shared service delivery to support all the brands. Shared services will provide greater efficiencies, optimize services, improve margins and enhance controls for standard foundational capabilities. More importantly, this will also allow brands to focus on operations and servicing their customers and employees versus focusing on technology. Now let's focus a bit more on customers. As I mentioned in our technology investment approach, we prioritize capabilities that will better serve our customers. Today, I will highlight 3 examples of customer-centric initiatives, including cross-brand customer intelligence. Our own homegrown commercial customer portal called InSite and new capabilities to evolve our BOSS platform. Let's start with cross-brand customer intelligence. Data has long been viewed as an asset. However, Rollins has a distinct advantage in the depth and breadth of data that collectively our brands provide. We have a tremendous opportunity to gain insights through cross-brand analysis. For example, understanding more about our customer journey and behaviors is extremely powerful within one brand, let alone being able to perform customer analysis across the Rollins portfolio. As Cam mentioned, we are building a single view of the customer, which is an untapped opportunity to date. Also related to data, is a custom-built dashboard for our commercial customers called InSite, which you heard Pat speak about earlier. InSite is a web reporting capability unique to commercial customers that equips them with service information, alerts and a multitude of reporting and analytical capabilities. To demonstrate the capabilities, let's watch a brief video. [Presentation]

Customers consistently provide feedback on the value of InSite. And they also help influence the future capabilities and product development. Rollins will continue to invest in InSite, especially with our focus on commercial growth and the new division launched earlier this year. Finally, investments are being made in evolving the BOSS platform and capabilities. With the initial investment, customer and call center agent experiences will become more seamless, as we mature from a multichannel to omnichannel environment. None of the goals and objectives I touched on previously could be done without the talent of our people. Given the high rate of acquisitions, we need to deliver exceptional end-user and employee experiences and minimize disruption in the acquisition and onboarding process. The Rollins IT organization was restructured to better align with business needs and operations. This restructuring created a focus on M&A technology integration, again, this is directly tied to the acquisition strategy and onboarding, IT business partnership and relationship management across the brands and unified our shared services team to strengthen our enterprise standard service offerings. Finally, I could not let this opportunity go by without addressing artificial intelligence. It continues to gain popularity and adoption with significant investments being made by technology and software companies, many of whom we partner with. Rollins will always value the human element in our employee and customer experiences. But there are use cases such as call routing at the call center, which have shown efficient and positive customer experiences. In some scenarios, it is the preferred method of engagement by customers. Given that, the Orkin call center will continue to assess its call center capabilities, and consideration for new uses of AI. Internally, we have also explored use cases around personal productivity and gaining efficiency in day-to-day tasks such as building summarization, performing initial data analysis or identifying trends and conducting initial contract reviews. No matter the use case or benefits, Rollins will remain disciplined in its technology investment approach, whether it be in AI or other technology as well as keep security and acceptable use a top priority. In summary, technology serves as a key enabler in achieving Rollins' strategic objectives and growth. Our investment and focus will remain disciplined and aligning to our business strategy, providing differentiating and exceptional customer and employee experiences, focused on driving cost savings and efficiency gains and delivering effective acquisition onboarding and integration to support our growth strategy. Thank you. I'll now turn it over to our EVP and CFO, Ken Krause.

It was really a helpful discussion there. When you look at the discussion this morning, we had Pat who's been in the business for just quite some time, leading Orkin and tremendous industry experience. And then with the brands, you've got a seasoned marketing professional in Cam, really impressive when we look at his slide on the diversification across the ways that we reach customers. And then you've got Renee, who joined the company just a couple of years ago, along with myself, right around the same time. Really refreshing to partner with a person like Renee as she brings a new focus on IT and partnering with the business. Really exciting time to be here. And as you heard throughout the course of the conversation this morning, we're well positioned to leverage our competitive advantages to extend this leadership position that we're benefiting from. I'm going to spend my time with you sharing more about our powerful model for shareholder value creation and how this should translate into future financial results. Jerry kicked the conversation off earlier discussing our focus is on compounding. And that's been a hallmark of ours for well over 20 years. Since 2000, we've delivered a 7% revenue CAGR, a 14% adjusted EBITDA CAGR, cash flow has grown at 18% and an average annual total shareholder return of over 20%. Turning to the next slide. What I've tried to do here is to isolate several time periods to further highlight key operating stats over a 1-, a 3- and a 10-year time frame. In more recent years, we've seen an acceleration of growth. Our earnings continue to inflect higher and cash flow performance has been exceptionally strong. Our focus on continuous improvement has yielded a very healthy improvement in EBITDA margin over these time periods. And maybe the most compelling slide here is the consistency of performance through various economic cycles. Our business is highly resilient and downside capture is much better than most. Whether it be the great financial crisis of 2008, the industrial slowdown in 2015 when oil went from $125 to under $30 a barrel or throughout the recent pandemic. Our business continued to perform very well with healthy levels of revenue and earnings growth. This consistency in performance, the resiliency in demand and our continuous improvement and performance has driven exceptional returns for our shareholders. Looking at our performance in over 2 decades, our average annual TSR is in excess of 20%, with significant outperformance relative to the S&P 500 over that same time period. We're very proud of these results and the business model that has helped support them. What I hope that you've heard today from the presentations is our conviction that our market, our business is well positioned to continue to grow in this very attractive market and deliver exceptional results. You've heard us discuss several key initiatives designed to leverage our distinct competitive advantages to capitalize on attractive market opportunities and drive above-market rate of organic growth. While there is considerable runway to continue to grow share in the U.S. market, we're also focused on building out our platforms in international markets where we already have a meaningful presence. We have a robust pipeline of attractive M&A opportunities, and that should continue to fuel growth through accretive acquisitions. Beyond our organic and M&A growth opportunities, in a moment, I'll discuss key areas of focus that we've identified to drive continued margin expansion. As Jerry mentioned, we're fortunate to operate in an attractive industry that's large, it's fragmented and continues to grow. The global pest control market is estimated to be in excess of $20 billion today. But we believe that the opportunity set is much more broader than that. Our service is focused on protecting our customers' health, their property and their brands, which for most home and business owners represents the most valuable and most important assets. As a result, people are willing to invest in the maintenance of these assets and various secular tailwinds increasingly underscore the essential nature of our services. As we discussed earlier, our multi-brand approach positions us for above-market growth, where we can build on existing brand recognition to foster loyalty and maximize our reach in the customers. This gives us that second bite at the apple. It's beyond Orkin's national footprint, and it helps us effectively compete throughout the country and satisfy different customer preferences. We're also able to leverage these brands and their different go-to-market strategies to acquire customers using a multichannel approach which brings really nice balance to our business and further enhances cross-sell opportunities across the portfolio. And as you heard during our brands discussion, we've built a premier portfolio of brands through disciplined and strategic M&A. The runway for continued growth from acquisitions in the future is supported by a robust pipeline of opportunities that exist in a highly fragmented and growing market. Our reputation as an acquirer of choice and the successful M&A track record that we've built over several years positions us very well with potential sellers that share in our philosophy and our values. And our focus on building out a best-in-class shared services that Renee spoke a bit about and our organization and a strong refinement of our M&A playbook should continue to enhance our ability to be an even better acquirer of companies into the future. Turning to our margin opportunities. Over the last 10 years, we've delivered a healthy amount of leverage through a combination of natural operating leverage in the business as well as some intentional steps that we've taken to drive productivity. As we think about the future and our focus, it remains on 3 key priorities. First, better aligning our pricing strategy to the value of our essential services. While we have seen good price performance over time, there's certainly opportunities here. And second, we continue to focus on optimizing our cost structure. Our pay-for-performance compensation model that we spoke about earlier and the scale advantages that we have provide us with an opportunity to further leverage our cost of services and drive gross margins higher. And third, our ongoing commitment to a continuous improvement mindset with specific focus on our back-office operations should continue to yield results. Beginning with gross margin, we can influence the margin levels in 2 primary ways: Through our pricing and through our cost of services. On the pricing front, we believe in a proactive pricing strategy that realizes the essential nature of the services we've been talking about all morning. Our focus, again, is on protecting the customer's property, the health of the customer as well as the brands. As a result, our services are increasingly becoming a must-have versus a nice-to-have. Pest control also represents a relatively low portion of the home maintenance wallet with many opting to pay someone to manage these services for them versus doing it themselves. And as others have mentioned, the essential nature of professional pest control management is further heightened in the commercial realm, given the high cost of failure that exists should a business encounter a pest problem. As we look at our pricing experience, we've begun to take a more proactive approach relative to history. And our historical price actions were typically in the 1% to 2% range at or below the CPI levels. In more recent years, we've begun to leverage data and analytics to better inform our understanding of price elasticity at a market level. We manage pricing more centrally today than we have in the past while still relying on that localized insight that helps support the market-based approach. Meaning we look at data across each brand drilling down to the ZIP+4 level to ensure we're considering customer attributes and local market factors. We overlay that information with customer cancellation and rollback activity. As we consider this, our expectation is very much grounded in a CPI plus, a CPI plus pricing model going forward. Turning now to the cost side of margin. There are 2 key points here that I'd like to make. First, we're focused on managing inflation in our input costs at or below CPI levels. This should provide an opportunity to leverage volume through the business model. Second, within our 4 main cost categories, people, fleet, materials and supplies and insurance and claims. The first 3 that are bracketed here make up the majority of our cost of services and represents our largest opportunity as we go into the future. We have initiatives to better leverage our fleet. For people costs, the variable comp model that I spoke about earlier that we've had in place for some time is very much an advantage for us. Technicians have a tremendous opportunity to share in the upside of our business. And we, in turn, can manage wage inflation much more effectively. We've also taken steps to work more closely with our vendors to better leverage scale advantages and drive improvements within the materials and supplies category of our P&L. And while we've seen many -- and while, as many have, seen higher inflation in insurance and claims, we've taken a proactive approach there as well. As you heard, we have an unrelenting focus on improving our safety culture. Our focus is to get our team members home safely each and every day. And the work we're doing to drive behavior-based safety initiatives and training throughout the company is incredibly important to us. We anticipate that this will help us mitigate some of the headwinds associated with insurance claims experience that we've experienced in recent years. Now let's turn the page and look at the income statement a little bit more closely, driving down into SG&A. SG&A currently represents almost 30% of our revenue. When we benchmark that against others, it appears to represent an opportunity. Compared to more route-based peers, our SG&A spend is roughly 330 basis points more. And relative to other industrial peers, we spend almost 700 basis points more in this category. As a result, we've increased our focus in the area with a goal of, first, improving productivity by modernizing our back-office operations, and Renee spoke a lot about that. You continue to hear us speaking a lot about that. But -- and second, we're focused on freeing up resources because we want to reinvest those resources in growth initiatives. Those initiatives are aimed at capitalizing and growing in this very attractive industry that we continue to compete in. Looking closer at the initiatives, we spend roughly 60% of our SG&A on administrative costs, while approximately 40% is spent on the selling and marketing areas. In other words, approximately 18% of every dollar of revenue earned gets spent on back-office support today. We see an opportunity to enact incremental change in this area in the future. As a result, late last year, we executed our first restructuring program at our home office in more than 2 decades to effectuate some change. We've upgraded the talent profile of our team, which is helping to drive initiatives aimed at improving processes, as well as systems to help reduce cost and increase productivity. There are a number of new team members in the room today, and I'd encourage you if you have some time to take some time to interact with them. They're bringing a tremendous amount of new energy to our already strong business, and I'm looking forward to the results that they'll drive in the future. Speaking of results, this slide highlights steps we're taking to reinvest some of our back-office savings into growth initiatives. It's certainly good to see that not only in 2023 but here in the early part of 2024, a healthy portion of the savings that we're seeing in administrative costs are being redeployed into selling and marketing resources, helping drive strong revenue growth. As I mentioned earlier, our returns have been attractive. So while the cost savings are near and dear to us, funding growth initiatives is our primary focus. Transitioning to cash flow and our balance sheet. We've consistently compounded cash flow at a double-digit rate. This is enabled through, first, our profitability improvements as we've consistently compounded earnings at a very strong pace. Second, we have a very capital-light business model. While we may invest in CapEx programs from time to time, net working capital is often at or below negative 5% of sales and CapEx averages less than 1% of sales. Let me repeat that. It's worthy of repeating. We have a negative working capital as oftentimes customers pay us in advance of receiving their service. As a result, earnings have continued to compound and convert to cash at well above 100%, which we then reinvest in our business and use to provide meaningful returns to our shareholders. Looking closer at the balance sheet, our cash flow profile has enabled us to maintain very modest levels of leverage. After I joined, back in 2022, we put in place a revolver that provides us an appropriate level of variable rate financing. And today, we have roughly 0.5x of leverage and ample capacity to grow our business and while maintaining that balanced and very disciplined approach to capital allocation. Capital allocation is a key focus of ours at Rollins, and we have a strong track record of returning capital while investing in the growth of our business. Since late 2022, we've transitioned from a special dividend to prioritize a regular, more consistent recurring dividend, which we've increased by 45% since the fourth quarter of that year. Our focus is to continue to grow the dividend and as our earnings and cash flow compounds. Also, we have a share repurchase program in place with the remaining authorization of just over 11 million shares, which equates to approximately $500 million today. Additionally, we repurchased $300 million of stock during the secondary offering last year, last September, and that investment has paid off nicely with an IRR of nearly 40%. We'll continue to evaluate share repurchases from time to time, but our priority is investing in our growth. As you see here, we've deployed $1.2 billion in capital in M&A over the past several years, and this investment is providing very attractive returns. As I mentioned earlier, our investment in Fox last year already has an adjusted multiple under 10x and our trading multiple approximates 30. So how should all of these initiatives and focus that we've highlighted today translate into financial performance? In the near term, for 2024, we continue to expect organic growth in the range of 7% to 8%, with additional growth of M&A of at least 2%. We anticipate that total revenue will grow in a range of 9% to 11% with incremental margins approaching 30%. Additionally, cash flow will continue to convert at a rate that is well above 100%. Turning to a more medium- to long-term growth algorithm. The story remains consistent. Given the conditions that we're seeing today in the market, coupled with our opportunities around continued execution and initiatives to drive incremental change throughout our business we believe that we're positioned to continue to outperform the overall industry. We believe that we can continue to deliver a base case of mid- to high single-digit organic growth annually. Additionally, growth from M&A should be in the low to mid-single-digit rate. Earnings should grow as a multiple of our revenue, and we are focused on delivering incremental margins in that 30% to 35% range. We should continue to convert cash flow at well above 100%, which would then translate to free cash flow growth that outpaces our earnings growth. Our views for our medium-term growth algorithm are largely in line with the trajectory of performance that has been the hallmark of Rollins as a financial compounder. And it reflects the potential for continued inflection in earnings and cash flow growth as we drive incremental change throughout our business. We hope that our discussions today have reinforced our powerful model for shareholder value creation and underscores that for Rollins, the best is yet to come.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to take our final break of the morning. We'll start back with our question-and-answer session at 11:20. Enjoy your break. [Break]

Okay. We will now be moving to our Q&A session with the broader team. We have 2 of my colleagues that will have microphones. If you have a question, please raise your hand and wait until the microphone gets to you. We want those joining us on the web to be able to hear your question. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Also, please state your name and the firm that you're with before asking your question. Thank you, and let's get started.

Tim Mulrooney, William Blair. I think my first question is probably for Pat on standing up the commercial locations. You talked about that earlier. I think historically, Rollins has combined -- or Orkin specifically has combined commercial and residential together. What led to the decision to split out those commercial branches? Can you talk a little bit about the pros and the cons and kind of what ultimately led to the split? We see competitors do it different way. So curious what -- why you guys decided to do that?

Sure, Tim. Thank you. Really, what led to it is it comes down to post realignment, we see for the first time in a while, we've got our commercial regions in the Pacific now talking to and collaborating with our commercial regions in the Northeast and in the Southeast, South Central. And when you look at the focus now that this group has and the training, the scalability, it's impactful. So we -- there's just there's strong alignment with this.

It's interesting. Scott Weaver is here as well. He heads up our commercial business. And so he's with us today. But it's interesting. It's really been, Pat, all about focus, right? Scott's focus, and it's not like we're creating infrastructure around the country. We're actually leveraging the same branch network but we're focusing the efforts in those various business lines. And so I think that's an important thing as we think about that to be considering.

Got it. Is this on? There you go. As my follow-up, which is completely unrelated, but I'll call it my follow-up, so I can fit it in. For Cam -- I think for Cam. I really liked that slide on splitting branches. I think it was during Pat's presentation, but I thought it was interesting this 15% revenue growth after the split. I think we all understand the revenue growth aspect of splitting a branch. But I was actually interested in how you think about splitting branches from a cost of customer acquisition perspective. This bullet here really struck me, 40% increase in near-me searches with Google in the past 5 years. Curious how you think about that from a digital marketing perspective.

Sure. Yes. To be honest, I got really excited when Pat talked about how he wanted -- he's really approached it from the angle of span of control and figures, limiting that span of panic control makes us more effective. And -- but I got excited because that we're probably going to have more branches in closer proximity to customers. It's actually been a frustration, I guess, for most route-based businesses on how important proximity is considering we'll drive out there, right? It was built more for destination businesses, but -- yes, I -- and those are essentially free listings, right? And so the more we can get through that channel in digital, the lower the costs are. So it's advantageous.

Just think about how dense a fully-scaled branch is. And when you separate it, the new customers that you now can access that you otherwise wouldn't be able to access, or you weren't focused on accessing because you were focused on taking care of that branch. And that's been an incredible part of it as well.

Absolutely.

Toni Kaplan from Morgan Stanley. Jerry, I wanted to ask for a little more color around the TAM analysis. It looked like you have the opportunity to double or more than double the TAM there and from the global pest control market. So what do you see as the best opportunities to be able to do that? And then I'll ask a follow-up on M&A as well.

Yes. To us, the best opportunity to capitalize on all of the -- between the secular tailwinds and just the growth that we're seeing in the market is we have all of these tools in our tool belt to go access that opportunity at different points in different ways. We're not just a one-trick pony, right? We have all these diversified ways of capturing that business, creating that market. Look at the impact of, in the last several years, the door-to-door market and how that has -- there's no doubt in my mind that has made the pie bigger in our industry, it has grown the overall pest control industry. And so as we're able now to play in all these arenas and Orkin can do what it does and focus more on commercial and residential. And all these ways, we had to access customers through our strategy. It's just -- I think that positions us really well to capitalize on it for a long time.

Another thing that I -- that we talk about as a team is you have all those secular tailwinds on the right side of that one sheet and those are all incredibly important. The other thing that you bring together with that is how -- I would say how often, it's really actually not that often, that homeowners use pest control. And so when you look at -- I don't know, was there 100 million homes out there, single-family homes or something. And if you just think about moving the needle slightly on that population is we do believe it's a pretty low penetration rate today. That has a significant outsized impact on that TAM that we showed earlier.