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

Okay. Welcome, everybody. On behalf of JPMorgan, welcome to U.S. All-Stars 2025 Day 2. We're thrilled to have you here. My name is Cameron Kissel. I run our U.S. into Europe efforts. I am thrilled on behalf of the firm to welcome Jerry and Ken to the stage, CEO and CFO of Rollins. They are a perennial attendee here. Just a quick reminder, JPMorgan does not cover the stock. So these will be certainly higher-level questions. I last had the pleasure 2 years ago of interviewing these 2 gentlemen on stage. They just had just finished a large M&A deal. And then last year's interview was really lots of focus on the labor front.

So maybe just to start with, I know there's some newbies in the audience. There's also some long-term holders. I did a cursory look back. Had you been lucky enough to hold stock for the last 1.5 decades. And I don't want to make anybody blush, but it's a low double-digit bagger on a total return basis. And if you move the starting points and make it more like just a decade, it's sort of mid- to high single digits, but it's still outrageously high. So -- and obviously, starting points do matter, but they have continued to grow formidable business over time. And I guess just starting from a pretty high level, what we're seeing on the economic front is a very peculiar labor picture. Immigration is impacting jobs numbers a lot. Just wondering how that's impacting, you guys on the front line because I guess the juxtaposition is a lot of the corollary growth indicators are still really strong for us. So we still see a strong economy. At the same time, labor is giving us a really peculiar picture. So just wondering what you guys are seeing on the demand side. And just what do you see on the front lines?

So thank you for hosting us again. Thank you for having us. It is always a fantastic event for us to attend. So thank you for that, first and foremost. So on the -- especially on the labor front, things are better today than they've been certainly since the COVID era. So we're finding it's much easier these days to attract people into our business. We have a really outstanding workforce. And we have a great business that's very consistent, a lot of continuity to it, and that attracts people to it once they understand our story. So once we engage with people and have the opportunity to tell our story about how wonderful the pest control industry is, how much opportunity there is, we're performing exceptionally well from attracting talent into our business. So it's been nothing, but good. And it's -- we certainly had our challenges during COVID and the first -- probably the year after COVID, but it's just gotten remarkably better.

And then I guess if I just kind of walk through the algorithm, so just cursory look back over the last nearly quarter of a century, revenues have gone from $600 million, $700 million to more like $3.8 billion. Margins are up 700, 800 basis points. Free cash flow conversion is very high, 100-plus percent. On the growth side, if you kind of look at -- organic tends to be 7% or 8%, you get a couple of points of M&A. How do we break down that organic side between price and volume? This is just kind of bigger picture, but just wondering what you're seeing on the pricing side as you're zooming into that.

Sure. Thanks for the question. And just adding on to what Jerry had indicated, quite frankly, growth is fun. And to be the growth leader, it makes it easy to attract people into our business. And that growth, as you had mentioned, Cameron, has been incredibly strong since COVID. Organic growth continues to be in that 7% to 8% range. M&A, 2% to 3%. This year, it's going to be more like a 3% to 4% number with the recent acquisition we made in April. And we enjoy a really attractive position from a pricing perspective. When you look at the pest control business in the pest control market, this is a CPI plus market. And so when you think about CPI being in that 2% to 3% sort of range, we are exceeding that, and we're delivering 3% to 4% price increase. That's up from what we saw pre-COVID when there was really very little inflation in the economy. And so we continue to price at 3% to 4%. We're seeing really good robust demand for our services. So volume is up as well. We're seeing really good volume performance with another 3% to 4% sort of growth, which is outpacing what many site is market growth in our markets. And when we think about the growth that we're delivering on the volume side, there's a number of things that are really paying off for us. First and foremost, the acquisition strategy that we've executed the last several years is certainly paying off, where we're buying businesses that are accretive to our organic growth profile. Saela and Fox are 2 really good examples of that. The second area that we continue to see incredible performance is in our ancillary area, growing a strong double-digit pace organically, which is really good to see. And then we continue to make investments in the commercial side, a really strong position with commercial accounts and commercial customers. The team is really doing a great job delivering there. So there's a number of things that are really paying off for us to really contribute to that 3% to 4% sort of organic volume growth on top of the 3% to 4% price increase that we're seeing.

Maybe just to follow up on this. You mentioned commercial ramping. Maybe just -- I know the B2B sales cycle is longer, residential ramps faster. So the investment in commercial takes longer to come through. At the same time, that's what's happening. It's resonating now. How do we think through the mix between the 2 and maybe what's happening competitively? And obviously, I guess we counteract that with -- we might get housing news today on rates and the housing market is sort of been blocked. But just how do you guys think about commercial versus resi as that commercial ramps?

Yes. So the residential market has the most competition in it because that's where more of the -- I call them the smaller companies, the regional companies, the mom-and-pop companies -- that's the market that they are strongest in. It's a little harder when you're smaller to scale on the commercial side and be able to serve large commercial customers across a wide geographic area. So there's often fewer competitors in there, but they're really good competitors. So it is still a very good competitive environment and -- which is, I think, is great for all of us to keep us focused on what we do and what we do best. We're very proud of our Orkin brand, in particular, that has a coast-to-coast coverage and full scale in the commercial side where we can take on just about any type of account that you could possibly imagine and be able to service you just about anywhere in North America. So that presents us a pretty strong opportunity on the commercial side. And we have the power of the Orkin brand behind it. And what that means after being in business, Orkin next year will be -- have been in business for 125 years. And there's a lot of trust from consumers, both on the residential side and the commercial side that has been a lot of brand equity that has occurred over the last 125 years. And we feel like that puts us in a really strong position to continue to compete.

And I guess maybe just following up on that -- on the commercial side, fewer competitors. It feels like you've really been successful taking share. Is there anything that you're noting competitively? There's obviously, a local player, who also competes in that market and shareholders here who've seen them some of their challenges. I'm just wondering what that's -- what you guys are seeing on the front lines competitively.

As we've talked about, we've put a lot of feet on the street in commercial. And that's really what it's about. It's about getting in front of people. It's about getting -- making sure you're top of mind and front of mind in the commercial space. So us building out the commercial sales force has been a strong part of that. Yes, it's competitive in that there's some really strong large regional and still national players. We have seen some of the landscape change over the years. If you go back 6, 7 years ago, there was a network called Copesan in North America that was a network of regional pest control companies that teamed up to be able to service national accounts throughout the United States. And years ago, they were acquired and dissolved into the Terminix brand. So there's -- there have been some fewer -- there are now fewer scaled competitors in that space than there was 5 or 6 years ago. So that may have created some lift, too. But at the end of the day, I would attribute it to our team, their focus and us making those investments in that business to be able to capitalize on it.

A few years ago, what we did was separate that business and place a greater focus on the commercial accounts. What we've realized is residential and commercial, B2C and B2B are completely different sort of markets. And so separating that, moving away from these res-com sort of branches and creating more focus on commercial is certainly paid off with really a strong high single-digit sort of growth that's accretive to the organic growth profile. Putting the feet on the street, putting the focus there, continuing to deliver really strong results.

That's a good point, Ken. We just recently added a Chief Operating Officer within the Orkin brand that's focused on nothing but commercial. And that's how optimistic we are about that. Continue to see that opportunity there.

Yes. So is it safe to say, we will get to inorganic growth in a minute, but the organic growth investments that you guys made and you're sort of benefiting from now, there's not more of that to come near term, you're sort of where you need to be. Is this more of a kind of catch-up or opportunity to do this once every few years? How do we...

I would just say that we're a growth company, and we're in a growth market. And so we're going to continue to invest, but we're going to be balanced, of course. And so when you look at last year, the second half, we had a lot of resources. We're starting to see leverage on those resources, productivity. It takes time to get people ramped up and to get the productivity to the level that you want to get it to. And so -- but we've seen that. We continue to evaluate opportunities. But I think as you go into the third quarter here, you'll probably start to see a little bit more leverage coming through the business from the productivity initiatives that we talked about here more recently.

And what does that mean numerically for incremental margins as we start to leverage some of those people costs?

I mean our business, I've said it consistently, this is a 25%, 30% plus EBITDA -- or I'm sorry, incremental margin profile. When you think about a gross margin that we reported 53%, 54%, you know what our cost structure is in terms of our fixed and variable. So our incremental gross margin is more in that high 50% range. Similarly on the SG&A. If you take that into consideration, what you get to is a roughly 30% incremental margin profile. So our focus is that. We continue to target that. You're going to see quarters where we deliver that. You're also going to see quarters like we have had in the first half where we haven't. And the reason for that is quite simply our investments. It's investments we're making. It's not tariffs. It's not issues or challenges that others are dealing with, but it's really intentional investment in growth programs or the impact of unfortunate claims that we might have in the business and safety-related claims and auto accidents, which happen, unfortunately, from time to time, but we're making investments in a number of different areas around safety. And we're starting to see some impact -- some positive impact on the claims count with respect to that. So to sum it all up, this is a great business. We continue to invest in growth. But at the same time, we do realize the opportunity to deliver really strong margin profile.

And maybe, I guess, just a follow-up of leveraging people and arming them with additional services to sell. I came across this term creative selling in one of the transcripts, which obviously sounds a bit like cross-selling, but just maybe a holistic view on your approach to new products and services and arming your people with additional products to sell.

Creative selling, to use that term, is really about -- a lot of it is about team sales, how our teams internally work together. So for example, if a pest control technician at Northwest Exterminating is doing a regular routine quarterly service for a customer and discover something in the attic or some past infestation or some other problem that we need to remediate, and we'll do that. But then there may be an opportunity to say, hey, look, the insulation has been damaged up in the attic and the person is exposed to rodent species or rodent urine in the attic, and they probably want to get that addressed. And so they then have the mindset that need to refer that to one of their teammates to say, hey, come out assess us with the customer and let them know what their options are. And that's how we sell ancillary services and grow so much in ancillary services. But it takes a team mindset. It takes systems and processes to be able to drive those creative sales throughout. A lot of it is about referrals, lead passing. We even have those kinds of programs that go on between our brands, where one brand does a service that another brand doesn't, well, they can refer those leads to other brands. So we're not necessarily dependent on the digital performance marketing to drive growth in our business. Our own people and leveraging our customers is helping us do that. And then when you think about how over the years, we've added new services -- new service offerings, whether it be could be mosquito, it could be wildlife control, could be the insulation example that I gave you. It could be encapsulating across base to prevent moisture and mildew from damaging the underneath and causing odors and smells inside of a home. So I think Ken says we have, in hockey terminology, 9 shots on goal on a residential structure of all these services. And we continue to look for different things that we can add in and around the home that help our customers either prevent or solve pest problems.

And then just, I guess, back to M&A. The last time I interviewed you guys 2 years ago, we were digesting the Fox deal, big acquisition, big implications. And now you guys have just finished the Saela deal. You do a ton of M&A all the time. Maybe just learnings from those 2. Any nuances to relay? And then what you're seeing competitively? Has the backdrop changed at all in a higher rate environment? Or is it just kind of business as usual? And maybe just a follow-on, sorry, several questions here, but are there new regions or geographies that you sort of strategize around that you might want to lean into?

Sure. I'll take it. We continue to be acquisitive. We operate in an industry with 17,000-plus competitors. And so we continue to be acquisitive. But the Fox and the Saela deal have certainly been very successful. Fox, we're 2 or 3 years into that deal. So I think it's fair to say that we've got some history behind us that gives us confidence in our ability to say that, that's been very successful. It's been accretive to margins. It's been accretive to organic growth. It's been accretive to our return hurdles around cost of capital. It's really delivering. And we followed that on recently here with Saela, of course. And both of those businesses are in a new area for us. It's door knocking, and it's a new way of accessing customers. And so when we think about some of these acquisitions we've done, we look at the geographic presence. We also look at the way that we're accessing our channels and accessing our customers. And so when you think about the Saela deal, another door knocking business that we acquired, and it's performing extremely well. Granted, it's one only 1 quarter in. But one quarter in, we're seeing double-digit organic growth year-over-year in that business. We're seeing margins that are accretive to our margin profile. In the first quarter of owning it, it's neutral to slightly positive on a GAAP earnings basis, which is really hard to do in today's cost of capital environment and with the amortization you have kicking off from recent deals, but it has been very, very successful. And so we remain very focused on it on acquisitions. We remain focused across the spectrum. We oftentimes talk about certain parts of the U.S., certain parts of North America, where we're becoming more and more acquisitive. In Canada, we're making more acquisitions in the Midwestern part of the United States. But quite frankly, we're open to acquisitions across all of our core geographies. And so we continue to explore and evaluate opportunities. The pipeline is very full. We continue to look at a number of different opportunities across the spectrum. And from the standpoint of multiples, they remain very, very healthy. And for us, because, quite frankly, we don't compete on price. We compete on being the acquirer of choice. When you sell your business to us, we're going to come in and we're going to take care of your people. We're going to take care of your brands, and we're going to pay you a fair price for it. But in the end, what we're focused on is acquiring good cultures, good brands that we can invest in and continue to grow as we think about the future.

And maybe just going back to customers. One of the falls on some price I wanted to ask was, can you elaborate on this term or how you think about rollbacks? I think this is where maybe price increases are pushed back by the customer?

Yes. So one of our key metrics about effectiveness or how we measure elasticity, if you will, is we're able to track how many customers call us and say, hey, I'm upset about my price increase we want you to roll it back. So oftentimes, we'll negotiate maybe we split the difference or depending on the size of the home. We look at the history with the customer. We certainly don't want to lose customers over what sometimes can just be a few dollars. So we use that as a metric to help us determine we look at how many calls did we get, how many times do we have to roll back price after following a price increase. Those numbers tend to be really, really low. I mean we're talking like less 0.5% to 1%. And we measure that by income band, by ZIP code. We have a really strong sense of what happens. And that gives us a sense of can we continue to put forth our pricing strategy on an ongoing basis. And that's just a way that we get the pulse just to see if there's any issues. And sometimes those issues just may pop up in one geographic area and we say, hey, next year, we maybe need to be a little more sensitive to that next year in this part of the country or -- and it's usually not even that part of the country. It's maybe that part of a state or these 6 branches, something like that. It just helps us get the pulse for what's going on with the consumer.

And just, I guess, back to the U.S. market overall and different regional cohorts. How do we -- is there any update or way to think about in your core markets, where you're seeing different trends? Or I know you guys have kind of committed to specific areas you want to invest in, but anything you could say about specific areas being healthier or less healthier?

I think that some of that is more affected by weather and seasonality from place to place geographically, possibly more than anything. So there are some times where, let's say, August, for example, was a really mild month temperature-wise in places like Georgia, which is usually where it's almost unbearable with heat and humidity. And it was actually a really nice mild August this year. But then out west, you go out west and it's super hot. And then we're supposed to get the heat wave back in Georgia in September, which is more unusual. So what we see are these pockets that are driven often by weather fluctuations and things going on with that. That's usually what's driving it. And then the other thing that can occur is we have -- there's a lot of invasive species. We have for those of you that have spent much time in the United States, we have all kinds of crazy critters that you don't have here in England or in the United Kingdom. And there's all kinds of new stuff coming in all the time.

Such as?

Well, Lyndsey talks about the Asian needle ant and these kinds of things that can actually have a sting and they come in, in one area and then they start to spread. And these are things that have never been in the United States before, but they get brought in maybe in landscape plants or things like that. And next thing you know, you've got pieces and parts of them and they're beginning to spread. You can look at -- in Florida, the University of Florida recently discovered that 2 invasive species of termites, the Asian termite and the Formosan termite. As you think based on their name, they're not from the United States. Those 2 have found a way to come together and create a new termite because they interbreed. And now we have a new termite with new biology and things like that going on that we have to figure out how to control. So it's just like -- it just never stops. And we just constantly have those kinds of things going on. And you have to stay -- you have to get ahead of that and stay in tune with what's going on because these things happen and it causes these pockets, if you will, of change and shifts in the business.

And maybe there's just a follow-on there. We talked last time, I interviewed you about the holistic global trends, weather, radical weather events, extremely hot weather, different pockets of the U.S. becoming harder than normal. That all feels like it's still coming your way. It still feels like a tailwind for all.

Yes. It certainly is a tailwind. I don't -- for example, I gave that example of the temperatures in August. It's -- that's not always -- in Georgia, that wasn't the best environment to have the most calls about pest control, but it's a much better environment for our people to be able to work in. But yet, at the same time, go to Arizona, there's a heat wave. And sometimes it gets too hot and the ants, for example, won't forge once the temperature gets too hot, right? But if it stays in a certain range. So there's all those kinds of factors. So I'm not as -- I don't like the extremes that we sometimes get. I wish it was more consistent, but it makes the business sometimes a little more chaotic and you have to be agile and be willing to -- be willing and able to respond when those opportunities arise.

But generally, a warming environment is actually beneficial to our end market. So when you think about secular tailwinds and opportunities for longer-term inflection in terms of overall growth of market or market attractiveness, generally, the warmer environments are more favorable. And what you're seeing over a longer term is an increase in the warming of the environment -- the temperature of the environment. So I think generally, that is positive. But Jerry is spot on. I mean, if you do see volatility in weather patterns, you will see volatility in certain parts of the business. Remember, 75% of our business is recurring. So that business doesn't change as much. But what you see in terms of volatility is some of the onetime business, some of the delays and deferrals and things like that, that will occur if, for example, a hurricane impacts us. And so things to keep an eye out. But generally, this is a secular tailwind for us.

Ken, we have [ Christian ] here from our U.K. operations. We had breakfast with them this morning. And on our walk over, I was asking Christian because I hear here, we had quite a warm heat wave and some drought-like conditions. And I asked them, I said, what does that meant in the residential side? And this market is not typically a residential market for pests. And he said, I think that's shifting. And I said, well, what's going on? He said, the population that we're seeing in stinging insects like wasps and waspnests here has been crazy. And oftentimes, it's because they're able -- when you have longer periods of warmth, they're able to reproduce and maybe add an additional generation of growth in their population. And we're getting the phone calls about that, right? So this climate shift really does impact the business. And that was the conversation I had with Christian on the way over here this morning.

I hear we enjoyed the best British summer in 2 decades as a father of a 10- and 12-year-old and not worried about wasp stings. Just shifting gears, I guess, I wanted to think about advertising and any impact from AI. I guess in an old world, we would have talked about the enhanced digital piece. You mentioned Saela and the door-to-door approach. Just wondering about ROIs and lead times and as AI has sort of hit flight, are you -- how do you guys think about it? How should we think about it as it relates to Rollins, I mean advertising and leads and new business front?

Yes. So we certainly see a lot of opportunity in AI. I always want to make sure my team and all -- and everyone understands that at its core, what we do, we're a people business, we're a relationship business and people are at the core of what we do. So when we look to these types of technologies, we look to them as enablers because like there's no AI that's going to run out and go get a rat out of the kitchen. That's not really on our radar screen in the short term. But what we could do is use AI to help us use routing and scheduling to help get them there faster than we ever did before, right? So we are looking at AI enhancements to help us improve efficiency in our business, improve maybe knowledge, enable some back-office improvements. We work a lot with some of our suppliers, our vendors that have some of those technologies, and they bring them in and we start embedding them into our business. We're using AI in our call center, for example, to -- in the past, we would have to listen back to phone calls. So let's say, a call center supervisor had 10 agents they were responsible for and all those calls get recorded. Those supervisors would have to then listen back to all those calls and critique them and say and coach their people. And they could spend hours and hours listening back to those phone calls. These days, we can run it through an AI model. It can provide feedback as if we say, hey, let's look for times when making sure our team was empathetic to a customer calling with a concern and find good examples and bad examples and they can use that for coaching, and they can do that real time, really quick. And we're using AI for things like that. And at the end of the day, that's going to help our customer experience. That will help our customers get a better experience with the human. We're not looking to use AI to replace that human over the phone. I still want that, that person-to-person interaction, but we're using that as more of an enabler type of thing. Ken, would you add anything?

Yes. I mean the only thing I would add, you hit the nail on the head from the standpoint of AI's impact on our business and how we're trying to use it to improve the efficiency. But when you think about this business broadly, because I think the question started a little bit around advertising. And so when you think about this business, we do certainly leverage the digital channels, and we do have a digital footprint that we're leveraging. But the beauty of this business and how it's been created over the last 50 or 60 years is the fact that we don't overly index on one form of advertising. And so we are leveraging a number of different approaches, whether it be door knocking relationships with homebuilders, of course, Google, but also billboards and cross-sellers. There's just so many different channels that have been built to the customer that allows us to manage any changes we might see associated with AI and related areas.

I guess I wanted to go back to resi and homebuilding. Obviously, the -- we've had several other meetings with businesses tied to that around here. We're right on the cusp of a new rate cycle maybe. But as you guys have looked at other -- just from a macro perspective, how do you think about the housing market as it relates to your business? It's sort of been on the knees for a while for a lot of really well-understood reasons. That might be on the cusp of changing, but might that unlock a different 3 to 4 years ahead of us on the resi side?

So we -- some of our brands are actually really closely tied to homebuilding. The HomeTeam Pest Defense business model installs a proprietary system that is built into new construction and that business continues to do well. Most of the new homebuilders in the U.S. are still -- have a lot of housing starts. They have an advantage. Oftentimes, they can do things like buy down mortgage interest rates and things like that to keep their businesses fairly healthy. Where we see the bigger softening is certainly in the existing home transaction side where that's gotten a little more challenging. Luckily for us, not a lot of our businesses tied to the real estate transaction. We don't operate businesses that are doing a lot of the inspection services for real estate transactions. We haven't been that, that impact by it. But what I would say, in some ways, it's helped us the current environment and that people staying in their homes are going to invest in their homes. So our ancillary work that we do and fixing up someone's crawlspace and making that a healthier environment or getting contaminants out of someone's attic, that type of work, people are willing to invest in that because they know they're going to stay in their home. And so I think it's made it a little easier for us on some of the ancillary side in the short run as well. So it hasn't really been a challenge for us.

I was looking through one of the presentations from last autumn and it was a look back at your business characterizing different periods and showing financial metrics during those periods. So for example, great financial crisis, revenues were sort of mid- to high singles. It shows that you guys deliver rain or shine, which is the point. And the second category was industrial -- or time frame was industrial slowdown 2015, 2016. Everybody who went through that period remember some of the implications. And that was a similar revenue profile. And then the third was the COVID pandemic. Obviously, revenue growth more likely doubled and then there were some real labor challenges coming out of it. There's a question here, which is, as we look back at what we've been through now in the last 3 years, what will that [ epoch beep ] be marked by from your perspective? And how will you frame the puts and takes of that period? Will it be around a lack of labor coming out of COVID and some challenges on that front? Will it be a reacceleration of commercial? Or how do we think about how you will define the last few years?

So I would say for us, when we do talk about the labor front, it's more about the shifts in the labor front that we're really starting to get behind and do a better job with investments that we're making in people. So while I said, hey, it's become easier to hire and it's been easier to attract people to our business, we're also hiring a lot of younger people than we did before. Pre-COVID, the average age of some of our new hires was in the mid-30s. Today, it's in the 20s, which implies then too, we're hiring people that are 22, 23, 24 years old. And what that means is that we have to do a much better job onboarding, connecting with leading and creating emotional connections with those people. And that takes -- for us, it takes investments that we make in our leaders to make sure that they can do that, processes and systems to make sure we remain connected. We put a really strong focus on reducing. We know that when you join us, if we get you for a year, you're going to stay a very long time. We have the challenge with turnover in the first 60 to 90 days where somebody gets in, they don't feel like this is for them or they haven't made those connections and they leave us. And we've made some really strong strides, and I'm really proud of the team for the work that they've done, making good progress in that area. We're also -- to help address that as well is we've just embarked on about an 18-month long program to put every single one of our people managers through new leadership development training. So we have about 2,300 people leaders in our organization that are all going to be trained from the top down on what it means to work and be a part of Rollins and what it means to be a people leader these days at Rollins. We have a lot of tenure, right, in our leadership team, which is a strength. But at the same time, we have to continue to sharpen their skills and hone their skills for today and what we're -- over the last few years and what we're going to face in the future from a hiring environment to be able to retain the people, keep them embedded in our business and have long-term relationships with our people. When we have long-term relationships with our people, they have long-term relationships with our customers and the results that we get can be amplified, and we can do even better. I just imagine what we can accomplish if you look at such great results that you referenced even through these difficult cycles as we continue to leverage some strength and build some muscle behind how we lead people, it's only going to help us be even better.

The only thing I would add is when I think about the last 3 years, I joined the company 3 years ago almost to the day, and Jerry became CEO in January of '23. The one word that I used to describe the last 3 years is modernization. And I've talked about it and I've used that word very consistently over the last 3 years. The steps we've taken to modernize the business are having a huge impact. And so if you just go through that, we raised the dividend by 70%. And so we priced in the special dividend in the fall of '22. We've since raised it consistently. And over that period of time, it's up about 70%. We also put a new revolver in January of '23. We changed our auditor. We put a shelf in place. We sold the family down by -- to the tune of $1.5 billion. We bought back $250 million of stock during that transaction. We entered the investment-grade bond market. We went public earlier this year with our inaugural offering, which is one of the tightest spreads in industrial land over the last 5 or 6 years. We did 2 major acquisitions in a brand-new market of door knocking with Fox and Saela. And I can continue to go through the list of accomplishments over the last 3 years, which have really had a great impact. The one thing we also did, and Jerry talked a lot about on the talent was just completely change the back-office talent profile. In doing that, what we did is we brought in a lot of new resources. That's allowed us to do our first ever Investor Day last spring, and I think that was a huge success. We've expanded that sell-side coverage from 5 sell-side analysts to almost 13 today during that course. So it's been a really strong successful run. And I think right now, as we think about the next 3 years in modernization, it's really about how do we improve our processes. And so how do we take these people that we're bringing into the business and improve the back-office support, the back-office processes to allow Christian and those folks that are on the front line to focus on the customer. And if we can do that, I really do believe that the margin profile will continue to expand and our earnings profile will continue to grow.

We've got about 5 minutes left. That was a thorough answer. I appreciate it. And I know there are some holders in the audience. So I'll keep going, but I just thought I might turn it over to see if anybody wants to ask a question. Please, Sami.

Just on the competitive side, Rentokil have had their issues much like yourself over the last few years, they've been looking to write that. Are you seeing any change in competitive behavior from them at all? Are you noticing them in any markets? Or is the market simply big enough for both of you to succeed?

I would say the way you said it the last, I mean, we've always had a lot of competitors. We've had big competitors, regional competitors. We have such a wonderful industry and great competition that exists. I don't -- I wouldn't characterize anything that they've done as some shift in any change. So there's still a formidable foe in terms of earning and getting business. And they've been that way and the Terminix brand has been that way for many, many years, and I think they can continue to do that.

James, please, is there a microphone there?

This was a great business 10 years ago. You guys are making even better today. Well done.

Thank you.

You talked about some of the growth programs. Could you elaborate a little bit on the ones that you think might be the most material? And then from a kind of a commercial pitch standpoint, are there any ingredients that you can bring into a commercial pitch that others just simply can't match?

When I think about the growth programs, I start with our M&A program. The businesses we're buying are really good businesses. We're getting them at a very attractive price, and we're investing in them. And in turn, they're accretive to our organic growth profile. And so that's really important because it structurally changes our business as we think about the future. When we think about the ancillary part of the business, we've talked about it a few times here. That continues to be an incredible growth driver for our business as well, highly accretive to our growth, our organic growth. We're seeing double-digit organic growth coming out of the ancillary side. And quite frankly, it represents a really small portion of our customer base. So there's opportunities to continue to inflect that higher. And then on the commercial programs and the investments we're making there, the focus, the laser focus we have on the commercial market, really important for us. So there's a number of different things across. We're not really dependent upon one thing, but there's a number of different things and levers that we're pulling to really drive that 7% to 8% organic growth profile that we're enjoying today.

And then on the commercial side, I'll give an example at Orkin, which is what we've talked about on the commercial side quite a bit. We have a triple guarantee. So imagine walking into a commercial establishment that may have an incumbent, somebody that's already servicing it and you're wanting to take that. And one of the fears is fear of making a change. You don't know what you're going to. So we have this triple guarantee. Part of that triple guarantee makes it really easy for you to change to us because what we'll offer you is, hey, we're going to come in, we're going to service you. And if you had some existing problem, we're going to keep coming at no charge until that problem is resolved. So that's one part. The second part is that if we are struggling to get it resolved, we're going to refund your money back to the first penny that you paid us, we'll give you a full refund. And the third element of that is if you're at the end of that, if we still don't have your complete satisfaction with the service that we're providing, we'll actually pay to -- you can choose another pest control provider and we'll pay for that initial service. That's how confident that we are that we're going to be able to take care of your problem. So if we get sales objections related to that, we can get over that really quickly by doing it. It's not -- it's something anybody can do, but you actually have to be able to service it and put your money where your mouth is to be able to execute to that. So that's something that in the Orkin brand that they sell hard on is that triple guarantee, and that's how we close a lot of deals. So I think that's -- it's not something -- it's certainly something anybody can do, but you also better live up to it if you make that guarantee.

That's great. We are just running out of time. I think we nailed it perfectly time-wise. Gentlemen, thank you very much.

Thanks very much.

I really appreciate it.