Consumer Discretionary
Personal Services
$22.36B
19K
Rollins, Inc. is an international services company providing essential pest and wildlife control services and protection against termite damage to residential and commercial customers. They operate through a family of leading brands with over 800 company-owned and franchised locations in approximately 70 countries. Rollins is a leader in the global pest control market, with a focus on their core pest control market, and their contracted and recurring services provide visibility into future revenue.
Key insights and themes extracted from this filing
Rollins reported record revenues of $3.4 billion, a 10.3% increase over 2023. Organic revenue grew by 7.9%, with acquisitions contributing 3.1%, demonstrating a balance between organic initiatives and inorganic expansion.
Gross margin improved by 50 basis points to 52.7% in 2024, indicating successful pricing strategies and cost management. This improvement reflects a positive trend in operational efficiency and profitability.
Operating margin increased by 40 basis points to 19.4%, while adjusted operating income margin increased by 20 basis points to 19.9%. This suggests that Rollins managed to balance growth investments with margin expansion, although growth investments and pressure from legacy auto claims impacted incremental adjusted EBITDA margin.
Rollins completed 44 acquisitions in 2024, including 32 acquisitions and 12 franchise buybacks, indicating a continued focus on inorganic growth. This strategy aims to enhance market presence and leverage acquired businesses for incremental growth.
Rollins' foreign operations accounted for approximately 7% of total revenues in both 2024 and 2023. This consistent contribution highlights the company's ongoing efforts to expand its international presence through organic growth, acquisitions, and franchise programs.
The company anticipates 7-8% organic revenue growth and a 2-3% contribution from acquisitions in 2025, demonstrating a targeted approach to growth. This strategy balances organic initiatives with strategic acquisitions.
The company focused on strategic improvements by hiring and onboarding the right people in support and customer-facing functions. This highlights management's commitment to improving overall operations and customer experience.
Rollins upgraded training and onboarding programs to improve teammate retention, reflecting a focus on human capital management. This initiative aims to reduce employee turnover and enhance workforce stability.
The company's focus on pricing, ongoing modernization efforts, and a culture of continuous improvement are expected to support healthy incremental adjusted EBITDA margins. This indicates management's proactive approach to maintaining profitability.
The 10-K highlights that the company's operations are directly impacted by weather conditions worldwide, including catastrophic events, natural disasters, and potential impacts from climate change. Changes in rainfall patterns, water shortages, storm patterns, and temperature levels could adversely impact costs and business operations.
The company acknowledges that it, its brands, third-party business partners, and service providers have been subject to cybersecurity incidents in the past and could be the targets of future attacks. These attacks could result in disruption to business operations, economic and reputational damage, and possible fines, penalties, and private litigation.
The 10-K states that the company has a complex global network of distributors and suppliers, and disruptions in production, transportation, labor disputes, and other supply chain issues could result in out-of-stock conditions and adversely affect customer relationships.
The company acknowledges it operates in a highly competitive industry with fragmented markets and low barriers to entry. Revenues and earnings are affected by changes in competitors' services, markets, and prices and general economic issues.
The company's strong brands, such as Orkin, HomeTeam Pest Defense, Clark Pest Control, Northwest Exterminating, Fox Pest Control, Trutech, Western Pest Services, The Industrial Fumigant Company (IFC), Waltham Services, Okolona Pest Control (OPC), and Critter Control, have significantly contributed to the success of our business.
The company believes that its customer experience and quality service are excellent, but cannot assure investors that we will be able to maintain our competitive position in the future.
Gross margin improved 50 basis points to 52.7% in 2024 compared to 52.2% in 2023, as pricing more than offset inflationary pressures. We saw 20 basis points of leverage in fleet and 10 basis points of leverage in materials and supplies, while employee expenses and insurance and claims were flat as a percentage of revenue.
The company is capitalizing on momentum as we start 2025, while remaining focused on continuous improvement initiatives to enhance profitability across our business.
As a percentage of revenue, SG&A increased 20 basis points to 30.0% in 2024 versus 29.8% in 2023. Selling and marketing costs have increased 40 basis points as we continue to invest in growth initiatives. This was partially offset by 20 basis points of leverage associated with lower administrative costs.
The company has invested in, and expect to continue to invest in, new systems and technology to implement new or improve existing business capabilities and streamline business processes, financial reporting, and acquisition integration.
The company may experience significant delays, increased costs, and other difficulties, which could adversely affect our ability to process work orders, send invoices, track, and collect payments, fulfill contractual obligations, or otherwise operate our business in compliance with laws.
Our expenditures on research activities relating to the development of new products or services are not significant. We utilize the relationships with our manufacturers and materials suppliers to provide new and innovative products and services, coupled with in-depth reviews by our tenured Entomology Department to confirm they meet our strict requirements.
The company continued to execute a balanced capital allocation program enabled by compounding operating cash flow and a strong balance sheet. This includes dividend payments, acquisitions, and share repurchases.
A total of $298.0 million was paid in cash dividends ($0.62 per share) during the twelve months ended December 31, 2024, compared to $264.3 million in cash dividends paid ($0.54 per share) during the twelve months ended December 31, 2023.
The Company did not repurchase shares of its common stock on the open market during 2024 or 2023.
Rollins undertakes a variety of efforts to support the health and well-being of our teammates, including their physical and mental health. This includes investing in competitive compensation and benefits while also providing the culture, tools, training and development opportunities to make working at Rollins an enjoyable and rewarding experience.
Adapting to feedback provided by our teammates about the needs of themselves and their families, in 2023, we increased our investment in mental health and wellness services that are offered at no cost.
We offer teammates the opportunity to participate in various community outreach programs. Our brands work closely with their local communities to create an impact through outreach, volunteerism, and donations. Our overarching goal is to create a significant impact in local communities over an extended period of time.
The continued disruption in economic markets due to inflation, changing interest rates, tariffs, trade disputes, business interruptions due to natural disasters and changes in weather patterns, employee shortages, and supply chain issues, all pose challenges which may adversely affect our future performance.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development ("OECD") has proposed a global minimum tax of 15% of reported profits ("Pillar Two") for multinational enterprises with annual global revenues exceeding €750 million.
Our operations are directly impacted by the weather conditions worldwide, including catastrophic events, natural disasters and potential impacts from climate change.