M&A school

Hopefully you finished 2024 nicely and you have business booked well into 2025. As we start the New Year, I want to fill you in on a new feature we’ve added to Lawn & Landscape.

Starting this month is our Dealmakers column. The column will run monthly and will focus on mergers and acquisitions and private equity.

Each month, the author will provide different perspectives on these topics and will inform the reader on a topic the industry as a whole is still a bit naïve about. Columns will be written by investment bankers, consultants, private equity firm executives or landscapers. The topics will range from the very basic to more involved and complicated. Whether it’s terminology used for deals or hiccups you may incur during the M&A process, everyone will be able to take away something.

While this column is focusing on M&A and private equity, organic growth will still be covered across all of our platforms. But for the past couple of years, it was clear in my discussions with industry professionals that the industry is underserved in this area.

I know some of you don’t like the amount of consolidation and PE investment in the industry, but it is a reality.

According to our State of the Industry reports, 6% of companies have some private equity investment in their company, compared to 4% last year. I expect that to grow in the next couple of years.

We asked if you have been approached to sell your business in the past three years, and in the 2021 report, 34% said yes while that grew to 50% in our 2023 report. Though that number did dip to 44% in our 2024 report, that’s still a significant amount of people receiving inquiries about selling.

I want to close with a shameless plug for an event that ties into this column: our 2025 Business Builders Summit where landscapers with an aggressive growth mindset can get together to become educated and network. You can learn more here: bit.ly/llbusinessbuilders. Our Technology Conference is also entering its sixth year — bit.ly/lawntech2025.

I hope you have a great 2025.

— Brian Horn