Ten Years of Audited Pest Control Economics: What SEC Filings Show

What the filings show

• Rollins, Inc. reported revenue of $3.761 billion for calendar 2025, up from $1.573 billion in 2016, a compound annual growth rate of 10.17 percent and a 2.39 times increase.
• Operating margin rose from 15.7 percent in 2019 to 19.3 percent in 2025, an expansion of 3.6 percentage points. Net margin rose from 10.1 to 14.0 percent.
• SG&A expense stayed between 29.8 and 31.2 percent of revenue in every one of ten years, a band of 1.4 points, while revenue grew 139 percent.
• $2.27 billion of acquisition spending across 18 years, averaging $126 million a year, with the four largest years being 2019 at $431 million, 2023 at $367 million, 2025 at $310 million and 2024 at $157 million.
• Between 2016 and 2025, acquisition spending equalled 7.9 percent of cumulative revenue.
• Against the last measured US industry revenue figure, Rollins was 12.6 percent of the US industry in 2022, and its share held between 11.9 and 12.6 percent across the four overlapping years.
• Revenue growth never fell below 6.4 percent in any year from 2017 to 2025, including 2020 at 7.2 percent.
• What this cannot tell you. Customer churn, revenue per technician, stops per day, customer acquisition cost and margin by job type are not in any public filing or federal dataset. This report says so rather than estimating them.

Why one company’s filings are the best available benchmark

In short: The operator questions asked most often in this industry have no public answer. Audited filings from the largest public operator are the closest defensible substitute, and they come with real limits.

The most common questions operators ask each other are what a normal monthly cancellation rate is, what revenue per technician should be, how many stops a day is reasonable, and what margin a given job type carries. Search for any of them and the results are field-service software blogs, consultants and benchmark vendors, none citing a source.

That is not because those writers are lazy. No public dataset reports any of those metrics for this industry. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes employment and wages but not churn. The Census Bureau publishes revenue and receipts but not margin by job type. The only genuine datasets are a paid industry association cost study and a paid vendor benchmark, and neither is ours to republish.

What is public is the audited financial record of Rollins, Inc., filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission under penalty of law and tagged in machine-readable XBRL. It is one company, it is larger than almost every reader, and it operates internationally. Those are serious limits, stated throughout. It is still better than an unsourced benchmark.

Line by line

1. $3.761 billion revenue in 2025. Rollins reported revenue from contracts with customers of $3,761,050,000 for calendar year 2025. (SEC EDGAR XBRL company facts, CIK 0000084839, retrieved 27 September 2026.)
2. 10.17 percent compound annual growth. Revenue grew from $1,573,477,000 in 2016 to $3,761,050,000 in 2025. (Author calculation from the same source.)
3. Operating margin of 19.3 percent in 2025, on operating income of $726,068,000. (Same source.)
4. 3.6 points of margin expansion. Operating margin rose from 15.7 percent in 2019 to 19.3 percent in 2025. (Author calculation.)
5. Net margin of 14.0 percent in 2025, on net income of $526,705,000, up from 10.1 percent in 2019. (Same source.)
6. SG&A held in a 1.4 point band. Selling, general and administrative expense ranged from 29.8 to 31.2 percent of revenue across 2016 to 2025. (Author calculation.)
7. $2,274,534,000 of acquisitions over 18 years. Payments to acquire businesses net of cash acquired, summed across 2008 to 2025. (Same source.)
8. $431 million in the single largest year, 2019, equal to 21.4 percent of that year’s revenue. (Same source.)
9. 7.9 percent of cumulative revenue spent on acquisitions across 2016 to 2025. (Author calculation.)
10. Revenue grew in every year examined, with the slowest year being 2017 at 6.4 percent and 2020 at 7.2 percent. (Same source.)
11. 12.6 percent of US industry revenue in 2022. Rollins revenue of $2.696 billion against Census Service Annual Survey US industry revenue of $21.466 billion. (Author calculation; this is an upper bound, see limits.)
12. Share stable at 11.9 to 12.6 percent across 2019 to 2022, the four years where both series exist. (Author calculation.)

Ten years of audited financials

In short: Double-digit revenue growth in most years, steady margin expansion, and an SG&A ratio that barely moves.

Source: US Securities and Exchange Commission, EDGAR XBRL company facts for Rollins, Inc., CIK 0000084839. Revenue from the tag RevenueFromContractWithCustomerExcludingAssessedTax, annual calendar-year frames. Operating income, net income, SG&A and payments to acquire businesses net of cash acquired from their respective us-gaap tags. Retrieved 27 September 2026. Margins are author calculations. “Not tagged” means no annual calendar-year frame exists for that tag and year in the XBRL data, not that the company did not report it.

What it means. Three patterns stand out. Revenue growth is remarkably consistent, never below 6.4 percent across nine year-over-year changes, and 2020 was the third slowest rather than a decline. Margins expanded steadily, 3.6 points of operating margin over six years, which for a service business at this scale is substantial. And the SG&A ratio is almost inert.

What limits it. Operating and net margin figures are unavailable before 2019 in the XBRL annual frames, so the margin expansion is measured over six years rather than ten. Margins are consolidated and include international operations. A single company’s cost structure is not an industry benchmark, and Rollins is a multi-brand consolidator whose economics differ from an owner-operated route business.

The SG&A finding

In short: Across a decade in which revenue grew 139 percent, selling, general and administrative expense moved within 1.4 percentage points of revenue. That is the most transferable number in this report.

Most operators reading this will never have $3.8 billion of revenue. But the ratio of overhead to revenue is scale-independent in a way that absolute figures are not, and it is the one line in these filings that an owner can compare against their own books.

Source: as above. SG&A share is author-calculated as SellingGeneralAndAdministrativeExpense divided by revenue for the same calendar year.

What it means. Roughly 30 cents of every revenue dollar goes to selling, general and administrative expense at this company, and that has been true through acquisitions, a pandemic and a doubling of the business. It suggests the ratio is structural to the service model rather than a function of scale, which makes it a more useful reference point than any absolute figure in these filings.

What limits it, and it is important. How a company allocates costs between SG&A and cost of services is an accounting choice, and comparability across companies is poor for exactly that reason. An owner-operator whose chart of accounts puts route supervision in cost of services will not get a comparable figure. This is a reference point, not a target, and a 30 percent SG&A ratio at a company with national advertising and a corporate structure says little about what a three-truck operation should spend.

The cost of consolidation

In short: $2.27 billion of acquisition spending over 18 years, concentrated in four years, quantifies the roll-up that this site has mapped structurally.

Source: SEC EDGAR XBRL, tag PaymentsToAcquireBusinessesNetOfCashAcquired, annual calendar-year frames 2008 to 2025.

What it means. Acquisition spending is lumpy rather than steady. Four of eighteen years account for $1.26 billion, or 56 percent of the total. The smallest year was 2009, immediately after the financial crisis, at $11 million. A seller assessing timing should note that the largest buyer in this industry does not spend evenly.

What limits it. Payments to acquire businesses net of cash acquired is a cash-flow figure and is not the same as enterprise value paid, because it excludes assumed debt and any equity consideration. It also aggregates many transactions per year, so it says nothing about individual deal multiples. It covers one buyer, and private-equity-backed platforms are also active, as our ownership map sets out. Nothing here supports inferring a multiple for any particular sale.

One company against the industry

In short: Rollins was about an eighth of US industry revenue in the four years where both figures exist, and its share was flat rather than rising.

Sources: Rollins revenue from SEC EDGAR XBRL. US industry revenue from the Census Bureau Service Annual Survey for NAICS 561710, via FRED series REVEF56171ALLEST. The Census series ends at 2022, which is why later years are absent rather than estimated.

What it means. The largest operator grew at roughly the pace of the industry over this window rather than taking share. Given that it spent $846 million on acquisitions across those same four years, growing only in line with the market is itself informative about how fragmented the remaining field is.

What limits it, and this is the most important caveat in this report. Rollins operates internationally and its reported revenue is consolidated across all geographies, while the denominator is US-only. The share column is therefore an upper bound on US market share, not an estimate of it. The true US share is lower by the proportion of Rollins revenue earned abroad, which we did not separate from segment disclosures. Nobody should quote 12.6 percent as Rollins’ US market share.

What the filings cannot tell you

In short: The five metrics operators most want are absent from every public source. Naming that absence is more useful than filling it with a guess.

Why revenue per employee is not in this report. We could compute it if XBRL carried headcount. It does not: the only entity-level tags available are shares outstanding and public float. Company headcount appears in the narrative text of the annual report rather than in the tagged data, and we did not extract it. An industry-level revenue per employee figure is available and appears in our industry statistics page at $148,873 for 2022.

The honest summary. If you need a churn benchmark, buy the association cost study or the vendor benchmark. If someone quotes you one for free without naming either, they do not have a source.

Three ratios we derived

1. Overhead ratio stability

Definition. The range of a company’s SG&A expense as a share of revenue across a multi-year period, as a measure of whether overhead intensity is structural to the business model or varies with scale.

Formula. Stability band = max(SG&A / revenue) minus min(SG&A / revenue) across the observed years.

Inputs. SEC EDGAR XBRL tags SellingGeneralAndAdministrativeExpense and RevenueFromContractWithCustomerExcludingAssessedTax, annual calendar-year frames 2016 to 2025.

Result. A band of 1.4 percentage points, from 29.8 to 31.2 percent, across ten years in which revenue grew 139 percent.

Why it is the most useful figure here. Ratios transfer across scale in a way absolute dollars do not. This is the only line in these filings an owner-operator can meaningfully hold against their own accounts.

Limitations. The split between SG&A and cost of services is an accounting policy choice, so cross-company comparison is unreliable. A single company cannot establish that 30 percent is normal for the industry. Ten observations is a short series.

2. Acquisition intensity

Definition. Acquisition spending expressed as a share of revenue in the same year, tracking how much of a consolidator’s cash flow goes to buying growth.

Formula. Intensity = PaymentsToAcquireBusinessesNetOfCashAcquired / revenue, same calendar year.

Inputs. As above, 2016 to 2025.

Result. A range from 2.9 percent in 2016 to 21.4 percent in 2019, with a cumulative figure of 7.9 percent of revenue across the ten years. Four of eighteen years account for 56 percent of all acquisition spending since 2008.

Why it matters to a seller. It quantifies that the largest buyer’s appetite is episodic. A seller reading trade coverage of continuous consolidation should know that the spending behind it arrives in bursts.

Limitations. Cash paid net of cash acquired understates total consideration where debt was assumed or equity issued. The measure aggregates all transactions in a year and cannot be decomposed into deal sizes or multiples. One buyer only.

3. Growth floor

Definition. The lowest single-year revenue growth rate observed across a period, used as a measure of demand resilience for a service business.

Formula. Growth floor = min of year-over-year revenue growth across the observed years.

Inputs. As above, nine year-over-year changes from 2017 to 2025.

Result. 6.4 percent, in 2017. The 2020 figure was 7.2 percent, the third slowest. Revenue never declined.

Context. This is consistent with the industry-level finding in our analysis of whether pest control is recession-proof, which found that US industry revenue did not fall in any year from 1998 to 2022 on Census data. A company-level growth floor of 6.4 percent and an industry-level record of no down years are two independent observations pointing the same way.

Limitations. Nine observations covering an unusually favourable period for the sector. Acquisitions contribute to reported growth, so this is not an organic growth floor, and the filings’ XBRL data does not separate the two. A growth floor tells you nothing about margin resilience.

Download the data

The tables in this report are published as CSV files under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. You may republish, remix and build on them, including commercially, with attribution to The Pest Control Brief and a link to this page.

• Revenue, operating income, net income, SG&A and acquisitions, 2016 to 2025 (CSV, 10 rows)
• Annual acquisition spending, 2008 to 2025 (CSV, 18 rows)

How to cite this report

The Pest Control Brief, “Ten Years of Audited Pest Control Economics: What SEC Filings Show”, 2 October 2026. https://thepestcontrolbrief.com/pest-control-public-company-economics/

References

1. US Securities and Exchange Commission. EDGAR XBRL company facts, Rollins, Inc., CIK 0000084839. data.sec.gov/api/xbrl/companyfacts/CIK0000084839.json. Accessed 27 September 2026. Every company figure in this report is read from this endpoint.
2. US Securities and Exchange Commission. EDGAR filing index for Rollins, Inc. sec.gov EDGAR, Rollins 10-K filings. Accessed 27 September 2026. Employee headcount appears in the annual report narrative rather than in XBRL and was not extracted.
3. US Census Bureau, Service Annual Survey, via FRED series REVEF56171ALLEST. fred.stlouisfed.org/series/REVEF56171ALLEST. Accessed 27 September 2026. Denominator for the industry share column.
4. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, NAICS 561710. data.bls.gov/cew. Accessed 27 September 2026. Industry context only.
5. National Pest Management Association and PCO Bookkeepers. 2025 Pest Control Industry Cost Study. npmapestworld.org. Named as a place where churn and margin data genuinely exists. It is a paid product and no figure from it is reproduced here.

Which tags were used

Source. US Securities and Exchange Commission, EDGAR XBRL company facts API, at data.sec.gov/api/xbrl/companyfacts/CIK0000084839.json, retrieved 27 September 2026. No key is required. XBRL company facts are the machine-readable form of figures filed in audited annual and quarterly reports.

Tags used. RevenueFromContractWithCustomerExcludingAssessedTax for revenue, OperatingIncomeLoss, NetIncomeLoss, SellingGeneralAndAdministrativeExpense, and PaymentsToAcquireBusinessesNetOfCashAcquired. We used only facts carrying an annual calendar-year frame, which excludes quarterly and partial-period facts and prevents double counting.

Why revenue uses that tag. The company reports under both Revenues and RevenueFromContractWithCustomerExcludingAssessedTax. The two agree exactly for every overlapping year, 2016 through 2020. The latter tag extends to 2025 while the former stops at 2020, so we used it throughout for a consistent series.

Derived figures. All margins, growth rates, ratios, the compound annual growth rate and the industry share column are author calculations from the tagged values. No figure in this report is an estimate of an unreported quantity.

Industry comparison. US industry revenue is the Census Bureau Service Annual Survey for NAICS 561710 via FRED series REVEF56171ALLEST, which ends at 2022.

What we did not do. We did not extract employee headcount, which appears in annual report narrative text rather than in XBRL, so no revenue-per-employee figure for the company appears here. We did not separate US from international revenue, which is why the market share column is labelled an upper bound. We did not examine segment disclosures, balance sheet items, or any other pest control company. Rentokil Initial is a larger operator globally but files as a foreign private issuer on a different schedule, and we did not analyse it.

Limitations. This is one company. It is a multi-brand consolidator operating internationally at a scale unlike almost any reader’s business, so its cost structure is not an industry benchmark and is not presented as one. Operating and net margin are unavailable in annual XBRL frames before 2019. Accounting policy choices, particularly the boundary between SG&A and cost of services, limit comparability with any other company’s accounts. Reported growth includes acquired revenue and the filings’ tagged data does not separate organic from acquired growth. The period examined was favourable for the sector, so nothing here should be read as a forecast.

Last reviewed: 27 September 2026.

Filing sources

Tier 1, primary regulatory filings and government data. US Securities and Exchange Commission, EDGAR XBRL company facts for Rollins, Inc., CIK 0000084839. US Census Bureau Service Annual Survey for NAICS 561710, via FRED series REVEF56171ALLEST. US Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, for industry context.

Tier 2, credible secondary. None of the figures in this report derives from a secondary source.

Tier 3, journalism. Not used.

Excluded. Vendor and consultant benchmark figures for churn, revenue per technician and margin were excluded because their methods and samples are not published. Paid benchmark products are named as the places where the data genuinely exists, without their figures being reproduced. Broker commentary on sale multiples was excluded as unsourceable.

For analysts and reporters

Most quotable statistics

1. The largest US public pest control company grew revenue at 10.17 percent a year for nine years, to $3.761 billion in 2025.
2. Its operating margin rose from 15.7 percent in 2019 to 19.3 percent in 2025.
3. Overhead stayed between 29.8 and 31.2 percent of revenue across ten years in which revenue grew 139 percent.
4. It spent $2.27 billion acquiring other pest control businesses between 2008 and 2025, with four years carrying 56 percent of that total.
5. No public dataset reports customer churn, revenue per technician or margin by job type for this industry.

Data limitations to quote alongside them

This is one company, operating internationally, at a scale unlike most operators. Its share of US industry revenue is an upper bound because the numerator includes non-US business. Margins before 2019 are unavailable in annual XBRL frames. Reported growth includes acquisitions and cannot be separated from organic growth in the tagged data.

Fields in the published CSV files

Calendar year; revenue; year-over-year growth; operating income; operating margin; net income; net margin; SG&A; SG&A as a share of revenue; acquisition payments; acquisition payments as a share of revenue; XBRL tag; source.

Press summary

The pest control industry’s only large US public pure-play grew revenue at 10.17 percent a year for nine years and expanded its operating margin from 15.7 to 19.3 percent, according to an analysis of audited SEC filings by The Pest Control Brief. Rollins, Inc. reported $3.761 billion of revenue for calendar 2025, up from $1.573 billion in 2016, and spent $2.27 billion acquiring other businesses between 2008 and 2025, with four of those eighteen years accounting for 56 percent of the total. Selling, general and administrative expense stayed between 29.8 and 31.2 percent of revenue in every one of ten years, a band of 1.4 percentage points, across a period in which revenue grew 139 percent. The analysis also documents what public sources cannot show: no federal dataset or SEC filing reports customer churn, revenue per technician, route density or margin by job type for this industry, and the only genuine datasets are paid products.

Five headlines editors could use

1. Ten years of audited pest control economics, and the numbers nobody publishes
2. $2.27 billion: the price of consolidating American pest control
3. Overhead barely moved while revenue doubled
4. Consolidation arrives in bursts, not a steady stream
5. The industry’s most-wanted benchmarks do not exist in public data

Questions operators ask

What is a normal profit margin in pest control?

No industry-level figure exists publicly. The largest public operator reported a 19.3 percent operating margin and a 14.0 percent net margin in 2025, at $3.8 billion of revenue and with international operations. That is a data point from one large company, not a benchmark for a route business.

What is a normal customer churn rate?

Not available in any public dataset or SEC filing. The only real sources are a paid industry association cost study and a paid vendor benchmark. Anyone quoting a churn figure for free without citing one of those has no source.

What is revenue per technician?

Also not public at company level, because employee headcount is not in the XBRL data. At industry level, revenue per employee was $148,873 in 2022 using Census revenue and BLS employment, which is set out in our industry statistics page.

How much overhead should a pest control company carry?

The largest public operator ran SG&A at 29.8 to 31.2 percent of revenue across ten years. Treat that as a reference point rather than a target, because how a company splits SG&A from cost of services is an accounting choice.

How much does the largest company spend buying others?

$2,274,534,000 between 2008 and 2025, averaging $126 million a year but concentrated in four years: 2019 at $431 million, 2023 at $367 million, 2025 at $310 million and 2024 at $157 million.

What share of the US market does Rollins hold?

Lower than 12.6 percent. That figure compares its consolidated global revenue against US-only industry revenue for 2022, so it is an upper bound rather than an estimate. We did not separate its US revenue.

Did revenue fall during 2020?

No. Revenue grew 7.2 percent in 2020, the third slowest of nine years examined. The slowest was 2017 at 6.4 percent.

Is this the largest pest control company in the world?

No. Rentokil Initial is larger globally. It files as a foreign private issuer on a different reporting schedule and was not analysed here.

Can I use this to value my business?

Not directly. Acquisition payments net of cash acquired aggregate many deals and exclude assumed debt and equity consideration, so no multiple can be inferred. See our business valuation analysis for what can be established.

Where can I get this data myself?

Free from the SEC at data.sec.gov/api/xbrl/companyfacts/CIK0000084839.json. No registration or key is required. The tag names used are listed in the Methodology section.