What Pest Control Franchisors Disclose, and What It Leaves Out

Franchisors publish their financial performance in a legally regulated document, the Franchise Disclosure Document, and several states make those documents public. What gets repeated online is usually a single average, quoted by someone paid if you buy. Here is what the documents themselves show, and what they are constructed not to show.

The disclosure is optional, and it is revenue, not profit

The Federal Trade Commission’s franchise rule allows a franchisor to include financial performance information in Item 19 of the disclosure, provided there is a reasonable basis for it. It does not require it. A franchisor that discloses nothing, or only its own company-owned stores, or only a forward projection, is fully compliant. The rule also requires a statement that a new franchisee’s individual results may differ from those shown.

What the pest control disclosures report is overwhelmingly gross revenue per unit. Gross revenue is before labour, chemicals, vehicles, royalties, marketing and everything else. None of the figures below is profit, and it would be a mistake to treat any of them as what an owner takes home.

The average is not the typical franchisee

In every case the median sits well below the average, because a handful of large units pull the average up. Pestmaster is the extreme: its average is 3.5 times its median, and a single franchisee reporting $6,985,408 drags the whole figure. Eight of its 33 franchisees grossed under $82,000.

Pestmaster deserves credit for the honesty of that disclosure, though. It reports every franchisee, with no screen for tenure or reporting status, which is exactly why the spread is visible. A disclosure that looks cleaner is often one that has trimmed its sample.

One brand, four different businesses

Mosquito Squad publishes the most complete breakdown in the category: four quartiles of 54, 54, 54 and 55 territories, which reconcile exactly to the 217 in the sample. The top quarter ranged from $679,499 to $2,929,941. The bottom quarter ranged from $19,138 to $166,234.

That is the useful way to read a franchise disclosure. The question is not what the average unit makes, but which quartile a new unit in your territory is realistically likely to land in, and what the bottom quartile’s revenue has to cover.

Cohort screens move the number

Item 19 lets the franchisor define who is counted, and the definitions are doing real work. Common screens in these disclosures include units open for the full year, units that have completed two or more seasons, and units that submitted a full-year financial report. Each is reasonable on its own terms. Each also removes units, and the units removed tend to be the newest and the weakest. Read the sample definition before reading the number, and ask how many units it excludes.

Another distinction breaks almost every comparison table published online: territories, outlets and owners are different units. Mosquito Joe’s 407 franchised businesses are reportedly held by about 165 franchisees, around 2.5 territories each, so its per-unit revenue describes a territory rather than an owner’s business. Mosquito Shield reports in territories, others in outlets. Comparing them as though they were the same thing is how most brand comparisons go wrong.

What Item 20 shows that Item 19 does not

Item 20 reports openings, terminations, non-renewals, reacquisitions and closures every year. It is the most honest outcome measure in the document, because it counts the units that are no longer there.

Added together, the four largest mosquito systems went from 1,588 units at the end of 2023 to 1,567 at the end of 2025, while opening 172 new units over those two years. Selling and opening 172 units and finishing 21 smaller implies roughly 193 exits. That total mixes Mosquito Shield’s territory counts with outlet counts for the others; excluding Shield, the three remaining systems still shrank, by 12 units on 93 openings.

Mosquito Authority’s 2025 was the sharpest turn: 2 openings against 25 units that ceased operating. Pestmaster is the counter-example, growing 44 per cent between the end of 2023 and the end of 2025, with no terminations in 2025, while disclosing the widest revenue spread in the category.

The seasonality problem, and the upsell that answers it

Mosquito franchises inherit their region’s season. In northern markets they run roughly April to October, and nobody we could find publishes how much of a unit’s annual revenue falls in the peak months. What is visible is how franchisors have responded: by selling franchisees a second revenue line. Mosquito Authority paired with a year-round pest brand and markets dual ownership. Mosquito Hunters added holiday lighting. Mosquito Squad broadened into ticks and general pest work. The fix for a seasonal franchise has become a second offering, often with its own fee.

Pricing is not the source of the revenue spread. Mosquito Joe’s 2026 disclosure reports gross sales per treatment averaging $92.68 across all 407 units, with a median of $92.66. Price per visit is nearly identical across the system. The wide gap between territories is a volume and density problem, which is why route density matters so much in this business, as we set out in the industry’s seasonal swing.

Who is writing what you read

A large share of the pages ranking for pest control franchise queries are franchise broker and lead-generation sites. Brokers are typically paid by the franchisor, commonly reported at 40 to 50 per cent of the first-year franchise fee, and they represent a small fraction of the brands on the market. Their figures are frequently stale: we found pages dated 2026 presenting investment ranges and unit counts several years old. The disclosure document, read directly, is the only source with a legal obligation behind it.

For context on scale, the largest company in the industry, Rollins, reported 131 domestic franchise agreements at the end of 2025 against $3.76 billion in revenue. Franchising is a small corner of this industry, concentrated in mosquito and seasonal outdoor services.

What to do with this before buying

1. Read Item 19’s sample definition first, and ask how many units it excludes and why.
2. Use the median and the bottom quartile, not the average, to test whether the unit covers its costs.
3. Read Item 20 for net change, including transfers and closures, which is the closest thing to an outcome measure the document contains.
4. Add up everything the franchisor takes: royalty, brand fund, required local marketing and technology fees, as a share of bottom-quartile revenue.
5. Call franchisees, especially former ones, whose contacts Item 20 lists.

Whether to franchise at all, against starting independently, is a separate decision covered in franchise versus independent. What a built business is worth when it is sold is covered in business valuation.

How we did this

Figures come from each brand’s 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document, covering the 2025 fiscal year, as filed with the Wisconsin franchise registry and extracted by FranchiseDepth, a service that parses registry filings and records each document’s issuance date. We checked the Mosquito Squad and Pestmaster figures against that extraction directly. Item 20 net changes are our own calculation from year-end counts. Rollins figures come from its 2025 annual report filed with the SEC. We excluded disclosures whose published cohort tables did not reconcile to their stated samples.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a pest control franchise make?

It varies enormously within a single brand. Mosquito Squad’s 2026 disclosure shows an average of $493,200 in gross revenue per territory but a median of $330,985, with the bottom quarter averaging $101,689. These are gross revenue figures, before any costs, not profit.

What is Item 19 in a franchise disclosure?

It is the section where a franchisor may report the financial performance of its units, if it has a reasonable basis to. Disclosure is optional under the Federal Trade Commission’s franchise rule, and the franchisor defines which units are counted.

Why is the average so much higher than the median?

Because a small number of very large units pull the average up. Pestmaster’s average is 3.5 times its median; one franchisee reported nearly $7 million while eight of 33 grossed under $82,000. The median is the better guide to a typical unit.

Are mosquito franchises growing?

The four largest mosquito franchise systems together went from 1,588 units at the end of 2023 to 1,567 at the end of 2025, despite opening 172 new units in that period. Mosquito Squad and Pestmaster grew; Mosquito Joe, Mosquito Shield and Mosquito Authority shrank.

Is franchise revenue the same as profit?

No. The figures in these disclosures are gross revenue, before labour, vehicles, chemicals, royalties and marketing. Where profit figures appear at all, they generally describe stores the franchisor owns rather than franchised units.

Why do different websites give different figures for the same franchise?

Mostly because they are quoting different years, different cohorts, or confusing territories with outlets and owners. Many broker pages also carry figures several years old under a current date. The disclosure document filed with a state registry is the authoritative source.

How do mosquito franchises deal with the off-season?

Increasingly by adding a second business line: year-round pest control, tick and general pest services, or holiday lighting. Several franchisors now actively market these add-ons, sometimes as a separate franchise with its own fee.

Sources

• Federal Trade Commission Franchise Rule, 16 CFR 436.5, Item 19 financial performance representations. law.cornell.edu
• FranchiseDepth, registry-derived extracts of 2026 disclosures for Mosquito Squad, Pestmaster, Mosquito Joe, Mosquito Shield and Mosquito Authority, with methodology. franchisedepth.com
• Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions, franchise registration search. dfi.wi.gov
• Rollins Inc., Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2025, filed with the SEC. sec.gov
• Franzy, Mosquito Joe franchise profile. franzy.com