Who Owns the Pest Control Industry: The Roll-Up Map

The local company with the family name on the truck may be owned by a company listed in Atlanta or London, or by a private equity fund. Nothing requires it to say so. This is the ownership map as the filings describe it, with the figures taken from annual reports rather than from press coverage.

The two that matter

Figures from Rollins’ FY2025 annual report filed February 2026 and Rentokil Initial’s FY2025 preliminary results.

Rollins grew revenue 11.0 per cent in 2025, of which 6.9 points were organic and 4.1 points came from acquisitions. It completed 26 deals during the year and 94 over three years. That is the roll-up strategy stated plainly: buy a local operator roughly every fortnight, keep the name, keep the customers.

Rentokil took the opposite route, buying one very large company instead of many small ones. The Terminix deal closed on 12 October 2022 at $6.7 billion, paid as $1.3 billion in cash and 643.3 million new shares. Integrating it has been the company’s main operational story since.

Who owns the name on the truck

Two name collisions are worth knowing, because they trip up even trade coverage. Arrow Exterminators is family-owned and based in Georgia; Arrow Environmental Services is a Rentokil brand in Florida. Western Pest Services belongs to Rollins; Western Exterminator belongs to Rentokil.

The private money

Below the two listed companies sits a layer that files nothing public, so the detail thins out quickly.

Anticimex has been backed by the Swedish investment firm EQT since 2012 and reported group revenue of SEK 17.1 billion across 22 countries with about 12,000 staff. Its US operations trade under acquired local names rather than the Anticimex brand.

Aptive sold a majority stake to Citation Capital in August 2024 and reports more than 500,000 households served and around 4,000 staff. Hawx was acquired by PCM Growth in March 2021. Certus is an Imperial Capital platform, backed by Liberty Mutual Investments since May 2024, assembled from more than 60 tuck-in acquisitions. Massey Services remains family-held, reports about a million customers across ten states, and announced five acquisitions of its own in 2025.

The pattern across all of them is the same as Rollins’: buy local firms, keep the local name. The difference is that private owners disclose almost nothing, so customer counts and revenue figures generally come from the companies’ own marketing rather than from audited accounts. We have flagged in our data file which figures could not be verified against a primary source, and there are several.

Ecolab, the one people forget

Ecolab’s pest elimination division reported $1.25 billion in 2025 sales, up from $1.16 billion in 2024, at a 19.0 per cent operating margin. That is a business roughly a third the size of Rollins, operating almost entirely in commercial and food-service accounts, which is why a homeowner never encounters it and a restaurant operator frequently does. It represents 7.8 per cent of Ecolab’s group sales.

The termite liability nobody wanted

The most instructive number in any of these filings concerns what Rentokil inherited with Terminix: legacy termite damage claims, concentrated in the southern states, from warranties written years earlier.

In 2025 Rentokil booked a further $201 million charge against that liability, of which $122 million came in the second half, and paid out $95 million in cash. The closing provision stood at $384 million, up from $266 million at the start of the year. The provision is growing despite substantial cash payments, which means claims are still arriving faster than the reserve anticipated.

For anyone in the industry this is the clearest available demonstration of what a long-dated repair warranty can become. A termite bond is a liability that sits on the books for decades and reprices with construction costs, not a product sold once. Our guide to termite bonds and warranties covers what the different warranty types actually commit the company to, and why repair coverage is priced so differently from retreatment coverage.

What this means for a customer

1. A local name does not mean local ownership. Several of the largest brands in any given state are subsidiaries. The parent is usually identifiable from the licence record or the terms and conditions on the contract.
2. Ownership changes rarely announce themselves, and the practical effects a customer notices tend to be a new service schedule, a different call centre and revised pricing at renewal.
3. Consolidation is not automatically bad. Larger owners generally bring formal training, insurance and licensing compliance. What tends to be lost is pricing flexibility and continuity of technician.
4. The questions worth asking are unchanged: who holds the licence, who carries the insurance and what the guarantee actually obliges them to do. Our guides to choosing a company and reading a guarantee set out both.

For operators, the strategic picture is in our analysis of industry consolidation and, if you are on the other side of the transaction, what a pest control business is worth.

How we did this

Every figure here comes from a primary source: Rollins’ FY2025 annual report filed with the SEC in February 2026, Rentokil Initial’s FY2025 preliminary results statement, Ecolab’s FY2025 segment note, and company announcements for the private transactions. Where a figure appears only in company marketing, we have said so.

Three corrections to numbers circulating in trade coverage are worth recording. Rollins’ “$310 million” is cash spent on acquisitions in 2025, not its cash balance, which was $100.0 million at year end. Rentokil’s termite provision did not rise by $201 million: $201 million was the charge taken through the income statement, while the provision balance moved from $266 million to $384 million after $95 million of cash settlements. And Fox Pest Control belongs to Rollins, acquired in April 2023, not to Anticimex.

Rollins does not publish a brand count. Its annual report names 20 brands and then says “and more”, so 20 is a floor rather than a total. Private companies’ customer and staff numbers are self-reported throughout.

Frequently asked questions

Who owns the biggest pest control companies?

Rollins, listed in New York, owns Orkin, HomeTeam Pest Defense, Clark Pest Control, Trutech, Fox Pest Control and at least 15 other brands, on $3.76 billion of 2025 revenue. Rentokil Initial, listed in London and New York, owns Terminix, Ehrlich, Presto-X, Western Exterminator and Steritech, with $4.29 billion of North American revenue.

Who owns Terminix?

Rentokil Initial plc, which completed the $6.7 billion acquisition on 12 October 2022, paying $1.3 billion in cash and issuing 643.3 million new shares. Rentokil intends to retain around 30 North American brands, representing more than 90 per cent of its North American revenue, and to retire the remainder over time.

Is Orkin owned by a big company?

Orkin is the principal brand of Rollins, Inc., a publicly listed company that reported $3.76 billion in revenue for 2025 and 21,946 employees. Rollins operates more than 20 named brands and completed 26 acquisitions in 2025, generally keeping the acquired company’s local name.

How do I find out who owns my pest control company?

Check the legal entity name on the contract and invoice rather than the trading name, and look up the licence holder in the state regulator’s register, which records the licensed entity. Both usually identify the parent even where the brand does not.

Sources

• Rollins, Inc., Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025, filed February 2026. sec.gov
• Rentokil Initial plc, FY2025 preliminary results statement. rentokil-initial.com
• Ecolab Inc., Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025, segment information. sec.gov
• Company announcements for privately held acquisitions, as cited in our published data file.
• Compiled by The Pest Control Brief, September 2026.