Ensuring Every Transaction is the Right Fit
HVAC Industry Consolidation Tracker
Updated Quarterly
The pace of HVAC industry consolidation grew quickly over the past few years. To help HVAC owners visualize and track this consolidation trend, IEI Advisors developed two graphs tracking the cumulative number of active commercial and residential HVAC buyers.
The first graph displays data on the number of buyers actively pursuing commercial HVAC acquisitions over the past decade. IEI defines an active buyer as any company that has already purchased one commercial HVAC company and has someone in a role dedicated to making additional acquisitions. Our Blog has a more detailed breakdown on who these companies are and what sparked their interest in buying commercial HVAC companies.
As the first graph shows, commercial consolidation is primarily driven by private equity investors. Typically, private equity investors purchase a large HVAC company and use that business as their "platform" to acquire other companies in the industry.
The second graph looks at residential HVAC consolidation which indicates that consolidation in residential HVAC is also driven by private equity investors.
This Consolidation Tracker data simple scratches the surface of all that is happening in commercial and residential HVAC consolidation. Owners that have questions about how this trend impacts their exit plans can Contact IEI and request a complimentary exit consultation and review of the consolidation tracker data.
Footnotes to commercial graph:
(1) In a number of instances, a consolidator has been bought by or merged with another consolidator. In the tracker, these two businesses are merged into one company, and the earliest start date of the two is used as the start date of the combined company.
(2) There are a number of niche HVACR platforms in the market. IEI's consolidation tracker only includes traditional HVAC and mechanicals contractors. Companies acting as distributors or manufacturers representatives are not included. Additional, firms strictly focused on industrial refrigeration services are not included in the tracker.