A trade being bought for its recurring base
Pest control is among the most consolidated of the home service trades. National platforms and regional operators buy routes for the same reason: a recurring service account produces revenue on a schedule and survives a change of ownership, which one time treatment work does not.
That makes the recurring base the centre of any transaction, and it also explains why the published multiples for the trade are so widely spread.
What the four publishers report
Peak Business Valuation reports 2.34x to 2.90x owner earnings, presented as market averages with no size band attached.
DealStream reports 1.5x to 3.0x owner earnings, scoped explicitly to very small companies with revenue under $500,000.
BizBuySell transaction data covering 2021 through 2025 reports that the middle half of pest control businesses recorded as sold fell between 1.7x and 3.0x owner earnings.
CT Acquisitions, verified 5 June 2026, reports 3x to 5x owner earnings, with a premium tier of 4.5x to 5x, scoped to owners with $200,000 to $2,000,000 of owner earnings.
All four use the same measure. The lowest figure in the set is 1.5x and the highest is 5x, which is more than a threefold spread for the same trade. But the spread is not evenly distributed. Three of the four sit on top of each other between roughly 1.5x and 3x, and the fourth sits above all of them.
The one drawn from completed sales lands inside the cluster, not above it. That is the arrangement this series keeps finding: the figures describing what sellers are told sit above the figures drawn from what buyers paid, and they do so in the same direction every time.
Two of the three carry no date at all
This is the part worth stopping on, and it is a different problem from the disagreements we have written about elsewhere.
Neither the Peak Business Valuation page nor the DealStream page states when its figures were published or last reviewed. There is no date on either.
A valuation multiple without a date is a claim with no time attached. Markets move, and in consolidating sectors they move quickly. We saw that directly in veterinary practices, where one publisher notes its current range compares against multiples roughly half as large a few years earlier. A pest control figure that was accurate in 2019 and one that was accurate this year look identical on the page.
So the practical position is worse than a four way disagreement. Two of the four participants cannot be placed in time at all, and the dated ones sit at opposite ends of the spread: the transaction record at the bottom, the advisory band at the top.
The scopes do not line up either
Even setting dates aside, the four are not describing the same population.
DealStream scopes its range by revenue, to companies under $500,000. CT Acquisitions scopes by owner earnings, to a $200,000 to $2,000,000 band. Peak Business Valuation states no size band at all. BizBuySell scopes by what was recorded as sold on one marketplace, which is a population defined by where the transaction happened rather than by the size of the business.
Those are four different populations measured four different ways, which means part of the spread is not disagreement about value. It is four publishers answering slightly different questions and their answers being read as though they were the same one.
What the highest source says drives its own range
CT Acquisitions is the only publisher here that explains what separates the top of its range from the bottom, and the answer is the one that recurs across every trade we have examined.
It attaches its premium tier to businesses with a high share of quarterly recurring accounts, low customer concentration, and low churn. The bottom of its range is attached to commercial and project based work.
So the spread inside that one publisher's range maps to the same variable the whole sector is bought for. Whatever you conclude about the disagreement between the four sources, the question for an owner remains what proportion of the book is genuinely contracted and recurring.
Why we report the disagreement instead of resolving it
Our estimator marks this trade as carrying conflicting evidence. It leads with what pest control businesses actually sold for, sets the highest of the four against it as an asking versus sold contrast, and shows all four sources beneath with their scopes and, where they exist, their dates.
Averaging them would produce a number none of the publishers reported, drawn partly from figures we cannot place in time, describing populations defined four different ways. That is not a benchmark. It is arithmetic performed on incompatible inputs.
Showing the absence of a date is part of the point. It is information about the quality of the evidence, and a reader is entitled to it before deciding what weight to give a number.
What a buyer examines
Diligence concentrates on proving the recurring base and on obligations that outlast the service.
- Recurring service agreements counted by account rather than by revenue
- Churn measured across a full renewal cycle rather than a good quarter
- The split between recurring service and one time treatment work
- Commercial contract terms, renewal provisions, and concentration
- Termite and wood destroying organism warranty obligations still carried
- Applicator licensing by individual and by state
- Pricing history, and whether increases actually held across the base
What to do about it
Since the published record here cannot give you a defensible benchmark, the leverage is in what you can prove about the book.
Count the recurring accounts from the agreements rather than from the billing system, and check the two agree. Establish churn over a full cycle. Separate contracted service revenue from one time work in a way a stranger could follow. Then look at the termite warranty obligations you are still carrying, because that exposure attaches to properties and outlives the treatments.
Verelume reads contracts, financials, and operating records and reports what the record supports, where documents conflict, and where a claim has no documentation behind it. In a trade where the public benchmarks are this unreliable, what your own record establishes is close to the whole of your position.