On the desk today · Rollins
The bugs come back every month. So does the bill. Nobody cancels either one.
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The Subscription That
Biology Renews
In 1901, a 14-year-old boy in Pennsylvania started killing rats for his neighbors. His name was Otto Orkin. He was good at it. He charged a small fee. The neighbors told their friends. Within a decade, Otto — known locally as "the Rat Man" — had built a pest control business that stretched across the Southeast.
Sixty-three years later, a cotton mill worker from rural Georgia named O. Wayne Rollins walked into a bank and did something no one had done before. He borrowed $60 million — nearly seven times his own company's annual revenue — and bought Otto Orkin's business in what is believed to be the first leveraged buyout in American history. Rollins knew nothing about pest control. He knew everything about recurring revenue.
A pest control technician came to my house last month. Same guy. Same uniform. Same route he's been driving for three years. He sprayed the baseboards, checked the traps in the garage, flagged a carpenter ant trail near the back door, and left. The whole visit took 25 minutes. The bill — $69 — appeared on my credit card automatically. I didn't approve it. I didn't even notice it until I scrolled past it in my statement. It's been appearing every month for years. I have never once thought about canceling — because the last time I skipped a month, the ants came back.
That is the business model. Pest control is a subscription renewed by biology. The bugs don't stop. The rodents don't stop. The termites don't stop. The service runs monthly. The bill runs monthly. And the moment a customer cancels, the problem returns — which is why almost nobody does.
Rollins Broadcasting — Wayne Rollins' original company — started in 1948 with a radio station in Virginia bought to advertise his brother's car dealership. By 1960, it owned six radio stations and three TV stations. In 1964, Rollins acquired Orkin Exterminating Company for $62.4 million, funded by Chase Manhattan and Prudential. In 1965, the company renamed itself Rollins, Inc. Wayne Rollins died in 1991. His son Gary ran the company for decades. The Rollins family still owns approximately 35%.
In fiscal 2025, Rollins reported $3.76 billion in revenue — up 11% from the year before and the 24th consecutive year of revenue growth. Organic growth was 6.9%, with acquisitions adding another 4.1%. Gross margin held at 52.8%. Net income reached $527 million, up 12.9%. The company serves more than 2.8 million customers from over 850 locations across approximately 70 countries. It employs 22,000 people. And it owns more than 20 pest control brands — Orkin, HomeTeam Pest Defense, Clark Pest Control, Critter Control, Fox Pest Control, and others — each running the same recurring service model that Otto Orkin started in 1901.
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That 24-year growth streak is the number that tells you what recurring revenue looks like when the product is necessity. Rollins hasn't shrunk in a single year since 2001. Not during the financial crisis. Not during the pandemic. Not during any of the three recessions in between. Pests don't read the news. They don't respond to interest rates. They respond to warmth, moisture, and food — and American homes provide all three, year-round.
The pricing power is embedded in the service cadence. Rollins raises prices annually — typically in the low-to-mid single digits — and customers absorb it because the alternative is not a cheaper provider. The alternative is no provider. And no provider means the problem returns. In 2025, residential pest control revenue grew approximately 10%. Commercial pest control grew 11%. Termite and ancillary services grew 14%. All three categories grew — because the biology that drives demand doesn't pause.
The acquisition model is where the flywheel turns. The pest control industry remains deeply fragmented — thousands of small, family-owned operators across the country, each with a local customer base and a few trucks. Rollins buys them. In 2025, acquisition-related revenue contributed 4.1% growth on top of 6.9% organic. Recent acquisitions include Fox Pest Control and Saela Holdings. Each acquired company brings its customer base — a book of monthly subscriptions — and Rollins folds the operation into the network, applies its pricing model, and layers on operational efficiencies through its proprietary technology platform. The branch grows. The route density improves. The margin expands.
The company's press release noted it plainly: "24th consecutive year of revenue growth; FY 2025 delivered double-digit revenue, earnings, and cash flow growth." The simplicity of that statement is the whole point. This is not a company that needs to reinvent itself. It needs the weather to stay warm, the housing stock to keep aging, and the bugs to keep showing up. All three are guaranteed.
WHY THIS WORKS
Biology renews the subscription. Pests return on a biological cycle — monthly, seasonally, annually. The customer doesn't choose to renew. Nature does it for them. Canceling means the problem returns.
24 consecutive years of revenue growth. Through every recession, every pandemic, every rate cycle since 2001. Pest control demand is disconnected from economic sentiment. People stop renovating. They don't stop calling the exterminator.
Fragmentation feeds the flywheel. Thousands of small operators remain. Each acquisition adds a book of monthly subscriptions. Rollins applies pricing discipline, operational technology, and route density — and the margin improves.
The Rollins family still owns 35%. Three generations in. The family that bought Orkin in 1964 with a leveraged buyout still controls the company. The time horizon is generational. The strategy hasn't changed.
In 1964, O. Wayne Rollins borrowed $60 million to buy a pest control company seven times the size of his broadcasting business. He had never killed a bug in his life. But he understood something about the business that the Orkin family, in the middle of its own internal wars, had stopped seeing: a customer who pays you every month to solve a problem that never goes away is the most valuable customer in the world. Otto "the Rat Man" Orkin figured that out in 1901. Wayne Rollins figured out how to scale it. Three generations later, 2.8 million customers still get the monthly visit. The bugs still come back. The bill still arrives. And the subscription — the oldest, most durable subscription in American services — just completed its 24th consecutive year of growth.
