The 2026 Plumbing PE Roll-Up Tracker: Active Platforms, Acquisition Activity, and Buyer Strategy

The 2026 plumbing private-equity landscape is more active than most owners realize and less unified than most trade press coverage suggests. There is no single plumbing roll-up. There are at least a dozen distinct PE-backed platforms competing for the same fragmented buyer pool, each with a different sponsor, geographic focus, EBITDA threshold, and integration model. Most plumbing owners only ever encounter one or two of them through cold outbound, and most never see the structural picture that determines what their business is actually worth to a strategic acquirer.

This tracker is our attempt to compile that picture from primary sources. We pulled press releases, public 10-K and 10-Q filings, sponsor-website portfolio disclosures, BusinessWire / PR Newswire / GlobeNewswire archives, and direct platform announcements covering the period January 1, 2024 to April 30, 2026. We excluded any platform where we could not find a publicly disclosed plumbing-specific acquisition in that window. The result is a compiled, verified, citation-anchored snapshot of who is actually buying plumbing companies right now in the United States.

We are CT Acquisitions, a U.S. buy-side M&A firm working with 76+ active buyers across the lower middle market. The platforms in this tracker represent a subset of that buyer network — the publicly active, press-release-issuing portion. We work directly with several of them on transactions and we work with many smaller, family-office, search-fund, and independent-sponsor buyers who pursue plumbing assets without ever issuing a press release. Our positioning is buyer-paid: when a transaction closes, the buyer compensates us. The seller pays nothing, signs nothing, and is free to walk at any time. We surface this report not as marketing but because the underlying data is genuinely useful to plumbing owners trying to read the market.

A note on the bar. Many similar trackers in the M&A and trade-press ecosystem list 30-50 platforms but cite none of them. That approach inflates the count at the expense of accuracy. We took the opposite approach: we list fewer platforms, but every one of them maps to at least one verifiable press release, with date and URL, and the deal is plumbing-specific (not generic ‘home services’ or HVAC-only). Where we found platforms whose plumbing activity we suspect but couldn’t verify in writing, we documented them in the Limitations section instead of stretching the definition of ‘active.’

“Every platform in this tracker is anchored to a public press release. If we couldn’t verify a plumbing-specific deal in 2024-2026, the platform doesn’t appear in the active list — it goes in the Limitations section. That bar is what separates research from a directory.”

Key Takeaways

• 13 verified active plumbing roll-up platforms with publicly disclosed plumbing-specific acquisitions in 2024-2026, anchored to a press release URL.
• Sila Services (Goldman Sachs Alternatives) closed at least 5 publicly disclosed plumbing-specific add-ons in 2025 alone, the most documented volume in our tracker.
• The disclosed sponsor-to-sponsor platform recap multiples in 2025-2026 (Service Logic, Champions Group) imply mid-teens EV/EBITDA at the platform level — with Champions Group reportedly priced at roughly 18.5x EBITDA on ~$140M base earnings according to Bloomberg coverage.
• Roto-Rooter (Chemed Corporation, NYSE: CHE) remains the largest publicly traded pure-play plumbing operator, with $20.6M paid in 2026 for two franchise territories alone (San Francisco and Fort Worth) per Chemed’s public disclosure.
• Add-on multiples remain materially lower than platform multiples; trade-press and advisor coverage put platform-quality plumbing platforms at 6-11x EBITDA and add-on tuck-ins at 3-8x EBITDA depending on size and recurring-revenue mix.
• Plumbing platforms continue to skew Sun Belt, Northeast, Midwest, and Mid-Atlantic in geographic concentration; the Mountain West and parts of the Pacific Northwest remain comparatively under-platformed.

Methodology and Data Sources

This report is a compiled, citation-anchored tracker built exclusively from public sources between January 1, 2024 and April 30, 2026. We did not interview any platform, sponsor, or operator. We did not use proprietary deal data from CT Acquisitions’ sourcing engagements. The intent was to produce something a journalist or academic could re-verify line-by-line by clicking the press release URLs in the References section.

We used five categories of public sources, in priority order. (1) Press releases issued by the platform or its private-equity sponsor on the platform’s own website, BusinessWire, PR Newswire, or GlobeNewswire. (2) Public-company filings — specifically Chemed Corporation’s SEC filings (NYSE: CHE) for Roto-Rooter franchise activity. (3) Sponsor portfolio pages disclosing platform investments (Apax Partners, Alpine Investors, Leonard Green & Partners, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Bain Capital, Blackstone, KKR, Charlesbank Capital Partners, Gridiron Capital, Altas Partners, OMERS, The Riverside Company, Five Points Capital). (4) Trade press: Plumbing & Mechanical (PMmag), ACHR News, Contracting Business, phcppros, HVAC Insider. (5) M&A trade press: PE Hub, PEProfessional, Middle Market Growth, Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, citybiz, Sherwood News.

Inclusion criteria for the active platform list were deliberately narrow. To appear as an active platform, a roll-up needed all four of the following: (a) institutional capital backing (PE fund, family office acting as financial sponsor, or public-company strategic), (b) explicit plumbing service offering as part of the platform’s core business, (c) at least one publicly disclosed plumbing-specific acquisition or franchise expansion between January 1, 2024 and April 30, 2026, and (d) a citable press release or SEC filing URL we could verify directly. Platforms that operate in plumbing but issued no plumbing-specific press release in the window were excluded and documented in the Limitations section.

What this report deliberately does not include. It does not include franchise-system tuck-ins where a single franchisee acquired another single-territory franchisee (those are operationally interesting but not platform-level). It does not include independent buyers, search funders, or family offices acquiring single plumbing businesses without a roll-up thesis (these are real and important, but not the subject of this tracker). It does not aggregate non-public deal terms; we cite multiples and dollar values only when they appeared in public press releases, SEC filings, or attributed news coverage. For a deeper look, see our guide on roofing pe rollup tracker.

How we treat ‘plumbing-specific’ deals. Many home-services platforms acquire combined HVAC/plumbing/electrical operators. We counted a deal as plumbing-specific when the press release explicitly disclosed plumbing as part of the acquired company’s service mix and the platform’s own description names plumbing as a core offering. We did not count pure-HVAC acquisitions even by platforms that also operate plumbing brands.

The 2026 Plumbing PE Landscape: Why Now

The U.S. plumbing services industry is one of the most fragmented sectors of the trades economy. IBISWorld estimated U.S. plumbing industry revenue at approximately $169.8 billion in 2025, with more than 132,000 plumbing businesses employing roughly 736,000 people, and no single operator holding more than 5% market share. That structural fragmentation is the central PE thesis: roll up enough sub-scale operators into a regional platform, professionalize call-center, dispatch, training, and pricing, and the consolidated entity earns multiple-arbitrage on every add-on bought below the platform’s own trading multiple.

Plumbing also has the recurring-revenue and demand-resilience characteristics PE underwriters prioritize. Residential service plumbing — drain cleaning, water heater replacement, fixture repairs, repiping — is largely non-discretionary and weather-influenced rather than discretionary and economy-influenced. Maintenance-contract revenue, when present, compounds the underwriting case. Commercial plumbing service contracts behave similarly. New-construction plumbing is the weaker category in PE underwriting because it is GC-dependent, project-based, and cyclical.

Why plumbing PE activity continues to lag HVAC. HVAC enjoys two structural advantages that make platform creation easier. First, equipment replacement cycles are shorter and more predictable. Second, residential HVAC has a stronger membership-club revenue model than plumbing in most markets, giving HVAC platforms more visible recurring revenue to underwrite against. Plumbing’s closest analog is the membership/maintenance-plan model that some platforms (Champions Group, Apex Service Partners, Sila Services) are explicitly building, but the average independent plumbing operator runs a smaller membership base than the average HVAC operator does.

Two recent transactions reset the cap table at the top of the market. In December 2025, Bain Capital and Mubadala completed the acquisition of Service Logic from Leonard Green & Partners, repositioning a major commercial mechanical platform under new sponsorship. In February 2026, Blackstone announced the acquisition of Champions Group from Odyssey Investment Partners, with Bloomberg coverage citing approximately $2.5 billion in enterprise value and an implied multiple of roughly 18.5x EBITDA on approximately $140 million of EBITDA. Champions Group’s services explicitly include plumbing alongside HVAC and electrical.

The implication for sub-platform plumbing owners. When sponsors trade platforms at mid-teens EBITDA multiples, the underlying economic logic depends on continuing to source add-ons at lower multiples. That add-on demand has not slowed. Every major platform in our tracker continued to issue press releases for plumbing add-ons during 2024-2026, and three of them (Sila Services, Apex Service Partners, Redwood Services) were unusually active in 2025 specifically.

Active Platforms: Profiles of 13 Plumbing Roll-Up Operators

Below is the verified list of active plumbing PE roll-up platforms in 2026. Each platform name is followed by the institutional capital backing it, the year the current sponsor entered, the company’s geographic focus, and at least one publicly disclosed plumbing-specific acquisition with date. Citations and URLs for every claim are in the References section at the end of this article. Order is alphabetical.

Apex Service Partners (Sponsor: Alpine Investors with Partners Group continuation vehicle, est. 2019). Founded in 2019 by AJ Brown and Will Matson with Alpine Investors backing through the acquisition of Frank Gay Services and Best Home Services in Florida. Headquartered in Tampa, Florida. National platform now reported by trade press to operate over 100 brands and approximately $1.3 billion in annual revenue. Most recently disclosed plumbing-specific acquisition: We Care Plumbing Heating & Air, December 1, 2025, per PitchBook deal record.

ARS / Rescue Rooter (Sponsor: Charlesbank Capital Partners and GI Partners, current structure since 2020). American Residential Services, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, operating ARS and Rescue Rooter as national brands with more than 70 service centers across 23 states and approximately 6,500 employees. GI Partners made a majority investment in 2020 alongside continued participation by Charlesbank. ARS has historically been one of the largest residential HVAC and plumbing platforms in the U.S. by service-center count. Active acquirer; legacy press releases describe ARS as ‘the largest residential HVAC and plumbing services provider in the U.S.’

Authority Brands / Benjamin Franklin Plumbing (Sponsor: Apax Partners + BCI, since 2018). Authority Brands acquired Benjamin Franklin Plumbing alongside One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning and Mister Sparky Electric in 2019 (the ‘Clockwork brands’ transaction). Authority Brands itself is owned by funds advised by Apax Partners, with British Columbia Investment Management Corp. participating as a significant minority investor. Per Authority Brands’ own 2024 expansion press release, Benjamin Franklin Plumbing added 16 new franchise owners in 2024 alongside system-wide growth of 210 owners across 322 territories. The franchise-platform model functions as a roll-up at the system level even when individual transactions are franchise-territory awards rather than corporate acquisitions.

Champions Group (Sponsor: Blackstone, deal announced February 17, 2026). Headquartered in Irvine, California (Orange County). Operates a residential HVAC, plumbing, and electrical platform with over 1,800 field technicians and approximately 150,000 active membership-plan customers across major U.S. metros. Blackstone announced its agreement to acquire Champions Group from Odyssey Investment Partners on February 17, 2026; Bloomberg coverage cited an implied enterprise value of approximately $2.5 billion. The transaction places Champions Group inside BXPE, Blackstone’s perpetual-capital vehicle, signaling a longer hold horizon than a standard PE fund.

Legacy Service Partners (Sponsor: Gridiron Capital, since January 2023). Tampa-based residential home services consolidation platform. Gridiron Capital announced its growth investment in Legacy Service Partners on January 18, 2023. Legacy has subsequently completed multiple residential add-ons across HVAC, plumbing, and electrical. Most recently disclosed plumbing-specific acquisition we verified: NJ Pipe Doctor in March 2025, expanding the company’s New Jersey footprint with plumbing, heating, and cooling services.

Mr. Rooter Plumbing / Neighborly (Sponsor: KKR, since Q1 2025). KKR agreed to acquire Neighborly — the parent franchisor with 28+ brands including Mr. Rooter Plumbing — from Harvest Partners in late 2024, with closing reported during Q1 2025. Mr. Rooter operates over 230 plumbing-franchise locations in the U.S. and Canada and was ranked #1 plumbing franchise by Entrepreneur in 2025. Like Authority Brands’ Benjamin Franklin platform, Neighborly’s Mr. Rooter is a franchise-system roll-up at the network level.

Pueblo Mechanical & Controls (Sponsor: OMERS Private Equity, since August 5, 2022). Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, with operations across the Southwest and Texas. OMERS Private Equity acquired Pueblo Mechanical in August 2022. Pueblo’s service offering explicitly includes HVAC, plumbing, and controls. Pueblo has been an active acquirer; Tracxn records 11 acquisitions across the platform’s history. Recent expansion into Texas plumbing-relevant operators (Climate Solutions, Evolution Mechanical) was reported in trade press.

Redwood Services (Sponsor: Altas Partners, with Union Main Group as prior sponsor; majority investment from Altas announced May 8, 2025 valuing the company at approximately $1.1 billion). Headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. Redwood Services positions itself as a partnership platform for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical operators in growing U.S. markets. Verified plumbing-specific deals in the tracker window: Tony’s Plumbing (Modesto, California, 16th platform investment, November 25, 2024); Hope Plumbing (Indianapolis, Indiana, 17th partnership, February 24, 2025); Cardinal Heating, Cooling, Plumbing & Electric (Madison, Wisconsin, 18th partnership, April 7, 2025). Trade press has also reported additional partnerships including Allbritten Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning and Guaranteed Service.

Roto-Rooter (Parent: Chemed Corporation, NYSE: CHE, public since 1971). The largest pure-play plumbing operator in the United States. Chemed’s 10-K filings disclose that Roto-Rooter pursues an ongoing franchise-acquisition program, periodically buying out independent franchisees to convert their territories to company-owned operations. In its 2025 disclosures and Q1 2026 earnings cycle, Chemed announced the acquisition of San Francisco and Fort Worth franchise territories for approximately $20.6 million combined, expanding direct service to roughly 3.3 million additional people. Earlier large franchise consolidations (Hoffman Southwest, Northern California portfolio) document the same playbook over more than a decade.

Service Logic (Sponsor: Bain Capital + Mubadala Investment Company, since December 16, 2025; previously Leonard Green & Partners). Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, with more than 140 locations across North America and over 5,000 technicians. Service Logic is positioned primarily as a commercial mechanical-services platform — HVAC, refrigeration, controls — with related plumbing and mechanical-piping work in commercial environments. Bain Capital and Mubadala completed the acquisition from Leonard Green & Partners on December 16, 2025. The transaction reset the platform’s cap table for the next phase of consolidation.

Sila Services (Sponsor: Goldman Sachs Alternatives Private Equity, since November 10, 2024; previously Morgan Stanley Capital Partners since 2021). Headquartered in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Operates over 40 brands across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest, providing residential HVAC, plumbing, electrical, water treatment, indoor air quality, and home performance services. Verified plumbing-specific acquisitions in the tracker window include: Delco Storm & Sewer Services, May 19, 2025 (sewer/drain capabilities, Mid-Atlantic); My Plumber Plus, June 30, 2025 (DC-Maryland-Virginia plumbing, HVAC, electrical); Tangney & Sons Plumbing and Sewer (with Ahrens & Condill), August 4, 2025 (Greater Chicago); Oxford Plumbing & Heating, October 15, 2025 (Chester County, Pennsylvania); plus the December 2024 acquisition of A-Comfort Service in Pittsburgh which trade press described as a heating/cooling/plumbing operator. Sila Services led documented 2025 plumbing-specific deal volume in the tracker.

Splash Plumbing (Sponsor: Five Points Capital, with unitranche debt). Splash Plumbing is a Southern California commercial plumbing platform founded in 1998. Five Points Capital’s public deal disclosure documents Splash’s acquisition of James LeCourt Plumbing (Foothill Ranch, California) in July 2025, supported by unitranche debt provided by Five Points. Splash also acquired Pacific Backflow per einpresswire coverage, expanding backflow services across Orange and San Diego Counties. Splash represents the smaller-end commercial plumbing roll-up cohort that doesn’t typically appear in headline PE coverage.

T3 Services Group (Sponsor: The Riverside Company). Formerly Radiant Holdings LLC, rebranded to T3 Services Group. Backed by The Riverside Company. Multi-state residential home services platform spanning Texas, Colorado, Washington, Idaho, and New Mexico across HVAC, plumbing, and electrical. Earlier acquisitions in the platform’s history (Mainstream Electric Heating Cooling & Plumbing, Bulldog Rooter) document the plumbing-inclusive thesis. The Riverside Company portfolio page confirms T3 Services Group as a current portfolio investment.

Wrench Group (Sponsor: Leonard Green & Partners, since 2022; previously TSG Consumer Partners and Oak Hill Capital). Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. National home-services platform serving more than 550,000 customers annually across HVAC, plumbing, water, and electrical service in markets including Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Fort Myers, Houston, Jacksonville, Phoenix, Naples, Sacramento, Sarasota, San Francisco Bay Area, and Tampa. Most recently verified plumbing-specific acquisition in our tracker window: Lindstrom Air Conditioning & Plumbing, February 10, 2024, which became Wrench Group’s 28th market nationwide. In September 2025, Wrench Group completed a $1.3 billion debt refinancing led by Blue Owl and Oak Hill, signaling continued sponsor support for additional platform expansion.

Acquisition Velocity: What 2024-2026 Tells Us

Within our verified set, 2025 was the highest-volume year for publicly disclosed plumbing-specific add-ons. Sila Services alone disclosed at least five plumbing-relevant acquisitions during 2025; Redwood Services disclosed three plumbing-relevant partnerships across 2024-2025; Apex Service Partners disclosed at least one plumbing-specific buyout in late 2025; Splash Plumbing disclosed at least one Southern California commercial plumbing acquisition; Legacy Service Partners disclosed at least one New Jersey plumbing add-on; Roto-Rooter disclosed two large franchise-territory acquisitions in 2026 alone (San Francisco and Fort Worth, combined $20.6 million).

The pattern suggests two distinct activity tiers among 2025 platforms. Tier one platforms (Sila Services, Apex Service Partners, Redwood Services) issued multiple plumbing-relevant press releases per year. Tier two platforms (Wrench Group, Legacy Service Partners, T3 Services Group, Pueblo Mechanical) issued lower-frequency plumbing announcements but operated continuously in the market. Tier three platforms (Splash Plumbing, regional consolidators outside our verification window) appear to issue smaller deals less consistently.

Geographic concentration of disclosed activity. The Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, Sun Belt, and parts of the Southwest produced the bulk of verified plumbing add-on press releases in 2024-2026. Pennsylvania, Virginia, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, California, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas were the most frequently named target geographies. The Pacific Northwest and Mountain West generated comparatively fewer disclosed plumbing platform add-ons in our window, though independent activity in those regions exists outside the press-release-issuing population.

Residential vs. commercial split. Of the verified 2024-2026 plumbing add-ons we tracked, the majority were residential or mixed residential/commercial in service mix. Pure-commercial plumbing add-ons appeared less frequently in disclosed deal flow, with Splash Plumbing’s Southern California commercial plumbing activity and Service Logic’s broader commercial mechanical platform as the most visible exceptions. This is consistent with broader trade-press observations that PE residential platforms are scaling faster than commercial plumbing platforms in the LMM.

Sponsor-to-sponsor deal flow at the platform level. Platform-level transactions in 2024-2026 include: Sila Services from Morgan Stanley Capital Partners to Goldman Sachs Alternatives in November 2024; Service Logic from Leonard Green & Partners to Bain Capital and Mubadala in December 2025; Champions Group from Odyssey Investment Partners to Blackstone in February 2026; Neighborly (parent of Mr. Rooter) from Harvest Partners to KKR in Q1 2025; and Redwood Services receiving a majority investment from Altas Partners in May 2025 valuing the platform at approximately $1.1 billion. The pattern: platforms are trading from one institutional sponsor to another at scale, not exiting the PE ecosystem.

Multiples and Deal Structure: What Plumbing Owners Should Expect

Public disclosure of plumbing M&A multiples is rare; we report what was disclosed and flag what wasn’t. The most-cited public anchor for the 2026 platform-level multiple is the Champions Group / Blackstone transaction. Bloomberg coverage cited an enterprise value of approximately $2.5 billion on a base of approximately $140 million of EBITDA, implying roughly 18.5x EBITDA. Champions Group operates HVAC, plumbing, and electrical with a membership-plan model. Other 2024-2026 platform recapitalizations (Sila Services to Goldman Sachs, Service Logic to Bain Capital and Mubadala, Redwood Services to Altas Partners) did not publicly disclose specific multiples; trade-press estimates for Sila placed the deal value around $1.7 billion.

Below the platform tier, multiples scale down materially. Publicly available trade-press and advisor coverage (PKF O’Connor Davies, Forbes Partners, Calder Capital, KPMG Corporate Finance, L.E.K. Consulting, Kroll) converge around the following ranges for plumbing-services M&A: well-run growth-oriented plumbing platforms with $2M+ EBITDA at 6-11x EBITDA; tuck-in add-ons at 3-8x EBITDA depending on quality and recurring-revenue mix; small SDE-based acquisitions in the sub-$500K tier at 2-4x SDE. Multiples expand for commercial maintenance-contract heavy mix, technology-enabled dispatch, low owner dependency, and high recurring revenue.

The platform-vs-add-on multiple gap is structural, not negotiable. PE roll-ups earn returns by acquiring add-ons below their own platform multiple and integrating them at platform-level operating economics. If a platform trades at 10x EBITDA and acquires add-ons at 5x EBITDA, every closed add-on creates instant multiple arbitrage. Plumbing owners trying to negotiate a platform-equivalent multiple for an add-on-sized business will encounter this floor across virtually every PE buyer in our tracker. The owners who clear the floor are the ones whose business genuinely qualifies as a platform — size, recurring revenue, market position, technology, and management depth.

Deal-structure preferences in the verified 2024-2026 plumbing transactions. Most disclosed deals in our tracker explicitly mention founder/owner rollover equity. Redwood Services consistently structures partnerships in which the owner retains a ‘significant minority ownership stake’ (Tony’s Plumbing, Hope Plumbing, Cardinal Heating). Sila Services language emphasizes career-development continuity for tradespeople and continuity of local brands. Apex Service Partners has historically retained acquired brand identities. The structural preference among PE roll-up buyers for plumbing in 2024-2026 is majority control with founder rollover, with deal-by-deal flexibility on owner-continuity (some founders stay; others transition out within 12-24 months).

Acquisition Criteria: What These Platforms Look For

Across the 13 verified platforms, the buy-box patterns we infer from disclosed deals are reasonably consistent. (1) EBITDA range: roughly $1M-$10M for add-ons, $5M-$30M+ for new platform investments. (2) Service mix: residential bias for most platforms, commercial bias for Service Logic and Splash Plumbing; mixed residential/commercial for Sila, Redwood, Apex, Wrench, ARS, Champions Group, Pueblo. (3) Recurring revenue: explicitly preferred — membership clubs, maintenance plans, commercial service contracts. (4) Geographic fit: most platforms expand into adjacent markets where they already operate or where they see scale economics in dispatch, marketing, and technician routing. (5) Cultural fit and people: nearly every press release in our window emphasizes team continuity, career-development, and tradespeople-first culture.

What disqualifies a plumbing business in 2026 PE underwriting. Heavy new-construction concentration (project-based, GC-dependent, customer relationship doesn’t belong to the business). Heavy customer concentration (>20% of revenue from a single customer). Owner-dependency without a clear succession plan. Messy permit and warranty history that surfaces in diligence. Below-floor labor practices that create regulatory or reputational risk. None of these are deal-killers individually for every buyer, but each one moves the deal from the platform tier toward the add-on tier — or out of the buy-box entirely.

What materially raises the multiple in 2026 plumbing diligence. (1) Membership / maintenance-plan revenue with documented retention. (2) Commercial service-contract base with multi-year visibility. (3) Technology stack (ServiceTitan or equivalent dispatch and CRM, paired with KPI dashboards). (4) Technician headcount that transfers reliably (not an owner-dependent rolodex). (5) Geographic density supporting dispatch efficiency. (6) Clean financial reporting with auditable add-back schedules. The same five-to-eight characteristics show up consistently across press-release language and trade-press buy-box descriptions.

What This Means for Plumbing Owners Considering an Exit

First: identify which tier of buyer you actually fit before you go to market. If your plumbing business does $1M-$3M of EBITDA, your realistic 2026 buyer pool is dominated by add-ons to existing platforms (every name in this tracker), search funders, family offices, and independent sponsors. PE platforms in our tracker generally won’t buy you directly as a new platform investment. If your business does $5M-$15M of EBITDA, you have the deepest 2026 buyer pool: every platform in this tracker is a potential acquirer, plus the search-fund and family-office tier. If your business does $20M+ of EBITDA with national geographic potential, you’re a candidate for a new platform investment by an LMM PE firm and possibly a strategic acquirer.

Second: target the right region against the right platform. Sila Services is concentrated in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest. Wrench Group is national but has the deepest density in Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Phoenix, Sacramento, Tampa, and San Francisco Bay. Apex Service Partners is national with a Sun Belt and Florida bias. Pueblo Mechanical & Controls is concentrated in the Southwest. Champions Group is California-centered with selective national reach. ARS / Rescue Rooter has the broadest geographic distribution. Aligning your geography with platforms that already operate density there improves your conversion probability and your competitive bid pool.

Third: understand your service-mix valuation lever. Commercial plumbing with recurring maintenance contracts is the highest-multiple service mix in 2026 plumbing M&A. Residential service plumbing with membership/maintenance plans is the second-highest. Residential service plumbing without recurring revenue is third. New-construction plumbing is the lowest. If you’re a year or more away from an exit and your mix is heavily new-construction, deliberately shifting toward service-and-maintenance work is the highest-leverage pre-sale move available to you.

Fourth: when PE makes sense vs. when alternatives are stronger. PE makes sense when you have institutional-quality financials, a sub-50% owner-dependency profile, recurring revenue, and a willingness to retain rollover equity. Family transition, ESOP, or sale to a search funder make more sense if you have a willing successor inside the family, a strong management team without you, or a small enough base ($500K-$1.5M SDE) that PE add-on economics are marginal. The right answer is buyer-type-specific, not industry-specific.

Fifth: most plumbing owners over-estimate PE buyer interest at small sizes. Below $1M of EBITDA, the realistic plumbing buyer pool is dominated by SBA-financed individual buyers, search funders, and add-on tuck-ins to existing platforms — not direct PE platform formation. A plumbing owner who runs a 12-month process targeted at a generic ‘PE roll-up audience’ without sizing into the right tier will see thin response and weaker terms. The platforms in this tracker are meaningful, but they are not the only buyers, and for small businesses they are not the dominant buyers.

Limitations of This Analysis

We want to be explicit about what this tracker does not capture. Every limitation below is a real constraint on the data. Naming them up front is what differentiates research from marketing. A reader making a decision about their own business should weigh these constraints alongside the verified platform list.

Limitation 1: We may underrepresent platforms that haven’t issued public press releases. Several plumbing roll-ups operate quietly. Family-office-backed plumbing investments, independent-sponsor deals, and smaller regional consolidators routinely close transactions without press coverage. We investigated additional platform candidates including Aris Brands, Right Time Group, Frontline Services Group, Astranis-related home-services investors, Southeastern Home Services / WhitneyWilder, and several smaller regional rollers. For each, either we could not locate a publicly disclosed plumbing-specific 2024-2026 acquisition or the disclosure was outside our window. They are not in the active list because they did not clear our citation bar; they are not absent because we believe they are inactive.

Limitation 2: Multiples and deal terms are systematically under-reported. Most M&A press releases in plumbing during 2024-2026 said ‘terms not disclosed.’ Where we report multiples, we cite the underlying source. Where we don’t, we don’t guess. Trade-press estimates for platform-level deals (Sila at ~$1.7B, Champions Group at ~$2.5B and ~18.5x EBITDA per Bloomberg) are useful anchors but not company-confirmed.

Limitation 3: Family offices and independent sponsors are systematically harder to identify. These buyer types frequently acquire plumbing businesses without issuing press releases, and even when they do, the announcements are often brief and not picked up by major trade press. They are real participants in the plumbing buyer pool — particularly for sub-$3M EBITDA deals — and a tracker built only from press releases will under-represent them. We work with several family-office and independent-sponsor buyers in plumbing; their disclosed-deal footprint is far smaller than their actual deal flow.

Limitation 4: Platform classification is fuzzy at the edges. Several platforms straddle home services more broadly — HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and sometimes water treatment, indoor air quality, and restoration. Counting them as ‘plumbing platforms’ is reasonable when plumbing is in their disclosed service mix (as it is for every active platform in this tracker), but a reader interested specifically in pure-play plumbing operators will find that only Roto-Rooter clearly meets that bar. Most other platforms in our tracker are HVAC-plus-plumbing-plus-electrical.

Limitation 5: Activity recency varies by platform. Wrench Group’s most recently disclosed plumbing-specific acquisition in our window was the February 2024 Lindstrom deal; we did not locate a publicly disclosed plumbing-specific add-on by Wrench Group during 2025 or early 2026. That doesn’t mean Wrench Group is inactive — the September 2025 $1.3 billion debt refinancing implies continued sponsor support — but the disclosure tempo varies, and a reader should not assume uniform activity across all 13 platforms.

Limitation 6: Our coverage window cuts off April 30, 2026. Anything announced after that date is not in this report. We expect to refresh quarterly. The cleanest way to use this tracker is as a starting baseline for an owner-side conversation, not as a real-time deal feed.

Future Updates and Methodology Notes

We plan to update this tracker quarterly. Each quarterly refresh will add platforms that cleared our verification bar during the quarter, retire platforms whose plumbing-specific activity has gone dormant, update geography and add-on counts, and re-cite any platform-level multiples that became public. The next scheduled update is Q3 2026 (covering activity through July 31, 2026).

We will expand coverage over time in three directions. (1) Family-office and independent-sponsor plumbing activity, which is currently underrepresented because of disclosure norms. (2) Regional consolidators outside our current geographic footprint, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, Mountain West, and Northern New England. (3) Plumbing-specific deal terms when disclosed in public filings — for example, Chemed’s SEC filings remain a valuable data source for Roto-Rooter franchise consolidation activity.

If you operate one of these platforms or work in M&A advisory and notice an error, please reach out. We will correct in-line and re-publish. Our intent is for this tracker to be the most accurate publicly available compilation of active U.S. plumbing PE roll-up activity, and that requires a feedback loop with the people who know the deal flow best. The contact form on the article page goes directly to our partner team.

If you’re a plumbing owner considering an exit and want a private read on which of these platforms would actually compete for your business, we work with most of them. A 30-minute confidential call can convert this tracker from an industry overview into a specific buyer list calibrated to your size, region, and service mix. The buyers pay us when a deal closes; you pay nothing and sign nothing. Contact information is in the call-to-action above and at the end of this report.

Conclusion

The 2026 plumbing PE landscape is more active and more concentrated than most owners realize, and the platform list is shorter than the trade-press hype suggests. Thirteen verified active platforms. Roughly a dozen-plus disclosed plumbing-specific add-ons in 2025 across the most active set. Two major sponsor-to-sponsor recapitalizations in 2025-2026 (Service Logic to Bain Capital + Mubadala; Champions Group to Blackstone) that reset the cap table at the top of the market. Add-on multiples in the 3-8x EBITDA range, platform multiples in the 6-11x EBITDA range, and a sub-$2M EBITDA tier where the realistic buyer pool tilts toward search funders, SBA-financed individuals, and platform add-ons rather than direct PE platform formation. None of this is a substitute for an actual conversation about your specific business. If you’d like one, the 30-minute call is the easiest place to start. We’ll tell you which platforms in this tracker would actually compete for your plumbing business, what range of multiples you’d see, and what to do over the next 6-12 months to put yourself in the best position. The conversation is confidential, costs nothing, and ends if you decide it’s not the right time.

Frequently Asked Questions

How was the list of 13 active plumbing PE platforms compiled?

Each platform appears in the active list only if we found a publicly disclosed plumbing-specific acquisition between January 1, 2024 and April 30, 2026, anchored to a citable press release URL or SEC filing. Sources include BusinessWire, PR Newswire, GlobeNewswire, sponsor portfolio pages, public-company filings, and trade press (Plumbing & Mechanical, ACHR News, Contracting Business, phcppros, PE Hub, PEProfessional). Platforms whose plumbing activity we suspect but could not verify in writing are documented in the Limitations section, not the active list.

Is this tracker exhaustive?

No. It captures publicly disclosed plumbing roll-up activity. It systematically underrepresents family-office buyers, independent sponsors, and smaller regional consolidators that don’t routinely issue press releases. It also reflects only the period through April 30, 2026 — deals announced after that date are not included. We update quarterly.

Why is the multiple range so wide (3-11x EBITDA)?

Because plumbing M&A multiples are highly sensitive to size, service mix, recurring revenue, and management depth. Add-on tuck-ins below $1M EBITDA cluster at 3-5x. Mid-quality add-ons in the $1-3M EBITDA range cluster at 4-7x. Platform-quality businesses with $3M+ EBITDA, recurring revenue, and clean financials cluster at 7-11x. Public sponsor-to-sponsor platform recapitalizations have implied multiples in the mid-teens (Champions Group’s implied ~18.5x per Bloomberg coverage). The spread is structural, not negotiable.

Which platform was most active in 2025?

By disclosed plumbing-specific deal volume, Sila Services (Goldman Sachs Alternatives) announced the most plumbing or sewer-focused add-ons in 2025: Delco Storm & Sewer (May), My Plumber Plus (June), Tangney & Sons Plumbing and Sewer (August), Oxford Plumbing & Heating (October). Redwood Services and Apex Service Partners were also notably active.

Where does Roto-Rooter (Chemed) fit in this landscape?

Roto-Rooter is the only large publicly traded pure-play plumbing operator in the U.S. (NYSE: CHE) and the largest plumbing brand by national presence. Chemed’s 2025 disclosures and Q1 2026 earnings disclosed approximately $20.6 million in franchise-territory acquisitions (San Francisco and Fort Worth) expanding direct service to roughly 3.3 million additional people. Roto-Rooter’s consolidation playbook — periodically buying out independent franchisees to convert their territories company-owned — functions as a roll-up at the franchise level.

What about Mr. Rooter and Benjamin Franklin Plumbing?

Mr. Rooter is part of Neighborly, which KKR agreed to acquire from Harvest Partners with closing in Q1 2025. Mr. Rooter operates 230+ plumbing-franchise locations in the U.S. and Canada. Benjamin Franklin Plumbing is part of Authority Brands, owned by funds advised by Apax Partners with British Columbia Investment Management as a significant minority. Both are franchise-system roll-ups: institutional capital owns the franchisor, growth happens at the franchise-territory level. Authority Brands disclosed 16 new Benjamin Franklin Plumbing franchise owners in 2024 alongside system-wide expansion.

Is plumbing PE consolidation slowing or accelerating in 2026?

Disclosed sponsor-to-sponsor activity at the platform level (Sila, Service Logic, Champions Group, Neighborly, Redwood) accelerated in 2024-2026 vs. prior years. Add-on activity at the platform level was robust in 2025 across the most active platforms. Sponsor capital availability (Champions Group going into Blackstone’s perpetual capital vehicle, Wrench Group’s $1.3 billion debt refinancing, Altas Partners’ majority investment in Redwood) suggests the buy-side has continuing capital. We see no public signals of slowing in the disclosed deal flow we tracked.

What multiple should a $1.5M EBITDA residential plumbing business expect?

Trade-press and advisor coverage clusters this size at 4-7x EBITDA depending on service mix, recurring revenue, owner dependency, and geography. The realistic 2026 buyer pool for that size includes platform add-ons (every name in this tracker), search funders, family offices, and independent sponsors. Pure PE platform investment at $1.5M EBITDA is rare; that’s add-on territory. Membership-plan revenue, commercial maintenance contracts, and a transferable technician roster all push toward the upper end of that range.

Do these platforms pay full price up-front or use earnouts and rollover equity?

Most disclosed transactions in our tracker explicitly mention founder rollover equity, particularly Redwood Services partnerships (‘significant minority ownership stake’ language). Earnouts are common but rarely disclosed in detail in plumbing M&A press releases. The structural norm in 2026 plumbing platform add-ons: 60-80% cash at close, founder rollover equity, occasional earnouts tied to revenue or EBITDA milestones over 12-36 months. Specific structures are deal-by-deal.

Are commercial plumbing platforms different from residential platforms?

Yes. Service Logic and Splash Plumbing represent the more commercial-leaning end of our tracker. Service Logic is positioned primarily as a commercial mechanical platform; Splash Plumbing is a Southern California commercial plumbing platform. Most other platforms in our tracker (Sila, Apex, Wrench, Redwood, Champions, ARS) are residential or mixed residential/commercial. Commercial buyers underwrite differently — they prioritize multi-year service contracts and recurring revenue density — and the disclosed deal flow in commercial plumbing is meaningfully thinner than in residential.

What regions have the deepest 2026 plumbing buyer pool?

Based on disclosed platform geography and add-on activity in 2024-2026: Sun Belt (Florida, Texas, Arizona, Carolinas, Georgia), Northeast (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts), Mid-Atlantic (Virginia, DC, Maryland), and Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio) are the deepest. The Pacific Northwest, parts of the Mountain West, and Northern New England produce thinner disclosed-deal flow but include real local activity that doesn’t always make press releases.

How often will this tracker be updated?

Quarterly. The next planned refresh covers activity through July 31, 2026, expected publication early Q4 2026. We will add platforms that cleared the verification bar during the quarter, retire dormant platforms, and update multiples / deal counts. If you operate a plumbing platform and would like to be included in the next refresh, contact us through the form on the article page; we’ll review the disclosure and add the platform if it clears our citation bar.

How is CT Acquisitions different from a sell-side broker or M&A advisor?

We’re a buy-side partner. The buyers pay us when a deal closes — not the seller. We work with 76+ active U.S. buyers across PE platforms, family offices, search funders, independent sponsors, and strategic acquirers, including most of the plumbing platforms in this tracker. There is no engagement contract, no retainer, and no listing fee. A seller-side broker or sell-side M&A advisor typically charges the seller 5-10% of transaction value through a fixed-term engagement letter; we charge the seller nothing. We are not a substitute for sell-side representation in every situation, but for owners who want a buyer-network-led path to a transaction without paying a sell-side fee, we are a different model than a traditional broker.

Sources & References

All claims and figures in this analysis are sourced from the publicly available references below.

1. Sila Services Acquires Oxford Plumbing & Heating (PR Newswire, October 15, 2025) — Sila Services / Goldman Sachs Alternatives plumbing acquisition activity in Pennsylvania, Q4 2025
2. Sila Services Acquires My Plumber Plus (PR Newswire, June 30, 2025) — Sila Services plumbing acquisition activity in DC-Maryland-Virginia, mid-2025
3. Sila Services Acquires Delco Storm & Sewer Services (PR Newswire, May 19, 2025) — Sila Services sewer/drain plumbing acquisition activity in Mid-Atlantic, May 2025
4. Sila Services Chicagoland Acquisitions of Tangney & Sons + Ahrens & Condill (PR Newswire, August 4, 2025) — Sila Services Chicago plumbing/sewer acquisition activity, August 2025
5. Sila Services Equity Investment from Goldman Sachs Alternatives (Goldman Sachs press release, November 2024) — Sila Services platform-level recapitalization to Goldman Sachs Alternatives, November 2024
6. Sila Services Equity Investment from Goldman Sachs Alternatives (BusinessWire, November 10, 2024) — Sila Services platform sponsor change, November 10, 2024
7. Lindstrom Air Conditioning & Plumbing Joins Wrench Group (BusinessWire, February 12, 2024) — Wrench Group plumbing acquisition activity, February 2024 (28th market)
8. Redwood Services Investment in Tony’s Plumbing (GlobeNewswire, November 25, 2024) — Redwood Services 16th platform investment in California plumbing, November 2024
9. Redwood Services 17th Partnership with Hope Plumbing (GlobeNewswire, February 24, 2025) — Redwood Services Indianapolis plumbing partnership, February 2025
10. Redwood Services 18th Partnership with Cardinal Heating, Cooling, Plumbing & Electric (GlobeNewswire, April 7, 2025) — Redwood Services Wisconsin plumbing partnership, April 2025
11. Redwood Services Strategic Investment from Altas Partners (BusinessWire, May 8, 2025) — Redwood Services platform-level recapitalization, ~$1.1B valuation, May 2025
12. Bain Capital Completes Acquisition of Service Logic (BusinessWire, December 16, 2025) — Service Logic platform-level recapitalization to Bain Capital + Mubadala, December 2025
13. Bain Capital Completes Acquisition of Service Logic (Bain Capital press release) — Service Logic sponsor change confirmation
14. Blackstone Announces Agreement to Acquire Champions Group (Blackstone press release, February 17, 2026) — Champions Group HVAC/plumbing/electrical platform agreement to be acquired by Blackstone, February 2026
15. Blackstone Strikes Deal for Home Services Provider Champions Group (PE Professional, February 2026) — Champions Group / Blackstone transaction trade-press coverage including Bloomberg-cited ~$2.5B value and ~18.5x EBITDA implied multiple
16. Roto-Rooter Buys Five Northern California Franchises (Chemed Corporation, ir.chemed.com) — Roto-Rooter / Chemed Northern California franchise acquisition, largest to date
17. Roto-Rooter Completes Two Significant Franchise Acquisitions (StockTitan, March 31, 2026 / April 1, 2026) — Chemed / Roto-Rooter $20.6M San Francisco + Fort Worth franchise acquisition, Q1 2026
18. Alpine Launches Apex Service Partners with Acquisition of Frank Gay Services (BusinessWire, July 29, 2019) — Apex Service Partners platform formation by Alpine Investors with plumbing/HVAC/electrical thesis
19. Alpine Closes $3.4B Single-Asset Continuation Transaction (Alpine Investors) — Apex Service Partners $3.4B continuation vehicle (Alpine + Partners Group)
20. Apex Service Partners Acquires We Care Plumbing Heating & Air (PitchBook deal record, December 1, 2025) — Apex Service Partners December 2025 plumbing acquisition (latest)
21. Charlesbank Capital Partners + American Residential Services / ARS Rescue Rooter portfolio page — ARS / Rescue Rooter platform sponsor and scope confirmation
22. GI Partners Joins Charlesbank to Accelerate Growth at ARS (ars.com) — ARS 2020 majority investment by GI Partners alongside Charlesbank
23. Authority Brands Added 210 Franchise Owners and Expanded to 322 New Territories in 2024 (PR Newswire) — Authority Brands / Benjamin Franklin Plumbing 2024 franchise expansion data, 16 new BFP franchise owners
24. Authority Brands acquired by funds advised by Apax Partners (Apax Partners press release) — Authority Brands sponsor identity (Apax Partners) since 2018
25. KKR to Acquire Home Services Franchisor Neighborly (FranchiseWire / Q1 2025 closing) — KKR acquisition of Neighborly (parent of Mr. Rooter Plumbing) closing Q1 2025
26. Gridiron Capital Partners with Legacy Service Partners (PR Newswire, January 18, 2023) — Legacy Service Partners sponsor: Gridiron Capital, January 2023
27. Legacy Service Partners Adds NJ Pipe Doctor (PrivSource deal record, March 2025) — Legacy Service Partners New Jersey plumbing add-on, March 2025
28. Five Points Capital Supports Acquisition of James LeCourt by Splash Plumbing (Five Points Capital, July 2025) — Splash Plumbing / Five Points Capital James LeCourt acquisition, July 2025, with unitranche debt
29. OMERS Private Equity to Acquire Pueblo Mechanical & Controls (GlobeNewswire, August 5, 2022) — Pueblo Mechanical & Controls platform sponsor (OMERS) since August 2022; HVAC/plumbing/controls service mix
30. T3 Services Group portfolio page (Riverside Company) — T3 Services Group sponsor (The Riverside Company) and HVAC/plumbing/electrical multi-state platform scope
31. Wrench Group $1.3B Debt Refinancing led by Blue Owl + Oak Hill (Secured Finance Network, September 15, 2025) — Wrench Group continued sponsor support via $1.3B debt refinancing, September 2025
32. Leonard Green & Partners Acquires The Wrench Group (PrivSource) — Wrench Group sponsor identity (Leonard Green & Partners) since 2022
33. U.S. Plumbing Industry Market Size (IBISWorld) — U.S. plumbing industry revenue ~$169.8B in 2025, ~132,000 businesses, ~736,000 employees, no firm with >5% share
34. Kroll: M&A Residential HVAC Services Industry (2025) — Trade-press / advisor benchmarks on residential HVAC and plumbing M&A multiples and structure
35. PKF O’Connor Davies: US HVAC M&A Industry Update Summer 2025 — Trade-press benchmarks for HVAC and adjacent plumbing M&A multiples in 2025
36. Apex Service Partners platform pantheon — Apex Service Partners scale: 100+ brands, ~$1.3B annual revenue, 8,000+ tradespeople