Brightview Holdings Inc (BV) 2025 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good day, everyone, and welcome to today's BrightView earnings call. (Operator Instruction) Please note, this call may be recorded. (Operator Instruction) It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Mr. Christ Stoczko, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you for joining BrightView's Fourth Quarter and Full Year Fiscal 2025 earnings call. Dale Asplund, Brightview's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Brett Urban, Chief Financial Officer, are on the call.

I'll now refer you to slide 2 of the presentation, which can also be found on our website and contains our safe harbor disclaimer. Our presentation includes forward-looking statements subject to risks and uncertainties. In addition, during the call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please see our press release and 8-K issued yesterday for a reconciliation of these measures. With that, I will now turn the call over to Dale.

Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone, 2025 was another transformational year here at BrightView. We continue prioritizing our frontline employees by investing in consistent service levels and refreshing our fleet, enabling a best in class service experience to our customers each and every day.We have also made progress in expanding our sales force, hiring about 100 new sellers in the year, which positions us to drive top line profitable growth in the near term.

We offset the investments by continuing to leverage our size and scale and drive meaningful efficiencies within our business. These initiatives, as well as the hard work and dedication of our nearly 19,000 team members, resulted in the highest ever adjusted EBITDA and margin.

Our unwavering focus on delivering world-class service to our customers continues to yield meaningful momentum in customer retention improving about 200 basis points from the prior year and about 400 basis points since the beginning of my tenure in October of 2023.

I want to thank our team members for their continued efforts to put the customer at the center of everything we do and position ourselves as the service provider of choice. Additionally, as part of our disciplined approach to capital allocation and commitment to shareholder value, we have increased our share repurchase authorization from [$100 million] to [$150 million], and we are evaluating the pace at which we will execute.

We believe our current valuation is dislocated from the tremendous progress we have made over the past two years and the significant opportunities that lie ahead. Our strong balance sheet and growth outlook gives me the confidence to expand the program and return capital to shareholders in a strategic and opportunistic way.

As we turn the corner into fiscal 2026, I want to reemphasize my primary focus of delivering sustainable and profitable top line growth in the near and long term. I believe the investments we made and will continue to make such as consistent service levels and expanding our sales force, have strengthened the foundation of our business and will position us to inflect top line growth in 2026 as reflected in our guidance, which Brett will touch on in a bit.

Our formula remains the same, prioritize our front line, which in turn reduces turnover and leads to improved customer retention. All key fundamentals to topline growth and larger, more profitable branches. This, coupled with ramping up our sales force and unlocking our size and scale will strategic while strategically allocating capital, will position Brightview as a clear investment of choice.

Moving to slide 5, we continue to see sequential improvements in our frontline turnover. Two years ago, this metric was nearly 100%, with the bottom quartile of our workforce turning over 4 to 5 times per year. This created inconsistent levels of service and required additional costs to hire and onboard new employees.

Through continued investments in our employees, we've been able to drive meaningful improvement. The progress we've made continues to deliver cost savings, and we've reinvested into our frontline and well -- as well as more consistent service levels to our customers. This has been the key to solidifying our foundation and will continue to be a priority moving forward as we position Brightview as the employer of choice.

Turning to slide 6. I'd like to highlight the sequential improvement we've made in customer retention over the past two years, which is now approximately 83%, a 400 basis point improvement since the start of our transformation two years ago. This is a reflection of the exceptional service our employees deliver every day.

Although we have seen great improvement there is even more opportunity across our branch network as best-in-class branches sit at 90%-plus customer for retention. As I said from day one, becoming the service provider of choice begins with prioritizing our employees and providing best-in-class service. This formula will continue to drive retention improvements across our business and contribute to our growth in 2026 and beyond.

Now, let's move to slide 7. As I just outlined, we made significant progress in solidifying the foundation of our business and are making investments to expand our sales force. At our investor day in February, we committed to adding approximately 50% to our sales force, equating to about 500 net new hires through 2030.

In 2025, we added roughly 100 sellers to the business. And we have been able to fund the investments through continued G&A savings and efficiencies. It's important to note that the hiring of these sellers was more heavily weighted to the back half of the year. In 2026, we will continue to leverage savings in G&A to fund the investment into our sales organization.

In the bottom right, you can see that our current 10 year is relatively, new merely a function of ramping our salesforce. Training of our new sellers takes time, and we typically see improved productivity after their first year.

However, we continue to invest in technology and training to help onboard and speed up the effectiveness of both our new and tenured sellers. As we move forward, expanding our sales force, along with other key growth levers, which I will touch on in the next slide , will be key to driving sustainable top-line profitable growth.

Moving on to slide 8. In my first two years, we've made significant strides in unifying our business, enhancing operational efficiencies, investing for the future, and continuing to prioritize our employees and customers, effectively solidifying the foundation of our business.

Our development maintenance teams are working together as a unified one Brightview, focused on cross-selling into future reoccurring maintenance work. Additionally, with our record capital spend last year, was an investment in over 30 new tree trucks, which more landing at branches in 2026.

Investments like these will help bolster and expand our service offerings to our customers. Also by levering our national presence, we can effectively service large national accounts as a single point of contact provider.

These multifaceted levers along with the investments we are making in our sales force have positioned us to deliver top line profitable growth in 2026 and beyond and deliver value for all our stakeholders. With that, I will now turn the call over to Brett.

Thank you, Dale, and good morning, everyone. I'll start by reiterating Dow's enthusiasm for the progress we've made over the past two years as we actively transformed this business. Our teams across the country continue to raise the bar, delivering exceptional service, driving operational excellence, and strengthening the culture that makes Brightview poised for success.

Moving to slide 10. We delivered another year of record adjusted EBITDA and margin, which was made possible by our streamlined operating structure and unlocking scale advantages as the number one provider in our industry.

Fiscal '25 EBITDA was $352 million at a margin of 13.2%, representing a 260 basis point improvement from fiscal '23. We have made great progress in just 24 months, taking a business with shrinking margins and stagnated EBITDA to a business that has grown EBITDA over $50 million and delivered record margins all while investing at record levels back into the long-term success of the business.

Let's now move to slide 11 to take a look at how we were able to improve profitability in fiscal '25. Adjusted EBITDA was a record $352 million, an increase of $28 million or 8% higher than fiscal '24. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 13.2% was also a record and expanded 150 basis points year over year, marking another consecutive year of margin expansion.

Operating efficiencies more than offset the revenue flow-through, and we saw the benefits from the record level of investments we made refreshing our fleet, centralizing procurement, and continued efficiencies in G&A. As Dale mentioned, we are actively making investments back into expanding our sales organization, which will be one of the keys to sustainable top line growth.

Turning now to slide 12. We've taken substantial overhead costs out of our business, improving SG&A expense as a percentage of revenue by 180 basis points since 2023.

Our streamlined operating structure has produced meaningful cost benefits that we are using to reinvest into our employees, client satisfaction and more recently, our sales organization. Going forward, we expect to unlock additional efficiencies by leveraging our size and scale which are built into our long-term plan we presented last fiscal year during Investor Day.

Moving to slide 13. We're encouraged by the progress we've made in our trajectory of land maintenance revenue over the past two years. By aligning our sales and operating sturcture, we made sequential improvement in year-over-year revenue through Q2 2025.

In Q3, we experienced some macro related headwinds, but the sequential improvement that we saw on Q4 gives us confidence that land revenue growth is on the near-term horizon. As Dow mentioned, we added 100 new sellers in fiscal '25. And going forward, we will continue to invest G&A savings back into our sales team that will ultimately be a driver of profitable top line growth.

In fiscal '26, we expect these investments, coupled with our development conversion strategy and enhanced ancillary offerings to deliver land revenue growth. I'll touch further on our fiscal '26 guides in a few minutes, but I'd first like to turn to slide 14 to talk about our fleet management strategy, which has generated multifaceted benefits since its introduction.

To start, our fleet was severely aged 2023, given the lack of investment made previously into our core business. This led to a range of issues, including higher repair and maintenance expenses, higher rental expenses lower residuals, frustrated employees, and unsatisfied customers.

But over the past two years, we've invested over $300 million of capital to refresh our trucks, mowers, and other equipment, bringing down the average life of these assets considerably. The age of our core production vehicles have been reduced to just five years on average and our core mowers to one year. Another focus area for 2026 will be refreshing our fleet of trailers, which are about 11 years old on average.

The investments we made have driven significant improvements in repairs, maintenance, and equipment rental, all driving incremental margin. Additionally, we found that the refresh fleet has improved employee morale and employee retention as frontline workers are able to service our customers with the confidence of having reliable equipment. In turn, our customers have been more satisfied as evidenced through our improvement in customer retention.

In total, our fleet refresh strategy has delivered both financial and operational benefits that we will continue to realize as we invest further in the years ahead.

Moving slide 15, we remain disciplined in a strategic capital allocation focused on driving long-term shareholder value. Our strong balance sheet continues to support this approach, highlighted by ample liquidity and a favorable debt profile with no long-term maturities until 2029. Net leverage remained at 2.3 times.

We accelerated our fleet strategy in fiscal '25 and we will continue to execute this strategy in fiscal '26 as I previously discussed. And as Dale mentioned, we have increased our share repurchase authorization from $100 million to $150 million.

We believe there is a significant disconnect in our current valuation versus our earnings potential. The profits and margins we've generated since 2023 have been exceptional. We remain confident in our long-term growth strategy and coupled with our shares trading at an attractive multiple believe that repurchases represent an accretive and efficient use of capital.

The proactive management of our strong balance sheet reinforces our ability to reinvest in the business, support profitable growth, and create meaningful long-term value for shareholders.

Now I'll turn to slide 16, where we outline our guidance for fiscal '26, which is under pinned by a return to revenue growth in land maintenance and translates to yet another record adjusted EBITDA and continued margin expansion.

We expect to deliver revenue in a range of $2.67 million to $2.73 million. Adjusted EBITDA in a range of $363 million to $377 million. And adjusted free cash flow in a range of $100 million to $115 million.

The revenue guidance assumes the following. For maintenance land, we expect revenue to increase by 1$ to 2% as we begin to realize the benefits of our growing sales force, the continued improvement in customer retention, expanding our ancillary offerings, and higher development and maintenance conversions.

For development, we expect revenue growth to be in the range of flat to 2%, reflecting a combination of a healthy backlog as well as the benefits from cold starts, partially offset by project delays early in the fiscal year.

For snow, we are anticipating revenue to be in the range of $190 million to $220 million, reflecting a midpoint at our five-year average the shift to more fixed fee contracts. Moving to adjusted EBITD, we expect margins in the maintenance segment to expand by 50 to 70 basis points and margins in the development segment to expand by 20 to 40 basis points.

In total, we expect adjusted EBITDA margins to increase by 40 to 60 basis points, reflecting continued momentum in the multiple initiatives we've undertaken to drive profitable growth. Important to note the midpoint of our margin guidance would imply a $310 million basis point improvement over the last three years, reinforcing our commitment from investor day to expanding margins on average 100 basis points per year.

Before turning the call back over to Dale, I would like to remind you of the incredible progress we've made in just 24 months and the tremendous opportunity we have ahead as we continue to transform this business for long-term success. Also, I would like to express my gratitude to all of our committed team members. Without their unwavering focus and dedication, none of this would be possible.

With that, I'll turn the call back to Dale.

Thanks, Brett. Before we open the call for questions, I'd like to reemphasize what I've said from day one, transforming this business would not be possible without the commitment and dedication of our employees. By investing in our people, and becoming the employer of choice, we will continue providing world-class service and become a better partner to our customers.

This, coupled with the ramp of our sales force, unlocking our size and scale, strategically allocating capital, and returning our business to top-line growth will make Brightview the investment of choice.

With that, operator, you may now open the call for questions.

(Operator Instruction) Tim Mulrooney, William Blair.

Hi, good morning. This is Luke McFadden on for Tim. Thanks for taking our questions today. So coming out of the 3rd quarter, I think you felt like the worst was largely behind you in terms of tariff-related disruptions in your land maintenance business.

I'm curious how performance in some of those more discretionary areas of land maintenance trended as you move through the fourth quarter and how you're feeling about the setup for land maintenance sitting here today, several weeks into the first quarter.

Yes, great question, Luke. I'll start off and Brett can add. First of all, we sit here today in our branch in San Francisco a little early and I've got a little cold, so pardon my voice, but I would tell you that the progress we saw as we went through the quarter showed optimism that discretionary spend of ancillary, we could definitely see return and probably more positive for me as I stood at the gate yesterday during gate check and watched all the new fleet that Brett just talked about rollout and the cultural change it has on our frontline workers.

When we talk to them about the work they're going on to do, the feeling of our customers once again looking to return to those ancillary projects that were delayed when liberation they happened was very positive.

So look, it's going to be a daily grind. We had last year some two named storms that hit us, one at the end of September, one in October. The one at the end of September, as many people remember, was right from the panhandle of Florida all the way up to the Carolinas. So we're going to have to step over that. But we feel like the progress we saw right at through Q4 is an indication of why we said we're going to grow this business as we go through 2026.

Now just to remind everybody, these are our seasonal months. The next six months or two quarters, we could have some noise from the seasonality of the business. But like I used in my opening, I'd like to remind everybody, everything we've done has created a foundation positions us to grow this business and where we feel when we get to our stronger months for the land revenue business in Q3 and Q4, we will be positioned right where we thought we would be to grow this business in the back half of the year.

But we felt good, Luke. We're seeing some positive momentum. As we went through the quarter, and most of that, as everybody heard in our Q3 call was discretionary related.

Brett, do you want to add anything?

I think they'll the nail in the head. We are seeing sequential improvement. We saw that in Q4. We do have to step over a couple of named storms having last year in Q1. But Q1 and Q2 is not really our busy land season We do about a third of our land revenue in the first half of the year, and we're doing everything we can and now to ramp up our sales force and make investments into the salesforce of the company so that we're well positioned as especially as we get into our busy season in the back half year.

It's really helpful color, and you know, my follow-up, but I wanted to dig in a bit more on some of these investments you're making on the selling side. Maybe just how should we think about the productivity ramp on some of those new sales hires? I know you gave some context around the numbers in your prepared remarks, but maybe how that ramp fits in the context of your segment level organic growth outlook that you provided for 2026.

Yeah, let me try to break it into thirds at a high level. And obviously, is, there's exceptions for everything. But usually, the first six months of new sellers, they're learning the business, they're trying to get their arms around and they're very, very limited on productivity. They're out making relationships you could think of getting work to bid on.

The second six months traditionally they see a little more of a ramping. And once they get over a year, we see them get closer to what our seasoned sales reps would sell. And once they get over 18 months, we feel like they're in that normal stride of, call it, $1.5 million a year is what we target for our season sellers.

So they take time, Luke, it takes us a little bit. We added a lot this year and we feel great and I will say this. They are paying dividends as I see us starting to get new businesses. We even enter 2026 and we will continue to make investments through 2026 that will add cost to the P&L that we've forecasted in our EBITDA number, we think we'll add a similar number of resources as we work through '26.

Yeah, I would just add, Luke. The transformation of this business under Dale's leadership in such a short period of time has been nothing short of exceptional. And if you look at our trend over the last two years from a profitability standpoint in EBITDA and a quality of earnings standpoint and margin, and you look at what we're able to produce to the balance sheet with cash to invest in the business -- that's the beauty of where we are standing right now, so we're so excited. We have the ability to invest in the business.

And you can see in our EBITDA bridge in '25, we invested about $7 million into the sales force really starting in the April through June quarter. But we're going to continue to invest in the sales force now the foundation of the business, as you see in some of the KPIs that we presented, is solidified and significantly improved from just 24 short months ago.

Our employee retention has improved significantly, and our customer retention has improved significantly. So now that, that foundation is set, that's why we're putting the gas pedal down right now so hard on adding to the sales force and they'll talk to the timing of that and and ramping those those sellers up. It does take time.

But we have the ability and the fortunate situation where we continue to grow earnings and have cash to invest back into the business.

[Bob Ladik at CJS Securities].

Good Morning, thanks for taking our questions.I wanted to ask, hey, so I wanted to start with you know some other KPIs. Obviously you've really done quite well and you have the continuing progress on prioritizing your employees. There's a couple of blue, I guess circles, a lot of green checks on that slide as well.

You've -- where can this go, I guess is the question. How far are you along the road map of improving employee retention? And how much more progress is there to make? And how can this continue -- at what point does this continue to influence or stop influencing your customer retention rate, we link those two together, but really with the employee retention goals and where can it go.

Yeah, look, we've made progress and the blue checks that we're still working on to make us a better employer for our frontline workers, we're going to keep looking at new opportunities, Bob, those aren't the final steps.

Our goal is to make sure by far, our number one most important asset that touches our customers every day feels that they work for the best landscape company in the industry. We have improved that line from the day I arrived.

I said we have to do a better job of prioritizing those employees. We have improved that statistic over 3,000 basis points since the end of 2022, which is an absolute amazing statistic when you think about it. I think, Bob, there's another, call it 2,000 to 3,000 basis points that we can get to get to a more normalized level for that type of high churn workforce, but those people are so critical in driving our overall customer retention that we just have to keep thinking of new ways to make sure that they understand their importance.

And that starts with yesterday me standing at the gate handing out donuts and coffee and thanking them for what they do and it makes me feel good when they thank me for the new vehicle they have. So I fully believe -- they are the key to keep driving that customer retention. And I feel like we're only halfway-ish on our journey of what we can accomplish with frontline turnover.

Okay. That's great. And then you talked, I think, about the $300 million of investment in fleet earlier on the call. Can you talk about how the new tax bill influences the rate of investment that you're going after? And how many more years of -- will it take to get to kind of a normalized range for your capital investment? Because obviously, you're getting rid of fully depreciated assets. At some point, you'll get something back for those assets further down your roadmap.

Absolutely, Bob, it's Brett. I'll take that one. So yeah, we were again excited that we have the opportunity to invest in our fleet, invest in our people as Dale just mentioned. So yeah, you did see us in 2025, we benefited from the One Big Beautiful Bill where we did not pay any federal taxes and we took that money for cash savings and accelerated our fleet refresh, as you could see in the capital we spent in 2025.

So we're excited we're able to do that. We have our mowers in a spot now where it's exactly where we want to be for the long-term, an average of one year old mowers, which is fantastic. We have our trucks right around five years old, our core production trucks.

We probably have one more year to go to continue to refresh our trucks to bring that age down just a little bit further. And then in 2026 and even into 2027, we're going to. really invest our trailer, our trailers which we have about 4,500 trailers across the fleet.

So we started a little bit of that at the end of 2025, but you can see in our CapEx guide still heavier than normal, I guess in 2026. And then when we get into 2027 and really in 2028 we'll start to get back into that 3.5% range of revenue for capital, but the beauty of it is with our debt structure the way it is and our ample liquidity we're able to invest back in the fleet.

And they all said it. In about one minute, we're going to start seeing trucks roll out of the yard we're sitting in here in San Francisco and spending time with the crews and spending time with the managers here on site. I mean the team on the ground could not be happier with some of the investments we're making into their offices, into their trucks that they drive in every day into the fleet of mowers, the reliability they have to service to our customers. So that's really where we're seeing this payoff.

Andy Wittmann, Baird.

Great, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess I wanted to build on the last question on capital. I mean, the -- so I just heard '26 is going to be obviously [6.4%] of revenue sounds like next year is going to be above the 3.5%. What's the delta you guys talked not that long ago about maybe '26 being a normalized year. What -- where was the CapEx bill higher than you expected? Was that just inflation and tariffs, or is it just kind of a new look at the fleet from kind of where you were at analyst day?

It's a great question. Look, I think I'll start by saying we are fortunate to have our balance sheet in a position now to continue to invest in the business and refresh our fleet. And as you look at employee retention and that metric continuing to get better, you look at customer retention, that metric continuing to get better. That's directly related to some of the fleet investments we're making so that we can service our customers with a reliability ability that they deserve.

And then secondly, as you -- as you think about the investment -- moving forward, yeah, we're going to spend a little bit more this year because we want to get through kind of the refresh of our fleet. Previous to 2024, we spent a lot of cash in the company, but very little of that cash was on our core business, right? You guys know the story about M&A, et cetera. So we're now investing cash back into our core business. So we're going to continue to do that.

Now you think about the P&L side of the equation, our repair maintenance and rental expense, which was listed in our deck here, the $59 million a few years ago. We saw about a 15% reduction over the last 24 months, down about $51 million. We expect to see a reduction here in '26 and '27. And that number we said to an investor day, we could probably get half into the P&L as savings, and we expect to see more of that come through '26 and '27 as we move forward.

Andy, let me add a little color to that. I think the word that I would use is today, we have flexibility that we didn't have 24 months ago. We have the ability, if we see some reason to slow down capital, our fleet is at a level today that we could operate and customers would still see us as a great provider.

We're going to continue to move that to the level that we want it to be, where we think that repair and maintenance will be on our opportunistic level. But right now, we do have flexibility. Two years ago, we didn't have that, Andy. When I arrived, we didn't needed fleet refreshes. We needed to invest money. We were already keeping fleet way too long. Today, I feel like we have flexibility, and that's the key.

Yes. Okay. And then just, I guess, operationally, kind of a two-part question probably for you, Dale. So there was a comment in the prepared remarks about new technology and training for sellers. I was just hoping maybe you could expand on that, how the tools that they're going to have in '26 are different from what's happened in the past?

And then -- but -- you also mentioned in your comments, there's kind of the next round of efficiencies that are going to be able to fund some of those investments. And but maybe if you could help us get a tangible sense of that, maybe some examples of things that you plan to do that you haven't yet done, they're going to forge you that opportunity.

Yes. So I'll start with the training side. In the back half of '25 we brought in a new leader at our corporate level to drive trading across our organizations and her primary first focus is on our sales organization. We have a lot of content, Andy, that we've digitized that we're now putting out there that our employees can access via their phone they can access it via a computer or they can get printed materials if they want.

We have to continue to invest in those materials, especially as we grow that sales force. And then as you heard in my prepared remarks, we continue to invest in ancillary services. As an example, the three trucks we added we have to make sure that every one of our branches have the ability to give [tree service] access to our customers.

And that takes making sure our sales reps understand what that service provider is and make sure that we have professionals that can work with our customers to get them the proper quotes and then we can do the work safely and efficiently.

So it's a lot of information gathering and when you have a dispersed salesforce, we have to have an easy way to make sure they can get to the content. Because what we found, Andy, when we look at it, our quickest sales rep to get up to speed to be able to produce are the ones that access that materials, not just the day they join, but when they access it multiple times, and they use it as a reference. So making it visible, making it at the touch of a button is critical.

Yes, I would just add from an EBITDA standpoint, Andy, we are going to unlock more efficiencies in the business. We've seen significant efficiencies in our fleet strategy paying dividends. We've seen efficiencies and scale advantages by centralizing our procurement function.

As you can see on Page 11 of our deck that we presented -- and the beauty of it is we are continuing to create that size and scale advantage as the number onre player in the industry, so we can reinvest back in the business.

And we're reinvesting in our employees. As you see that, you're reinvesting in our fleet, as you talked about a minute ago. We're also reinvesting technology. We're launching and digitizing Howe as one example in our field service management system, how we digitize and route our crews and we expect to add efficiency in the system by digitizing that, having it on your phone, being able to route and make adjustments throughout the day to add more service to customers as we go forward.

So there's technology investments as well that's going to add to that efficiency.

Jeffrey Stevenson, Loop Capital.

So Brett, following up on your point about the field service management system. Can you talk about the time line of the broad rollout across your branches for that? And whether you have any benefits this baked into your second half guidance this year?

Yes. Great question, Jeff. I'll start with that one because it's a project I'm very close to. And for those of you who visited our branches, we underinvested in the past in the use of technology. And with labor being 40% of our cost, there was no greater area than the management of our frontline crews.

We did it far too manually with whiteboards -- we have implemented a tool that integrates into our CRM system, so we know what jobs to service everyday. We have rolled that system out in every one of my geographical regions for a couple of branches in a couple of different markets to make sure that it was efficient and added value to the branches. We tweaked it -- we've gone back, and started rolling it out to the masses across the whole company.

We will be complete with that sometime after the new year, call it, in the first quarter of the new year or our second fiscal quarter, which is the time we want to do it in a lot of our markets where we have a little bit less land revenue, and that's the major focus is on our maintenance business.

But yes, Jeff, we are very excited about what it can do for us, what we have built into our forecast, and what we tell people as we roll that tool out. That is not a savings tool. That is a capacity creation tool for us. We want our employees to be more efficient doing the work that they do every day.

And when we're growing this business in the back half of the year, we want to make sure we get the flow through on that incremental revenue as we work into 2027. That's the goal of field service. It's not a savings tool. It's a capacity creation tool so we can do more work with our existing team as we grow this business.

I would just add, Jeff, that that's why we sound so excited on this side of the conversation because we've created the ability in just a short 24 months to make sure we can continue to invest in the business. The amount of EBITDA that we've generated over $50 million since Dale has started in his chair as CEO that we're able to use to reinvest into the business, the cash that we have on the balance sheet, we're able to use to reinvest in the business.

And you hear some of it from ramping up our sales force, but technology is absolutely a big piece, and we're going to continue to invest in the business. And that's why I think we're so excited on this side of the table because we have the ability to invest and continue to invest in the business.

Got it. No, that's very helpful. Thanks for the color. And -- and then I was wondering if you could provide an update on the large project delays in your development business and how current segment backlogs have trended over the last 90 days. And then following up on that, how should we think about the timeline of your development [coal] start initiative and whether you expect any benefits from this program and fiscal '26.

Yes. Great question, Jeff. I mean the development business is a business that we see cyclicality in it, and the markets did great in the back half of '25 were kind of the soft markets in the back half of '24. And the markets that did real well in 2024 were a little softer in '25.

In fact, if you really look at that business, even though Q4 looked a little soft, we did the same in 2025 as we did in Q4 2023. So a little bit of it is a comp issue of how well we were able to complete fleet jobs last year in Q4.

I think on the cold start side, if you think about where we're at, we mentioned we're going to do 10 cold starts. We have five of them that we're starting to try to get open the door now at existing real estate and starting to make productivity as we work through '26 in that area.

We expect another five to be somewhere in the process within the end of 2026, hopefully, with leaders, with sales reps in those markets. The key of opening those development cold starts -- it allows us to service a broader base of jobs without trying to service big jobs in all markets from one branch.

So Denver is a great market for us that we have a very large branch, but they're doing jobs all over the state of Colorado. We need another branch that can do work so that the Denver group can focus on just the Denver market.

So we made great progress, Jeff. We think that's why we feel confident we're going to return that business to growth this year and long term by having more branches and more markets, our branches will go after more work within each market, not just the big jobs going, [Jason], across the whole geographic area they can cover.

So I hope that answers it.

Yes. And I would definitely say if you look at kind of the trajectory of the development business, they've grown significantly, Jeff, over the last few years, credited the development teams and the branches we operate in.

And that business has grown $60 million in '23. They grew $50 million in 2024, took a small step backwards here really towards the tail end due to some of that macro. But we're definitely coming down the other end of the bell curve.

And if you look at kind of where Q4 came in at an 8% reduction in revenue quarter over quarter, Dow mentioned last Q4 was really impressive growth. But we're definitely coming down the other end of the bell curve.

We expect it to be a little bit choppy here in the first half of the year that's just as those delays work its way through the system, and we're starting to see that free up here a little bit. And definitely, this business will be back to growing and growing at a nice pace here in the second half of the year.

One other part of your question, Jeff, you asked about project delays. Let me just add this week for Pittsburgh airport, which has been a very big project for us, actually switched to the new terminal. We're not done with our work there, but we're proud of the work that we did do.

But where you see those things accelerate where we did have the delays, Jeff, we have other projects that haven't even started yet that we were founding on in Q3 and Q4. So there's always going to be give and take. There's a lot of noise out there, but there's plenty of work for our guys to go get.

So we're motivating our development team. Let's get some new branches open. Let's all get more salespeople out there. Let's go get more work, because there's plenty of work for that team and the quality they do is second to none.

So we're in great shape as we enter this year. We guided to 0% to 2% increase as we work through 2026 again. But great questions.

Greg Palm, Craig-Hallum.

Maybe just dovetailing on the last question. I don't know if we can spend a minute on labor and any impacts from sort of the changing immigration policy. But have you seen any direct or maybe indirect impacts there? And I guess if the industry is seeing some impact. At some point, are you able to use this to your advantage to maybe accelerate share gains if some of your competitors are having issues?

Yes. Great question, Greg. Let me try to take that. So I believe that investing in our frontline people drives long-term customer retention and the quality of service that we deliver. But if I went back two years ago and I thought the challenges in the end labor markets due to immigration, we're going to be as hard as they are today.

I would have made those same investments because today, the employees we have feel like Brightview care is more about them than ever. So I would tell you, as I talked to my operations team, what in the past was reactionary behavior every time somebody came to try to take one of our employees, our employees have seen the benefits, and we cover that on the trend that we showed of the improvement in turnover.

Things that we put in this past year like PTO have been a huge benefit for our employees that when we get rain days or when there's a sick day they need to take. So I would tell you, Greg, we are so well positioned with where we're at. And yes, I do believe some of what we're seeing with our new sales were availability.

As everybody knows, we verify our employees. We are very proud of that to make sure we can provide a good company to work for, for proper documented employees in the United States, and we don't have a fear about all the noise that's going around in some of these markets with some of the immigration challenges, but we feel great. We think it's going to be a tailwind, not just where we felt so far, but as we work through '26, Greg.

Okay. Appreciate that color. And Dale, as you think about '26 in this sort of focus on growth. What are you -- what are the biggest near-term levers versus some of the stuff that I don't know, might trickle in a little bit and be more impactful in future years?

Yes. Look, it's -- we talked about it at our Investor Day talking about how we're going to get growth between now and 2030. It's the same levers, Greg. I am so proud of how far we've come on customer retention. We were up 400 basis points, granted from 79% to 83%. We are not done with that.

Maybe the 200 basis points we've seen over the last couple of years, maybe it's low is down a little, but there's somewhere between 100 and 200 basis points each year over the next several years. We have moved.

This is the the key the underperforming branches when we were at our investor day last February, 20% of our branches had customer retention below 70%. As of the end of the year, only 10% of our branches were below 70%. That's still roughly 20 branches that is below 70% that we have to improve what we said and what we know when branches are in the mid 80s, they are growing.

We also have a litany of ancillary services. I talked about adding 30 tree trucks. We have a lot more tree trucks on order because what I want to do is be a full service provider to our customers. There's other ancillary work that we're working with our branches to go get.

Today a lot of the flowers and mulch and install work we do is with our existing customer base. We can do it for anybody, and our branches are starting to get more creative to go out and bid on work outside of their existing contract work to get more ancillary.

So look, we have a lot of levers to pull here. That's why we're confident to say we're going to grow in 2026. Yes, we're always going to have a little noise. It's time for us to really put the foot down and get the accelerator going because this is our time for growth.

So I hope that gives you an idea. I think adding sales resources, keep that customer retention, drive ancillary and let's go. I'm sick of talking about things in the past that create noise like a storm. We just be able to step over that stuff without any problem as we grow this business to mid-single digits annually.

(Operator Instruction) (inaudible)

Hello, this is [Harold Lento] on for the Stephanie Moore. Just, I guess just one question for me. I know, your capital allocation, you talked about your fleet investments. I just wanted to get any sense for -- and your views on M&A, it has, how that, how have those conversations gone through the quarter? What are multiples looking at any, anything that would be helpful.

Yes. Look, we'll take the topic M&A. In a way, I think what I kicked off with and what Brett talked about increasing our share repo to me kind of sends the signal if we're going to buy a quality company, those companies are trading at 8 to 10 times very easily, Harold.

Our company is drastically undervalued, trading around 7 times, and with our new EBITDA guide, we're actually below 7 times. So I'm going to take advantage. In fact, the word that I would use, our Board didn't approve the share increase in our share repo program. My board encouraged it. They were supportive to say we have come so far, not just in the financials that Brett covered, but in the culture.

The fleet that we have today, 24 months later, is a drastic change in our business. Our business is completely different than what it was two years ago. And today to be able to buy it at the press levels, we're going to. Take all that cash right now until our stock trades at a more normalized level and we're going to buy back our own stock.

Is there a pipeline in M&A? Absolutely. Will we maybe look at something on the ancillary side, such as tree businesses, aquatic businesses, if I find the right one? Yes, but we're not going to chase deals. Our Board is supportive of what we're doing here in the short term with the dislocation in the stock price, and we're going to take advantage and accelerate that program.

So opportunities are there, but to get the companies that deserve to be part of Brightview, the multiples are well above what we are willing to buy right now considering our stock price.

[Toni Kaplan, Morgan Stanley].

This is [Yehuda Silverman] on for Tony Kaplan. Just had a quick question on the snow side. So you mentioned that you're working towards getting to a customer contract base that's more fixed than variable, heading into the upcoming snow season and looking into 2026, can you talk about the improvement in that area so far? And how this shift is expected to impact the business compared to a more variable heavy tactic?

Yes. Look, I mean there's always markets that is going to be very hard to switch to fix, take the Carolinas or Atlanta, where we saw some weather last year. So those will always be variable. But I would tell you, we focused on two things with our snow business.

First, trying to get the majority of the customers that do land with us that need snow services to use us and limit us just providing snow removal services. We want to make sure we offer a full year service to our customer.

And then go away from that riskier time and material, we've definitely seen an increase, which gave us the confidence to guide to that $1.80 to $2.10 or $2.05 midpoint of -- or $2.20, I'm sorry, the $2.05 midpoint that we guided to. We feel like we're in a great spot and we continue to push.

Here's what I would tell you. This is why I can't really give you the exact number. In many markets that hasn't slowed yet. And some people don't like to refresh those snow deals until the flights start to fly. So we've got a lot of paper out there that people will finally commit to.

Once they know the storms are coming. We saw a little weather across the Midwest -- but we have opportunities yet across Colorado and the Northeast where we've yet to see weather. But our strategy is working. We feel like we're making it a much more predictable business.

And we feel like as we go through '26, once again, there's going to be no excuses because of snow -- we told you guys what we believe is there. We think we can deliver on that. And if we can't deliver on it, it's not going to be a reason that we lower EBITDA.

So we're committed to delivering this business and the forecast we put out there. And if snow is a little softer, we still think we can deliver the bottom line.

George Tong, Goldman Sachs.

In your landscape maintenance business, can you provide some additional color on how you're has performed relative to ancillary, especially the per occurrence side of contracted revenues.

Yes. Great question, George. I think we feel great about where we're at with our book of business when I look every day at where we're at for the month of adding and losing because I track it every day, and I send it to my direct report and they'll tell you I can run the reports now.

So it's great data for me to look at and I tracked that contract because it should be very predictable. I would tell you, I think some of the areas where we saw some of that discretionary for occurrence where areas we saw some of that snow like the Carolinas, like Georgia, we feel like a lot of that noise is behind us. We feel good about what we're feeling with contract revenue and expect that to continue to be a tailwind for us as we go through 2026.

Ancillary, like I started the conversation off with we've come a long way and it's not just what we're seeing in the numbers, it's really what the people in the branches are saying. I'm out here in San Francisco, and I had one local branch managers come to me yesterday that gave me great news that he has signed two deals and I said that's great. Keep going. Let's keep the team motivated, keep going, get it and let me know what I can get you from fleet or personnel to make sure you can keep getting that work. So I would tell you we've come a long way.

Yes, there's still some noise, but 2026 is our year to growth. Contract revenue will be up. Ancillary, we firmly believe will be up, and the investments we made in additional ancillary type assets like the tree will help us even drive that work.

So we're positioned well, George, great question. I would tell you contract where we felt some of that discretionary per occurrence, that's behind us now, we feel great as we enter 2026.

And gentlemen, we have no further questions this morning. Mr. Asplund, I'd like to turn things back to you, sir, for any closing comments.

Thank you, operator. Guys, as I complete my second year with Brightview. I want to take a moment to thank all of our employees on the incredible progress we've made together. Over the past two years, we've strengthened our culture, sharpened our execution, and advanced our transformation. Together, we built a more efficient, stronger and significantly better foundational business to service our customers.

My focus now is squarely on delivering consistent, profitable top line growth both in '26 and for years to come. So once again, operator, I want to thank everybody for joining us today. Thank you for your interest in Brightview. We look forward to giving you our progress as we work through 2026, which is a year we are very, very excited about. And the team, as we just left our annual meeting feels like there's so much upside based on the foundation we've built.

So thank you, operator, and we'll talk to everybody in February.

Thank you, Mr. Asplund, and thank you, Mr. Urban. Again, ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude today's Brightview earnings conference call. Again, thanks so much for joining us, everyone, and we wish you all a great day. Goodbye.