Apex Service Partners

Private Equity Manager (GP)

Case study

About the company

Apex Service Partners (“Apex”) is a provider of HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning), plumbing and electrical services. Founded in 2019, the business operates across the USA and has over 8,000 employees.

Investment rationale

• Apex operates in a sector that has proven to be resilient through economic cycles as it provides mission-critical services that often cannot be delayed.
• The HVAC market is growing strongly and is benefitting from an increasing number of households, ageing housing stock, increasing energy efficiency requirements and more extreme weather patterns.
• Apex operates in a highly fragmented market that the manager believes is ripe for consolidation. The vast majority of competitors are smaller, independent providers that lack the scale required to grow in this market.

Our relationship

Alpine Investors (“Alpine”) is a top-performing, US-based private equity manager that focuses on the mid-market. PIP has previously invested alongside Alpine in TEAM Services Group, which was a manager-led secondary transaction.

Active management and value creation

Alpine first invested in Apex in 2019 and has grown the company significantly through M&A during the first phase of its ownership. Apex’s internal M&A team has developed a successful M&A playbook that provides acquired businesses with a significant uplift to EBITDA one year after acquisition. The M&A strategy is likely to result in accretive acquisitions, which is expected to drive value over the course of Alpine’s next phase of ownership.