Earlier this week, BrightView revealed its intent to go public when it filed a form S-1 with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC). An S-1 is the document a company uses to file its public offering of shares.

We read the document, so you don’t have to. Here are 13 things we learned.

Financials

1. BrightView’s 2017 annual revenue was $2.26 billion with a net income of $5.3 million (0.2 percent) and adjusted EBITDA of $283.6 million (12.5 percent). Maintenance revenue was $1.7 billion and development revenue was $583 million during that period.

2. As of March 31, the company had $1.6 billion in debt, which it intends to reduce with future free cash flow.

3. The company called the industry “highly fragmented” and “a significant opportunity for future consolidation,” noting it holds only a 2.7 percent market share despite being the largest provider of commercial landscaping services.

4. Since Jan. 1, 2017, BrightView has acquired eight businesses with more than $188.2 million of aggregate annual revenue, adding more than 4,200 additional customer sites.

Operations

5. The company’s business is about three-quarters maintenance services (74 percent) and one-quarter development services (26 percent).

6. The company’s maintenance services model is grounded in its branch network. A typical maintenance services branch serves between 40 and 150 customers across 200 to 300 sites and generates between $4 million and $12 million in annual revenue.

7. BrightView said its commercial landscape maintenance contract renewal rate was 85 percent in 2016 and 2017.

8. BrightView’s top 10 customers accounted for approximately 12 percent of its fiscal year 2017 revenue. No single customer accounted for more than 3 percent of revenue. Its client base includes approximately 13,000 office parks and corporate campuses, 9,000 residential communities and 450 educational institutions. It serves four of the five largest U.S. banks, 11 of the top 15 U.S. health systems, nine of the top 10 third-party hotel management firms and four of the top five largest U.S. companies.

9. The company says the commercial landscape maintenance and snow removal market is a $62-billion industry.

10. BrightView boasts OSHA-recordable safety incidents at approximately half of the industry average.

People

11. The firm has instituted a self-imposed requirement that 100 percent of new employees be verified through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify system.

12. The senior leadership team is supported by a deep bench of operating senior vice presidents and vice presidents with an average tenure of 17 years with BrightView or acquired companies.

13. As of March 31, the company had approximately 19,000 employees, about 5 percent of which are in a union. In 2017, BrightView employed approximately 1,626 seasonal workers through the H-2B visa program.

Photo: BrightView