BrightView Holdings Stock

BrightView Holdings, Inc. provides commercial landscaping services in the United States.

The company conducts substantially all of its activity through its direct, wholly-owned operating subsidiary, BrightView Landscapes, LLC (BrightView). The company provides commercial landscaping services, ranging from landscape maintenance and enhancements to tree care and landscape development. The company operates through a differentiated and integrated national service model, which systematically delivers services at the local level by combining its network of over 280 branches with a qualified service partner network. The company's branch delivery model underpins its position as a single-source end-to-end landscaping solution provider to its diverse customer base at the national, regional, and local levels.

The company offers a single-source landscaping services solution to a diverse group of commercial customers across all 50 U.S. states. It serves a broad range of end market verticals, including corporate and commercial properties, Homeowners Associations (HOAs), public parks, hotels and resorts, hospitals and other healthcare facilities, educational institutions, restaurants and retail, and golf courses, among others. The company is also the Official Field Consultant for Major League Baseball. Its diverse customer base includes approximately 8,800 office parks and corporate campuses, 7,100 residential communities, and 550 educational institutions. The company is the only commercial landscaping services provider able to service clients whose geographically disperse locations require a broad range of landscaping services delivered consistently and with high quality.

The company serves a geographically diverse set of customers through its strategically located network of branches in 36 U.S. states, and through its qualified service partner network, it is able to efficiently provide nationwide coverage in all 50 U.S. states.

Segments

The company operates through two segments: Maintenance Services and Development Services.

Maintenance Services

The company's Maintenance Services are primarily self-performed through its national branch network and are route-based in nature. This segment delivers a full suite of recurring commercial landscaping services ranging from mowing, gardening, mulching and snow removal, to more horticulturally advanced services, such as water management, irrigation maintenance, tree care, golf course maintenance and specialty turf maintenance. Its maintenance services customers include Fortune 500 corporate campuses and commercial properties, Homeowners Associations (HOAs), public parks, leading international hotels and resorts, airport authorities, municipalities, hospitals and other healthcare facilities, educational institutions, restaurants and retail, and golf courses, among others.

In addition to contracted maintenance services, the company has a strong track record of providing value-added landscape enhancements, defined as supplemental, non-contract specified maintenance or improvement services which are typically sold by its account managers to its maintenance services customers. These landscape enhancements typically have a predictable level of demand related to the company's amount of contracted revenue with a customer.

The company has a strong maintenance presence in both evergreen and seasonal markets.

In the company's seasonal markets, it is also a leading provider of snow removal services. These route-based snow removal services provide the company with a valuable counter-seasonal source of revenues, allowing it to better utilize its crews and certain equipment during the winter months. The company's capabilities as a rapid-response, reliable service provider further strengthens its relationships with its customers, all of which have an immediate and critical need for snow removal services. This allows the company to actively maintain relationships with key customers in seasonal markets year-round. A portion of its snow removal business is contracted each year under fixed fee servicing arrangements that are subject to guaranteed minimum payments regardless of the season's snowfall.

The performance of the company's snow removal services business, however, is correlated with the amount of snowfall, the number of snowfall events and the nature of those events in a given season.

Development Services

The company's Development Services consist of sophisticated design, coordination, and installation of landscapes at some of the most recognizable corporate, athletic, and university complexes, and showcase highly visible work that is paramount to its customers' perception of its brand as a market leader.

Through its Development Services segment, the company provides landscape architecture and development services for new facilities and significant redesign projects. Specific services include project design and management services, landscape architecture, landscape installation, irrigation installation, tree moving and installation, pool and water features and sports field services, among others. These complex and specialized offerings showcase its technical expertise across a broad range of end market verticals.

The company performs its services across the full spectrum of project sizes, with landscape development projects generally ranging from $100,000 to over $10 million, with an average size of approximately $1.2 million.

Depending on the scope of the work, the contracts can vary in length from 2-3 months to up to 2-3 years. The company largely self-performs its work, and it subcontracts certain services where it has strategically decided not to allocate resources, such as fencing, lighting, and parking lot construction.

In the company's Development Services business, it is typically hired by general contractors with whom it maintains strong relationships as a result of its superior technical and project management capabilities.

The company's core operating strategy is to systematically deliver its services on a local level. The company's maintenance services model is grounded in its branch network. For example, a representative maintenance services branch typically serves 25-100 customers across 50-250 sites.

The company's scale supports centralizing key functions, which enables its branch, production, and account managers to focus their efforts on fostering deep relationships with customers, delivering excellent service and finding new revenue opportunities. The company supplements its branch network with its qualified service partner network, which is managed by the company's BrightView Enterprise Solutions team, or BES. Through its BES platform, the company is able to provide landscape maintenance services in all 50 U.S. states. BES identifies qualified service providers in areas where the company does not have branches, thereby extending its service area. The company's qualified service partner screening process is designed to ensure that each of its service partners has the appropriate technical expertise, equipment and resources, including insurance coverage, to support the projects it assigns to them.

The company's Development Services organization is centered around 40 branch locations strategically located in large metropolitan areas with supportive demographics for growth and real estate development. Certain facilities used by its Development Services segment are shared or co-located with its Maintenance organization. The company's Development Services branch network is supported by two design centers, as well as centralized support functions similar to its Maintenance Services organization.

Sales and Marketing

The company's sales and marketing efforts are focused on both developing new customers and increasing penetration at existing customers. It primarily sells its services to businesses, commercial property managers, general contractors, and landscape architects through its professionally trained core sales force. The company has a field-based sales approach driven by its growing team of more than 160 business developers that are focused on winning new customers at a local level. The company also has a separate 14-member sales team that focuses on targeting and capturing high-value, high-margin opportunities, including national accounts. Within the company's Maintenance Services segment, every customer relationship is maintained by one of its more than 600+ branch-level account managers, who are responsible for ensuring customer satisfaction, tracking service levels, promoting enhancement services and driving contract renewals.

The company's marketing department is also integral to its strategy and helps drive business growth, retention, and brand awareness through marketing and communications efforts, including promotional materials, marketing programs, and advertising; digital marketing, including search engine optimization and website development; and trade shows and company-wide public relations activities. Its field marketing teams focuses at the branch level to make its corporate marketing strategies more localized.

Fleet

The company's highly visible fleet of approximately 15,000 trucks and trailers foster the strong brand equity associated with BrightView. The company manages its fleet with a dedicated centralized team, as well as regional equipment managers, who together focus on compliance, maintenance, asset utilization, and procurement. The company has the largest fleet of vehicles in the commercial landscape maintenance industry.

Seasonality

The company's services, particularly in its Maintenance Services segment, have seasonal variability, such as increased mulching, flower planting, and intensive mowing in the spring, leaf removal, and cleanup work in the fall, snow removal services in the winter and potentially minimal mowing during drier summer months.

The company has a significant presence in its evergreen markets, which require landscape maintenance services year round. In its seasonal markets, which do not have a year-round growing season, the demand for the company's landscape maintenance services decreases during the winter months. Typically, the company's revenues and net income have been higher in the spring and summer seasons, which correspond with its third and fourth fiscal quarters (year ended September 30, 2023). The lower level of activity in seasonal markets during its first and second fiscal quarters is partially offset by revenue from the company's snow removal services. Such seasonality causes the company's results of operations to vary from quarter to quarter.

Intellectual Property

The company, primarily through its subsidiaries, holds or has rights to use various service marks, trademarks, and trade names it uses in the operation of its businesses that it deems particularly important to each of its businesses. As of September 30, 2023, the company had marks that were protected by registration (either by direct registration or by treaty) in the United States.

Competition

In its Maintenance Services segment, most competitors are smaller local and regional firms; however, the company also faces competition from other large national firms, such as Yellowstone Landscape, Bartlett Tree Experts, and HeartLand.

Regulatory Overview

The company must also meet certain requirements of federal and state transportation agencies, including requirements of the U.S. Department of Transportation and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, with respect to certain types of vehicles in its fleets. The company is also regulated by federal, state, and local laws, ordinances and regulations, which are enforced by Departments of Agriculture, environmental regulatory agencies and similar government entities. The company is also subject to the regulations of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Environmental Matters

The company's businesses are subject to various federal, state, and local laws and regulations regarding environmental, health and safety matters, including the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Clean Air Act, the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, the Oil Pollution Act, and the Clean Water Act, each as amended.

History

BrightView Holdings, Inc. was founded in 1939. The company was incorporated in 2013.