# Landscaping Rollup Model See how recurring contracts, seasonal work, crew capacity, and pricing affect a landscaping business. - Canonical: https://finamodel.com/templates/landscaping - Excel download: https://finamodel.com/templates/landscaping.xlsx - Category: Operating Businesses - Model type: Operating model - Difficulty: Intermediate - Audiences: Investors & analysts, Founders & operators, Landscaping and lawn-care operators, Search-fund and PE buyers, Home-services investors, Lenders and analysts - Tags: landscaping, lawn-care, home-services, rollup, dcf ## Overview This model is built for a landscaping company serving residential or commercial customers. It brings recurring maintenance contracts together with enhancement work, design and build projects, and seasonal services such as snow management. Use it to test branch growth, contract retention, pricing, and crew capacity. The model shows how those choices affect revenue, profit, cash flow, and the value of the business. ## What's included - Branch inputs: Year-1 branches, new branches per year, engagements per branch, crew FTE per branch, average engagement value - Utilisation: Year-1 crew utilisation with an annual ramp and a practical ceiling - Service mix: grounds maintenance, enhancement, design-and-build and irrigation-and-lighting shares, per-tier value indices and net margins - Ancillary: snow accounts per branch and seasonal fee, materials and supply markup per engagement, price escalation - Cost structure: crew and office comp and wage with benefits and wage growth; facilities and fleet, sales and marketing, technology and SG&A as % of gross profit; depreciation (% of revenue); tax - Capital and working capital: maintenance capex %, branch build-out cost per branch, NWC % of revenue growth, base-year revenue - Valuation: WACC, terminal growth, net debt, shares outstanding - Operations sheet: branch roll-forward, utilisation ramp, engagements per branch, total engagements, staff headcount, engagements per crew FTE - Revenue sheet: four service tiers, service revenue, snow and ice contracts, materials and supply markup, total revenue - P&L sheet: revenue to net income with materials and equipment cost, labour and overhead, margins, identity check - FCF sheet: NOPAT, depreciation add-back, capex, change in NWC, unlevered FCF, discount factor, PV - Valuation sheet: sum of PV, terminal value, enterprise value, equity value, value per share, implied EV/EBITDA - Dashboard with branches, engagements, utilisation, revenue per branch and per engagement, EBITDA margin, EV, per share, and revenue mix ## Landscaping Rollup Model: How the Financial Model Captures Branch Growth and Contracts This landscaping financial model provides a seven-year operating forecast and unlevered DCF for a multi-branch commercial and residential landscaping platform. It rolls forward maintenance contracts, cross-sells enhancement, design-build and irrigation work, and costs crew hours explicitly, so you can test how branch expansion, retention and pricing affect revenue, profit and cash flow. ### Branch growth and the maintenance contract base The model rolls the branch estate forward at a steady de novo and tuck-in pace. Two branch measures matter beyond year-end reporting. - Average branches count mid-year openings for half a year, so per-branch fixed costs such as yard, office admin and plough rigs run off that measure; a ramping branch therefore carries full fixed overhead against a part-year book. Effective branches further weight new openings by a first-year ramp, and it is this vintage-adjusted count that drives account wins, the snow book and the route-capacity ceiling. - The maintenance contract base itself rolls forward through renewals, attrition and new wins, capped by route capacity. Portfolio book fill is an output of that roll-forward, so adding branches can temporarily dilute fill before the annual cohort shrinks relative to the larger base. ### Cross-selling service tiers and pricing normalisation Grounds maintenance engagements represent the average account base. Enhancement jobs, design-build projects and irrigation jobs are modelled as attach rates on that base, each growing at an annual cross-sell rate. - The realised revenue mix is therefore an output of the attach rates rather than a fixed assumption, and the four service shares reconcile to 100 percent. Ticket values are the blended engagement value scaled by a per-tier value index. - Because the indices average slightly above one on the year-one book, the model normalises them by a reference blend index derived from the year-one value-weighted mix. That normalisation ties the realised year-one blended engagement value back to the average engagement value input, while later mix drift still moves the realised ticket. ### Crew capacity, utilisation and the loaded hourly cost Required man-hours are built from account visits, enhancement jobs, install projects, irrigation jobs and in-house snow pushes. Those hours are converted into field-crew FTEs using paid hours per FTE and a billable-utilisation block that separates the mow season from off-season hours. - Headcount is solved from work booked rather than pinned to a fixed number per branch, so volume growth must be staffed and paid for. The loaded crew rate applies overtime share, overtime premium and benefits to the base wage. - Field-crew labour is a direct cost above the gross-profit line. Seasonality enters through annual proxies rather than a monthly calendar: the year-round crew retained on lower-billable off-season hours, plus the overtime load, create the shoulder idle hours that make the snow book economically necessary rather than opportunistic. ### Cost stack, cash flow and valuation mechanics Direct cost comprises tier materials, field-crew labour and three snow cost lines: de-icing material, subcontracted ploughing and equipment standby. Gross profit is struck after all of these. - Overhead is not geared to gross profit; office and branch admin, facilities and yard, and fleet and vehicles run off average branches or crew trucks, while only sales and marketing, technology and corporate SG&A are percentages of revenue. - The unlevered free-cash-flow bridge adds back depreciation, deducts fleet replacement and branch build-out capex and the working-capital change, and separately discloses the peak seasonal working-capital swing that a mow-season business funds. Net debt rolls forward on a cash sweep, while the DCF capitalises a normalised terminal cash flow into enterprise value, equity value and value per share. ## Service mix drives the ticket and margin Revenue is the product of a branch estate, the client engagements it fills, and the service mix of those engagements. The model makes branch count, engagements per branch, a utilisation ramp, and a four-tier service mix explicit, so total engagements and revenue per engagement are transparent operating metrics an analyst can flex against the cost stack rather than a top-down growth rate. ## Designed for one-edit responsiveness Every input, the branch pipeline, engagements per branch, the utilisation ramp, the service mix, the average engagement value, the full cost stack, capex, working capital, and the WACC, is a named-range cell. Edit one and the operations build, revenue, P&L, free-cash-flow bridge, valuation, and dashboard all recompute. No formula rewrites are needed to test a pricing, mix, or expansion scenario. ## An unlevered DCF, not an EBITDA shortcut A landscaping platform builds out and equips each branch with a capital-intensive service-truck and mower fleet, tools and inventory, so the model bridges to unlevered free cash flow and discounts it at a WACC with a Gordon-growth terminal value. Enterprise value bridges through net debt to equity value and a per-share figure, and the implied EV/EBITDA falls out as a sanity check against where landscaping platforms change hands. ## Workbook structure ### Cover Workbook overview, sheet legend, units, and tab-colour key. - Title and scope framing - Sheet-by-sheet purpose summary - Units and tab-colour legend ### Assumptions Every driver in one sheet: branches, utilisation, service mix, costs, capital, valuation. - Year-1 branches, new branches per year, engagements per branch, crew FTE per branch, average engagement value - Utilisation with an annual ramp and a practical ceiling - Service-tier shares, value indices and net margins, snow and materials inputs, price escalation - Crew and office comp and wage, the percent-of-gross-profit overhead lines, depreciation, tax - Maintenance capex, build-out cost per branch, NWC, base-year revenue - WACC, terminal growth, net debt, shares ### Operations Branches, engagements, utilisation, and staff. - Opening plus new branches equals closing branches - Utilisation ramps from a Year-1 input, capped at a ceiling - Engagements per branch equal mature engagements times utilisation - Total engagements equal closing branches times engagements per branch - Crew and office headcount equal closing branches times per-branch FTE - Engagements per crew FTE as a productivity metric ### Revenue Revenue by service tier and ancillary. - Each tier equals total engagements times service share times average value times value index times escalation - Service revenue subtotal - Snow and ice contracts equal closing branches times snow accounts times seasonal fee - Materials and supply markup equals total engagements times markup per engagement - Total revenue ### P&L Revenue to net income. - Revenue from the Revenue sheet - Materials and equipment cost as the inverse of the per-tier net margin - Gross profit and gross margin - Field-crew and office labour by headcount, the percent-of-gross-profit overhead stack - EBITDA, depreciation, EBIT, tax on positive EBIT, net income, margins, identity check ### FCF Unlevered free cash flow bridge. - EBIT and unlevered tax from the P&L - NOPAT equals EBIT less unlevered tax - Add back depreciation - Maintenance capex on revenue and build-out capex on new branches - Change in net working capital on revenue growth - Unlevered free cash flow - Discount factor and PV of UFCF ### Valuation Discounted cash flow. - Sum of PV of explicit UFCF - Gordon-growth terminal value and its PV - Enterprise value - Less net debt to equity value - Shares outstanding and value per share - Implied EV/EBITDA ### Dashboard Headline metrics and revenue mix. - Branches, engagements, utilisation, revenue per branch and per engagement - Revenue and EBITDA - EBITDA margin - Enterprise value and value per share - Revenue mix across service, snow and ice, and materials ## Features - **Service mix drives the ticket and margin:** Revenue is the product of a branch estate, the client engagements it fills, and the service mix of those engagements. The model makes branch count, engagements per branch, a utilisation ramp, and a four-tier service mix explicit, so total engagements and revenue per engagement are transparent operating metrics rather than a top-down growth rate, and the high-ticket design-build-versus-recurring-maintenance spread is visible in the blend. - **Recurring base, project upside:** Grounds maintenance dominates the engagement count and anchors the top line with auto-renewing annual contracts, while high-ticket design-and-build installation dominates the revenue swings. The model separates the recurring backbone from the project work, and layers a counter-seasonal snow and ice book on top, so an operator can see how much of the platform is contracted versus won project by project. - **An unlevered DCF, not an EBITDA shortcut:** A landscaping platform builds out and equips each branch with a service-truck and mower fleet, tools and inventory, so EBITDA overstates cash. The model bridges EBITDA to cash through NOPAT, depreciation, maintenance and build-out capex, and the change in working capital, then discounts the unlevered free-cash-flow stream at a WACC with a Gordon-growth terminal value to a defensible enterprise and equity value. ## Use cases - **Intrinsic valuation:** Set the branch pipeline, utilisation ramp, service mix, the cost stack, and a WACC, and read the enterprise value, equity value, value per share, and implied EV/EBITDA. Sense-check the multiple against where landscaping platforms change hands. - **Roll-up and pipeline planning:** Flex new branches per year and the build-out cost per branch to see how the de novo and tuck-in pipeline consumes cash and lifts engagement volume, and watch revenue per branch and the EBITDA margin respond as the group scales. - **Mix and pricing stress test:** Shift the service mix toward higher-ticket design-and-build or compress the per-tier net margins to model material-cost and menu-pricing pressure, and read the revenue-per-engagement, gross-margin, EBITDA-margin and valuation impact. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is a landscaping financial model? A landscaping financial model captures the seven-year operating economics and intrinsic value of a multi-branch commercial and residential landscaping platform that runs recurring grounds-maintenance contracts alongside seasonal enhancement, high-ticket design and build installation, irrigation and lighting work, counter-seasonal snow and ice contracts and a materials and supply markup. It rolls a branch count forward, converts a crew-utilisation ramp into total client engagements, prices engagements across a four-tier service mix at a blended average value and value index, runs the crew-heavy cost stack to EBITDA, and discounts an unlevered free-cash-flow stream to enterprise value, equity value, and value per share. ### How is landscaping revenue built? Revenue is driven by the branch estate and its utilisation: total engagements equal closing branches times engagements per branch times a crew-utilisation factor that ramps to a ceiling, and service revenue splits those engagements across a grounds maintenance, enhancement, design-and-build and irrigation-and-lighting mix, each priced at a blended average annual engagement value times a per-tier value index. Branch-driven snow and ice contracts and engagement-driven materials and supply markup layer on to total revenue. ### Why does the EBITDA margin expand over the forecast? Field-crew and office labour scales with the branch footprint, but revenue per branch climbs as the crew-utilisation ramp lifts engagement throughput toward its ceiling. Because labour is broadly fixed to the branch count while utilisation compounds, EBITDA margin expands across the horizon even at a flat menu price, the operating-leverage story at the heart of every landscaping roll-up. ### Why an unlevered DCF instead of an EBITDA multiple? A landscaping platform still builds out and equips each branch with a capital-intensive service-truck and mower fleet, tools and inventory, so EBITDA overstates cash. The model bridges to unlevered free cash flow, NOPAT plus depreciation, less maintenance and build-out capex, less the change in working capital, and discounts it at a WACC, then adds a Gordon-growth terminal value. The implied EV/EBITDA falls out as a sanity check rather than as the valuation input. ## Related templates - [HVAC Services Rollup Model](https://finamodel.com/templates/hvac-services) - [Pest Control Services Model](https://finamodel.com/templates/pest-control) - [Franchise Unit Economics Model](https://finamodel.com/templates/franchise-model)