After 30 months of waiting, BrightView’s CEO got to say the words investors and employees want to hear: the company’s land maintenance business grew. Revenue in that segment was up 4.0% in the quarter ended March 31, 2026 — the first year-over-year increase since the third quarter of 2023. For the same period, construction revenue was down 13.0% while snow revenue was up 28.5%.
BrightView management has been laying the foundation for growth ever since Dale Asplund became CEO in October 2023. This foundation consists of three initiatives:
- Cease “buying” landscape maintenance contract revenue by bidding cheap.
- Work to increase customer retention which had fallen to a low of 79% in 2023. (Now it stands at 84.5%.) Part of this customer retention effort included a focus on decreasing field employee turnover.
- Increase the size of their business development team by 50%.
I have included some interesting stats on retention and the sales force below.
The combination of these efforts has produced the first year over year growth in more than two years.
That growth headline is certainly noteworthy for the industry, but I have included below some other noteworthy disclosures from BrightView’s recent earnings release that are highly relevant to other landscape companies.
Margins Shrink
As you will see in the table of quarterly results below, despite the strong growth in snow, BrightView’s gross margin and operating profit margin declined in the quarter ended March 31, 2026, as compared with the quarter ended March 31, 2025. As most readers know, I focus on operating profit margin, not revenue growth, to gauge the overall health of the company and the life margin of owners and executives. (Note that BrightView’s gross margin calculation includes indirect job costs like vehicles and equipment expense and indirect labor expense.)
A Valuation Gap
At a recent stock price, BrightView is valued at approximately 7.5 times EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization). Many large private landscape companies still sell for 10 times EBITDA, or more.
Normally, public companies trade at higher multiples than private ones because shareholders can sell at any time. In the landscape industry, that relationship has been backwards for years. Why? Investors think the future cash flows of private landscape companies are more certain than BrightView’s.
Because of that upside down relationship, BrightView cannot acquire companies economically. Instead, the company continues repurchasing its own stock. In the most recent quarter, BrightView repurchased 1.1 million shares of stock.
Snow Contracts
BrightView’s current snow contract mix is 60% variable and 40% fixed. Management is targeting 67% fixed. They have been working since early 2025 to move that direction, and they see the recent heavy snow season as an opportunity to convert variable customers in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic to fixed contracts at renewal.
Sales Force
In the last 12 months, BrightView added approximately 200 new sellers. The goal is to increase the sales force by another 300 people to approximately 1,500 sellers, mostly related to landscape maintenance contracts. Management believes that the growth in landscape maintenance revenue in the current quarter is evidence that its strategy is working.
BrightView’s expectations of new sellers’ production are interesting:
- First 6 months: very little
- 6 to 12 months: $500,000 to $600,000 in annual run rate
- 12 months and beyond: about $1 million in new contracts per year
- Fully matured at roughly 18 months: $1.5 million annually in new contracts
Customer Retention Stats
About 35% of BrightView’s branches now have customer retention of 90% or better. About 10% of branches are still below 70%. The CEO’s near-term goal is to get the percentage of branches below 80% retention to zero.
Fuel Surcharges
In 2022, BrightView added fuel surcharges to many of its landscape management contracts. It did not go well. Retention dropped from 83% to 80%. To maintain customer goodwill in 2026, management is not planning broad fuel surcharges on landscape maintenance contracts. The company is planning to recover fuel price increases as it prices ancillary work.
Income Statement Summary
In its public reports, BrightView “adjusts” its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization and net income for certain expenses. I have used some of these adjustments for operating income in the tables below. The idea is that these expenses are not part of ordinary operations. Historically, the adjustments included expenses associated with business transformation and integration, becoming a public company and defending shareholder lawsuits, paying some employees partially through equity-based compensation, and some other unusual expenses.
For the accounting experts: Note that I have excluded from operating income the expense related to the amortization of intangible assets that were recorded as BrightView acquired other businesses and the gain on divestiture. Since most landscape companies do not have these items, I have excluded them so that management teams can compare their numbers to BrightView’s numbers.
The sale of US Lawns and the discontinuation of BES make it more difficult to compare BrightView’s more recent financial results for landscape maintenance and snow removal with periods prior to December 31, 2023.
To see short-term trends, the following table shows operating results for each of the past five quarters:
| Qtr Ended | Qtr Ended | Qtr Ended | Qtr Ended | Qtr Ended | |
| Mar-25 | Jun-25 | Sep-25 | Dec-25 | Mar-26 | |
| Snow removal services | 172.5 | 5.9 | – | 68.4 | 221.6 |
| Landscape maintenance | 320.3 | 502.9 | 480.4 | 368.0 | 333.0 |
| Landscape development | 171.9 | 201.3 | 224.1 | 179.2 | 149.6 |
| Eliminations | (2.1) | (1.8) | (1.8) | (0.9) | (1.3) |
| Net service revenues | 662.6 | 708.3 | 702.7 | 614.7 | 702.9 |
| Year over year growth rate | 6.1% | ||||
| Cost of services | 515.1 | 537.4 | 526.2 | 500.4 | 565.2 |
| Gross profit | 147.5 | 170.9 | 176.5 | 114.3 | 137.7 |
| Gross profit margin | 22.3% | 24.1% | 25.1% | 18.6% | 19.6% |
| Selling, general and admin (SG&A) expenses | 118.1 | 106.2 | 114.2 | 115.2 | 116.3 |
| Adjustments | (13.1) | (8.9) | (9.8) | (11.3) | (10.4) |
| Ongoing SG&A expenses | 105.0 | 97.3 | 104.4 | 103.9 | 105.9 |
| SG&A as a % of revenue | 15.8% | 13.7% | 14.9% | 16.9% | 15.1% |
| Adjusted operating income | $ 42.5 | $ 73.6 | $ 72.1 | $ 10.4 | $ 31.8 |
| Operating profit margin | 6.4% | 10.4% | 10.3% | 1.7% | 4.5% |
To see long-term trends, the following table shows operating results for each of the past four years:
| Year Ended | Year Ended | Year Ended | Year Ended | |
| Mar-23 | Mar-24 | Mar-25 | Mar-26 | |
| Snow removal services | 212.7 | 221.2 | 212.9 | 295.9 |
| Landscape maintenance | 1,858.7 | 1,817.1 | 1,700.4 | 1,684.3 |
| Landscape development | 714.4 | 777.8 | 822.7 | 754.2 |
| Eliminations | (8.6) | (6.8) | (6.7) | (5.8) |
| Net service revenues | 2,777.2 | 2,809.3 | 2,729.3 | 2,728.6 |
| Year over year growth rate | 1.2% | -2.8% | 0.0% | |
| Cost of services | 2,104.7 | 2,139.3 | 2,095.2 | 2,129.2 |
| Gross profit | 672.5 | 670.0 | 634.1 | 599.4 |
| Gross profit margin | 24.2% | 23.8% | 23.2% | 22.0% |
| Selling, general and admin (SG&A) expenses | 542.9 | 512.0 | 479.0 | 451.9 |
| Adjustments | (43.7) | (52.1) | (64.8) | (40.4) |
| Ongoing SG&A expenses | 499.2 | 459.9 | 414.2 | 411.5 |
| SG&A as a % of revenue | 18.0% | 16.4% | 15.2% | 15.1% |
| Adjusted operating income | $ 173.3 | $ 210.1 | $ 219.9 | $ 187.9 |
| Operating profit margin | 6.2% | 7.5% | 8.1% | 6.9% |
Greg Herring has served as a CFO of both public and private companies. Herring is the founder and CEO of The Herring Group, a professional services and data analytics firm providing outsourced financial leadership to the landscape industry using its proprietary process, the Path to 12%. The firm is on a mission to improve the profit margin of companies, the life margin of owners and executives, and the autonomy of employees. Read his blog at herring-group.com or get in touch at [email protected].
