Titan Pest Control’s founder Aaron Eubank is no stranger to selling a company to a much larger entity. He sold his Phoenix-area landscape business to LandCare USA in 1998.

Because he’d been through a sale before, he knew it could be difficult and he knew he wanted assistance when it came time for him to exit Titan Pest Control.

Aaron founded Titan Pest Control in 1999 with his wife, Donna. He was under a landscaping noncompete but decided to branch out into pest and termite control.

“We moved to Anthem, north of Phoenix, started taking care of neighbors and grew the business over the last 23 years,” Aaron says.

Meanwhile, Aaron — a tree lover who has been an arborist since 1993 — started a landscape/tree company in 2016 and has been operating it alongside Titan Pest Control.

The decision to sell

Recently, Aaron and his family decided it was time to consider divesting one of the companies to focus on the other.

“The main reason for wanting to sell the pest business was to give me time to work on our growing tree and landscape company that my sons want to be involved in,” Aaron says. “Honestly, it’s hard to run two businesses.”

He called Dan Gordon and the team at PCO Bookkeepers & M&A Specialists to understand his options. Aaron knew about PCO from the company’s involvement in the industry and Dan’s work as columnist for Pest Management Professional magazine.

“I just called them up and they guided us through the process,” Aaron says. “Dan was amazing – very helpful, very honest. He didn’t try to push me in a way that wasn’t good for us.”

The sale

After several conversations, an opportunity to sell Titan Pest to Anticimex presented itself in 2023. Things moved quickly, and the deal closed in August. Titan is a tuck-in acquisition for Northwest Exterminating, Anticimex’s platform operation in Phoenix.

“I thought the process was going to be draining, but it wasn’t that bad,” Aaron says. “They really made it easy. (PCO’s) Steve (Linskey) was phenomenal. Dan was great on the front end. I couldn’t be happier with the relationship. Everything I was told was going to happen was the way it happened. There were no surprises.”

Anticimex was the right choice, Aaron says, because of what they could offer employees as a large company in terms of compensation, benefits and career paths. Customers also will benefit

from the expanded services the new company offers. And now Aaron and his family have less stress and can focus on their passion for trees and landscaping.

“My wife says we simplified our lives,” he says. “I say we took some chips off the table.”