👷‍♂️“Boring” Business to an Infrastructure Services Powerhouse

In today’s piece, we dive into the story of a company that transformed from a historically “boring” repair and maintenance contractor into a “sexy” business riding the tailwinds of the infrastructure boom—culminating in a $1.2 billion exit.

We’ll be taking some time off next week and will return to our regular schedule after the holidays. Hope everyone enjoys time with family over the Thanksgiving break!

Foundation & Growth under Search Fund

Founded in 1998, the company began by providing maintenance services to wireless companies. For decades, the company did the unglamorous (nonetheless, very important in providing connectivity that powers the modern world) work in relative obscurity. 

In 2014, Pearce was acquired by Willcrest Partners, a search fund led by Bret Forster (here’s an interesting podcast on his ETA journey acquiring and running Pearce as CEO). At that point in time, 80% of the revenue was tied to doing repair and maintenance work for AT&T. Over the next several years, Pearce would grow into a specialized engineering, maintenance, and repair to wireless carriers nationally across the U.S. 

Growth under PE Ownership

The real inflection, however, came in 2020 when Pearce attracted the backing of New Mountain, a firm well known for their buy-and-build strategy that we wrote about before. 

Right away, Pearce went on a M&A tear using acquisitions to expand into growth sectors, starting with renewables then onto data centers and other digital infra. Notable deals include:

By mid-2022, Pearce had completed seven acquisitions in the renewables sector alone in less than 2 years since partnering with New Mountain. Then starting 2023, Pearce broadened further into digital infrastructure.

Through these acquisitions, Pearce morphed from a narrowly focused contractor serving AT&T into a diversified platform serving telecom carriers, renewables, and data centers. The strategic thread was clear: take a boring but cash-generative field services business and reposition it for high-growth sectors through acquisitions.

At the time of acquisition, Pearce was a pure-play maintenance provider serving telecom carriers. Meaning, their revenue was directly tied to how much those carriers spent in capex.

And if you were looking for stability, U.S. telecom capex was about as predictable as it gets in the decade leading up to 2020.

Boring but steady. That’s exactly what made Pearce a great search-style buy for Willcrest and a strong, low-volatility foundation for New Mountain to build from.

2. Diversify into Growth Markets Via M&A

The first area Pearce looked into was renewables, which was going through a huge growth period. 

Then into data centers.

Between 2020 and 2025, Pearce’s end-market exposure jumped 8.5x from ~$80 billion (capex from carriers only) to ~$680 billion (capex from carriers + renewables + data centers). 

3. Scale = MSAs = Repeat Business

So what gave Pearce the right to win across all these markets? Scale.

Pearce’s nationwide technician footprint has become a key competitive advantage, allowing it to sign Master Service Agreements (MSAs) that span multiple regions. And this national scale caters to the preference of customers across telecom, renewables, and data centers in how they procure engineering, repair, and maintenance services.

And the reason scale matters so much is simple: like many blue-collar sectors, the contractor labor market has been tightening. If you’re already a credible player with a large contractor network, you suddenly become eligible for national MSAs—whether with carriers or data center operators.

These contracts usually span several years (often 3-5+ years with renewal options). For instance, specialty contractor Primoris (a peer in infrastructure services) disclosed a multi-year MSA with a utility that generates about $60 million per year in recurring revenue for maintenance work.

4. Robust Strategic Buyer Universe

Now, I don’t think New Mountain went in underwriting a sale to any specific buyer. But it certainly helps when you have a healthy universe of strategics riding the same megatrends.

For instance, Quanta Services, a $60+ billion specialty contracting firm, has explicitly cited surging demand from data center build-outs as a key growth engine fueling its record $39 billion project backlog. 

And what happens when markets get hot? Deal multiples go up.

Enabled by valuations for public strategics going up.

The investment thesis centered on taking Pearce’s scale and deep contractor network—built serving a steady telecom end-market—and using it to pivot into faster-growing segments such as renewables and data centers.

And because these megatrends were universal and pushed valuations higher for every major player, Pearce was able to exit to CBRE earlier this month at a $1.2 billion valuation, reflecting 13.3x forward ‘26E EBITDA multiple, plus an additional $115M earnout.

Despite the high-growth end market exposure, Pearce is nevertheless still a human-capital, field services business:

1. Labor Supply & Costs
Pearce’s business relies on skilled field technicians (tower climbers, high-voltage electricians, fiber splicers, etc.). These specialists are in high demand industry-wide, and a tight labor market or wage inflation could squeeze margins if higher costs can’t be passed to customers. Field service labor rates have been rising (roughly 8% recently)
Mitigation: With national scale and sizable MSAs, Pearce is partially insulated from the pricing squeeze that smaller mom-and-pop providers face and can pass along wage inflation more effectively. But, as with most field services platforms, the real durability comes from a steady recruiting engine and a brand contractors trust.

2. Market Cyclicality & Capex Slowdowns
Many of Pearce’s revenue streams depend on customers’ capital expenditure cycles and budgets. If those clients pull back spending, Pearce could see fewer projects. For example, telecom carriers have been under financial pressure – rising interest rates and heavy debt loads are prompting some telcos to dial back network capex after 2024’s 5G rollout peak.
Mitigation: This is where Pearce’s diversification into multiple sectors helps buffer any one segment’s downturn. If telco network spending moderates, other areas like data center build-outs, EV charging infrastructure, or critical power systems might still surge, balancing the load. 

3. Integration 
Pearce’s rapid roll-up inevitably puts strain on the organization.
Mitigation: To their credit, Pearce has still delivered double-digit annual growth since 2022. It’s hard to assess integration quality from the outside, but that responsibility now sits with the new owner, CBRE.

Pearce Services’ journey offers a case study in how a “boring” business can be reinvented through savvy positioning. In just five years, Pearce went from fixing telco cables to helping power the 5G and AI (via fiber and data center support) and the clean energy transition (via renewables infrastructure). 

This transformation was about recognizing that existing strengths–field services expertise and national scale to drive MSA relationships–can be augmented by a fast-paced M&A campaign enabled by deep-pocketed capital.

Unassuming businesses can become sexy when aligned with the right secular trends. Or better yet, buy a boring business and build into hot markets.

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