The Roofing Acquisition Wave Is Here: How Owners Get on the Right Side of It

By Sam Taggart

CEO and Founder

Selling a Roofing Company•October 5, 2026

The roofing acquisition wave is not a rumor anymore. On the first episode of the Forge Podcast CEO Roundtable, Sam Taggart sat down with his Forge partners, Cody Kline, Josh Langford, Ryan Nichols and JD Beck, to talk about the private equity money moving into home services and what it means for roofing company owners.

Between them, this group has built and sold roofing and home service companies, worked inside a private equity fund, and coached hundreds of roofing businesses. This post breaks down what they said about why consolidation is coming to roofing, how the multiple math works, what buyers look for, and why most owners are not ready when the call comes.

Why Roofing Is Next in the Roll-Up Cycle

Sam framed the episode around a pattern he has watched play out across home services. In his words, "we started seeing consolidations in HVAC, plumbing, electrical. And all of a sudden we got the writing's on the wall, roofing's next."

He has watched friends and clients go through it as larger platforms "gobble up the good companies and create what they call a consolidation." His conclusion was blunt:

Sam also pointed to how much capital is chasing deals. "There is 5,000 times more private equity companies today than there were 20 years ago," he said. "What is missing? Good companies to buy." That imbalance matters for owners, because as Sam put it, "you have supply and demand issues. And so that also drives the multiples up."

Part of the appeal, according to Sam, is that the service industry is "arguably hard to disrupt with AI." "They're not gonna go and kill your bugs. They're not gonna go and change the roof," he said. When the team asked where the puck was going, home services, and roofing in particular, was the answer.

The Multiple Math: Why One Plus One Can Equal Three

The most important idea in the episode is how size changes valuation. Sam described the thesis this way: "when you arbitrage a multiple, uh, EBITDA together, and the bigger the EBITDA in one systematic company, the bigger the multiple."

He turned to Josh Langford, Forge's Chief Strategist, to explain the numbers for a roofer doing a million dollars of EBITDA alone. Josh's answer was "maybe two, maybe three," and he explained why buyers pay more for scale: "they don't want to buy a bunch of million dollar EBITDA companies to put together. That's a lot of work." Instead, he said, "as you go up that ladder, the higher the multiples are. And so it ends up being a win for companies that we bring together."

One of the partners then put it in plain dollars for owners listening. A company making a million a year might be worth two, three or four times that, depending on things like "key man risk or key client risk," so "you could walk away with two to four million bucks." But "together with a group, you may now be worth six, seven, eight, 10 X that million dollars." Sam's reply: "100%."

Why Forge Is a Platform, Not a Coaching Company

That math is why the Forge team built a partnership model instead of another consulting offer. Sam was direct about it: "This is not a coaching company. This is not a pay us 10 grand a month and we'll come and help consult you. We said, how about we actually partner with roofing companies?"

He described the origin 18 months before the episode: "we said, hey, let's go launch a roofing platform, we'll call it a strategic equity company, that is not your typical private equity." If you want to see how that structure works, the Forge platform overview walks through it.

What Buyers Actually Look For

Every partner at the table has sat on the buying side. Ryan Nichols, Forge's COO and former founder of Eco Roof and Solar, spent about three years with a private equity fund. "Looked at over 152 transactions," he said. "Obviously 90% of those, uh, they did not do, they didn't complete. Six and a half million plus on legal fees on transactions that didn't go through."

So what separates the companies that get done from the ones that fall apart? Sam asked JD Beck, who leads Forge's due diligence process, exactly that. JD gave three filters.

1. The Owner Still Wants It

"Number one, it's the founders or owners, how much they want it. Do they want to stay engaged?" JD said. He contrasted owners asking "how do I get to the next level?" with owners who say "I'm on cruise control or I'm actually slowing down and I just want out."

2. The Financials Hold Up

"Number two is just the financials and kind of where they're at," JD said. "If they have a whole bunch of debt, the business is being run poorly, that's scary." He was clear that perfection is not the bar: "I don't care that everything's dialed in necessarily perfect... But in general, they're running a good, positive cash flow type business."

3. The Fit Is Right

Finally, JD asked, "are they cool people that we want to work with, right? Do they have kind of that it factor?" The partners added that willingness matters too. As one put it, the work "requires change. It requires egos to be checked at the door."

Key Man Risk Is What Shrinks Your Multiple

When Sam asked why owners get in the way of their own deals, one partner named the issue most roofers do not want to hear. "Egos, human capital, you know, how good is the CEO running the business or the president? You know, if that guy steps away, does the business collapse? Is it all being held together by one person or do they have some operations?"

The answer to that question changes what a bank will pay. Companies with standard operating procedures, a team that can take handoffs, and strong delegation spread risk across departments. Without that, the partner explained, "that's where that multiple of your business actually shrinks."

If the company runs through you, a buyer sees risk, not value. For more on readiness, see Only 15% of Roofing Companies Are Ready to Sell. Here's Why.

Why Owners Hesitate to Sell

Sam asked JD what goes through an owner's head when a buyer comes calling. JD's answer was honest about the fear involved.

He does not dismiss that fear, but he asks owners to weigh it against the alternative: "what does the next couple of years look like for me if I don't change? And is that actually riskier than making the change and making the sell?"

He was also clear that partnering is not a quick decision. "What we're doing is not a week-long decision where it's like, perfect, let's jump in and join," JD said. "There's a lot of due diligence. We need to understand, do a quality of earnings. We need to understand your financials. We need to make sure you're the right fit just as easy as us."

If you are weighing whether a private equity offer is right for you at all, our breakdown of whether to sell your roofing company to private equity covers the questions to ask first.

The Language Gap at the Deal Table

One of the most relatable moments came when the partners talked about walking into their first deal rooms. JD, who stayed on as CEO after selling Purelight, remembered it clearly: "I'll never forget sitting in rooms hearing those acronyms and literally like kind of hiding my phone and typing it in."

Cody Kline, who sold his own roofing company during the first wave of private equity in roofing, said "it was the exact same for me when I was going through the acquisition... I was scared to look stupid and even ask the questions."

That gap is part of what a group can close. As JD put it, once you have been through it, "that's where the multiple goes up and the value goes up because we're playing the game at their level now and we're not just one small company."

Don't Trust the Multiple Gossip

The partners also warned owners about the numbers they hear at conferences. "Don't trust the gossip that you hear about transactions being done in the industry," one said, describing claims of 10X or 12X deals. "You could, you could sign an LOI or hear about a deal at X multiple, however that thing probably closed at half of it."

Run the Business on a Scorecard

Exit readiness starts with knowing your numbers every week. Sam asked Josh what he puts in place first when he dives into a company's financials. "First of all, it's like just having the scorecard," Josh said. "90% are probably or more not doing that. And then having a weekly cadence where you're actually looking at it."

Sam recalled asking Josh how the team tracks it: they started with spreadsheets, built a whole tech platform, then went back to "spreadsheets and only like four numbers." Even so, he said, "it is hard for them to update four numbers." At the time of the episode, Sam said Forge had eight companies on the platform, had "already did over 60 million," and was "trending to do close to 107 this year."

If you want to build that weekly rhythm, OwnersOS has a practical guide to the home service scorecard, and getting your numbers right before you sell covers quality of earnings and working capital in more depth.

Get in a Different Room

Sam also challenged owners who have plateaued. "The issue is why you're not growing is you're actually not putting yourself in an uncomfortable different room and you're singing the same songs and no one's holding you accountable to the next version of what you're being."

He drew a line between community and partnership. Having hosted a mastermind for years, he said of that kind of room: "that's a mastermind. That's not a partnership." The difference is someone looking at your actual numbers every week.

CEO Confessions: The Mistakes Worth Learning From

Sam closed the roundtable by asking each partner for the biggest mistake they had made as a CEO. A few answers stood out for any owner preparing for a sale.

• Decision velocity. One partner credited his friend Russ Perry with the idea that "the highest level people in the world can make quick decisions and good decisions quickly."
• Financial accountability. Another said "it is 100% your responsibility to learn every cost and expense that's ran through your business," and admitted "the biggest mistake that I ever made was not being in the weeds in spreadsheets."
• Clarity. Another shared a quote he loves: "amateurs talk about strategy, professionals implement logistics."

Sam added a framework from an outside consultant: "create clarity, communicate clarity, over communicate the clarity, and then implement the clarity."

How to Get on the Winning Side of the Wave

Pulling the episode together, here is what roofing owners can act on now:

• Decide whether you still want to build. Buyers and partners look first at whether the owner is engaged and hungry for the next level.
• Clean up your financials. Positive cash flow, manageable debt and numbers you can explain are the baseline for any quality of earnings review.
• Reduce key man risk. Document processes, build a team that can take handoffs and make sure the company does not collapse when you step away.
• Track a weekly scorecard. Start with a few numbers and review them every week.

Sam's message to owners was simple. For anyone "looking to sell their company, not just like tomorrow, but over the next two, three years... and you want to participate in maybe two or three times the actual value that you would get selling it by yourself, it might make sense to hit us up."

If you are not sure where your company stands, start with a roofing company valuation, or talk with the team about partnering with Forge.