The Rollup of Tomorrow - Vol 1. Empower Technical Services: building the "Comfort Systems of the UK"

Disclaimer: Unless noted otherwise, views and analysis expressed here are the author's own and based on public sources. The article is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. This is not financial advice. Please consult a professional for investment decisions.

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Founded in 2025, Empower Technical Services aims to become a one-stop shop for commercial and industrial clients in the UK. To date, Empower has completed one acquisition, a specialist electrical engineering firm called Circle Control, and has a few more under LOI. 

In London on a sweltering summer day, I sat down with two out of Empower’s three co-founders Nick Manning (below right) and Denis Piffaretti (below left) to find out more. 

Read on to find out: 

• Nick’s and Denis’s backgrounds - and why they joined forces

• Why the UK needs a multi-technical services rollup

• Lessons learnt from Comfort Systems, a $7B revenue / $19B market cap mechanical and technical services aggregator from the US 

• The types of businesses (and their founders) that Empower is searching for  

• A deep-dive on Circle Control, Empower’s Acquisition #1

• Denis’s thinking on AI in rollups 

• Empower’s roadmap to £100M in revenue - in 5 years

If you'd rather listen to the audio version, check out our Rollup Stories podcast on Spotify!

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Alex: Nick and Denis, to kick off, please introduce yourselves and share how you came up with the idea of Empower?

Nick: After spending 10 years in investment banking and private equity (Rothschild, Livingbridge, Waterland), I felt that the mechanical and electrical markets were underserved. I have a personal connection to this space. My brother runs an electrical engineering business, plus I worked in the industry alongside university studies. After much deliberation, I left Waterland last summer to pursue the roll-up opportunity, and teamed up with Denis and Florian towards the end of the year. 

Denis: I spent most of my career in distressed debt at a large investment bank (JP Morgan). Industry-wise, I specialised in the UK and European industrial companies; also some consumer businesses. A few years ago, I decided to do something more entrepreneurial. One, I bought a small SaaS in the Shopify app ecosystem. Two, I co-founded an AI community, which has since morphed into an education and consulting business.

A bit over a year ago, together with Florian, our third co-founder with a background in hedge funds, I researched industries suitable for a buy and build strategy. I highly recommend this exercise to anyone thinking about a rollup. 

We picked UK building technical services for several reasons. 

Number one, strong secular trends. A proven model for cross-selling synergies which we've seen in diversified players in the US and in the UK. Number two, clear appetite from private equity and trade buyers at a certain scale. Number three, limited AI disruption risk. 

Alex: OK, so 3 high finance alumni join forces. Create a cool name and cool website. Speaking of which: your website lists an awful lot of target industries! I saw mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, HVAC, drainage, insulation. Also fire safety and security. This is unusual, because most rollups we come across these days have 1 or 2 industries. What's the angle?

Nick: It is interesting because the industry has become very specialized, whereas the customers seek a more joined-up approach. Secondly, from an investor perspective, the businesses that are trading at the highest multiples and are growing at the fastest rates are those that are offering diversified services.

It’s inherently hard to win new customers, to displace the incumbents. However, if you already have a customer you're providing a fire safety and security service to, and they're looking for an electrical testing provider, those things go quite hand in glove. Often, it’s one buyer for multiple services.

Also an overlooked perspective is that there's a lot of talent moving between the industries. Imagine someone transitioning from a more traditional mechanical engineering background into fire suppression systems, a subset of mechanical engineering. We want Empower to be well positioned both from a talent attraction and retention perspective. 

Having said that, our M&A pipeline is shaped more by a sector perspective rather than a capability perspective. We are targeting niches with GDP+ growth potential over the next few years. 

Alex: Let’s talk about your acquisition #1, Circle Control. I want to know everything about it! 

Nick: Circle is a really high quality asset! It has 35 engineers. It has grown consistently for the last 5 years. Circle has been offering electrical engineering services specifically in the water sector for 30-odd years. They are running on really good margins. I won't give you the exact numbers, other than to say 20%+ EBITDA margins and growing by 20%+.

From the buyer positioning point of view, we are not a big corporation and we are not private equity. These aren't the types of acquirers many founders look for. These founders don't want to own the finance function anymore. They don't want to deal with HR issues. What they DO want to do is to de-risk themselves by taking some money off the table.  

And this is a perfect match for Empower since we don't do full cash-out, retirement type deals. 

What structures do we use to achieve buyer / seller alignment? I won't give you the exact mechanics, other than to say, we can be very flexible. Our toolkit contains things like put/call options; earn-out structures; and of course straight retained equity / rollovers.

You have to be careful with earnouts though as these can corrupt incentives. In particular in your first deal when you're running fast, the last thing you want is a deal structure which restricts you from being able to make the changes you want, like add-ons and integration. Avoid having founders thinking I won't take any risk with the business because I've got to hit this number to get that payment.

Alex: Within Empower, who does what? How much is centralised versus decentralised? And how do you drive value within those businesses? 

Nick: We are a 3-person founding team. I bring the dealmaking experience, the Private Equity toolkit. Denis has deep technology and AI experience, both of which are tremendously helpful as we are building an integrated back office. Our tech stack is built to scale to 1,000 engineers, from 35 today. Florian is acting as an objective investor voice. All 3 of us actually have buy-side backgrounds and act as the investment committee. 

We will keep building the central team. Our CFO, Mark Lovett, has worked for several businesses backed by sponsors like Equistone and Bridgepoint. Bottom line: we strive to be as integrated as we possibly can without destroying brand value. We are centralising Finance, HR, IT, Key Account Management, and ESG. 

No doubt this is heavy upfront investment, but that way on Day 1 we can take some of the clerical burden out of the founders hands’ and let them get back to delivery. We see a lot of very talented engineers that grew businesses to a scale beyond their imagination, but now they are being held back by all the admin. Circle’s MD was looking for help getting past the 50 FTE mark and beyond that to 100, even to 200 FTEs. 

What we will not touch is how the founders go about their day-to-day job! Except Key Account Management. Centralising this function allows us to deliver on the cross-sell vision, with Empower becoming a true trusted partner to its customers.

Alex: There’s something odd about this interview. We have gone on for 15 minutes without mentioning AI. Right now, the “brick-and-mortar rollups that install AI” are very en vogue. How important is AI for you? 

Denis: Having spent a lot of time on generative AI for work and on a personal level, I have embedded AI into my daily processes - and I aspire for the same outcome for Empower. The difference between us and VC backed rollups is that we are not spending 2 years building an amazing product which we are going to retrofit onto the acquired businesses.   

And why would we? Comfort Systems in the US built a $7B revenue business pursuing an aggregation strategy that's very similar to ours. And you know how? By mostly using off-the-shelf tools from selected partners. 

Because of that, I don't think that having a proprietary AI system is a major USP. For me, the USP stems from the ability to find the best tech solutions in the market. To implement these solutions in a durable manner. And to drive efficiency.

At Circle, there are a lot of tasks that are highly repetitive and can be automated with the help of computer vision. Think customer contracts. These small efficiency gains eventually add up to a meaningful margin uplift!

Also within AI rollups, the focus is on B2C, high-volume operations typically to domestic customers. In a business with lots of small jobs a modern schedule and dispatch system can meaningfully boost margins by lifting technician utilisation rate. For Empower, it’s less impactful as our engineers perform fewer, but much higher value jobs. 

Yet another angle for AI is Go To Market. Imagine a plumber who is getting 20 calls a day and he’s very busy. By not being reachable at all times he is missing out on business opportunities. And that’s where AI agents come in to act as a call center, a CRM, a sales operative. Again, for Empower this is less of a pain point as we have got larger customers that we already work with. 

Alex: Final question: what’s your financial ambition? With a playbook that sounds highly scalable, what is the 5, 10, 20 year plan in terms of revenue? And what is the endgame? 

Nick: I will start off by saying that we have exceeded our initial fundraising target. With the equity piece in place, and a debt partner coming onboard we've got access to £40M+ ($55M+) of capital. This gives us the runway to go as far as we can with the thesis. I believe we can exceed £100M in turnover within 5 years - including £20M+ in Year 1. 

Our primary focus, however, is to be the highest quality asset in the market. This means a couple of things. First, maintaining a double-digit growth rate - at scale. Second, delivering 20%+ margins - at scale. Third and final, having an industry leading M&A and integration “engine”. 

Alex: Many thanks, guys. Best of luck getting to that £100M mark!