The Rollup of Tomorrow Vol. 4. Lindbergh: The Italian HVAC rollup that wants to cool your villa!

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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Welcome to Episode 4 of our interview series: the holiday edition!

This summer, many of our readers travelled to Italy. I love Italy - though preferably outside the summer months, as I can’t stand the heat. Perhaps I should reconsider, now that air conditioning is becoming more ubiquitous?

Today, we are bringing you the story of SMIT: Italy’s fastest growing HVAC rollup and a subsidiary of Lindbergh, a publicly listed maintenance, repair and operations operator (ticker: BIT:LDB). 

In July 2025, SMIT announced its 12th acquisition, a 50+ year old business called Termotecnica Monzese. Termotecnica came with €1.9M revenue and a 10% margin. The price paid was €1M, or approx. 5x EBITDA, with most of it deferred over a 4 year period.     

Two weeks ago, I sat down with Andrea Allegrini, a Lindbergh veteran and the driving force behind the rollup. In this episode, we discussed: 

1. Why a 20-year old MRO group suddenly decided to start rolling up HVACs

2. No active outreach and low multiples: SMIT’s intriguing M&A playbook 

3. How does the “sharing of engineers” work - and why it is highly profitable

4. SMIT’s next step: from a confederation of small businesses to a “one-stop shop” provider with nationwide coverage 

The Rollup of Tomorrow series is sponsored by Sourcescrub: the No.1 deal sourcing tool for serial acquirers.

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

Alex: Welcome Andrea! Let's dig into the business model of Lindbergh.

I first heard about your company in the spring, when you presented at the Redeye Serial Acquirers conference in Stockholm. The equity story went like this. The business started more than 15 years ago as an outsourced service provider to Italian field maintenance technicians. In 2021 you went public. More recently, you developed a new business  line: an HVAC roll-up under the SMIT brand. 

I'm curious to hear, how did you go from putting tools into the technicians’ white vans overnight - to buying HVAC businesses? Are there synergies between the various units of Lindbergh? 

Andrea: We entered the HVAC space thanks to our French business - an overnight delivery service of spare parts for repair technicians. In France, we had a couple of large customers in the field of manufacturing and installation of home appliances and boilers. Since these were multinational groups, we approached them in Italy as well.

That initiative was doomed after we discovered that in Italy, 100% of HVAC installation and maintenance activities were subcontracted to small family owned businesses. The industry is hugely fragmented and there are no national champions.

In this field, technical expertise is crucial. We couldn't build this vertical from scratch. Growing through M&A was the only way to get going. Since early 2023, we have completed 12 acquisitions. Deal-wise, we will continue to run fast, yes, there are lots of synergies as we have been able to increase the productivity of service engineer networks. 

Alex: I want to pick up on something that you said. You've done 12 acquisitions. There was a slide in your Redeye presentation that referenced a €12B TAM and 13,000 HVAC businesses. Including several thousand businesses with €1-10M revenue. For this interview, I dialled in from the Baltics and I can feel that the summers are getting hotter and hotter even here - let alone in Italy. 

How big is the opportunity for Lindbergh? How many acquisitions are you ultimately going to do? How do you see the operational value-add? 

Andrea: Our goal is to bring a modern approach to an industry which has remained unchanged for decades. We have developed an industrial plan, which builds on many years of our experience working across the value chain. 

Take logistics as an example. We are optimising all logistics processes, including inventory management and implementing Lindbergh’s signature overnight spare parts delivery service for engineers. There is a tremendous opportunity to “share” engineers in order to mitigate the strong seasonality among companies that offer cold air conditioning and heating maintenance services. 

And then there’s the back office piece. We want the back office colleagues to spend more time building the relationship with the end customer - to become a sort of “climate advisor”.

Finally, Go To Market. As a public company, we can bring corporate customers. Just think about all the retail, multi-site, complex customers looking for a single contract, a single service point nationwide. 

Alex: Let’s talk about your M&A playbook. I'm very jealous! As you know, I'm building my own Holdco. I'm doing a lot of cold outreach. I'm talking to a lot of brokers. Whereas SMIT’s does not appear to be doing any active outreach. Companies contact you. Plus, you openly talk about paying low multiples. 

Very curious, how on earth is this even possible? How do people find out about SMIT? What multiples do you pay exactly? Finally, do you use holdbacks and earn-outs to reduce the purchase price requirement even further?

Andrea: Why do business owners contact us? Because of word of mouth. Their advisor might have read about us or seen our press release. There is enough deal flow for us to remain passive and opportunistic at the same time. We have a very specific idea of what we are looking for.

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