FirstService Corp

FirstService Corp

206.25
CAD
+12.79
(+6.61%)
6.38EPS
40.21P/E
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Feb 09Next Earn

Q2 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptJuly 23, 2026

Operator

Good day and welcome to the second quarter investors conference call. Today's call is being recorded.

Legal counsel requires us to advise that the discussion scheduled to take place today may contain forward-looking statements and involve known and unknown risk and uncertainties. Actual results may be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements contemplated in the forward-looking statements.

Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to materially differ from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in the company's annual information form as filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators and in the company's annual report on Form 40-F as filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. Today is July 23rd, 2026.

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press *11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised.

If you would like to remove yourself from the queue, please press *11 again. I would now like to turn the call over to Chief Executive Officer, Mr.

Scott Patterson. Please go ahead, sir.

Scott Patterson

Thank you, Lisa. Good morning, everyone.

Thank you for joining our Q2 conference call. I'm on today with our CFO Jeremy Rakusin.

I'll kick us off with some high-level comments, Jeremy will follow with more detail. Let me start by saying that we're generally pleased with our Q2 results in an economic environment that continues to be quite challenging.

We're also pleased with the progress we made during the quarter on a few fronts that we believe puts us in position to achieve a stronger second half of the year and gain momentum into 2027. Total revenues for the second quarter were up 2% over the prior year, half organic growth.

EBITDA for the quarter was up 3%, reflecting a consolidated margin of 11.2%, up 10 basis points over the prior year and better than expectation primarily within our Brands division. Jeremy will walk through the detail in his prepared comments.

Finally, earnings per share were up 2% over the prior year, in line with top-line growth. Looking at our divisional results, FirstService Residential revenues were in line with expectation and up 5% organically.

The reported revenues were slightly less at 4%, reflecting the sale of our residential pool maintenance operations early in the quarter. We separated and sold residential accounts that have accumulated over the years to focus solely on commercial pool maintenance and management.

Our core property management business continues to perform solidly on expectation and we expect similar results for the balance of the year. Moving on to FirstService Brands, revenues for the quarter were up 1% with strength at Century Fire, tempered by approximately flat results at our restoration and home service brands, and largely offset by revenue declines within our roofing operation.

I'll walk through each of the segments. Revenues for our two restoration brands, Paul Davis and First Onsite, were down slightly from the prior year.

As we pointed out at the last two quarter ends, we entered the year with a weakened pipeline due to the mild weather experienced in Q4 of last year, which has impacted us in the first half of this year. Towards the end of Q2 and into July, we made significant progress in signing work and bolstering our pipeline back to historically healthy levels.

In particular, we won a number of large loss projects across North America that will convert to revenue over the next 12 to 18 months. In addition, we're seeing opportunities for specialty construction projects that have arisen through our restoration work with certain customers and in certain verticals.

Looking forward, we expect to show approximately 5% year-over-year growth in the back half of the year for our restoration brands. It's a modest outlook relative to the uptick in activity as it's difficult to forecast how quickly the recent backlog additions will convert to revenue.

Our experience suggests that scoping, permitting, and insurance navigation could create delays in generating revenue. Storm and hurricane activity in the coming months could add to the backlog and improve this growth outlook.

Moving to our roofing segment, revenues for the quarter were down approximately 6% on a reported basis and 10% organically, lower than our expectation. There are a few factors that impacted our top line during the quarter.

First and foremost, the market remains stubbornly weak and ultra-competitive, both the new construction market outside of data centers and the reroof market. The market conditions are particularly acute in two of our larger branch regions: Las Vegas and Southwest Florida.

In both markets, we have intentionally moved away from certain low-margin work that was in our pipeline. The other factor during the quarter was the delay of a few large reroof projects that we expected to complete during the quarter.

The delays accounted for half the miss relative to our expectation. All the projects remain in our backlog.

The roofing market has been a challenge for us in the past year. It's been a difficult environment, and with ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty, it's unlikely to improve materially in the near term.

That said, we strongly believe that the long-term thesis is unchanged. Roofing is a huge market and an essential service with long-term tailwinds.

We believe in our team and are focused on continuing to build the platform. As evidence of our ongoing belief in the opportunity, we closed on the acquisition during the quarter of Sheffers Roofing in Kansas City.

Sheffers is a leader in the market, serving customers throughout Missouri and northern Arkansas, and strengthens our presence in the important Midwest region. Looking forward to Q3, we expect our roofing operations to be down slightly with organic growth off in the mid-single-digit range.

Moving to Century Fire, we had another strong quarter that was right on expectation and mirrored our Q1 result, with revenues up over 10% versus the prior year, including high single-digit organic growth. During the quarter, we announced the acquisitions of Titan Fire Protection, based in Tampa, Florida, and GSC Fire and Security, based in Austin, Texas.

Titan is a sprinkler installation company serving commercial customers across central Florida. GSC is an alarm installation and service company serving the Austin and San Antonio markets.

In both cases, Century will look to partner with the management teams to broaden the service capability and provide both sprinkler and alarm install and service across the respective customer bases. Looking forward for Century, we finished the quarter with an improved backlog sequentially and expect similar strong 10%-plus year-over-year growth for the third and fourth quarters.

Now on to our home service brands, which as a group generated revenues that were up slightly versus year ago, modestly better than our expectation. As a reminder, our home service brands include California Closets, CertaPro Painters, Floor Coverings International, and Pillar To Post Home Inspectors.

Activity levels at these brands are closely tied to the housing market and consumer sentiment, both of which continue to hover around 10-year lows. The teams continued to do a great job driving increases in close ratio and average job size to eke out revenue gains.

We're not getting any help from market improvement, and we're not expecting any over the back half of the year. Market indices and economic forecasts all suggest continued weakness in the housing market and consumer confidence.

Looking forward for our home services group, we expect the teams to continue to take market share to drive similar results for the third and fourth quarters, with revenues that are slightly up year-over-year. Let me now hand off to Jeremy.

Jeremy Rakusin

Thank you, Scott. Good morning, everyone.

As always, I'll provide details of our segmented financial performance, summarize our cash flow, capital deployment, and balance sheet position, and close out the commentary with a look forward. First, a recap of our consolidated financial results.

Revenues for the second quarter were $1.45 billion, up 2% year-over-year, and we reported adjusted EBITDA of $161.7 million, up 3% versus the prior year. Adjusted EPS came in at $1.75, a 2% increase over Q2 2025.

This brings our year-to-date consolidated financial performance for the first half of the year to revenues of $2.77 billion, an increase of 4% over last year. Adjusted EBITDA of $267 million, representing 3% growth over the $260 million last year, with a margin of 9.7%, down 10 basis points year-over-year.

Adjusted EPS for the first half of the year sits at $2.69 versus $2.63 in the prior-year period. Our adjustments to operating earnings and GAAP EPS to calculate our adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS respectively have been summarized in this morning's press release and remain consistent with our disclosure in prior periods.

Reviewing the second quarter segmented financial performance, I'll lead off with our FirstService Residential division. Quarterly revenues came in at $617 million, up 4% over the prior year and, as Scott mentioned, up 5% organically.

EBITDA for the quarter was $69 million, a 6% year-over-year increase, with an 11.2% margin, up 20 basis points over the 11.0% margin in Q2 of last year. For the first half of 2026, our division EBITDA margin sits at 9.9%, up 30 basis points compared to the equivalent prior-year period.

During the remainder of the year, we expect margin improvement to continue at similar pacing to the year-to-date performance as our teams continue to extract efficiencies in various areas of the enterprise. Shifting to the FirstService Brands division, our financial metrics for the second quarter were relatively comparable to last year's Q2, including revenues of $832 million and EBITDA at $96 million, both up 1%.

Our margin during the quarter was 11.5%, down 10 basis points, with the quarter-over-quarter performance better than both Q1 and our expectations heading into the current quarter. In particular, home services margins performed relatively better as we continue to optimize the balance of marketing and promotional investments in support of lead flow.

Turning to our cash flow profile, we generated $112 million in operating cash flow during the second quarter prior to working capital movements and in line with the prior year. Cash flow after accounting for working capital changes was $130 million for the quarter and sits at almost $220 million year-to-date.

Our capital expenditures during the quarter were a little over $30 million, and with our year-to-date total at $60 million, we expect our annual CapEx to be roughly $130 million, less than our initial target of $140 million we provided at the beginning of the year. Acquisition spending on tuck-under deals during the quarter was just over $40 million.

The combination of our recent free cash flow performance, together with conservative debt levels on our balance sheet, supported our decision during the second quarter to also execute share repurchases under our normal course issuer bid. During the quarter, we purchased more than 1.8 million shares at a total cost of almost $250 million or an average price per share of US$135.91.

With these buybacks, our leverage, as measured by net debt to EBITDA, increased modestly to 1.8 times from the 1.5 times level at the end of Q1. Our leverage remains conservative, and we still have ample liquidity with more than $800 million of cash on hand and undrawn bank credit facility balances.

This current financial flexibility allows us to continue opportunistically repurchasing additional FirstService shares under the buyback program when we see the valuation of our large, diversified enterprise trading at a meaningful discount to smaller private market businesses in our respective industries. At the same time, we are focused on building our tuck-under deal pipeline to deploy growth capital when we see acceptable acquisition valuations and target return thresholds.

Concluding with an outlook, our FirstService Residential division will deliver growth in the balance of the year largely mirroring recent quarters: mid-single-digit top-line growth with modest year-over-year margin improvement. For the Brands division, Scott has provided top-line growth indicators for each of the operating businesses, which aggregates to mid-single-digit revenue growth in the back half of the year.

This performance will be skewed to the fourth quarter and influenced by the amount of restoration backlog to revenue conversion from the increased pipeline activity levels that Scott referenced, as well as capitalizing on any potential seasonal spikes in weather activity in the coming months. Putting it all together on a consolidated basis, for the upcoming third quarter, we expect both revenue and EBITDA growth to be similar to the second quarter in the low single-digit range.

For the full year, consolidated revenue growth is expected to be similar to or modestly better than our year-to-date top-line growth, and we are anticipating mid-single-digit annual EBITDA growth over 2025. That concludes our prepared comments.

Lisa, you may now open the call to questions. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press *11 on your telephone.

If you would like to remove yourself from the queue, press *11 again. We also ask that you please wait for your name and company to be announced before proceeding with your question.

One moment while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question will be coming from the line of Stephen MacLeod of BMO Capital Markets.

Please go ahead.

Stephen MacLeod

Thank you. Good morning, guys.

Jeremy Rakusin

Morning.

Stephen MacLeod

Morning. I just wanted to just circle around on the roofing business.

Obviously the backdrop is quite weak, and you referenced a continued competitive environment. I know you gave the outlook for the balance of the year, but just curious kind of what factors you're looking for to potentially see a light at the end of the tunnel with respect to some of the reroofing projects that have been delayed and how your backlog currently looks.

Scott Patterson

Let me start with the backlog, Stephen. It's down year-over-year, but it is up in June sequentially over May, and May was up sequentially over April.

We are moving in the right direction, but slowly and I would say battling headwinds. The misses in Q2 were really as I suggested, from some jobs that were delayed.

They all still remain in our backlog, but we don't have start dates. There's a number of factors associated with each.

The largest is an insurance claim relating to hail damage, and it's caught up in negotiations between the owner and insurance carrier. It will take place, it's just a matter of when.

Then as I suggested, we've intentionally moved away from jobs that were in our pipeline due to the tight pricing, which was beyond our comfort level, particularly in Southwest Florida.

Stephen MacLeod

That's helpful. I guess, you noted that one of the larger sort of project in the backlog was related to an insurance claim.

How much of the delays you're seeing are attributable to factors such as that versus the macro backdrop and companies just saying we'll do this next year when we have better visibility?

Scott Patterson

I think the delays are primarily related to delays in construction and whether that's other contractors finishing their bit on time and pushing it out or insurance-related issues because the projects I'm referencing were in our pipeline, and we expected to complete. In terms of building the pipeline more quickly, we're seeing softness in the market.

Stephen MacLeod

That's helpful. Thanks, Scott.

Then maybe just one for Jeremy. Just on the NCIB, you're obviously very active in the quarter, and I know you talked a little bit about the balance between funding M&A as well as being active when the stock price is materially dislocated from fair value.

I'm just curious how you prioritize those two things and how active you expect to be on the buyback in the back half of the year.

Jeremy Rakusin

We've been buying at current levels, and you can be sure that we will continue to do so. Just given our balance sheet is still quite conservative, under two times.

We'd feel comfortable going at least to the mid-twos level, two and a half times would be a strong comfort level for us. We're always going to look at our pipeline.

If we see imminent deals that are of size and provide attractive returns, that would take priority. We think we can do both with our current balance sheet and the $800 million-plus of liquidity.

We can do them in tandem. A lot of flexibility to use the buyback program, as well as not compromise our tuck-under acquisition prospects.

Stephen MacLeod

That's great. Thanks, Jeremy.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for the next question, please.

The next question is coming from the line of Stephen Sheldon of William Blair. Please go ahead.

Stephen Sheldon

Hey, good morning. Thanks.

Scott, I wanted to dig in a little more on restoration and some of your comments in the prepared remarks. It sounds like sales activity, pipeline has picked up there in the quarter and not tied to big storm activity.

Can you just refresh us on the progress building out relationships with larger, more national accounts? Is that becoming more impactful to the trajectory of the business?

Then, would also love more detail on where the team is finding success with more specialized and complex restoration services like you kind of alluded to in the prepared remarks.

Scott Patterson

Right. Certainly, we've been talking about it for a few years how hard the team's been working in terms of developing and enhancing the national account roster, but also at the same time, really developing expertise in a number of different verticals: healthcare and government.

Generally, developing a reputation for large loss claims. Just really the last four to six weeks, I'd say, we've signed, as I said in my prepared comments, a number of large loss projects that will benefit us over the next 18 months or so.

The projects, they're not related in any way. They're all tied to various regional weather events or specific fire or water damage claims.

Factories, large warehouses, government buildings, big box retail, multifamily across North America. It is a significant sort of rally for us that certainly has enhanced our backlog.

As I said, not likely to help us materially in Q3. These projects, they're still being scoped, the sizes are not clear.

We'll see some in Q4, but it's certainly going to help us in 2027. You had a question right at the tail end, Stephen.

Can you repeat that?

Stephen Sheldon

Oh yeah, it was just I think you answered it just with healthcare and government, but just, yeah, where you're seeing I guess more detail on

Scott Patterson

I made a comment about specialty contracting. That really has evolved from our expertise and depth of experience in the healthcare sector.

We have a number of team members that have specific certification and training around the mitigation and construction in a sensitive healthcare environment. This expertise and reputation has led to other construction opportunities in healthcare.

Then beyond that, other contracting opportunities in general, and talking about retrofits and capital improvements and some new construction opportunities. We've been asked to submit bids on unique situations based on our experience, and we have a few wins with some pending and, I would say, momentum building.

Stephen Sheldon

Got it. Very helpful.

Maybe just following up on restoration then. I think you talked about 5% growth in the back half of the year.

Wanted to make sure I heard that right. Then, I know you don't want to talk about next year, but I guess if some of these things are starting to pick up, I know a lot can ebb and flow with big storm activity, but excluding that, I guess as we think about heading into next year and especially the first half, if some of this stuff picks up, would we be in line to have even better growth, I guess, and potentially even more than if storm activity gives you opportunities as well?

I guess, yeah, just how are you thinking about it in the next year?

Scott Patterson

We should. We're feeling good about our restoration because the pipeline where it is today and we're just heading into storm season, and who knows, right?

We do feel good about the position we're in heading into the back half and into '27, for sure.

Stephen Sheldon

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for the next question.

The next question is coming from the line of Daryl Young of Stifel. Please go ahead.

Daryl Young

Hey, good morning, everyone. I wanted to touch on Residential and your new cross-selling initiative that you announced.

I think it's called Resilience First and that looks to be a concerted effort to cross-sell restoration with Residential. Could you maybe expand on what that is and the opportunity and whether there's any other cross-sell opportunities you're pursuing expressly?

Scott Patterson

Yes. That effort and program is between FirstService Residential and our restoration brands and roofing operations.

It is cross-selling, but what I really think about it as a focus on bringing value to our managed communities and differentiating FirstService Residential from its competitors. The goal is to reduce the frequency of loss events, and then so prevention, and then minimizing the severity of losses.

We're talking about complimentary inspections, training, education, storm preparation. Most of the losses we see in our communities are water losses.

Simply educating residents and property managers around water shut-off, certainly when they leave on vacation or you get water into one unit, it seeps into neighboring units, and that's the typical loss scenario in our communities. They can be prevented.

That's what we're focused on: access to a proprietary leak detection program for our communities. If we're successful, it will reduce the number of claims, reduce the severity of loss, and drive down insurance costs for our communities.

Again, the focus is on differentiating FirstService Residential.

Daryl Young

Got it. Okay.

Then just moving to margins, performances, I'd say, continue to be quite strong despite maybe a softer organic growth environment. I'm wondering if when organic growth recovers, can you hold the existing benefits or will there be some costs that maybe come back as activity levels pick up?

I guess said differently, is there operating leverage still to come from here?

Jeremy Rakusin

Daryl, you got to look at it business by business. In property management, it's a lot of variable costs as we grow, and that business is performing right down the fairway.

We've got a little bit of margin expansion built in, as I said in my prepared comments. On the Brands side, pretty well every business and we obviously speak about the optimistic outlook for growth in restoration.

Those businesses do generate good operating leverage when you get the top-line growth even if there are some investments that come in support of that growth. It's a net positive to the margin.

Daryl Young

Okay. That's it for me.

I'll get back in the queue. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for the next question.

Our next question is coming from the line of Erin Kyle of CIBC. Please go ahead.

Erin Kyle

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions.

I just wanted to go back to the roofing segment and maybe follow up on an earlier question. Maybe in your view in terms of what's impacting the segment from a macro perspective, what would you say is most meaningful or substantial to customer decisions there?

Is it rates, inflation? Is it the Middle East conflict and oil prices, all of the above?

What would you say really needs to change for award activity to really start converting there?

Scott Patterson

Remember, Erin, that first of all, new construction outside of data centers is down year-over-year. That's a big chunk of the market, so that's a driver.

A lot of new-construction-focused roofers have turned their attention to the reroof market. The reroof market is probably flat nationally, but the level of competition around reroof has increased significantly.

I think that everything you mentioned, interest rates, Mideast war, inflation, all of that is impacting both of those markets. Reroofs can be deferred, but longer term, they're non-discretionary.

It is a matter of time, and I think that the competitive environment will normalize because some of the pricing is not sustainable. Particularly in a few of our markets that I've referenced.

Southwest Florida is a unique situation right now. We know from our major suppliers that the market's particularly weak relative to the rest of the U.S.

In fact, the data we have, we're off less than the market in general. A lot of that, there's a couple things going on.

Hurricane Ian effectively pulled forward a few years of roof work, and our businesses benefited at the time. The last two years, we've seen declines off those peaks.

Post-hurricane, there were a number of roofers that expanded to Florida to capitalize on the surge, and so right now there is overcapacity in that market and every job is ultra-competitive. We have a very strong position and we'll be fine.

We just need to let the market settle out. The capacity will normalize.

We know operations are pulling out and closing their doors. It'll just take some time.

We'll be fine in Florida.

Erin Kyle

That's helpful there. Then maybe just on the M&A side, just looking at the spend year-to-date, last quarter, I think you flagged that there's been fewer bidders as some funds have pulled back in this environment.

FirstService M&A spend remains modest compared to historical. It's in line with 2025, just looking back here.

As you think about your capital deployment here, are you taking a more conservative approach as you're evaluating targets or how should we think about the M&A spend on a go-forward basis?

Scott Patterson

We're not necessarily taking a more conservative approach. We're sticking to our discipline, being patient.

Frankly, we're not seeing many quality companies come to market, and certainly we're seeing fewer companies come to market. I think there are fewer opportunities.

We're being very patient, focusing on the right partnerships and ensuring that it's a fit both in terms of service line, geography, and culture. I'd sort of confirm that we expect this year to be similar to last year at this point based on the opportunities in our pipeline.

Nothing's really changed for us. It's just the number of opportunities that we're seeing.

Erin Kyle

Got it. Thank you.

I will pass the line.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for the next question, please.

Next question is coming from the line of Himanshu Gupta of Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Himanshu Gupta

Thank you and good morning. First on Century Fire, which has been strong for a few years now, are we going to face tough comps at some point of time?

Just wondering how long these tailwinds can last in this business, what makes it so special.

Scott Patterson

It's not in our sightline, Himanshu. We continue to experience growth in both the sprinkler and alarm installation side, half the business, and on the repair, service, and inspection side.

We're seeing strength in multifamily. We've talked about some exposure to data center work, but it's approximately 15% of our backlog is data center, it's not the key driver.

Throughout our branch system, we just have a strong local branch network that are winning. We grew the backlog sequentially in the second quarter, and it's well up over prior year.

We expect continued growth, as I said in my prepared comments.

Himanshu Gupta

That's great color. Thank you.

Then moving to, obviously, roofing, a lot of questions have been asked. I think you already elaborated on the Florida branch.

I'm just wondering on Las Vegas. We saw a fair bit of weakness last year as well in that branch, and again, I think you mentioned in Q2.

Is there anything peculiar about this market, Las Vegas, leading to this softness?

Scott Patterson

Again, there's a couple things there. The market is weak and we see that in our other businesses.

We know there's weakness in Vegas that is more significant than anything we might see nationally. The other issue for us in this market is that we're more weighted towards new construction.

It's well over 50% versus 30% on average across our portfolio. It's really that historical reliance on new construction and we were strong in that business in '23, '24.

We're coming off two years in a row from some real strength, new construction strength in Vegas, including some very large projects in '24.

Himanshu Gupta

Got it. That was very helpful.

Then if I look at all roofing, organic growth was down 10% in Q2. Is it new roofing is down 20% or 30%?

Is that a lion's share of all this underperformance happening for the entire segment, I'm talking now?

Scott Patterson

Yeah. New construction, I actually haven't looked at it that way.

Maybe Jeremy has, but yeah, it would definitely weight towards new construction.

Himanshu Gupta

Yeah. Industrial warehouse deliveries, and if that doesn't improve next year, rather down double digits, then that will further push new roofing in that regard.

Scott Patterson

I'm not sure I understand the question, Himanshu.

Himanshu Gupta

I'm saying that if new roofing is tied to industrial warehouse construction, new construction,

Scott Patterson

Right.

Himanshu Gupta

If industrial warehouse construction is likely to be down double digits next year in the U.S., that will not help the roofing recovery in the near term.

Scott Patterson

It won't necessarily help a recovery, but our backlogs heavily weighted right now towards reroof. That's really our focus go forward.

Our recovery is going to be driven by reroof. New construction will certainly help, agreed, when it happens.

Got it.

Himanshu Gupta

Just one last question on capital allocation. Obviously, buyback is a big focus now.

Have you reached a point when M&A is less accretive than buyback, or are there verticals where you will still prefer M&A over buyback?

Jeremy Rakusin

Himanshu, we target a mid-teens return on any of our capital deployment initiatives. Again, growing through tuck-under acquisitions and adding strategic assets to our Brands is really the primary focus.

Again, I said it earlier, we're able to do both at this juncture, and given the discount in the valuation of our business versus some other assets, we just think it's compelling or highly compelling that we be buying back our stock at this juncture. We're not at the point with our conservative leverage, it's not an either/or.

We're able to do both at this point, and we're not going to compromise our normal bread-and-butter tuck-under program. It's just balancing that versus the opportunities, and as Scott said, some of the opportunities are a little lesser today.

We're pursuing both paths equally.

Himanshu Gupta

Fantastic. Thank you so much, and I'll turn back.

Operator

Thank you. One moment, please.

Our next question is coming from the line of Frederic Bastien of Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Frederic Bastien

Thank you. Scott, I believe you're in the midst of a brand optimizing exercise at RCA, sort of investing in the platform.

Can you offer an update on that?

Scott Patterson

We're continuing and committed to it. It's really implementation of a enterprise-wide financial system that pulls together 14 different operating systems.

It'll give us much better information and certainly ability to forecast and manage the businesses. That continues.

It's on track. Then we continue to invest in people and generally in the platform, Frederic, as I said in my prepared comments, we're committed about long-term opportunity in this business and committed to continue to invest.

Frederic Bastien

Will that exercise yield, in your view, better growth opportunities or enhance margins or both or?

Scott Patterson

I think it will enhance margins, not materially. It's not something we're sort of modeling out, but it's what we need to do to pull the business together and move forward strategically.

We need better information. It's very similar to what we did at FirstService Residential years ago, and First Onsite more recently, and Century Fire.

It's a similar exercise. Just puts us in a better long-term position to grow this business.

Oh,

Frederic Bastien

understood. That's helpful.

Jeremy, I have one for you. Can you clarify if the 1.8 million shares bought back include purchases in July, or does that just pertain to the first six months of the year?

Jeremy Rakusin

First six months of the year.

Frederic Bastien

Can you indicate or tell us whether you've been active since?

Jeremy Rakusin

No, we were in blackout. We had an automatic share purchase program, and the trigger points were not activated.

We had to do it before we went into blackout, the parameters were not. We'll be out of blackout on Monday, and then we can be active, without our hands tied due to the blackout.

Frederic Bastien

Got it. All right.

Thanks, guys. That's all I have.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for the next question.

Our next question is coming from the line of Tim James of TD Securities. Please go ahead.

Tim James

Thank you. Scott, I'm wondering, you've talked about fewer M&A opportunities coming to the market.

I'm just wondering if you could talk about in your view why that is. It seems there's some particularly challenging conditions in roofing and to some extent in restoration.

Part of me would have thought that maybe would have kind of churned out a couple more opportunities and so either be a greater set, but then I'm just curious on your thoughts as to why you think there are fewer businesses coming to market.

Scott Patterson

I think in those two areas, Tim, it's because they're not performing, and so the owners are coming off numbers that were better in '23, '24, and they want to get back there before they put the company on the market. Many of these businesses are owned by private equity, and so if the companies aren't performing, would mean that they would need to crystallize a loss, and I think that they're reluctant to do that at this point.

Tim James

That's helpful. My second question, really looking big picture here, do you think there are any structural changes in any of your businesses or structural changes in I guess the ability to roll out capital, and I guess what I'm thinking there is about PE and multiples being higher?

Or would you say the challenges that across the business you're seeing today are just purely related to market forces that should normalize and kind of get you back on the path with kind of the same structural reasons for your strategy as has been the case for many years?

Scott Patterson

I don't think that there are structural changes in the business models. As it relates to acquisitions, certainly the level of private equity capital that we're competing with increases every year.

That has changed over the years, and I guess could be defined as a structural change in how we operate. In terms of our businesses and the fundamentals, I don't see any change.

Does that get at what you were asking?

Tim James

Yeah. I'm just thinking as if we want to kind of look forward and pick our time when we think market conditions normalize, there's no reason to think FirstService is any different than it was prior to this challenging period.

Scott Patterson

No. Right.

Tim James

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. That does conclude today's programming.

Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.