Platform File: Wrench Group

Every national residential-services platform of consequence changed hands or recapitalized in the last two years. Wrench Group did not. It has sat under the same lead owner since 2019 while its peers traded at high-teens multiples. That single fact, placed next to a verified count of the licenses Wrench actually holds on the ground, is the most useful way to read this platform in 2026.

Facts in this file are drawn from public records, company announcements, and state licensing data. Passages marked “The read:” are Echelon’s interpretation, not reported fact.

Wrench Group is one of the founding names of the great trades roll-up, and for M&A readers it is also one of the most watched. That attention cuts both ways. Almost everything about the platform has been written up somewhere, which means a useful file cannot just repeat the brand list. It has to say what the public record does not, and it has to get the ownership facts exactly right in a year when several sources got them wrong. Here is both.

Who owns Wrench, and who does not

Wrench Group has moved through a clear sequence of sponsor ownership since it was assembled. Investcorp formed the platform in 2016 by combining four regional home-services companies anchored in Atlanta, Houston, the Dallas and Fort Worth metro, and Phoenix. In April 2019, Investcorp sold Wrench to Leonard Green & Partners, which took majority control and still holds it. In November 2022, TSG Consumer Partners and Oak Hill Capital made a significant minority investment, with Leonard Green and management retaining the majority. In September 2025, a private-credit group led by Blue Owl and Oak Hill Advisors arranged a 1.3 billion dollar debt refinancing that replaced the platform’s prior bank facilities. Through the first half of 2026, there has been no change of control, and the most recent platform-level news is an AI customer-support partnership announced in March.

Now the part several outlets got wrong. A number of third-party sources circulated a claim in early 2026 that Wrench Group had been acquired in a roughly 2.5 billion dollar deal. That transaction was real, but it was not Wrench. It was Blackstone’s agreement to acquire Champions Group, an Orange County residential-services platform, from Odyssey Investment Partners. The two are easy to confuse because Champions Group was formerly named Service Champions, and Wrench operates a separate, unrelated brand called Service Champions North in Northern California. Wrench Group was not the buyer and was not the target. The distinction matters, because a reader who believes Wrench just sold will misjudge everything about its phase.

The brands under the platform

By its own verified profile, Wrench operates across 14 states and 25 markets, with a reported employee band of 5,001 to 10,000 and leadership anchored by Ken Haines as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Dennis Laliberte as Chief Operating Officer. The Echelon Database tracks 27 named brands under the platform, which group into three tiers.

The founding core, assembled in 2016, is Coolray Heating & Air Conditioning and Mr. Plumber Atlanta in Atlanta, Abacus Plumbing, Air Conditioning & Electrical in Houston, Berkeys Plumbing, AC & Electrical in the Dallas and Fort Worth metro, and Parker & Sons in Phoenix.

The Midwest brands operate under the MAX Service Group sub-platform: Williams Comfort Air and the Mr. Plumber brands in Indianapolis, Jarboe’s Plumbing, Heating & Cooling in Louisville, Thomas & Galbraith in Cincinnati, and Buckeye Heating, Cooling & Plumbing in Columbus.

The balance were added through acquisition and greenfield across the South, West, and Mid-Atlantic: BriteBox Electrical Services and Ragsdale in Atlanta, Baker Brothers in Dallas, Collins Comfort Masters in Gilbert, Service Champions North in Sacramento, Maine Home Services in San Jose, Plumbline Services in Denver, CoolToday in Sarasota, Donovan Air, Electric & Plumbing in Jacksonville, Lindstrom Air Conditioning & Plumbing in Pompano Beach, Red Cap Plumbing, Air & Electric in Tampa, Morris-Jenkins in Charlotte, Comfort Wave in Oklahoma City, Mountain Home Services in Salt Lake City, Boothe’s Heating, Air & Plumbing in southern Maryland, and Comfort Dynamics in Memphis.

What Wrench holds on the ground

Here is the part no aggregator publishes. A brand list is easy to copy. What is hard, and what actually tells you where a platform is dug in, is a count of the licenses each brand holds in each state. The Echelon Database produces that by cross-referencing the Wrench brand map against active state contractor license rosters, then stripping out the common-name collisions where an unrelated local company happens to share a brand’s name. Echelon now tracks six states under continuous weekly refresh, and they do not all license the same way, which changes what a fair count looks like. Three of them, Florida, Texas, and Ohio, license the contracting company as an entity, so there we count the active company licenses each brand holds, and the table below is that count. These span the trades each state licenses, not HVAC alone. The other three each need their own treatment, explained beneath it, because Kentucky licenses individuals, Colorado licenses HVAC at the county level, and Tennessee shows a brand present with its license lapsed. Every row and figure is an exact-name match confirmed in the brand’s home state.

Brand	State	Active company licenses
CoolToday (with Plumbing Today and Energy Today)	Florida	9
Lindstrom Air Conditioning & Plumbing	Florida	4
Donovan Air, Electric & Plumbing	Florida	3
Red Cap Plumbing, Air & Electric	Florida	3
Thomas & Galbraith Heating, Cooling & Plumbing	Ohio	2
Baker Brothers Plumbing, Air & Electric	Texas	2
Berkeys Plumbing, AC & Electrical	Texas	2
Abacus Plumbing, Air Conditioning & Electrical	Texas	1
Total, 8 brands, 3 company-licensing states		26

Two are worth naming precisely. Thomas & Galbraith’s two Ohio licenses are a plumbing and an electrical license, not HVAC, and Abacus’s single Texas license is electrical. The figure counts each brand’s active company licenses, whatever the trade, which is the honest way to measure where a platform is dug in rather than where its name suggests it should be.

One honest note on Florida, because a number you cannot defend is worth nothing. The Florida figures reflect the primary state license records only. A separate set of business-entity records is held in reserve and may raise the Florida totals in a future refresh, so treat these Florida numbers as a verified floor, not a ceiling.

Kentucky: where the license belongs to the person, not the company

Kentucky does not license the contracting business as a single entity. It licenses people, and under Kentucky law every HVAC journeyman and apprentice works under a Master HVAC Contractor who pulls the permits and carries the liability. So the fair count in Kentucky is not company licenses, it is the licensed workforce rolled up to each brand. Two Wrench brands appear, Jarboe’s and Thomas & Galbraith, both tied to the parent through WCA Group, the Williams Comfort Air holding entity, which confirms these are the real Wrench brands and not local namesakes. Together they field 61 live HVAC credentials, anchored by 5 Master HVAC Contractor licenses, the credentials that legally hold the permits. Ohio, another market Echelon watches closely, is covered in why private equity is buying HVAC companies in Ohio.

Kentucky brand	Master HVAC	Journeyman	Apprentice	Live HVAC credentials
Jarboe’s Plumbing, Heating & Cooling	4	25	3	32
Thomas & Galbraith	1	13	15	29
Total, 2 brands	5	38	18	61

The two brands carry similar depth but different shape, and the shape is the signal. Jarboe’s is journeyman-heavy, a mature crew of 25 journeymen over just 3 apprentices. Thomas & Galbraith is the reverse, 15 apprentices to 13 journeymen, the profile of a brand actively building its Kentucky bench through the training pipeline. That contrast is the kind of read a brand list cannot give you. Plumbing and electrical credentials for these brands are captured and tracked in the Echelon Database as well, and held out of the HVAC count so the numbers stay honest until those trades are worked in full.

Colorado: a company-licensing state where HVAC lives at the county level

Colorado licenses the contracting company as an entity, the way Florida and Texas do, but with a structural catch: HVAC is licensed at the county level in Colorado, not by the state, so the state roster does not carry it. What the state does license, and what Echelon captures, is electrical and plumbing contractors. Wrench’s Colorado brand, Plumbline Services in the Denver metro, holds 2 active state licenses, one electrical contractor and one plumbing contractor, both registered in Centennial. Three other Colorado records share the Plumbline name and were verified out: an unrelated Plumbline Mechanical in Gunnison, a separate County Plumbline in Denver, and a lapsed Plumbline Plumbing in Miami. So Colorado enters as a verified two-license electrical and plumbing presence, with the HVAC footprint sitting in county records the state roster does not reach.

Tennessee: a brand present, a license lapsed

Tennessee licenses the contracting company as an entity, the way Texas and Florida do, so a live Comfort Dynamics license would count as a company row. There is not one. Wrench operates Comfort Dynamics in the Memphis area, in Shelby County, but Echelon finds no active state contractor license under that name as of the pull. The only two records that exist are both dead, one application-expired and one closed, the most recent having lapsed in early 2025. A verified check of active Memphis-area licenses under any Comfort or Dynamics variant returns only unrelated companies. So Tennessee enters this file as a named-presence market with no current licensed footprint, which is itself the finding, not a gap in the data.

That makes two markets in this file where a Wrench brand runs a market with no live license under its trade name: Buckeye in Columbus, which returned no active Ohio license under its own name and is likely licensed under a parent entity, and Comfort Dynamics in Memphis. It is a small but real reminder that a brand roster overstates licensed presence, and the license data is what measures the difference. Cataloging that difference is the entire point of this file.

The platform that did not move

The clearest way to place Wrench in 2026 is to look at what its peers did while Wrench stood still. Over roughly two years, nearly every large national residential-services platform changed hands or recapitalized. Sila moved to Goldman Sachs Alternatives in November 2024. Redwood took an Altas Partners majority in May 2025. Service Logic went to Bain Capital and Mubadala in December 2025. Champions Group agreed to a Blackstone acquisition in February 2026 at a reported 2.5 billion dollars, near 18.5 times earnings. Apex drew a reported 2 billion dollar Apollo investment at a reported 10 billion dollar valuation in May 2026. Across that entire peer set, Wrench Group is the one that has not transacted since 2019.

A hold that long is well past the length of a typical sponsor position, and it makes Wrench the conspicuous non-mover in a group that has been clearing high-teens multiples. The 2022 minority sale already handed earlier investors partial liquidity, and the 2025 debt refinancing reset the capital structure. A long hold, a prior minority monetization, and a fresh debt package together read less like a platform settling in and more like one being positioned. We label that read analysis rather than forecast, and we note the obvious counterweight: Wrench is not a seller on the public record today, and it still behaves like a live acquirer, adding brands and technology partnerships.

That is the double vision this file is built to give you. The analyst reading the cap table sees a hold running long and comparable deals printing near eighteen times. The operator reading the trucks sees brands still hiring and still buying, a Kentucky bench with 15 apprentices coming up through Thomas & Galbraith alone. Both are true at once. The reader who holds both pictures is the one who is not surprised when a process opens, and not fooled when it does not.

Frequently asked questions

Who owns Wrench Group in 2026?

Leonard Green & Partners holds the majority, in place since 2019, with TSG Consumer Partners and Oak Hill Capital as minority investors since 2022. There was no change of control in 2026.

Is Wrench Group the same company as Champions Group?

No. Champions Group is a separate residential-services platform that agreed to a Blackstone acquisition from Odyssey Investment Partners in February 2026. Champions Group was formerly named Service Champions. Wrench Group operates an unrelated brand called Service Champions North, which is the source of frequent confusion between the two.

How large is Wrench Group?

By its own verified profile, Wrench Group operates across 14 states and 25 markets, with a reported employee band of 5,001 to 10,000. The Echelon Database tracks 27 named brands under the platform.

How many contractor licenses does Wrench Group hold?

Across the six states Echelon tracks under weekly refresh, Wrench brands hold 26 active company licenses in the three states that license the contracting company as an entity: 19 in Florida, 5 in Texas, and 2 in Ohio. These span the trades each state licenses; in Ohio, the two Thomas & Galbraith licenses are plumbing and electrical. In Kentucky, which licenses individuals rather than companies, its two brands field 61 live HVAC credentials. In Colorado, where HVAC is licensed at the county level, its Denver brand holds 2 active state licenses in electrical and plumbing. In Tennessee, its Memphis brand currently holds no active license. The Florida figures reflect primary license records and are a verified floor.

Is Wrench Group for sale?

There is no announced sale process on the public record. On our read, however, Wrench is the longest-held platform among its national peers, those peers have recently transacted at high-teens earnings multiples, and its capital structure was refreshed in 2025. Those conditions make a future liquidity event worth watching. We present that as analysis, not prediction.

Methodology and sources. The corporate snapshot is drawn from Wrench Group’s own verified company profile. The ownership timeline is assembled from sponsor and company announcements and M&A trade press. The license footprint is produced by the Echelon Database, which cross-references a maintained platform-ownership map against active state license rosters in the six states Echelon currently tracks: Florida, Texas, Ohio, Kentucky, Colorado, and Tennessee. Where a state licenses the contracting company as an entity, Florida, Texas, and Ohio, Echelon counts the brand’s active company licenses across the trades that state licenses. Colorado licenses the company but licenses HVAC at the county level, so only its state-level electrical and plumbing licenses are counted. Where a state licenses individuals, Kentucky, Echelon rolls credentials up to the operating business and reports the licensed HVAC workforce by tier, with the brands confirmed to the parent through the WCA Group holding entity. Common-name collisions are removed through home-state, county, and exact-name verification. Florida figures reflect primary state license records and are presented as a verified floor. The distinction between Wrench Group and Champions Group was confirmed against primary filings after several third-party sources conflated the two. Peer transaction values and multiples are from public announcements and M&A trade press and are presented as reported figures. The platform-phase read is labeled analysis, not prediction. Echelon takes no position on the merits of any transaction or policy referenced.