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Back of Napkin

Comfort Systems USA, Inc. FIX

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The bet you're really making is that America keeps building data centers, and that Comfort Systems keeps winning the job of putting the cooling, piping and electrical guts inside them. You're betting the technology customers who are now 58% of the work keep signing contracts, and that the company's prefab factories keep turning those jobs out at fatter margins than field crews ever earned. Right now it is going very well: the biggest quarter in company history, revenue up 50% and profit up 91%, with $14.1 billion of signed work still to build. You pay 40 times last year's earnings and 33 times this year's, more than the company has fetched in any of the last twelve years.

Key data

Price$1,610.34
52-week range$698.06 – $2,073.99
P/E (trailing / FY2026)39.6x / 32.9x
EV/EBITDA30.3x

FIX · price with moving averages

Daily · 6MWeekly · 3Y
$5$539$1073$1606$2140 Sep '23Apr '24Nov '24Jul '25Feb '26Sep '26 BID
EMAs82140

Source: market data.

The business

Comfort Systems USA installs and services the mechanical and electrical systems inside commercial buildings: the HVAC, chilled-water plants, piping and wiring. Mechanical is 71% of revenue, electrical 29%. What has changed the company is the customer. Technology, meaning data centers and chip plants, is now 58% of revenue, up from a broad base of hospitals, schools and factories a few years ago. Modular is 17% of the mix: instead of sending electricians into a field, the company builds climate systems as finished modules in its own plants and ships them to site, faster and at a higher margin. The moat is unglamorous and real: forty-odd local operating companies that own the customer relationships, and access to licensed crews in a business that cannot hire fast enough. In a labor-starved business, having the people who can pour a mechanical room is the edge. What the customer signs is a fixed-price contract for a pre-built cooling plant, delivered in weeks a competitor cannot match.

Inside the complete Back of Napkin

  1. 01The business
  2. 02The numbers
  3. 03Management
  4. 04How it fails or surprises you
  5. 05Closing thoughts
  6. 06Methodology

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