Annual owner earnings answer
This is an estimated pre-tax annual owner-earnings range for a post-first-year, single-territory Pest Hunters–Mosquito Hunters–Humbug Holiday Lighting business using a hired-supervisor operating model. In an owner-operated model where the owner performs the supervisor role, the corresponding estimated owner-operator benefit is about $93,000–$223,000. The 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document does not report total franchise sales, operating profit, net income, owner compensation, or owner earnings.
Independent estimate
This range is an independent analytical scenario, not an Item 19 financial performance representation by Mosquito Hunters, LLC. It combines identified 2026 FDD facts with separately identified U.S. government benchmarks and editorial assumptions. Actual results can differ materially by location, territory count, service mix, customer retention, season length, pricing, labor, chemicals, vehicle costs, storage or occupancy, financing, owner involvement, and execution.
Data basis
Scenario
$85K
Base hired-supervisor residual
Rounded from $84,500 at $650,000 revenue and a 13% post-fee operating margin.
Scenario
$145K
Base owner-operator benefit
Base residual plus a $60,960 wage-only proxy for supervisor labor performed by the owner.
Benchmark
22.0%
Industry operating-surplus proxy
Derived from 2022 Census revenue and expense estimates for NAICS 56171 employer firms.
Official
62 / 120
Item 19 pest-control cohort
62 franchisees owning 120 territories operated for a Full Season in 2025.
Official
$62,162
Median holiday-lighting revenue
Per participating franchisee in 2025; 34 franchisees fully participated.
Derived
17.8%
Base known core obligation burden
Royalty, required marketing, and the scheduled post-threshold technology fee at $650,000 scenario revenue.
Item 19 evidence
What does Mosquito Hunters Item 19 actually report?
Officially, Item 19 reports operating activity and selected revenue inputs—not owner earnings. The 2026 FDD covers 2025 customer counts, treatment prices, recurring-customer program values, and holiday-lighting revenue. It does not provide a complete revenue statement or expense statement for the current combined business, so an official profit margin cannot be calculated.
Tables A.1 through A.5 cover 62 franchisees owning 120 franchised territories that operated for a “Full Season” during 2025. The franchisor excluded 21 franchisees owning 25 territories, including four that were not ready for a full 2025 season and 17 that did not operate for all of 2025 after being fully operational in 2024. That equals derived coverage of 74.7% of the 83 described franchisees and 82.8% of the 145 described territories. Affiliate-owned territories were excluded. The data were compiled from direct reports and franchisee surveys and were not independently audited. Source: 2026 Mosquito Hunters FDD, Item 19, pp. 39–46.
| Official Item 19 measure | 2025 result | Population and limitation |
|---|---|---|
| “Customers per Strategic Partner per Quartile” median | Q1 420; Q2 252; Q3 181; Q4 88 | Per franchisee, not per territory. Quartiles had different average territory counts. |
| Mosquito-only recurring program value, regional median | $799.50 to $1,296.00 | Recurring mosquito-only customers; excludes one-time, bundled, and non-mosquito services. |
| Non-mosquito recurring program value, regional median | $295.00 to $498.00 | Recurring non-mosquito-only customers; a different customer base from Table A.1. |
| Humbug Holiday Lighting revenue per franchisee | Median $62,161.96; average $95,296.27 | 34 franchisees that fully participated in the 2025 holiday-lighting season. |
| Total pest-control sales | Not disclosed | Customer counts and program values cannot be multiplied safely because their cohorts and service definitions differ. |
| Operating profit, EBITDA, net income, or owner compensation | Not disclosed | No official same-brand owner-earnings figure is available. |
Revenue is not earnings
The official holiday-lighting figure is revenue, not profit. The customer-count and program-value tables are also not a complete sales calculation. Combining those tables would silently mix one-time and recurring customers, bundled and unbundled services, regions, franchisees with different territory counts, and different inclusion rules.
Scenario model
How is the annual owner-earnings range calculated?
The range is estimated by multiplying three explicit revenue cases by three post-fee operating-margin assumptions. The result is estimated pre-tax owner earnings after normal unit-level operating expenses, a paid supervisor, and recurring franchise obligations, but before personal income taxes and financing principal. Interest, depreciation, and major replacement capital expenditures are not separately modeled.
| Scenario and post-fee margin | Annual revenue assumption | Hired-supervisor owner earnings | Owner-operator benefit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative — 8% | $400,000 | $32,000 | $92,960 |
| Base — 13% | $650,000 | $84,500 | $145,460 |
| Upside — 18% | $900,000 | $162,000 | $222,960 |
- Revenue assumptions are editorial planning cases. The $400,000, $650,000, and $900,000 figures are not FDD averages, medians, quartiles, or probabilities. They test one post-first-year territory under the current combined service format.
- Margins are post-fee assumptions. The 8%, 13%, and 18% margins are defined after normal payroll, supervisor compensation, chemicals and supplies, vehicle expense, insurance, required marketing, royalty, technology and software, bookkeeping, storage, and ordinary overhead.
- The external ceiling reference is not a same-brand margin. The U.S. Census Bureau reported $21.466 billion of 2022 revenue and $16.749 billion of expenses for NAICS 56171 employer firms, yielding a derived 21.97% operating-surplus proxy. The scenario margins are deliberately below that broad benchmark because the benchmark is not a Mosquito Hunters franchised-unit P&L.
- Owner labor is separate. The owner-operator calculation adds the BLS May 2025 annual mean wage of $60,960 for first-line supervisors of landscaping, lawn service, and groundskeeping workers as a wage-only proxy. It does not add payroll taxes, benefits, overtime, or a local wage adjustment.
How does owner role change the three earnings scenarios?
Annual pre-tax dollars; owner-operator benefit includes the market value of supervisor labor.
Interpretation: Replacing a paid supervisor increases the owner’s economic benefit, but the added amount compensates the owner for labor. It is not passive business profit. Sources: scenario calculations; 2026 FDD Item 15, p. 33; BLS May 2025 national occupational wage table.
Recurring obligations
How much revenue is committed to recurring franchise and marketing obligations?
In the three modeled revenue cases, the known core FDD obligation burden is about 17.0% to 22.0% of revenue before chemicals, payroll, vehicle expense, software, insurance, storage, and other operating costs. This is a derived calculation for post-first-year operation. It includes the 10% royalty, required central paid media, National Marketing Fund contribution, $8,000 local marketing requirement, and the scheduled $250 monthly technology fee after the $1 million cumulative-revenue threshold.
Known core FDD obligations as a share of scenario revenue
Post-first-year annual burden before other operating expenses.
Interpretation: Minimum marketing obligations make the percentage burden highest in the conservative revenue case; the percentage declines as revenue rises and fee caps apply. Source: derived from 2026 FDD Item 6, pp. 8–10. Totals exclude convention fees and all non-franchisor operating costs.
| Recurring obligation | FDD rule used | Base case at $650,000 | Model treatment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Royalty and Service Fee | 10% of Net Revenues | $65,000 | Included in post-fee margin. |
| Centrally Managed Paid Media | $30,000 or 5%, whichever is greater; single-territory cap $45,000 | $32,500 | Included. |
| National Marketing Fund | $5,000 or 2%, whichever is greater; single-territory cap $7,000 | $7,000 | Included beginning after year one. |
| Local Marketing | $8,000 annually beginning in month 13 | $8,000 | Included. |
| Technology Fee | Scheduled $250 monthly after cumulative revenue reaches $1 million; starts at $150 monthly | $3,000 | Uses the scheduled post-threshold rate; subtract $1,200 before the threshold. MH may increase the fee up to $500 monthly. |
| Known core obligation total | Sum of the five obligations above | $115,500 | 17.8% of base scenario revenue. |
Additional recurring operating amounts described in Item 7 include sales-support resources of $200–$450 monthly, vehicle tracking of $50–$100 monthly, computer software of $415–$656 monthly, a service-vehicle lease of $1,200–$1,525 monthly, bookkeeping of $325–$400 monthly, and possible storage rent of $0–$1,000 monthly. Annualizing those disclosed monthly ranges, plus the scheduled post-threshold technology fee, produces approximately $29,280–$52,572 before chemicals, labor, fuel, insurance, maintenance, merchant costs, and other expenses. This amount is context, not a separate deduction from the scenario results, because the scenario margins already assume ordinary operating expenses. Source: 2026 FDD Item 7, pp. 11–14.
Owner role
Can a Mosquito Hunters owner treat this as passive income?
No. The current FDD requires the owner or entity owners to devote full time, energies, attention, and best efforts to the business. A trained on-premises supervisor may be hired, but that does not remove the owner’s full-time contractual participation obligation. The hired-supervisor scenario therefore represents a division of operating duties, not absentee ownership. Source: 2026 FDD Item 15, p. 33.
- Estimated pre-tax owner earnings
- Cash available after normal unit operating expenses and recurring franchise fees, before personal income taxes and financing principal.
- Owner-operator benefit
- Residual operating earnings plus the modeled market value of supervisor labor performed by the owner.
- Business profit
- The residual after paying market-rate labor, including a supervisor. It should not include unpaid owner labor disguised as profit.
- Take-home pay
- Not estimated here. Personal taxes, entity structure, debt, distributions, and retained cash differ by owner.
Owner-operator effect
The $60,960 difference between the two role models is compensation for operating labor, not an automatic increase in the underlying economics. An owner who handles scheduling, field supervision, sales management, and quality control may avoid a wage expense, but also assumes the workload and execution risk.
Evidence confidence
Why is the confidence rating limited?
Confidence is LIMITED because the model relies materially on external industry evidence and editorial revenue and margin assumptions. Same-brand Item 19 evidence is current and useful, but it does not disclose the complete numerator or denominator needed for an owner-profit calculation.
The strongest external margin reference is the Census Bureau’s 2022 Service Annual Survey for NAICS 56171, Exterminating and Pest Control Services. The derived 21.97% operating-surplus ratio comes from national employer-firm estimates, not franchised Mosquito Hunters territories. It may blend larger and smaller operators, different service mixes, geographies, capital structures, compensation practices, and franchise status. The Census NAICS definition for exterminating and pest control services is operationally relevant, but not a perfect match to the combined holiday-lighting format.
Item 20 adds another caution. The system ended 2025 with 145 franchised outlets, up from 135 at the start of the year. During 2025, 15 outlets opened, five were terminated, and 15 transferred to new owners. Company-owned outlets fell from six to zero because all six were sold to franchisees. Those changes affect cohort maturity and make a single systemwide earnings assumption less reliable. Source: 2026 FDD Item 20, pp. 46–52.
Largest unresolved uncertainty
Total annual Net Revenues and a complete operating-expense statement for a comparable one-territory franchisee remain undisclosed. Revenue volume, labor structure, chemical and service costs, and customer retention can move the result more than small changes in the royalty calculation.
Buyer verification
What should a buyer verify before relying on an earnings range?
A buyer should replace the editorial revenue and margin assumptions with comparable franchisee records before making an investment decision. The FTC explains that financial performance claims belong in Item 19 and that buyers can request written substantiation and test whether the disclosed population matches their intended operation.
- Request Item 19 substantiation. Confirm the definitions, source records, exclusions, territory counts, region, and treatment of owners who closed, transferred, or did not operate a full season.
- Ask for one-territory P&Ls. Separate mosquito, non-mosquito pest control, Smart Repellent Systems, and Humbug Holiday Lighting revenue and direct costs.
- Reconcile owner labor. Identify whether reported payroll includes a field supervisor, sales manager, office staff, technicians, owner wages, and payroll burden.
- Test mandatory marketing economics. Verify lead cost, close rate, customer acquisition cost, retention, route density, and the effect of minimum and capped marketing payments.
- Separate debt service. Obtain actual vehicle, equipment, working-capital, and acquisition financing terms. Financing principal is not included in the earnings range.
- Interview current and former franchisees. Compare operators with the same climate region, territory count, years in operation, service mix, and owner role.
Decision synthesis
What is the strongest defensible Mosquito Hunters earnings view?
The strongest defensible planning range is approximately $32,000–$162,000 in annual pre-tax owner earnings under a hired-supervisor model, or approximately $93,000–$223,000 in owner-operator benefit when the owner performs the supervisor role. These are scenario-based estimates, not official Item 19 earnings. The most important driver is sustainable revenue after customer acquisition and route-service costs. The largest unresolved uncertainty is the absence of same-brand total sales and complete franchised-unit operating expenses. Before relying on the range, a buyer should reconcile the 2026 FDD’s Item 19 substantiation with comparable one-territory P&Ls and structured interviews with current and former franchisees.