Cintas Corporation
CTASHIGH VELOCITYFILING INTENSITYCintas Corporation reads as High Velocity (composite 70/100); pressure / disclosure signals dominate the posture this cycle · primary market Industrial Services, ranked #10 on disclosed spend.
Lens
Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)
$466M
vs $228M in 2020–2022
Disclosed transactions
44
3/3 active fiscal years in window
Buyer archetype
Programmatic Roll-Up
High recurring acquisition cadence, usually with many smaller targets.
Composite score
70
High Velocity dominates · Filing Intensity
Cintas (CTAS) is a public-company acquirer in specialty business services with $3.6B of disclosed M&A spend across 260 acquisitions over 18 active years. Strategy mix is led by Bolt On (48%), Geographic Expansion (24%), Horizontal Consolidation (16%). Current capacity: $183M cash, $2.4B total debt, 0.8x net leverage (underlevered). Has $6.5B of incremental debt capacity to a 3.0x IG threshold and $12.3B to the 5.0x HY transition. Disclosed median deal size sits at $14M.
- “The factors contributing to the recognition of the amount of goodwill are based on several strategic and synergistic benefits that are expected to be realized from the G&K acquisition.”- 10-K FY2017
- “We believe these ratings reflect our commitment to conservative financial policies, strong financial management and a disciplined integration strategy for acquisitions.”- 10-K FY2010
- “further vertically integrate the operations for certain product lines”- 10-K FY2022
- ▸Continued tuck-in cadence around existing operations
- ▸Disciplined size constraint suggests no transformational deals
- ▸Room for a $12.3B debt-funded acquisition before HY 5.0x.
Behavioral posture, nine reads.
Each index scores the issuer 0–100 against an EDGAR-anchored definition. Scores ≥ threshold elevate the issuer into the index's constituent set; the dominant index drives the masthead label.
Active Acquirer
Companies actively deploying disclosed capital into M&A
- $4B disclosed buyer spend
Buyer Cadence
Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity
- Filed within 49d
- 304 acquisition-history signals
- 188 8-Ks
Target Probability
Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings
- Control-process language
- 9 activism filings
Spin/Carve
Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture
- 9 activism filings
Pressure Watch
Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure
- 9 activism filings
- Latest activism 4.1y ago; discounted
- Control-process filings
Distress Watch
Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns
- 9 activism filings
Restatement Risk
Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings
Capital Velocity
DominantIssuers with the highest filing-activity intensity
- 188 8-Ks
- 5 form types
Quiet Power
Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence
- Enterprise value $69.5B
- 10-Q 49d ago
- 4 active signals
Capital cadence.
Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($MM); ticks show recorded transaction count. Disclosure tier annotated where v6 audited corpus carries an entry.
Disclosed spend $MM Disclosed transactions (right axis)Peak spend year: $2,102M · Peak count: 28
| FY | Disclosed buys | Disclosed spend | Avg ticket | Audited tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 28 | $233M | $8M | N/A |
| 2024 | 16 | $187M | $12M | N/A |
| 2023 | N/A | $46M | N/A | N/A |
| 2022 | 20 | $164M | $8M | N/A |
| 2021 | N/A | $10M | N/A | N/A |
| 2020 | N/A | $54M | N/A | N/A |
Strategy posture.
The buyer's playbook in terms of strategic archetype: what each disclosed move says about how they're deploying capital.
Archetype mix
- Bolt On25%
- Geographic Expansion25%
- Horizontal Consolidation25%
- Vertical Integration25%
Strategy keywords
Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.
- bolt_on
- geographic_expansion
- horizontal_consolidation
- vertical_integration
Filing language.
Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.
“On April 30, 2014, Cintas completed its previously announced partnership transaction with the shareholders of Shred-it to combine Cintas’ document destruction business with Shred-it’s document destruction business.”
“The factors contributing to the recognition of the amount of goodwill are based on several strategic and synergistic benefits that are expected to be realized from the G&K acquisition.”
“Under the agreement, Cintas and Shred-it each contributed its document destruction business to a newly formed partnership owned 42% by Cintas and 58% by the shareholders of Shred-it.”
“We believe these ratings reflect our commitment to conservative financial policies, strong financial management and a disciplined integration strategy for acquisitions.”
“These benefits include improved service capabilities, an enhanced footprint in the markets that we serve, attractive synergy opportunities and value creation.”
Market context.
Where this issuer sits inside its SE-Cluster rollup wedge, with disclosed-spend rank plus trading comparables against the public peer set.
Primary market
Industrial Services
- Market spend (2023–2025)
- $65.5B
- Market spend (2020–2022)
- $39.6B
- Recent vs prior
- +65%
- Issuer rank in market
- #10 of 157
- Share of market capital
- 1.8%
Valuation positioning
CTAS trades at a +11.8-turn premium to the Industrial Services peer median of 12.1×.
- EV / Revenue
- 6.3×
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 0.8×
- Peer median EV / EBITDA
- 12.1×
Trading comparables
FMP market data · 2026-05-11
| Company | EV / EBITDA | EV / Rev | Net debt / EBITDA | Revenue | M&A 2023–2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cintas CorporationCTAS | 23.9× | 6.3× | 0.8× | $11B | $466M |
| 14.9× | 3.6× | 2.8× | $27.5B | $10.2B | |
AramarkARMK | 14.4× | 1.0× | 4.4× | $18.8B | N/A |
| 12.1× | 4.1× | 3.1× | $6.4B | $9.4B | |
| 9.5× | 0.4× | 3.6× | $8.9B | $151M | |
Brink’s Co.BCO | 7.7× | 1.3× | 3.0× | $5.4B | $27M |
Trading multiples from FMP market data; disclosed M&A spend from the SE-Cluster EDGAR 10-K corpus. Peer set = top disclosed buyers in Industrial Services. Bars scaled to the highest EV/EBITDA in the set.
Buyer landscape.
Public buyers whose stated archetypes, target categories, and recent cadence align with this issuer as a plausible acquisition target. Scores cross EDGAR signal and disclosure overlap.
Likely buyers
No public buyers surface as a strong target-side fit on current signal.
Likely sellers / divestiture partners
No reciprocal divestiture / strategic-alternatives matches identified.
Filing activity & signal stream.
Filing cadence and event-driven signals visible on EDGAR. The signal stream below is curated from restatement / spin-carve / activism categories, providing context for any near-term call.
Filing cadence
- 10-K (annual)352025-07-28
- 10-Q (quarterly)1032026-04-07
- 8-K (event)1882026-03-31
- Proxy / DEF 14A502025-12-22
- Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)92022-05-03
Signals on file
- elevated
Activism on file
2022-05-039 activist filings on file (13D, DFAN14A, PREC14A series).
- info
Signal
Disclosed acquisition spend
- info
Signal
10-K strategy themes
- info
Signal
Recent transaction activity
Audited corpus.
No audited record on file for this CIK in the current v6 corpus.
This issuer has not been extracted into the v6 audited acquirer corpus yet. The brief above pulls from ranking-level aggregates and issuer-index signal only.