Disclaimer: Unless noted otherwise, views and analysis expressed here are the author's own and based on public sources. The article is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. This is not financial advice. Please consult a professional for investment decisions.

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What is the one thing we Europeans can all agree on? Before you blurt out a political statement, I’ll give you a hint: climate. The summer of 2026 was the hottest on record in Spain, Britain, Belgium, France… oh yes, France. Too bad that only 25% of French households are equipped with AC, compared to 50% in Spain and Italy; and 90% in the US and Japan (source).

So stop ridiculing Harvard MBAs rolling up HVACs, and instead learn from their absorptive pursuits. Last week in the unseasonally cool Paris I interviewed Louis-Clair François-Poncet, a co-founder of SATEP (and a Harvard MBA), which “brings together companies accelerating the energy transition of buildings to enable them to operate with peace of mind, while preserving their autonomy and sustainably strengthening their expertise”. 

In other words, a residential HVAC rollup.

Since being founded in 2022, SATEP has completed 16 acquisitions. The target for year-end 2026 is 20, giving it a run-rate revenue of €85M.

Louis-Clair and I discussed:

Before we dig in, two announcements. 

Two, next week’s Serial Acquirer Summit (where Louis-Clair is presenting) is fully sold out. Similarly, we thank everyone who has applied to the Rollup Bootcamp, and the supporting investors: truly the who’s who of Buy & Build and HoldCo investing. Excited to kick off Cohort 3 very soon. Watch out for the next intake some time in Q1 2027. 

At the top of our list are the Independent Sponsor Forums in Munich on 11 November (sponsored by Bright Capital, who else?) and in Madrid (finally!) on 26 November. And no, we’re not done with our conferences. Save the date for 18 November in Paris.   

An honourable mention goes to the IESE Search Fund Conference (Barcelona, 15-16 October).   

Finally, if you’re lucky enough to pass for a US Independent Sponsor (or an LP), join the iGlobal ISP Summit in NYC at the end of the month. We’re neither… but will be hovering anyway. Come say hi in Boston on 28 September and NYC on 29-30 September. 

Alright, back to this week’s story:   

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AP: Welcome, Louis-Clair! Why don't we start with your backstory and the origins of SATEP?

Louis-Clair: My first job was at a French large-cap called Unibail-Rodamco (now part of Westfield). I worked as the right hand of the CEO of a shopping center. I worked in M&A. I worked in investor relations. Along the way, I helped an uncle buy a small business in France. That experience made me realise that I enjoy a combination of very operational work, and strategic and financial tasks.

Next, I quit my job to pursue an MBA at Harvard. It was at business school, in 2019, that I discovered Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition. I remember listening to a 4-person search fund panel, and thinking, this was for me!

So I decided to launch an acquisition project. Either buying one business, search-fund style, or launching a roll-up. I was very open-minded. Then I interned at Heritage Holding, a search investor born out of a search fund-turned-HVAC, and I really liked it. Upon returning to France, I called Lucien Roquette, one of my best friends. A tech entrepreneur, he was looking for a new project. Since we were 30 and single, and the idea of moving to the middle of nowhere to run a larger business didn’t excite us… so we launched a rollup instead. 

How did we land on HVAC? We didn’t map dozens of sectors. Lucien was adamant about pursuing a project linked to energy transition.andI just wanted to buy lots of small businesses. That brought us to the realm of energy retrofit. Buildings account for 1/4th of France’s CO₂ emissions, and the technologies to decarbonise them already exist: heat pumps, solar panels, new types of electrical installation. We saw an opportunity to do a roll-up in a field that made sense to us. Thus, SATEP was born.

The acronym stands for Société des Artisans de la Transition Énergétique (et Participations): the craftsmen of the energy transition. The craftsman was an important part of the definition.

We launched in 2022 and made our first acquisition in 2023. We will have more than 20 companies by the end of 2026. It has been a lot of fun!

AP: Europe is not exactly short of HVAC roll-ups, however, very few are residentially focused. In France, there is a live debate around air conditioning, specifically, around loosening the rules so that AC can be used more freely. What is your take? Are you pitching SATEP as a play on that regulatory shift?

Louis-Clair: Our thesis is MUCH bigger than AC “liberalisation”. The secular trend is the heating transition. In France today, more than 10 million households rely on gas heating, and more than 2 million on oil. Those fossil-fuel systems will be replaced by heat pumps. Oil and gas are becoming more expensive. Energy is a question of strategic autonomy for the country. More prosaically, households save money with a heat pump. 

Bottom line: heat pump penetration is around 15–20% today. We believe that, in time, it will exceed 50%. (RollUpEurope note: France tops EU rankings of heat pump sales, with 0.5M units sold: 20% of total - source) 

Then there is plumbing, which you will need until the end of time. Every renovation involves plumbing. Finally, we do a bit of electrical work. Putting it all together, heat pumps represent 50% of our business today, including air-to-air heat pumps - in other words AC, which cools you in summer and heats you in winter. Other HVAC is 20%, plumbing 15%, and electrical 15%, including solar. The revenue mix is majority B2C, with some B2B. We believe these small businesses need to stand on several legs, so that they are not hurt by cyclicality. 

AP: Was it a conscious decision not to go after B2B, given all the hype around data centres, as well as big-ticket orders from shopping malls and schools?

Louis-Clair: 100% conscious from day one, for several reasons. 

First, when you launch a venture, you need to be excited by what you do. Lucien and I found it fun to do Direct-to-Consumer. Digital marketing is a big part of the strategy.

Second, there is no reference player in French B2C, whereas in B2B there are several. If you execute a B2C play well, the upside is tremendous. The margins are higher, penetration is low, and the room for organic growth is massive because the markets are very deep. Your closest competitor is a tiny craftsman down the road. You do better than him, you gain market share.

AP: Let’s talk about the underlying businesses. You seem to buy relatively small companies - €4M in revenue, give or take. You emphasise brand preservation and autonomy. What is and isn’t centralised, and how do you drive value?

Louis-Clair: B2C businesses are smaller than in B2B. Interestingly, in the US, private equity investors seem to prefer B2C to B2B and value those companies much higher, because of the room for organic growth. 

Our mantra is to be very integrated in the back office. Same accounting, same ERP, same IT environment. When we buy a business, we rebuild the website so we can do Search Engine Optimisation. We help our companies with HR, and especially with recruiting, which is a major pain point. We also negotiate prices with all the distributors and suppliers.

That said, locally, you don’t see a major difference after the acquisition, because the brand stays the same. On average, our businesses have been operating for 30 years. The customers are used to the brand. On the other hand, no-one knows SATEP. We keep the brand and help it flourish.

It works because our pitch is: we’re not going to change the DNA. We keep the people, the atmosphere, the family culture. Technicians carry on with installing the machines they want -  Daikin, Mitsubishi, Atlantic - because that choice is within each company’s core competence. The CEOs remain mandataires sociaux, the legally responsible officers. They don’t call the HQ to authorise a raise. The companies were profitable before, and with their judgement they’ll be profitable tomorrow. The reason why so many HVAC business owners come to us is because of our reputation.

AP: You’ve partly pre-empted my question about founders, so let me go off-script. I hadn’t thought of SATEP as a play on SEO. Are you seeing a tangible revenue uplift just from improving these companies’ online presence?

Louis-Clair: Yes, and it’s pretty remarkable. In some of the businesses where we’ve switched on SEO, new leads account for more than half of the business. Our main challenge is that many companies aren’t sales-driven enough. We screen for technical excellence, not necessarily for sales potential. So the first thing we do is hire sales people. We train them. Once they’re mature enough, we put in the CRM and start generating leads. It takes time, but once a company is up to speed, a few thousand euros of spend produces massive results. 

It took us a while to understand the economics of digital marketing, but now we’re committed to deploying it across the entirety of the portfolio. The results speak for themselves. This year, organic growth is running close to 15%.

AP: Double-digit organic growth sounds pretty good! Let’s talk about the founders. Browsing your LinkedIn feed, I noticed that an inordinate number of acquisitions are family businesses. Why do these owners sell to you? Is it the rollover - the chance to own a slice of a bigger pie? Why are founders excited to join a larger organisation?