Prairie Capital Advisors, Inc. (“Prairie”), a leading middle-market investment bank, released its 2021 ESOP Construction Survey today. Prairie works with owners of private construction businesses across the country, providing advisory services to support their growth and ownership transition strategies. Many of its clients in the construction industry have decided on an ESOP as part of their ownership transition strategy. Prairie’s goal in surveying ESOP-owned construction companies is to gather insightful feedback and to gain a better understanding of industry benchmarks, trends and other meaningful market factors impacting them.

Selected Findings

• 77.4% of survey respondents reported that COVID-19 continued to have an impact on their business in 2021.
• 58.5% of employee-owned construction firms surveyed had a larger backlog in 2021 than they did in 2020.
• 84.9% of survey respondents indicated that access to capital was not a major issue in 2021, and 75.5% do not believe access to capital will impact their projects in 2022.
• 96.2% of employee-owned construction firms surveyed said that their supply chain was impacted in 2021.
• 79.2% of survey respondents reported that they experienced labor shortages in 2021.
• 90.6% of survey respondents cited labor resource availability as their biggest operational concern for 2022, while 83.0% cited material costs.
• 49.1% of employee-owned construction firms said that their ESOP was not impacted in 2021.

“Having worked with many ESOP construction companies throughout the U.S. and over the years, we’re excited to once again share insightful industry trends impacting our ESOP construction clients,” commented Franco Silva, Director at Prairie. Rocky Fiore, Managing Director and COO, added, “This survey allowed our team to develop a greater understanding of the relationship between construction activity, ESOPs and the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey results will provide our construction clients with improved visibility across the industry during this time of uncertainty.”

View the report results.

About Prairie’s ESOP Construction Survey

Respondents to the survey were of varying demographics, including revenue size, services provided, end markets served and the maturity of their ESOP. Since 2021 was another unique year due to the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic, the survey incorporated questions aimed at gathering the impact COVID-19 had on the industry and their ESOPs. The report discusses how the industry performed in 2021, the influence of the market on ESOPs, some specific effects of COVID-19 on construction companies and the outlook for 2022.