ADH Acquires Badger Metals as Owners and Employees Get Platform Equity

What happened

Advantage Distribution Holdings (ADH), a Miami-based HVAC distribution platform, announced on October 12, 2026, that it had acquired Badger Metals, Inc. Badger is a distributor of HVAC equipment, parts, and supplies headquartered in Appleton, Wisconsin. It's four branches, in Appleton, Fond du Lac, Madison, and Rhinelander, bring ADH to 17 locations across seven states and give it its first operations in Wisconsin. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The seller

Badger was incorporated in 1913 as the Badger Furnace Company, selling coal furnaces and other supplies before adding a wholesale division. The two divisions later merged under the Badger Metals name. Often doing business as BMI HVAC Supply, it sells furnaces, boilers, ductless systems, heat pumps, and air conditioning equipment, with the parts and supplies that go with them, to HVAC contractors across Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Its equipment lines include International Comfort Products and GE. The current owners represent the third and fourth generations of family ownership.

Joe Welch, the president, and his son Josh lead the company and will continue to do so, and Badger keeps its brand. As part of the transaction, both become shareholders in ADH and every Badger employee will be granted equity ownership exposure in the broader platform.

Badger is a longtime member of BLUE HAWK, a member-owned cooperative of independent HVACR distributors. Through it, Joe Welch built close relationships with Lauren Roberts, president and CEO of cfm Distributors, and Keith Sutton, founder of CTC Supply, whose companies ADH had already bought, and those friendships played an important role in his decision. "Through my relationships with Lauren and Keith, I came to understand that joining ADH did not have to feel like selling," he said. "It could be an opportunity to become a founder again."

The buyer

Miami investment firm Tigertail Capital Partners formed ADH in 2024 and announced it that August as its first platform. Tigertail is led by Alex Gatof, Andrew Och, and Zach Katz, who are also ADH's co-founders, and Clay Holder. Clay was formerly president of VAD HVAC Distributors but became ADH's chief executive with its first acquisition. "Badger represents exactly why we created ADH," the co-founders said.

Badger is ADH's third acquisition. The first, in March 2025, was CTC Supply, a Fayetteville, North Carolina, distributor serving mainly single-family and multifamily residential work. The second, in May 2026, was Kansas City, Missouri-based cfm Distributors, which runs six locations and a distribution center across Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska. ADH says it will give Badger additional capital, technology, procurement resources, and operating capabilities, and its proprietary technology suite, AdvantageOS, introduced in April 2026, includes a custom customer relationship management system and a consignment application.

How ADH structures its partnerships

The Badger structure follows the cfm deal. When ADH bought cfm, founded in 1969 and a York distributor since 1978, all cfm employees received equity participation in ADH, and Roberts, then chairwoman of Heating, Air-conditioning & Refrigeration Distributors International (HARDI), the HVACR industry's largest trade association, is still named cfm's president and CEO in the Badger announcement. Like Badger, cfm belongs to BLUE HAWK. ADH puts shared ownership at the core of its model: every employee across its partner companies receives equity participation, while the businesses keep local autonomy and their own brands. Owners comparing that structure with other buyers' can read our guide on selling an HVAC business to private equity.

What this means for HVAC distribution owners

For an independent distributor in a buying cooperative, the first conversation about a sale may now come from a fellow member rather than from a buyer, and that member can describe what changed for their own business after closing before the owner decides whether to talk to the platform at all.

OffDeal is an advisory firm that helps lower-middle-market business owners sell with confidence. Reach out to learn more about our expertise with HVAC distribution businesses in Wisconsin.

Own an HVAC distribution business with $5M–$100M in revenue? We’re glad to give you an honest read on what it’s worth and who would buy it — no pitch, no pressure. Get a free valuation.

Source: Business Wire - https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260930269407/en/Advantage-Distribution-Holdings-Completes-Acquisition-of-Badger-Metals