Air Pros USA founder reacquires the Florida operations after a Chapter 11 breakup

Almost every Tampa Bay ownership story runs one direction: a family sells to a platform, the platform sells to a bigger platform. This one ran backwards, and it took a bankruptcy to do it.

On June 3, 2025, Anthony Perera announced he had reacquired the legacy Florida operations of Air Pros USA, the company he founded in 2017 and left as CEO in 2022. The buyer was Exuma Capital Partners, the private investment firm Perera formed in 2024. The reacquired footprint covers Fort Myers, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Miami, Boca Raton, Davie, Tampa, Ocala and Orlando, and included the plumbing brand Drain Genie and the generator and electrical contractor Personalized Power. Terms were not disclosed (Source: PR Newswire / Exuma Capital Partners, 2025).

Perera said he was “coming back with a full commitment to maintain the high standards and performance” the company had been built on, and described starting the business with one truck and one employee.

The bankruptcy that made it possible

The reacquisition is only legible with the prior three months in view.

In September 2021, Air Pros announced strategic growth financing from Peak Rock Capital. At the time the company described roughly ten locations and more than 250 employees (Source: PR Newswire / Peak Rock Capital, 2021). What followed was rapid multi-state expansion into Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Washington.

On March 17, 2025, Air Pros Solutions announced it had filed for Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Georgia and had simultaneously entered into six separate transactions to sell all of its business units as going concerns under Section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code. The proposed buyers were stalking-horse bidders subject to court-supervised auctions, and the company secured $20 million of new financing from its existing lender (Source: PR Newswire / Air Pros Solutions, 2025).

A platform assembled over roughly four years was disassembled in one filing. The company’s own release did not name the six buyers.

Why this deal is the reference case

The Air Pros sequence — founder sells, sponsor funds expansion, platform files Chapter 11, regional units are split among new owners, founder buys one region back — is the clearest documented example in the Florida market of what the end of a hold period can look like when growth outruns cash flow.

It is also the reason the debt-and-exits question is worth asking about any platform, including healthy ones. Tampa homeowners who called Air Pros in 2024 and 2025 were customers of a company whose ownership changed twice in fifteen months, through a federal bankruptcy court, without any of it appearing on the invoice.

What it means for homeowners

The lesson here is about the model’s financing, not about the people who install equipment.

• Leverage is the variable. Debt-funded expansion works while revenue grows and stops working when it does not. A residential HVAC business with heavy interest costs has less room to absorb a slow season than one without.
• Warranties and service agreements live with the legal entity. In a 363 sale, assets and contracts transfer to a buyer under a court order. A multi-year membership plan or labor warranty is only as durable as the entity that has to honor it.
• Ownership can change without notice. Florida does not require a residential contractor to tell customers it was sold, or that its parent filed for bankruptcy protection.

Before you sign a multi-year plan with any contractor, ask who the legal entity is, whether the plan is prepaid or billed monthly, and what happens to it if the company is sold.

See the full deal record, or check the ownership history of any local brand in the company database.