Acrisure Raises $3.45 Billion, Counts Trott’s BDT as Investor

(Bloomberg) -- Insurance broker Acrisure LLC raised more than $3.45 billion in capital from investors including Byron Trott’s BDT Capital Partners.

BDT led a $3 billion investment in senior preferred stock, while a different group put $454 million of new capital into junior preferred stock, according to a statement Wednesday. The transactions give Acrisure an implied enterprise value of $17.5 billion, the company said.

Acrisure, led by Chief Executive Officer Greg Williams, sells products including insurance for businesses, auto and home policies and employee benefits. Now the company has plans to add products and services beyond insurance to its lineup, Williams said, without being more specific.

“The vast majority of our clients are business owners, and we know entrepreneurs well, we know what their needs are,” Williams said in a phone interview. “The deep reservoir of data that we have, and the information that we have about the marketplace including our clients, is what compels us to go into these other products and services and provide them.”

The investments help the insurance brokerage lower its cost of capital, Williams said, while also giving it more dry powder for dealmaking. The company has historically been an avid acquirer, snapping up 110 agencies last year and agreeing to buy an artificial-intelligence business from Tulco LLC to help the broker expand its technology platform. Williams said they’ll continue to expand the insurance brokerage and will look at investing capital to support some of the products and services the firm expects to add to its offerings.

“We obviously are a highly acquisitive company,” said Williams, who is also Acrisure’s co-founder and president. “We’ll continue to be highly acquisitive.”

Despite the challenges of 2020, Williams said the firm is likely to end 2021 with more than $1 billion in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Revenue has the potential to increase to roughly $2.7 billion by year-end from around $2.2 billion currently, he said.

“Acrisure is an innovative leader in an attractive industry with a very strong management team,” BDT CEO Trott said in the statement. “We look forward to a long-term partnership with Greg and his team.”

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