The Baldwin Insurance Group, Inc. (BWIN)
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M&A Announcement

Mar 4, 2022

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the BRP Group Westwood Announcement Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn to introduce your host, Bonnie Bishop, Executive Director of Investor Relations. Thank you, Bonnie. You may begin.

Bonnie Bishop
Executive Director of Investor Relations, The Baldwin Group

Thank you, operator, and good morning. By now, everyone should have access to our partnership announcement and slide presentation, which were released prior to this call and may also be found on the investor relations portion of our website at ir.baldwinriskpartners.com. Before we begin our formal remarks, a reminder that part of our discussion today may include forward-looking statements, which are based on the expectations, estimates, and projections of management as of today. The forward-looking statements in our discussion are subject to various assumptions, risks, uncertainties, and other factors that are difficult to predict and which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore, undue reliance should not be placed upon them.

We refer all of you to our recent filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021 for a more detailed discussion of the assumptions, risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could impact the future operating results and financial condition of BRP Group, the partnership discussed on this call or both, including those relevant to our completion and integration of this partnership and matters assessed in our due diligence of the partnership. We disclaim any intentions or obligations to update or revise any forward-looking statements except to the extent required by applicable law. In addition, this call is being webcast and an archived version will be available after the call on the investor relations portion of our website. I will now turn the call over to Trevor Baldwin, Chief Executive Officer of BRP Group.

Trevor Baldwin
CEO, BRP Group

Thanks, Bonnie, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning. Yesterday afternoon, we announced a new partnership with Westwood Insurance Agency, a leading full-service personal lines agency owned by QBE that specializes in builder-sourced homeowners insurance. Separately, Millennial Specialty Insurance, also known as BRP Group's MGA of the Future platform, entered into a program administrator agreement with QBE to assume MGA responsibilities with QBE's builder-sourced homeowners book. Westwood represents a highly strategic partnership for BRP, with $82 million of acquired revenue and $31 million of acquired adjusted EBITDA. It is also the largest new partnership in the history of our firm. During this call, I will talk about the partnership as well as the program administrator agreement, then John Valentine, our Chief Partnership Officer, will provide more detail on Westwood's business and a few specifics on the MGA agreement.

To conclude, Brad Hale, our CFO, will provide an update on our pro forma financial position. Thereafter, Brad, John, Chris, Jim, and I will take Q&A. First, I'd like to welcome our new colleagues, clients, builder partners, and community stakeholders that will join BRP Group through this partnership. We could not be more excited to support the next phase of Westwood's growth and are thrilled to add such a talented group of professionals to our firm. We've admired the Westwood business, President Alan Umaly, and the incredible team he leads for many years. Like BRP, their strong client and colleague-first culture and track record of growth has been driven by innovation, technology, deep and embedded client relationships, and a focus on sheltered distribution. Westwood represents a rare, high-performing asset that significantly accelerates BRP's efforts to develop tech-enabled homeowners solutions embedded in the home buying process.

Additionally, Westwood adds transformational access to shelter distribution channels as they have an established position as a premier partner with the largest home builders in the U.S. that collectively built over 230,000 new homes in 2021. Through the program administrator agreement with QBE, we will add approximately $200 million in homeowners premium and that size homeowners MGA platform, which fast-tracks our efforts toward building a world-class national homeowners MGA with a highly preferred and outperforming book of business given its focus on new construction. Importantly, the combination of the Westwood partnership and QBE MGA agreement represents the first transaction where BRP has successfully utilized its strength in both retail distribution and MGA technology to be the buyer of choice for an insurance company looking to monetize an asset.

This deal required a unique approach to solving for QBE's objectives as a seller that we were uniquely able to provide as a result of our differentiated approach to building what we think is the insurance distribution model of the future. With that, I'll hand the call to John to provide more detail on Westwood's business.

John Valentine
Chief Partnership Officer, The Baldwin Group

Thanks, Trevor. We're thrilled to partner with Westwood. We're thrilled about our new agreement with QBE, and we're excited to welcome all of our new colleagues to BRP. I'd like to tie a couple things together. Trevor mentioned four things there. He mentioned embedded relationships, which we called sheltered distribution. He talked about the desirable product class, homeowners with an outperforming book. He talked about proprietary tech and a tech-enabled process.

He talked about consistent organic growth. Now those four attributes make this a rare business. If you add a fifth metric, profitability, this becomes a unicorn. There are lots of ways for companies to grow, without making any money. Whenever we see a unicorn, we pay attention, but we're not in the business of randomly herding unicorns. I wanna justify for people the strategic value of this business. We have pretty consistently talked about what we're building at BRP, a 50-state tech-enabled homeowner solution interfacing with our MGA with proprietary product capabilities, which is embedded in the builder, realtor, and lender channels. That's what this is. This lies directly on our strategic path. Not only is this a 10 out of a 10 in its own right, it's a 10 out of 10 from a strategic fit.

I'll talk for a moment about our program administrator agreement with QBE. BRP will assume all the MGA functions associated with QBE's $200 million builder-sourced homeowners book, which is around 40% of the total Westwood premium base, which brings immediate scale and efficiency to our growing MGA efforts on the homeowner side. BRP will assume no balance sheet risk associated with this book, and QBE has committed to a five-year relationship on a book which has historically experienced strong underwriting performance given its focus on new construction homes. From a financial perspective, we anticipate roughly $8 million of synergies from this agreement related to our existing homeowners MGA build-out initiative. We've mentioned the investments we've been making in that since 2021. I'd like to take a step back and again put this in perspective.

It's important to understand what we've now built. I would point everyone to pages five and six of the presentation we made available on our IR site this morning to put in perspective how unique a position the combination of Westwood and the QBE agreement leave us in. We have a deeply interconnected business. Our pro forma collection of BRP tech-enabled MGA and homeowners businesses, which includes our existing MGA business, our Mainstreet business, Westwood, and the QBE homeowners book, in aggregate, represent approximately $260 million of pro forma revenue that grew organically at a 29% year-over-year in 2021. The combined businesses have scale, access to admitted and sheltered distribution, meaningful profitability, and an aggregate loss ratio below 60%.

We'd highlight that on a pro forma basis, this business, this $260 million of revenue, represents only 32% of our BRP Group total pro forma revenue base, which includes our reported 2021 pro forma revenue. In summary, we are incredibly excited about this once in a decade partnership. We look forward to Westwood contributing significantly to our rapid growth and our tech-enabled personal lines business. With that, I will turn it over to Brad.

Brad Hale
CFO, BRP Group

Thanks, John. To wrap up, the upfront payment for the transaction is $385 million, which includes the purchase price and $10 million in equity grants, which will be allocated to Westwood management and colleagues. The upfront payment can be funded with cash on hand and our $475 million revolving credit facility. We will examine additional debt and or preferred equity financing prior to close in order to leave capacity on our revolver for later in the year. The purchase price represents approximately 12.4x pro forma EBITDA, which does not include $8 million of expected synergies related to the run rate contribution of the QBE MGA agreement and our existing MGA home build-out. From a tax standpoint, we would expect this will create an amortizable asset of approximately the same size of the purchase price.

After closing, we expect our leverage will increase to approximately 5.5 times, beyond the range we have guided to historically. However, based on the increased size of our business, free cash flow and strategic value of this opportunity, we believe this approach is both prudent and responsible. Given the importance of this partnership and the significant discount to what we believe is intrinsic value of our equity, we believe shareholders are best served by this approach. We will continue to be thoughtful about managing our leverage and expect the continued growth in our business, free cash flow, and margin provided in our near-term path to delever while positioning us to remain opportunistic as high-quality partnerships present themselves and market conditions evolve. With that, operator, let's open up the line for questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question is from Meyer Shields with KBW. Please proceed with your question.

Meyer Shields
Managing Director, KBW

Great, thanks. Two quick questions. First, if I understand correctly, the $31 million in adjusted EBITDA, that covers any of the profits embedded in taking over the program administration component as well. Is that right?

Trevor Baldwin
CEO, BRP Group

Hey, Meyer, this is Trevor. No, that did not. The incremental $8 million of expected synergies from the PAA is the expected run rate profit contribution from that MGA agreement.

Meyer Shields
Managing Director, KBW

Oh, okay, perfect. No, that's helpful. And second, you didn't comment on the full year target of $150 million of acquired revenues. Does this deal change that outlook?

Trevor Baldwin
CEO, BRP Group

At this time, we're not gonna adjust that there early in the year and just a dynamic environment.

Meyer Shields
Managing Director, KBW

Okay, perfect. Thanks so much.

Trevor Baldwin
CEO, BRP Group

Thanks, Shields.

Operator

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. Thank you. Our next question comes from Pablo Singzon with JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question.

Pablo Singzon
VP Equity Research, JPMorgan

Hi. Thanks. It seems like you're modeling a roughly 40% margin for Westwood, which is much higher than Mainstreet or specialty, which have margins of 13%-20%. Should Westwood be immediately accretive to your P&L or are there upfront investments you've done that might absorb some or most of that margin advantage?

Trevor Baldwin
CEO, BRP Group

Hey, Pablo, this is Trevor. We expect that that's a good go-forward margin profile for the business.

Pablo Singzon
VP Equity Research, JPMorgan

Okay. Not a lot of major investments you see, Trevor, right? 'Cause there'll be some frictional costs, I suppose, but nothing major. Is that the correct-

Trevor Baldwin
CEO, BRP Group

Yeah. You know, with all partnerships, it typically takes 12-18 months for that pro forma margin EBITDA to fully show up inside our P&L. I would expect that to be a similar for this particular partnership. We are not anticipating incremental outsized investments above the investment program that we announced earlier in the week on our year-end earnings call.

Pablo Singzon
VP Equity Research, JPMorgan

Got it. Similar trajectory for the $8 million synergy from the MGA arrangement?

Trevor Baldwin
CEO, BRP Group

Yes.

Pablo Singzon
VP Equity Research, JPMorgan

$8 million should show up. Okay, got it. Last modeling question, I'll queue in case there are other questions, but do you have a sense of how this will be split up between Mainstreet and Specialty, whether looking at revenue or EBITDA? Thanks.

Trevor Baldwin
CEO, BRP Group

Yeah. The Westwood business will be a part of the overall Mainstreet business. The PAA will contribute to the MGA of the Future platform. Importantly, I would just point out that when you look at the $200 million of builder-sourced homeowners premium that we're taking over as a part of the MGA agreement, you can think about there being approximately $60 million of run rate annualized revenue in aggregate associated with that $200 million of builder-sourced homeowners premium, of which two-thirds or $40 million approximately is already inside the $80 million of revenue that exists at Westwood. The incremental $20 million will be a new run rate revenue stream that flows in over the course of 12 months post-closing as the MGA operations come online.

Pablo Singzon
VP Equity Research, JPMorgan

All right. Thank you.

Trevor Baldwin
CEO, BRP Group

Thanks, Pablo.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the floor back over. One moment.

Trevor Baldwin
CEO, BRP Group

Thank you.

Operator

We have a follow-up. Our next question is from Pablo Singzon with JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question.

Pablo Singzon
VP Equity Research, JPMorgan

Hi. Thanks for indulging me. I probably just tried my luck. Maybe, Trevor, I was just hoping you could speak through slide five of the presentation, right? I think it presents a pretty compelling picture of where your Mainstreet and specialty businesses today. If you could sort of talk through the different components of that, right? I'm thinking of, you know, your recently announced rollout of Admitted and E&S homeowners through Millennial, and then what you're trying to do with the Westwood. I guess talk about how you get to the end consumer in each instance, right?

You know, it seems like you're tapping into different segments of the homeowner's market and you're getting to the consumer directly, you know, through BRP's own Mainstreet agents or perhaps even through commercial line agents outside of BRP. Thanks.

Trevor Baldwin
CEO, BRP Group

Yeah. No. Great question, Pablo. I'm gonna have John hop in and provide some commentary here, and then maybe Jim Roche can also provide some incremental color commentary around the embedded distribution relationships.

John Valentine
Chief Partnership Officer, The Baldwin Group

Sure. I think, Pablo, you're familiar with the way we go to market for personal lines in the renters business, where we're embedded in software. For instance, leasing software used to run multi-family platforms. Westwood similarly has a tech platform where they are hooked in both to carriers and directly to Home Builders in order to directly capture leads under a number of different models and monetize that business. That's basically done without you know, without agents. Then we have our Mainstreet business where we've got cultivated relationships and embedded distribution. Most of that business is in Florida and in the Northeast. That's sort of a go-to-market strategy, and there's a number of different ways of doing it.

The two most embedded are the Westwood with the Home Builders and the typical MGA multifamily products.

Pablo Singzon
VP Equity Research, JPMorgan

Thank you.

Jim Roche
President, The Baldwin Group

John, just to add to what you said, obviously, we've known and kind of followed the Westwood model for a long time, and we do think it's extremely strategic and accretive to what we're already doing. I think just a part of the advantage of being an MGA is we can support multiple different products, so we can continue to help fill niches across both the existing BRP distribution model as well as Westwood. Both as Trevor said are focused on shelter distribution, and we're extremely excited about the proprietary technology and long-term relationships that come with the Westwood organization.

John Valentine
Chief Partnership Officer, The Baldwin Group

Yeah. I think it's also just it expands the outlet for us for proprietary products. If we're standing up a 50-state homeowners admitted in E&S, now we have a really great place to put a lot of that. There's 445,000 clients in the Westwood ecosystem. As new homes get built, new homes typically have lower claims, and that book performs better. Now we've got an excellent place to put our own proprietary product. We're building sort of a distribution network that is insulated, that is less price sensitive and is better performing. It's really the gold standard of what you would wanna build if you were trying to build a full business end-to-end without taking any risk.

Trevor Baldwin
CEO, BRP Group

Thanks, John. Thanks, Jim.

Pablo Singzon
VP Equity Research, JPMorgan

That makes sense.

Trevor Baldwin
CEO, BRP Group

Pablo , just to summarize, I think what you see on page five is our view of kind of the full picture of the insurance distribution business of the future and a model towards accessing clients and consumers in an embedded manner where we position ourselves at the point of transaction as the solution of convenience that provides speed and certainty of execution. We believe opportunities exist broadly across the insurance landscape for us to continue prosecuting this strategy and delivering and developing new proprietary products and new distribution points. We could not be more excited and believe that the opportunity for this business is just massive.

Pablo Singzon
VP Equity Research, JPMorgan

All right. Thank you again.

Operator

Thank you.

Trevor Baldwin
CEO, BRP Group

Thanks, Pablo.

Operator

Our next question is from Meyer Shields with KBW. Please proceed with your question.

Meyer Shields
Managing Director, KBW

Great. Thanks so much. First, I guess, Trevor, is there any seasonality to the revenues of the business as they rise?

Trevor Baldwin
CEO, BRP Group

I'm gonna defer to Brad and John on that. I'm sure there's some seasonality there. I don't have a specific answer for you on the end.

Brad Hale
CFO, BRP Group

There's not significant seasonality in this business. The personal lines homeowners space does not have the seasonality per se that you'd see in our Medicare business or our employee benefits business. It is, you know, there are times where more folks are buying homes, like they may not be in December around the holidays and such, but there's not the substantial seasonality you'd see in the middle market benefits part of our business or Medicare.

Meyer Shields
Managing Director, KBW

Okay. Perfect. Earlier in the week, you talked about targeting having E&S homeowners products in all 50 states and a handful of states with an admitted product. How far along that process is this deal getting?

Trevor Baldwin
CEO, BRP Group

Jim, you wanna provide some thoughts on that?

Jim Roche
President, The Baldwin Group

Yeah, Meyer, it's Jim. I'm happy to take that. It's all just helping us make that transition occur faster. As we kind of talked through by becoming the PAA for QBE's $200 million in homeowners business, that gets us between 40 and 50 states of additional programs via the QBE admitted paper. In addition, as you said, we're also rolling out admitted and E&S programs on additional AM Best A or A minus paper, in an effort to sort of take advantage of what we can do as an MGA.

That's sort of having multiple different products without taking on the balance sheet risk to help fulfill different parts of this shelter distribution marketplace, and which is now including Westwood on top of what we had across BRP as well as select external agencies.

Meyer Shields
Managing Director, KBW

Okay, perfect. Thanks so much.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for any closing comments.

Trevor Baldwin
CEO, BRP Group

Thank you. We appreciate everyone joining this morning, and we appreciate your continued support and confidence. We'll talk to you soon. Take care.

Operator

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

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