Good morning everyone. Continue on with this morning's schedule. I'm Greg Peters. I'm the insurance analyst for Raymond James, and really pleased to welcome back the Baldwin Insurance Group, who have been participating in the, in our conference ever since they went public. It has been a remarkable journey of growth for this company since they've been public. The last 12 months have been a different type of remarkable journey and we're gonna hear more about it today. Before we begin with some opening remarks from Trevor, let me just introduce the management team. Bonnie Bishop is in the audience, and she's the Executive Director of Investor Relations for the company, and feel free to reach out with her, to her with questions.
Brad Hale is our, the Chief Financial Officer for Baldwin, and of course, we have Trevor, who's the CEO. This is the next 30 minutes is supposed to be interactive Q&A, but before we begin with that, I thought this would be a good spot for you to provide us an update on the company. It's been a very challenging 12 months for you and, you know, talk about the outlook as well.
Yeah. Good morning. It's great to be here. Thanks for having us, Greg. Trevor Baldwin, CEO here at The Baldwin Group, and as Greg mentioned, we came public in October of 2019. That year, we were about $135 million of revenue, $35 million of EBITDA. Over the next 6 years, we grew the business to over $1.5 billion of revenue in 2025, $340 million of adjusted EBITDA, a CAGR on both top and bottom line of about 50% while growing earnings on a per-share basis by about 35% a year. We've intentionally built our business across Baldwin to create, you know, not just a brokerage, but a platform in the insurance space.
In today's day and age, particularly with all of the discussion around AI and the impacts and implications that's gonna have, we think it's incredibly important to understand how that platform enables us to operate across the value chain in a manner that positions us incredibly well to accelerate our performance over the coming months and years. We operate a business across three core operating groups. The first is our Insurance Advisory Solutions business, where we provide insurance brokerage services and advisory work to midsize and large clients. Importantly, in this business, our clients skew very much towards the continuum of scale and complexity.
In fact, more than 80% of the revenue in that segment comes from clients that are spending, on average, in excess of half a million dollars a year in insurance premium, not the type of clients who we believe are gonna be buying insurance from a chatbot anytime soon. Kind of a real moat around how we go to market and who we're serving through deep specialty expertise. Second, for quite some time now, we've had a belief around the evolution of how personal insurance is both purchased and consumed, meaning we believe that embedded insurance solutions are the way of the future. We are the leading purveyor of home insurance solutions at point of new home sale.
In fact, we're the partner for 20 of the top 25 home builders in the U.S. who collectively built and sold 57% of the new homes in the U.S. in 2024. We also have been investing deeply in building out our similar business in the mortgage channel. Last year, we launched our proprietary technology platform, Coverage Navigator, and onboarded 12 real estate mortgage partners, including New American Funding, a top 20 mortgage originator in the U.S. Just last week, we announced a 10-year exclusive partnership with Fairway Mortgage Lending Company, the sixth largest independent mortgage lender in the country. Real momentum on that platform, a platform and a strategy that will be enhanced as AI enables us to transact more quickly, more effectively, and provide more seamless experiences.
Third is our strategy that of vertically integrating into the insurance value chain via our UCTS segment, where we build and manage proprietary insurance products and source, arrange, and manage third-party capital to stand behind those products. We don't take the balance sheet risk, but we source the capital, we arrange it, and we manage it. Building proprietary product creates that end-to-end ecosystem that has real kind of anti-fragility to disintermediation risks. In our embedded channels, we're distributing largely our own proprietary product, whether it's our builder products in the, in the builder space, whether it's our own renters solutions in the embedded renter space. We can't be disintermediated as a result of it's our product. You have to come to our platform to access it.
All that's to say, we have a business that we believe was purpose-built for this era, and we really are excited for how we're gonna showcase that as growth continues to grow through the year, quarter by quarter. To Greg's remarks, 2025 was a year that certainly had some uneven or financial bumpiness to it. I would say that that really puts a spotlight on the power of the diversified but integrated insurance platform we've built.
It's not gonna be the last time that we go through periods of time where there's headwinds or challenges. The diversity of our platform enabled us to continue to deliver industry-leading organic growth for the year of 7% despite meaningful headwinds from the transition of our builder book from QBE, a procedural accounting change to achieve best practices and expedite cost synergy achievement in our IS business, and some real disruption in the Medicare marketplace that hit that small part of our business. You normalize for those three idiosyncratic headwinds we faced, and we had a business that delivered 10% organic growth for the year. Those three headwinds alone were a $30 million adjusted EBITDA impact for the year in 2025.
Most importantly, all of those headwinds are finite, they have a specific end date, and they turn into tailwinds as we go through the year and beyond.
Great. I think that I think it's worth highlighting the organic revenue growth because it's been one of the standout features of your company since you've been public, your ability to generate better growth rates on organic basis than your peers. Related to that is sales velocity. You know, as we sit on the outside looking in, it's hard for us to visualize what's going on with sales velocity, but it's one of the leading indicators of success for your company. Maybe you can spend a minute and tell us about sales velocity, talk to us about how the industry performs in sales velocity, and then talk about your company's sales velocity. There's the history, but more current is, like, what's been happening in the last couple quarters.
Yep. Happy to. Sales velocity is one of the key KPIs we track internally, and it's a measure or a metric of new business revenue, 1, as a percentage of prior year commission and fee revenue, so excluding contingents and overrides. It's a measure of kind of pure client revenue, momentum, so to speak. Since going public, we have been a high teens or higher sales velocity business. That compares to the industry average sales velocity or median of 11.5%, and a top quartile sales velocity of 15.5%. In 2025, our sales velocity was 19%, what we believe to be top decile performance for the industry, and certainly at scale. That compares to our scaled peers who are generally on average in and around 10%-12% from a sales velocity perspective. What does that mean?
Retention and sales velocity are two of the most controllable internal variables to organic growth. How much new revenue are we out winning? Are we taking share? Are we growing our pie? How much of the prior year revenue are we holding on to? We have historically been in and around average from a retention standpoint. Notably, we've made some significant enhancements to our overall stewardship processes and methodologies and are seeing that pay meaningful dividends, with client retention improving nearly 300 basis points year-over-year in the fourth quarter, with visibility to that trend continuing into the year. With continued high teens to low 20s sales velocity, retention in and above 90%, and a normalized market impact or renewal premium change factor of flat to +100 to 200 basis points, this is a double-digit growth platform.
That's the math. I think the way in which we go to market, the value of the tools and resources that we have, the quality of the talent we've been able to assemble and organize enables us to consistently generate those type of new business results and speaks to the health and the value of our franchise in the market.
The talent comment is a great segue into something that's going on in the industry, which is there are some entities out there that are trying to poach talent away from other brokers. And then, there's the ownership of the stock and the stock performance that also can affect sentiment among producers. Maybe you can talk about the retention of your employee base. Set us up, you know, how many of your producers own stock. Give us, you know, sort of the. Give us the background on that. And I know part of your answer you'll focus on the Vanguard producers.
Yeah
which are very important to your organization.
Another key KPI that I stare at on a monthly basis is Vanguard colleague retention. Our Vanguard colleagues today is roughly about a third of our overall colleague population, and is a metric and a measure of our highest performers. We track the retention of those highest performers very closely. Last year it was 94%. It is since inception always been over 90%. A metric we're incredibly proud of and I believe speaks to the power of our culture, the power of our platform, and the way in which we have built a business that enables those really high achievers to come build the most impactful and rewarding career that they can here at Baldwin.
Greg alluded to some of the competitive dynamics in the marketplace. 2025 proved to be the most competitive talent environment our industry has seen. Since I've been in the business. That, I believe, is driven by a number of factors. There's, Greg alluded to this, been some new entrants to the space who are bidding up talent in a meaningful way. I also believe just the general, you know, softening rate environment and kind of quest for continued growth has caused competitors to lean into talent more heavily as a result. You certainly saw us do that last year.
We increased our investment in frontline client-generating talent by 44% in our IS business, taking our net unvalidated producer pay, or NUP, a metric we track closely, up by 70 basis points from, I believe, 1.6% of commission and fee revenue to 2.3% of commission and fee revenue. Really at the high end of where industry incumbents are investing from a new talent perspective. Our talent franchise continues to be incredibly healthy. We had no regrettable producer losses in 2025. With that being said, it's a risk, and it's one we're very clear-eyed to, where, you know, I am certain we'll have talent losses from time to time that we would have preferred to avoid.
We're being thoughtful about investing in our professionals, creating kind of clear and expedited career tracks for our high performers, and continuing to invest in the tools, the resources, and the technology to ensure that we are the platform where the industry's very best and brightest can come to build those most meaningful, impactful careers and maximize their earnings opportunities over time. Stock ownership has been a hallmark of our culture since the very early days, frankly, since before even coming public. Since then, it's given us the ability to make 100% of our colleagues shareholders in the business. Everyone at Baldwin both enjoys the value creation and success when our stock performs and feels the pain when it doesn't, and 2025 was a pretty bruising year from a stock price performance perspective.
I would also frame that as an opportunity for our colleagues. While there's definitely ways in which they earn stock through performance and bonuses, particularly on the production side, you know, entrepreneurs and investors, they invest and buy their stock, and we have that opportunity for our colleagues in spades. I think many of our high performers took advantage of the dislocation in our stock price to really invest in the platform that they're contributing to and helping to drive our success. While it can create some unnerving feelings when you see a stock price that in many ways is disconnected from the underlying fundamentals of the business, they see and hear what's happening. They're feeling the client wins. They see that 19% sales velocity because they're in the midst of it every day.
They're feeling those retention improvements. They're seeing the new product rollouts that we're having. They're seeing the momentum that we're driving across our embedded platforms. I would say by and large, you know, our colleague base, they're true believers, and they're putting their money where their mouth is. More than 50% of our company is owned by colleagues. Our alignment runs deep, that means we share in both our successes and our failures with our shareholders in a super meaningful way.
Okay. With no questions in the audience, I'm gonna continue on. You talk about investing in colleagues. You've also invested in businesses, and there's been some recent acquisition activity. Talk to us about the recent transactions you've closed and what the opportunity set is there for the company going forward.
We closed on 3 partnerships, our nomenclature for acquisitions on January 1st. Capstone Group, which is a high-performing middle-market platform in the Philadelphia area, about $10 million of revenue, multiyear track record of double-digit organic growth and industry-leading sales velocity. Incredibly excited about their addition to the team and the momentum they're driving. We also partnered with a firm, Obie, who had been a longtime trading partners of ours with our MGA, the largest distributor of our real estate investor product built for single-family home for rent investors that operate at the kind of small to medium scale. That business is a track record of phenomenal growth, and we believe we're gonna be able to really elevate that through combination of our technology and their technology.
They're the leading embedded purveyor to insurance solutions to that real estate investor marketplace, incredibly excited about the momentum we're driving there. Importantly, CAC, the largest transaction in the history of Baldwin since our Westwood partnership back in April of 2022. I'd say it'd be remiss if I didn't point out Westwood's been one of the most successful partnerships in the history of our track record of M&A. We recently published the success of the financial metrics around that transaction with our year-end financial supplement. Buying down our multiple to roughly 6x over three years. Amazing. That has been a complete home run.
That doesn't even kind of contemplate the value of the earning stream we have in the MGA from all the proprietary home products we distribute through Westwood, which is a whole separate earning stream that's not a part of that calculation. It truly understates the performance of that combination. Back to CAC. CAC is a one of one asset. I spoke earlier to the value and moat we have around our IS business and the way in which we've leaned into clients of scale and complexity and really fielding teams of deep experts to be able to wrap around those relationships. CAC enhances that in a way that no other partnership possibly could have. I think it's important to provide some context around how that transaction came about.
This isn't a deal that we got a SIM for, we dug in, we got excited, and we made a move for. This is a management team that I've known incredibly well for over a decade and spent years cultivating relationships with. We've had a front row seat to how they've built that business, really going back to 2019 when CAC was formed through the combination of Cobbs Allen, Mike Rice, Paul Sparks, Grantland Rice, and Bruce Denson coming together to form this incredible business. Then getting to know Erin Lynch, their CEO, over the past couple of years and her track record. What CAC built, there is no other example of it in the industry at scale with independence and the depth and breadth of expertise into these end client industry sectors and upmarket, risk product, areas of expertise.
They had a five-year organic growth CAGR of nearly 30%. They have revenue per colleague metrics that are off the charts. A little over 600 colleagues for over $300 million of revenue. They come, and it's as if our businesses were purpose-built to come together. When they were running a process and exploring what was the right next step for them from a capital standpoint, we became the only strategic partner that they even entertained the conversation with. We were able to put together a deal that made sense for both parties, but that on its face is a fantastic financial construct for our shareholders and creates significant financial upside if you assume we can execute reasonably well. Importantly, that partnership is off to a really fantastic start.
I think when we announced the deal, I characterized CAC as a Ferrari, and we're gonna put it on the track, and we're gonna let it run. I can tell you it's running. As of the middle of last week, the CAC team had over $32 million of closed one new business. That compares to $19.6 million at the same point in time in the prior year period. We have over $11 million of active cross-sell opportunities that are being jointly worked between Legacy Baldwin CAC colleagues. As of two weeks ago, we've already actioned over $25 million of the identified $43 million of expected cost synergies to be achieved by three years, 60 days in. We're ahead of schedule. The teams are working together incredibly well.
The industrial logic, the wisdom that we saw in bringing these businesses together is proving itself out faster in a more meaningful way than we could have predicted even months ago. We're incredibly excited here. I think that's it's a good point. There's some questions. Yeah. Please.
Can you just give me a view of your free cash flow currently and how you see it going forward?
For the webcast, the question is around free cash flow and where it is currently and projected. Yeah. Our free cash flow, currently is running about 25%-30% conversion rate from adjusted EBITDA, which is well below peers, who are running, call it, in the 65%-70% range. The single largest differentiator there is the leverage that we've carried and the relative cash interest. That almost bridges you entirely, to where the peers operate. Clearly we've got to grow into that and continue to delever the business. The second differentiator I'd say is the amount of investment we've made in the business, the amount we've spent on integration. Certainly from a growth perspective, and even an expansion of margin and EPS perspective, we're benefiting from those investments.
We have outindexed our peers in terms of the integration costs and some of the one-time costs over the last several years. We have another year of I think integration costs now associated with CAC that will continue to, you know, have us operate I think somewhere below peer levels. Over the next several years, there's nothing fundamentally different about our business, I think, that would prevent us from achieving where the peers operate. I think it's worth also just accentuating a point. Brad talks about the, you know, the CapEx effectively, the internal use software development work that we've invested in our platform, you know, close to $100 million over the past 3 or 4 years. I think it's important to talk about where that leaves us now.
We've built out our own orchestration layer on top of our data layer. We call it internally Gator. We're plugging in LLMs and creating kind of a both synchronous and asynchronous capabilities for those LLMs to drive coordination of workflow and operating sequences which is gonna unlock massive margin opportunity. That's what 3B30 Catalyst is all about. It's about redesigning the way in which work gets done in our business.
We're in this unique position where we've done the hard work to integrate our platform, organize our data assets, and now having built that orchestration layer so that AI is kind of infrastructure across our entire platform that positions us to move with speed to leverage the advantages that that brings to knowledge work, drive significant gains in productivity, and enhance the way in which our colleagues go to market and provide advisory work and solutions to our clients. The next couple of years undoubtedly are gonna be the most consequential in the history of our firm because of the rate of change that is occurring, and I couldn't be more excited about how we're positioned to be a leader in that change across our industry.
That means we'll continue to bolster our status as the platform for the industry's best professionals, where they can come to gain access to those tools and resources and to deliver the most impactful outcomes for our clients. It's gonna be a really incredible couple of years.
Go ahead, sir. What's your deal sourcing process beyond the people we know immediately in the industry, if you was here to acquire?
Yeah. The question was, what's our deal sourcing methodology beyond just kind of proprietary relationships we have in the business? One, while we have been somewhat prolific from an M&A standpoint, we've done about 35 transactions since going public. Relative to our more acquisitive peers, I'd say those are relatively benign numbers. You know, many of our peers are doing upwards of 30, 40, 50 transactions a year. That's not our business model. We're investing in high quality, highly differentiated businesses where 1 plus 1 equals something far more than 2 as we integrate it into our broader business. From a deal sourcing perspective, we have a reputation across the industry as being that preferred home for those top professionals. When those businesses decide it's time for them to explore alternatives, we're generally getting a phone call.
We have a network of investment bankers that traffic in these type of opportunities. Whether we're hearing about it proactively, or we're getting the inbounds, there's generally not a transaction of significance that's occurring that we don't have line of sight to.
I think it's worth just closing out because it's very topical, the property casualty pricing cycle, and you talk about the organization being purpose-built. Talk to us about your expectation of how you're gonna perform as this cycle continues to evolve and the pricing pressure continues to develop?
The first thing I would say is our guidance for 2026 does not contemplate any miraculous recovery in the pricing environment for insurance. We believe property rates will continue to be deeply competitive. We believe that combined rate and exposure impacts will be headwinds before normalizing to more of a neutral impact towards the back half of the year. As we look across various lines of business, capital is somewhat abundant. Property will remain deeply competitive. We're beginning to see signs of the admitted market come in and take some share. The fourth quarter, for the first time in over four years, we actually saw a slight uptick in admitted as a percentage of our overall book of business in force. That's the first time that's occurred in quite some time.
It was a very small uptick, but that is a, I think, notable change that we saw. Casualty pricing pressure, while rates remain positive, they are ebbing, and competition across many casualty lines continues to increase, as I believe many in the property space are struggling to fully hit their premium budgets and goals because of how competitive the market is. It's a great environment for an intermediary such as ourselves to deliver great outcomes for our clients. Last year, we did not see meaningful changes in buying patterns, meaning historically, when the market begins to turn like this, you see clients transfer more risk via lower deductibles, higher limits. I expect we'll see more of that we will see that begin to flow through this year. Although, again, that's not fully contemplated in the expectations that we've set.
I don't see any catalyst for a shift in that market dynamic, over the coming year or 2. I think we're in for definitely a few years of competitive pricing. You know, the ebbs and flows of that will be somewhat dictated by, loss trends and loss events, but I don't think will change the overall direction of travel.
Excellent. We're at the 30-minute mark. Management will be downstairs in Cordova Six for a breakout session. Trevor, Brad, and Bonnie, thank you very much for your presentation today.
Thanks, Greg. Pleasure to be here.