Focus Financial Partners keeps mum about potential sale

Focus Financial Partners Inc. executives on Thursday morning declined to comment further on the firm’s announcement earlier this month that it might sell itself to a private equity manager.

On Feb. 2, the firm said that it had entered into an exclusivity agreement for a limited period with Clayton Dubilier & Rice, a private investment firm, to engage in negotiations regarding the terms and definitive agreements under which CD&R potentially could acquire Focus for $53 per share in cash.

Rudy Adolf, founder, CEO and chairman of Focus Financial Partners, said nothing about the potential sale during a conference call with investors Thursday morning to review the firm’s fourth-quarter earnings.

“We believe industry consolidation is just beginning,” Adolf said in a general assessment of the current mergers and acquisitions market for wealth management firms.

Shares of Focus Financial Partners, which had its initial public offering almost five years ago in the summer of 2018, started trading at $50.10 when the market opened this morning.

The firm has a unique position in the investment advice industry: It was one of the first and foremost aggregators of registered investment advisors, launching back in 2006.

The firms that Focus Financial has acquired have kept their own brands and have had the opportunity to use Focus as a bank for their own deals. Other aggregators merge firms completely under one brand and marketing approach.

Focus Financial said Thursday that it closed 24 transactions in 2022, including five new partner firms and 19 mergers on behalf of partner firms. Focus Financial Partners reported total revenue last year of $2.1 billion, an increase of 19.2% when compared to 2021.

The firm’s adjusted EBITDA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, for 2022 was $537.5 million, an increase of 19.1% when compared to the prior year. EBITDA, a cash flow metric, is one of the key measures used to establish a valuation for RIAs or RIA aggregators like Focus Financial Partners.