Armed with capital from its initial public offering this week, Envestnet Inc.’s top executive said the company doesn’t have any dramatic acquisition plans on the horizon. Instead he’d prefer to maintain its slow and steady approach.
“We see this IPO as the next step of our growth,” Jud Bergman, the Chicago-based company’s chief executive officer, said in an interview Thursday. “This is not a quantum leap. It is just going to give us additional capital that we can put to use in the coming quarter and year to develop or acquire a promising practice management technology or enhance what we have. We want to broaden our offerings of investment solutions as well.”
The new capital won’t be used to fill holes, he said. Instead, the company will look for opportunities to buy smaller players to “make a good application better or near perfect.”
The Chicago based company, which provides online investment tools for asset allocation modeling for investment mangaer and independent financial advisors, sold seven million shares to generate about $63 million. It had planned to sell 7.7 million shares for $9 to $10 per share.
Bergman said he has learned through this IPO that “things unfold differently than how I’d have scripted them.” He said Envestnet’s strategy hasn’t changed.
“We have added advisors and they are growing their book of business,” he said. “We have stuck to our knitting for 10 years.”
Over the past four to five years, Envestnet has added advisors at a rate of 12% annually and those advisors have added accounts at a rate of 18% annually.
“More advisors are transitioning to our platform as they see the benefit of it,” he said. “
The company, which was founded in 1999, saw total revenue decline 15% last year and it reported a net loss in 2008. Total revenue in the first quarter rose 16%.
Bergman said the company has suffered as a result of difficult economic conditions, but it is almost back to the levels of revenue it was reporting in 2008 because it has continued to add advisors and assets quarterly. “I don’t know how many other firms can say that,” he said.
Most of Envestnet’s revenue is generated from fees based on a percentage of the assets that are managed using its system. A large portion of its advisors come from Fidelity Investments.
Bergman said Fidelity remain an “extremely important partner,” but as it continues to expand and add more independent advisors its revenue stream will continue to diversify.
Envestnet expects to maintain double-digit revenue growth annually, he said. The company reported its preliminary second quarter results that indicate 35% year-over-year revenue growth.
