BC to fully exit Sabre

The sale will be undertaken via an accelerated bookbuilding offer to institutional investors, with Barclays Bank acting as sole global coordinator and bookrunner, Sabre said in a statement. The sale price of the shares and the final size of the offering will be determined after the books have closed.

BC Partners (the owner of Unquote parent company Acuris) will have fully exited the business following the sale. Co-founder Angus Ball will own a stake of approximately 1.8%.

Sabre floated on the London stock exchange in December last year with a market cap of £575m. The IPO raised £287.5m, of which £206m was used to acquire shares owned by BC, Ball and Keith Morris.

In May this year, BC and Ball sold down an 18% stake in the business for £112.8m, with BC retaining a stake of around 14.5%.

Previous funding
BC acquired Sabre in September 2013 in a deal understood to be valued at £240m, with capital drawn from the €6.5bn BC European Capital IX fund.

Under BC's tenure, the business introduced a management team led by CEO Geoff Carter and chief financial officer Adam Westwood to take over from the founding owners. It also invested in product development and bolted on Binomial Group in 2014.

Company
Headquartered in Dorking, Surrey, Sabre was founded in 1982 and has a headcount of 150. The business distributes policies through third parties and its own brands, Go Girl, Insure2Drive and Drive Smart.

Sabre generated gross written premiums of £210.7m in 2017 and reported a compound annual growth rate of 11.3% from 2006 to 2016, according to a statement issued at the time of the company's announcement of its intention to float. It generated adjusted profit after tax of £53.3m last year.

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• Topics
• Exits
• UK / Ireland
• Financials
• BC Partners
• United Kingdom
• Barclays