Skyward Specialty Insurance Group, Inc. launched its initial public offering of its common stock in early January. The offering consists of 4,750,000 shares of common stock offered by Skyward Specialty and 3,750,000 shares of common stock to be sold by certain of Skyward Specialty’s existing stockholders, plus up to an additional 1,275,000 shares to be sold by existing stockholders that the underwriters have the option to purchase. The initial public offering price is expected to be between $14.00 and $16.00 per share. The shares are trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol “SKWD.”
Skyward Specialty’s principal purposes of the offering are to increase capitalization and financial flexibility and create a public market for its common stock, thereby enabling access to the public equity markets for the Company and its stockholders. Skyward Specialty intends to use a portion of the net proceeds from this offering to make capital contributions to its insurance company subsidiaries to grow its business, using the remainder for general corporate purposes. Skyward Specialty will not receive any proceeds from any sale of shares of common stock by the selling stockholders.
Speaking to Insurance Business from New York, Skyward CEO Andrew Robinson confirmed that all employees would benefit from stock options.
“We had the employees fully engaged in everything from the opening bell, through the first trade and interviews with various senior leaders,” Robinson said.
“We announced to our employees that every single employee becomes a shareholder on the back of this transaction, which is a unique thing for a company to do – to allocate equity to every single employee.
“Those are kind of the mechanical things that we’re doing, but what sits behind those mechanical [things], is almost a self-reinforcing, quite organic way that that this company engages [with] employees and I’m just hopeful that we keep it going because it really is our x factor.”
Barclays Capital Inc. and Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc. are acting as joint lead book-running managers for the proposed offering. Piper Sandler & Co., JMP Securities, A Citizens Company, Truist Securities, Inc., and Raymond James & Associates, Inc., are acting as joint book-running managers for the proposed offering. Academy Securities, Inc. and Siebert Williams Shank & Co. LLC are acting as co-managers for the proposed offering.
About Skyward Specialty
Skyward Specialty is a rapidly growing specialty insurance company, delivering commercial property and casualty products and solutions on a non-admitted and admitted basis. The Company operates through eight underwriting divisions — Accident & Health, Captives, Global Property, Industry Solutions, Professional Lines, Programs, Surety and Transactional E&S.
Skyward Specialty’s subsidiary insurance companies consist of Houston Specialty Insurance Company, Imperium Insurance Company, Great Midwest Insurance Company, and Oklahoma Specialty Insurance Company. These insurance companies are rated A- (Excellent) by A.M. Best Company.