In 2019, the company generated $2.39 billion in revenues.
Revenues for the fourth quarter in 2020 were $642.1 million, increasing $63.1 million, or 10.9%, compared to the fourth quarter of the prior year. That growth included a 4.7% increase in "organic revenue," meaning revenue generated by offices it had at least a full year.
Much of Brown & Brown's revenue growth comes from its acquisition of smaller insurance brokerages as well as providers of other professional services including employee benefits solutions and financial services. In 2020, the company made a record 25 acquisitions which added $197 million in annualized revenues. It made 23 acquisitions in 2019.
The company has already made its first acquisition of 2021. On Jan. 14, it closed its purchase of O'Leary Insurances based in Cork, Ireland.
Brown & Brown also saw an increase in net income which also rose in 2020 to a new record high of $480.5 million, up 20.6% from the previous record $398.5 million in 2019. Fourth quarter net income also rose to $20.8 million, up 27.2% from the same quarter the previous year.
“We are very proud of our results in a year that challenged everyone globally," said CEO J. Powell Brown in a news release. "Our results are driven by nearly 11,000 dedicated teammates delivering solutions to our customers worldwide. I would like to thank all of our teammates for everything they did during the year.”
Brown & Brown is the nation's sixth largest insurance brokerage with offices throughout the country. It is also a public company whose common shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock symbol BRO. Its stock price rose 1 cent to close at $45.67 per share on Tuesday.
The company's new 11-story headquarters is at 300 N. Beach St. in downtown Daytona Beach. Prior to its move which began in late December, its corporate offices were in a five-story leased building on the west side of downtown at 220 S. Ridgewood Ave.
The company plans to begin renovating the 220 S. Ridgewood building as soon as it completes moving its operations from there into the new building. The plan, according to Brown & Brown officials is to continue using that building as well as another leased building one block to the south.
"We expect to begin renovation of the 220 Ridgewood building in either the middle to latter part of February," said Andy Watts, chief financial officer for Brown & Brown. "Our goal would be to have teammates back in there by the end of 2021."
Watts said the move into the company's new headquarters has been going smoothly. "A lot of our teammates have been able to come in and unpack their boxes in their new offices," he said. "We're following CDC guidelines on how many people we can have in the offices (to allow for social distancing). In certain departments, we might have some teammates working one day a week at home and four in the office or vice versa or some other combination. It's all based on the needs of each individual business unit and the needs of our customers."
It took Brown & Brown 70 years for its annual revenues hit the $1 billion mark, which it finally did in 2011. Since then, its revenues have continued to grow, surpassing the $2 billion mark just seven years later. Its revenue growth appears to be accelerating, putting it on pace to potentially hit the $3 billion mark in 2022 or possibly even this year.
The only other locally based public company of comparable size is TopBuild Corp whose headquarters is across town at 475 N. Williamson Blvd., just south of Dunn Avenue. The Daytona Beach-based national installer and distributor of insulation and other building materials generated $2.62 billion in annual revenues and $190.9 million in annual net income in 2019. It employed 10,400 workers that year. The company is set to report its fourth quarter and full-year earnings for 2020 on Feb. 23. Its common shares are publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol BLD.