Ardonagh EBITDA up 30% as specialty business drives growth

Ardonagh has reported EBITDA of £81m for the first half of 2020, up 30% on the same period of 2019.

Meanwhile, the broking group’s adjusted EBITDA, which strips out one-off and exceptional costs, rose by 2% to £100m.

Chief executive David Ross said this strong performance was a result of Ardonagh’s resilience and diversified business strategy.

“Amidst a pandemic and the hardest months of lockdown, Ardonagh has delivered a strong set of results,” he said. “These financial results illustrate a very limited profit impact from Covid-19; a testament to our business resilience, diversification, scale and the highly successful investment in infrastructure over the last three years.

“Furthermore, trading in July and August 2020 is materially ahead of prior year.”

The broker’s growth largely came from specialty business, with the specialty division’s adjusted EBITDA growing by £4.7m to £19.6m for the first six months of 2020.

Meanwhile, Ardonagh’s retail division remains its largest division with adjusted EBITDA of £45m. This was slightly down on the £47.3m reported for the same period in 2019, with this fall in EBITDA coming from an expected decline in business at Swinton as well as a limited impact from Covid-19.

The broker was, however, keen to point out that this was still ahead of budgeted performance.

The broking group was also aided by £6.6m of realised cost savings during the second quarter of 2020, as well as £8.1m of new future cost savings that were identified over the period. 

These new cost-savings include £3.1m from the retail division and £5m from advisory.

Looking into the second half of the year, Ardonagh revealed that July and August were both ahead of prior-year performance, with the Bravo and Arachas acquisitions adding £6m to the group’s EBITDA over those two months.

The two businesses were acquired in July following a £2.5bn re-financing that saw all of Ardonagh’s previous debt paid off.