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Lincoln National Corporation LNC recently announced a long-term strategic partnership with Bain Capital, under which the latter will invest $825 million to acquire a 9.9% equity stake in Lincoln. This all-cash deal values Lincoln's shares at $44 each, representing a 25% premium over its recent 30-day average. The insurer will sell 18.8 million of its shares. LNC shares jumped 14% yesterday.
Alongside the equity investment, the two firms have entered into a 10-year, non-exclusive investment management agreement. Hence, LNC can still work with others. Through this arrangement, Bain Capital, a private global investment firm,will manage a portion of Lincoln's assets across a range of classes, including private credit, structured assets, mortgage loans and private equity.
The partnership is designed to support Lincoln’s strategic goals by providing both capital and access to high-quality private assets with strong risk-adjusted returns. This is likely to boost LNC’s existing multi-manager platform. Lincoln intends to use the funds to expand its spread-based earnings, enhance its asset management capabilities, optimize its legacy life insurance portfolio and accelerate its efforts to reduce financial leverage to a target of 25%.
LNC’s long-term debt amounted to $5.9 billion at 2024 end, up 2.8% year over year. Short-term debt totaled $300 million. The company’s long-term debt to capital of 41.5% is significantly higher than the industry’s average of 14.3%.
The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2025. It is expected to give LNC a cash boost, access to Bain Capital’s expertise and more power to improve its long-term profitability.
LNC’s Price Performance
Lincoln National shares have gained 12.6% in the past year compared with the 9.4% growth in the industry it belongs to.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Zacks Rank & Key Picks
Lincoln National currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
Some better-ranked stocks in the broader Finance space are Brown & Brown, Inc. BRO, Jackson Financial Inc. JXN and MGIC Investment Corporation MTG, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Brown & Brown’s current-year earnings is pegged at $4.19 per share, which indicates 9.1% year-over-year growth. It has witnessed two upward estimate revisions against none in the opposite direction during the past month. Brown & Brown beat earnings estimates in each of the past four quarters, with an average surprise of 8.2%.