RYANRyan Specialty Holdings, Inc.
Industry Fee intermediaries Updated 28 Sep 2026 Price 23 Oct 2026
If management hits its targets, one share in 12 months
$43.68 → $49.87
Promises vs. what happened
9 claims · 8 decksEvery target management put in a slide deck, and whether they hit it, missed it, or quietly dropped it.
| Promise | Made in | What happened | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net leverage inside 3-4x | Q1 '24 | 3.3x - on a redefined basis | Held |
| First-ever $300M buyback | Q4 '25 | doubled to $600M; $342M spent | Held |
| Underwriting management gains share | Q2 '25 | 22% of commissions to 34% | Held |
| M&A keeps adding to growth | Q4 '24 | acquired revenue $268M to $128M; none in '26 | Late |
| Binding-authority panel consolidation | Q2 '25 | 14% of commissions to 12%, then unreported | Dropped |
| Margin expands modestly in most years | Q2 '26 | 32.2%, 31.7%, 31.6%; '26 guided down | Open |
| Empower makes room to expand margin | Q2 '26 | no figure on the slide; open | Open |
| Ryan Re approaching ~$2bn of premium | Q2 '26 | stated once, with no date | Open |
| Double-digit organic growth | Q1 '24 | 12.8%, 10.1%, then 8.9%; slide dropped | Missed |
What they’re pitching
the headline page, deck by deckThe headline from each quarterly results deck over two years, so you can see what they want you to focus on, and when it changes.
'24Q3
'24Q4
'24Q1
'25Q2
'25Q3
'25Q4
'25Q2
'26
OrganicPage one since Q1 '24
The thesisOff page one Q2 '26
E&SFirst seen Q1 '24
DelegatedNew Q2 '25 · Page one since Q3 '25
M&AFirst seen Q1 '24
ProducersFirst seen Q1 '24
EmpowerFirst seen Q2 '26
CapitalFirst seen Q1 '24
on the headline page further in the deck not in the deck▲ onto page one▼ off page one● first mentionTap a mark for the quote.
Double-digit organic growth on the headline slide
“20.6% 13.7% 3/31/24 YTD total revenue growth 3/31/24 YTD organic revenue growth2 2010 founded”
Deck Investor Presentation May 2024 · p. 4 ·
Double-digit organic growth on the headline slide
“19.9% 13.3% 9/30/24 YTD total revenue growth 9/30/24 YTD organic revenue growth2 2010 founded”
Deck Investor Presentation November 2024 · p. 4 ·
Double-digit organic growth on the headline slide
“21.1% 12.8% 2024 total revenue growth 2024 organic revenue growth2 2010 founded”
Deck Investor Presentation February 2025 · p. 4 ·
Double-digit organic growth on the headline slide
“25.0% 12.9% 3/31/25 YTD total revenue growth 3/31/25 YTD organic revenue growth2 2010 founded”
Deck Investor Presentation May 2025 · p. 4 ·
Double-digit organic growth on the headline slide
“23.9% 9.6% 6/30/25 YTD total revenue growth 6/30/25 YTD organic revenue growth2 2010 founded”
Deck Investor Presentation July 2025 · p. 4 ·
Double-digit organic growth on the headline slide
“WHO WE ARE 11.4% 9/30/25 LTM”
Deck Investor Presentation October 2025 · p. 4 ·
Double-digit organic growth on the headline slide
“WHO WE ARE 10.1% 2025”
Deck Investor Presentation February 2026 · p. 4 ·
Double-digit organic growth on the headline slide
“Revenue CAGR 2019-2025 2nd”
Deck Investor Presentation August 2026 · p. 4 ·
Founding thesis — retail brokers consolidate panels onto bigger wholesalers
“Retail broker panel consolidation is intensifying”
Deck Investor Presentation May 2024 · p. 3 ·
Founding thesis — retail brokers consolidate panels onto bigger wholesalers
“Retail brokers require a more wholistic solution from fewer trading partners”
Deck Investor Presentation November 2024 · p. 3 ·
Founding thesis — retail brokers consolidate panels onto bigger wholesalers
“Retail brokers require a more holistic solution from fewer trading partners”
Deck Investor Presentation February 2026 · p. 3 ·
Founding thesis — retail brokers consolidate panels onto bigger wholesalers
“Retailers are reducing the number of specialty providers through panel consolidation, which benefits scaled platforms”
Deck Investor Presentation August 2026 · p. 12 ·
E&S market tailwind
“E&S market growth is outpacing admitted market growth by”
Deck Investor Presentation May 2024 · p. 13 ·
E&S market tailwind
“Emergence of novel health risks 1 For the year ended 12/31/2024 78% OF OUR PREMIUMS ARE PLACED IN THE ATTRACTIVE E&S MARKET1”
Deck Investor Presentation February 2025 · p. 6 ·
E&S market tailwind
“Emergence of novel health risks 1 For the year ended 12/31/2025 78% OF OUR PREMIUMS ARE PLACED IN THE ATTRACTIVE E&S MARKET1”
Deck Investor Presentation February 2026 · p. 6 ·
E&S market tailwind
“E&S market share is durable, as”
Deck Investor Presentation August 2026 · p. 23 ·
Delegated underwriting authority as the growth engine
“Our Platform Is Well Positioned to Gain Share in a Fast-Growing Market”
Deck Investor Presentation July 2025 · p. 16 ·
Delegated underwriting authority as the growth engine
“Largest Delegated”
Deck Investor Presentation October 2025 · p. 4 ·
Delegated underwriting authority as the growth engine
“Largest Delegated”
Deck Investor Presentation February 2026 · p. 4 ·
Delegated underwriting authority as the growth engine
“#1 Delegated Underwriting Authority (“DUA”)1”
Deck Investor Presentation August 2026 · p. 5 ·
M&A engine
“◼ 52 acquisitions completed since founding”
Deck Investor Presentation May 2024 · p. 12 ·
M&A engine
“ 58 acquisitions completed since founding”
Deck Investor Presentation November 2024 · p. 12 ·
M&A engine
“ M&A opportunity is ripe, and there is a nascent opportunity for panel consolidation in Binding Authority”
Deck Investor Presentation February 2025 · p. 13 ·
M&A engine
“ Ample M&A opportunity in highly fragmented U.S. market”
Deck Investor Presentation July 2025 · p. 12 ·
M&A engine
“ 63 acquisitions completed since founding”
Deck Investor Presentation February 2026 · p. 12 ·
M&A engine
“Disciplined approach to M&A that compounds long-term value creation”
Deck Investor Presentation August 2026 · p. 16 ·
Talent — producer hiring and retention
“Ryan Specialty had 98% producer retention in 2023”
Deck Investor Presentation May 2024 · p. 8 ·
Talent — producer hiring and retention
“Ryan Specialty had 97% producer retention in 2023”
Deck Investor Presentation November 2024 · p. 8 ·
Talent — producer hiring and retention
“New hire classes typically cover their costs by the end of year two, hitting target margins by the end of year three”
Deck Investor Presentation February 2025 · p. 12 ·
Talent — producer hiring and retention
“Ryan Specialty had 96% producer retention in 2025”
Deck Investor Presentation February 2026 · p. 8 ·
Talent — producer hiring and retention
“New hire classes contribute organically from day 1, typically cover costs by the end of year two, and hit target margins by the end of year three”
Deck Investor Presentation August 2026 · p. 13 ·
Margin expansion through Empower
“Empower now creates the flexibility to expand margin while we keep investing.”
Deck Investor Presentation August 2026 · p. 17 ·
Balance sheet and capital return
“◼ Leverage remains below Ryan Specialty’s stated leverage corridor of 3 – 4x”
Deck Investor Presentation May 2024 · p. 15 ·
Balance sheet and capital return
“ In February 2025, increased regular quarterly dividend 9% to $0.12/share on outstanding Class A common stock”
Deck Investor Presentation February 2025 · p. 16 ·
Balance sheet and capital return
“ In February 2026, announced an inaugural $300 million share repurchase authorization”
Deck Investor Presentation February 2026 · p. 18 ·
Balance sheet and capital return
“Disciplined Capital Allocation Framework7”
Deck Investor Presentation August 2026 · p. 18 ·
What they keep talking about · 10
The themes that show up deck after deck, and the ones that disappear.
- Organic
- The "Who we are" slide led with year-to-date organic growth from 13.7% down to 10.1%, through February 2026. The August 2026 deck replaces it with a 26% revenue growth rate measured from 2019; the H1 '26 organic rate of 8.9% appears further back.
- The thesis
- Retail brokers consolidating panels onto bigger wholesalers was the first content slide from May 2024 to February 2026. In August 2026 it moves to a general secular-trends page.
- E&S
- In four of eight. August 2026 adds that the excess-and-surplus share is durable - after the April 2026 call cited property rate cuts of 25-35% in catastrophe-exposed lines. No deck mentions pricing or property softening.
- Delegated
- Added July 2025 with its own slide; "1st largest delegated underwriter" joins the headline in October 2025; by August 2026 the whole deck is organised around two segments. 22% of commissions in Q1 '24 LTM, 34% in 2025, 48% at Jun '26.
- M&A
- 52 deals at May 2024, 63 by February 2026 - and still 63 in August 2026, which gets a full M&A page. Acquired revenue fell from $268M to $128M, and the Q2 '26 call says a meaningful deal is unlikely to close this year.
- Producers
- 2023 producer retention reads 98% in May 2024 and 97% in November. "Cover their costs by year two" gains the word "typically" in February 2025, and the retention figure becomes a 2021-2025 average after it fell to 96%.
- Empower
- New in August 2026: a page arguing growth was deliberately put ahead of near-term margin, with no charge and no savings figure on it. The earlier restructuring programmes appear only in the reconciliation footnotes.
- Capital
- Buybacks enter in February 2026 with the first authorisation in the company's history; August 2026 adds a capital-allocation page that puts growth investment as the first call on cash.
- New
- August 2026: the Empower margin page, the M&A page, the capital-allocation page, and "Ryan Re approaching ~$2bn of premium" - stated once, with no date and nothing earlier to compare it with.
- Quiet
- Headline organic growth, the specialty mix between wholesale, binding authority and underwriting management, and revenue acquired by year all stopped. Persistence 0.57.
Every quarterly report we’ve saved · 8
The press releases and shareholder letters behind this page.
- Q2 2026 release · 8-K 30 Jul 2026
- Q1 2026 release · 8-K 30 Apr 2026
- Q4 2025 release · 8-K 12 Feb 2026
- Q3 2025 release · 8-K 30 Oct 2025
- Q2 2025 release · 8-K 31 Jul 2025
- Q1 2025 release · 8-K 1 May 2025
- Q4 2024 release · 8-K 20 Feb 2025
- Q3 2024 release · 8-K 30 Oct 2024
Archived as text; the links open the copies filed on EDGAR or the investor-relations site.
What analysts asked them
8 calls · Q3 24 – Q2 26The last eight earnings calls: what analysts kept asking about, which questions got dodged, and how much the CEO did the talking.
Share of questions by topic, call by call. A topic that suddenly dominates is usually the problem. The last row is how much of the answering the CEO did, rather than the CFO or others.
| Share of questions about… | Q3 24 | Q4 24 | Q1 25 | Q2 25 | Q3 25 | Q4 25 | Q1 26 | Q2 26 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Demand & customers | 5% | · | 18% | 8% | 6% | 7% | 10% | 16% |
| Growth & sales | 29% | 43% | 45% | 28% | 39% | 50% | 38% | 42% |
| Pricing & margins | 24% | 14% | 9% | 16% | 22% | 36% | 31% | 16% |
| Guidance & outlook | 5% | 43% | 9% | 28% | 22% | 36% | 28% | 26% |
| Capacity & supply | 10% | · | 9% | · | 11% | · | 3% | 5% |
| Capital & financing | 5% | 21% | 27% | 12% | 22% | 14% | 7% | 5% |
| Competition | 5% | · | 9% | 8% | 6% | 7% | 10% | 5% |
| Products & technology | · | · | 9% | 12% | 17% | · | 7% | · |
| Macro & regulation | · | 7% | · | · | 6% | 14% | 14% | · |
| Other | 38% | 29% | 27% | 44% | 11% | 14% | 31% | 47% |
| Questions | 21 | 14 | 11 | 25 | 18 | 14 | 29 | 19 |
| How much the CEO talked | 40% | 32% | 36% | 19% | 32% | 36% | 19% | 23% |
Who’s in charge, who’s selling
read from the filings · 2 Oct 2026Shareholder votes against the board and pay, plus which executives have been selling their own shares.
Tier 1 · live
77.1% of the votes, about 48% of the money, and the right to name the whole board
Class B carries ten votes to Class A's one. Patrick G. Ryan holds 15,678,471 Class A and 112,048,184 Class B shares at 2026-03-02 - 77.1% of the combined voting power - and officers and directors together 82.5%. The Director Nomination Agreement from the 2021 listing lets the Ryan Parties designate "all of the nominees for election to our Board" while they hold half their listing-date stake, on a sliding scale to 20%, and the agreement itself says this "could result in representation on our Board that is disproportionate" to their ownership. The right falls away on his death or disability, except for one nominee.
Tier 2 · improving
Nine charter amendments in one meeting
At the 2025-05-30 meeting the owners approved, effective the same day: declassifying the board with annual elections phased in to 2028, majority voting in uncontested elections, removal of directors by majority, 2029-09-30 as the outside date for the ten-to-one vote to sunset, action by written consent, the right to call special meetings, the end of two springing supermajorities, and officer exculpation to the Delaware limit. Each passed with under 12m votes against out of about 1.31bn.
Tier 2 · live
The private-equity co-owner sold out at $54.50; the founder bought at $32.50
Two insider sales totalling $232.9m in the year to Q2 '26 against eleven purchases of $19.9m, none of the selling pre-planned - net selling of about 5.1% of market value, the largest among the companies covered here. Onex sold its whole remaining 4,145,621 Class A shares at $54.50 on 5 Dec '25, about $226m, and its board designee Robert Le Blanc retired two months later; the chief executive sold 129,570 at $53.61 a week after Onex. The stock is now 30% below both. The buying was at the other end: the founder 120,000 at $32.50 in June, the chief financial officer 6,300 at $31.79, the company itself 9.1m shares at about $32.95.
Tier 2 · worsening
A president terminated, two co-presidents installed, and the founder is 88
Jeremiah Bickham separated as president on 2025-10-08 in what the proxy calls "an involuntarily termination without cause", for $4,248,224, and was replaced by two co-presidents - one of whom, the 8-K discloses, is married to the founder's niece and so a cousin-in-law of a director. The founder is 88 and Executive Chairman; his son, 58, has been a director since 2024. The board also lost its lead director, who died in July 2025 after thirteen years, and Onex's designee, who retired in February 2026 and has not been replaced: twelve directors against an authorised thirteen.
Tier 2 · worsening
The growth promise, and the margin target, both left
A "Double digit organic growth" build-up slide ran in seven decks from May 2024 to February 2026, where the label became "Industry-leading"; the August 2026 deck drops it, after organic growth went 12.8%, 10.1%, 8.9% and 6.7% in Q2 '26 alone. A 35% adjusted EBITDAC margin "by the end of 2027", given in February 2025 and reaffirmed in August, was deferred with no new date on 2025-10-30 - the month the president left. Three of seven tracked measures stopped: headline organic growth, the specialty mix, and revenue acquired by year. Binding authority stopped being shown alone after Q4 '25 at 12% of commissions; producer retention became a five-year average after it fell to 96%; net leverage moved to a credit basis that counts savings before they arrive. The pipeline's own management gate fails this name: 1 beat, 2 met, 3 missed, 1 withdrawn.
Tier 3 · improving
The chief executive earned $1.45m, because the performance units paid nothing
Total compensation of $1,454,058 for 2025 - $1,442,308 of salary and $11,750 of 401(k) contributions, no bonus, no stock, no incentive payout - against a $3,000,000 target award granted in February 2025. The proxy's reason is explicit: "actual performance results determined as of December 31, 2025, resulted in no PLUs and PSUs being earned". The pay ratio is 16 to 1 on a median employee at $92,847.
Where shareholders voted no
At each annual meeting shareholders vote on who sits on the board, what the executives are paid and whether the company may create more shares. These are the votes that drew the most "no"s at the last two meetings: the shares voted against (or withheld) each year, then what share of all votes cast that was. Under each one, what the vote was about and what a no means.
| 2025 | 2026 | Share 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advisory vote on payExecutive pay. Shareholders say whether they accept what the top executives were paid. The vote is advisory: the board can ignore it, but a large no is a public rebuke and boards usually change the pay plan after one. | — | 0.20M | 0.02% |
| Re-elect O'Halleran (chairs Geneva Re; not independent)A board seat. Shareholders vote to keep this person on the board, the group that hires, pays and can fire the CEO. A no, or a withheld vote, says they want this director out, often because of the committee they sit on or a decision they signed off. | 63.1M withheld | — | 4.8% in '25 |
| Re-elect Kuczinski (audit and pay)A board seat. | — | 8.14M | 0.7% |
| Declassify the board and phase in annual electionsElect the whole board every year. Where only a third of the directors stand each year, it takes three years to replace the board. Annual elections make every seat answerable to shareholders every year, so shareholders gain power; a no keeps the board harder to remove. | 0.01M | — | 0.0% in '25 |
| Sunset the ten-to-one Class B vote by 30 Sep '29Equal votes per share. Some shares carry many votes each, which keeps control with the founders whatever outside shareholders own. Ending that gives every share the same vote. More shareholder power. | 0.02M | — | 0.0% in '25 |
| Ratify Deloitte & ToucheThe auditor. Keeping the outside accounting firm that checks the company's books. This almost always passes; a sizeable no means shareholders doubt the audit or think the firm has been in place too long. | — | 0.11M | 0.01% |
Insiders who sold the most stock
Reported sales by executives and directors, biggest first.
| SEC insider data sets, Jul '25-Jun '26 | Sold | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Onex | $226M | its whole remaining 4,145,621 Class A shares at $54.50 on 5 Dec '25 - and its board designee retired two months later |
| Timothy Turner (CEO) | $6.9M | 129,570 Class A at $53.61 on 12 Dec '25, a week after Onex, and about a tenth of what he holds |
| Against that | $19.9M | eleven purchases by six people, including the founder at $32.50 and the CFO at $31.79 in Jun '26 |