Macro and micro factors are working in the short term against a public listing for the $700bn brokerage firm.

With 11,000 affiliated advisors and $700bn in assets, independent broker-dealer Osaic, by a few key metrics, resembles or surpasses what rival LPL Financial looked like when it went public in 2010. When LPL started its IPO process, it had more advisors than Osaic does now (about 12,000), but fewer assets (about $285bn).

The results for LPL speak for themselves. Shares of what is now the country’s largest independent brokerage firm trade at a 26.3x price-to-earnings ratio, a figure in line with the strongest multiples earned by RIAs in private market transactions. LPL’s stock price has jumped 363.2% over the past five years, far outstripping the S&P 500 index’s 86% gain in that span.

All those metrics raise one burning question for Osaic, now in its sixth year under the control of private equity firm Reverence Capital Partners: Does an IPO make sense for it, too?

‘I think the likelihood at our size [is] some day that we are a public company. That’s my guess,’ Osaic chief executive Jamie Price (pictured) told Citywire in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the company’s NXT conference.

Price’s further comments indicated the emphasis in that phrase should be on ‘some day.’ He noted Reverence holds Osaic inside of a 10-year fund, which also carries extension options for the private equity firm. Osaic’s long-term debt, which includes a term loan plus several revolving credit facilities and tranches of notes (both secured and unsecured), does not begin to mature until 2028 and 2029, Price added.

‘You don’t have to recap[italize] the company until 2028, 2029, so there’s no rush to do anything,’ Price said. ‘I suspect we’re two years away minimum and maybe four years away in reality — somewhere between those windows — where we’ll assess that.’

There are also macro and micro factors working against an Osaic IPO in the short term. In a macro sense, the IPO market remains largely inhospitable. According to a report from accounting firm and consultancy Ernst & Young, though the number of US IPOs in the first quarter of 2025 rose 55% year-over-year to 59, the amount of money raised ($8.9bn) was virtually flat relative to the first quarter of 2024 ($8.8bn).

Financial services companies aren’t playing much of a role in that resurgence, either. Ernst & Young found that financial services companies comprised just 6% of those IPOs in the first quarter of 2025 and raised just 2% of the money.

In a micro sense, the story for wealth managers as public companies isn’t much better, with LPL’s success proving to be the exception rather than the rule. It has been difficult for public analysts to distinguish the market-linked cash flows wealth managers generate from AUM fees from the AUM fees generated by asset managers’ mutual funds and ETFs. As a result, wealth firms like RIA financial Focus Financial Partners with sticky revenue have traded more in line with asset managers like T. Rowe Price contending with secular outflows from their active funds.

Even LPL’s position can be partially chalked up to the revenue it generates from the spread on clients’ uninvested cash as opposed to AUM fees. The company’s shares swooned for a period in 2024 when a new policy from rival brokerage house Charles Schwab to use third-party cash managers caused investors to worry LPL’s cash yields would plunge and generated a bevy of lawsuits and a probe from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Analysts from TD Cowen in 2024 estimated as much as 30% of LPL’s gross profit in 2024 and 2025 would come from cash sweep revenue.

Given all those structural factors, it’s easy to see why Osaic is in no hurry to file a Form S-1.

‘I think private equity loves these businesses longer term,’ Price said.

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