Mat Ishbia has long wanted to put more United Wholesale Mortgage stock into the public market. He’s now acting on that goal, while also perhaps increasing his stake in another high-profile business venture.
Public filings over the last several days spell out a handful of transactions the billionaire CEO of Pontiac-based mortgage lender UWM (NYSE: UWMC) has engaged in with an entity tied to a longtime minority owner of the Phoenix Suns, the NBA team Ishbia owns.
A securities filing earlier this week shows that Phoenix-based Garvin Family Sports LLC became a nearly 9.5% owner of UWM’s class A common stock, with nearly 15 million shares, a market value of about $1 billion given Friday’s trading price of about $7.30 a share.
Ishbia’s shares “were sold in a privately negotiated transaction for membership interests in a privately held limited liability company,” according to one of the filings.
“We recently executed a transaction at market price with a group of limited partners at the Suns and Mercury organization,” the UWM spokesperson wrote in an email. “This was a great opportunity to increase our float to meet market demand.”
UWM’s lack of public float — the shares available to buy and sell on the public market — has been a topic of discussion for some time, particularly given rules limiting how much of a company large, institutional investors can own.
Ishbia, who currently owns about 90% of the company, has spoken publicly on the topic.
“We have a great base of investors right now,” Ishbia said back in May during the company’s first quarter earnings call. “I know a lot of them would like to be able to add more, however float is a concern. So we always look at it, we’re opportunistic and look at those opportunities and see if there’s something we can do.”
Ishbia, along with his brother Justin, a Chicago-area private equity executive, acquired a more than 50% stake in the Suns and Phoenix Mercury WNBA team back in early 2023 in a deal valued at about $4 billion.
Garvin, who did not respond to messages seeking comment, maintained a minority ownership in the Suns organization following Ishbia’s acquisition of the team, according to a report at the time in the Arizona Republic.
Whether Garvin has any remaining ownership position in the organization is unclear, as is Ishbia’s specific stake.
That Ishbia arranged the stock sale with a known business associate as opposed to selling on the public market makes sense, said Erik Gordon, a finance professor at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.
That’s particularly true given that sophisticated traders watch for large blocks of stock being sold and can use that to their advantage.
“With a private sale, you negotiate one price and you know what it is,” Gordon said. “It might be a discount, but it might be less of a discount than selling piece by piece in the public market.”