Rent-A-Center acquires Acima Holdings

Rent-A-Center Inc. of Plano, Texas, has purchased Draper-based Acima Holdings LLC, a provider of virtual lease-to-own (LTO) solutions for consumers through a large network of retailers. The total purchase price consists of $1.273 billion in cash and approximately 10.8 million shares of Rent-A-Center common stock, currently valued at $377 million. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2021 subject to customary closing conditions, including clearance under anti-trust laws.

Established in 2013, Acima employs about 300 in its Utah operations. Acima has grown annual revenues from $97 million in 2016 to an expected $1.25 billion in 2020. The company will continue to operate out of Draper.

“We’re excited to welcome Acima to the Rent-A-Center family,” said Mitch Fadel, CEO of Rent-A-Center. “Founder Aaron Allred and his team have created a leading virtual LTO solution for retailers and consumers. We all share a common vision to expand the virtual LTO offering across a broader set of retail partners and to meet the needs of more customers through an integrated omnichannel strategy. Acima will help us strengthen our organization, accelerate growth and increase our virtual partner base, allowing us to better serve more consumers with the flexibility of LTO.”

Jason Hogg, executive vice president of Preferred Dynamix, the Rent-A-Center division that will govern Acima, said, “This combination marries Acima’s advanced decisioning with Preferred Dynamix’s complementary and proprietary digital platform. The resulting set of fintech capabilities will support faster innovation, allowing us to bring aspirational brands to consumers across a broader set of e-commerce and retail partners.”

“We’re thrilled to be part of a Rent-A-Center team that’s modernizing LTO to serve the estimated over 60 million unbanked and underbanked consumers in the United States,” said Allred. “We share Mitch and Jason’s vision to create the most dynamic LTO omni-channel shopping experience in the industry.”

Rent-A-Center Inc. is a lease-to-own provider for the credit constrained customer for products such as furniture, appliances, consumer electronics and computers in approximately 1,950 stores in the United States, Mexico and Puerto Rico and on its e-commerce platform. The company also has approximately 460 franchise locations.