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TickerNIC
SectorBanks - Regional
Mkt cap$2.3B
EV / EBITDA13.9×
PostureHigh Velocity
Composite78/100
LensBuyer-side
SE-Cluster Research·Issuer Brief·Q2 2026CIK 1174850

Nicolet Bankshares, Inc.

NICHIGH VELOCITYFILING INTENSITY

Nicolet Bankshares, Inc. reads as an High Velocity (composite 78/100); Consistent Strategic Buyer deploying $1B across 1 disclosed transactions, up 580% vs the prior cycle · primary market Regional Banking.

Lens

Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)

$1B

+580%

vs $147M in 2020–2022

Disclosed transactions

1

−75%

1/3 active fiscal years in window

Buyer archetype

Consistent Strategic Buyer

Meaningful spend appears across repeat years.

Composite score

78

/100

High Velocity dominates · Filing Intensity

Financial snapshot
Revenue$524M
EBITDA$171M
Enterprise value$2.4B
EV / Revenue4.5×
EV / EBITDA13.9×
P/EN/A
Cash$615M
Total debt$135M
as of 2026-05-10
§ I·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Behavioral posture, nine reads.

Each index scores the issuer 0–100 against an EDGAR-anchored definition. Scores ≥ threshold elevate the issuer into the index's constituent set; the dominant index drives the masthead label.

Active Acquirer

40/100

Companies actively deploying disclosed capital into M&A

  • $1.3B disclosed buyer spend
  • Filed within 20d

Buyer Cadence

30/100

Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity

  • Filed within 20d
  • 144 8-Ks

Target Probability

36/100

Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings

  • Control-process language

Spin/Carve

0/100

Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture

Pressure Watch

28/100

Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure

  • Control-process filings

Distress Watch

0/100

Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns

Restatement Risk

6/100

Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings

  • 2 auditor changes
  • Latest event 5y ago; discounted

Capital Velocity

Dominant
78/100

Issuers with the highest filing-activity intensity

  • 144 8-Ks
  • Filed within 20d
  • 4 form types

Quiet Power

0/100

Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence

  • Enterprise value $2.4B
  • 10-Q 20d ago
  • 5 active signals
§ II·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Capital cadence.

Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($MM); ticks show recorded transaction count. Disclosure tier annotated where v6 audited corpus carries an entry.

16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

Disclosed spend $MM Disclosed transactions (right axis)Peak spend year: $1,000M · Peak count: 2

FYDisclosed buysDisclosed spendAvg ticketAudited tier
20251$1B$1BN/A
2024N/AN/AN/AN/A
2023N/AN/AN/AN/A
20221$28M$28MN/A
20212$97M$49MN/A
20201$22M$22MN/A
§ III·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Strategy posture.

The buyer's playbook in terms of strategic archetype: what each disclosed move says about how they're deploying capital.

Archetype mix

  • Horizontal Consolidation
    33%
  • Bolt On
    33%
  • Geographic Expansion
    33%

Strategy keywords

Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.

  • horizontal_consolidation
  • bolt_on
  • geographic_expansion
§ IV·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Filing language.

Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.

•our inability to manage cultural assimilation risks associated with growth through acquisitions, which can be an often-overlooked and often-critical failure point in mergers;

10-KFY2023

our inability to manage cultural assimilation risks associated with growth through acquisitions, which can be an often-overlooked and often-critical failure point in mergers;

10-KFY2025

•merging or consolidating with any other bank holding company.

10-KFY2023

merging or consolidating with any other bank holding company.

10-KFY2025
§ V·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Market context.

Where this issuer sits inside its SE-Cluster rollup wedge, with disclosed-spend rank plus trading comparables against the public peer set.

Primary market

Regional Banking

Market spend (2023–2025)
$245.7B
Market spend (2020–2022)
$72.8B
Recent vs prior
+238%
Issuer rank in market
N/A
Share of market capital
0.0%

Valuation positioning

13.9×EV / EBITDA

NIC trades at a +1.6-turn premium to the Regional Banking peer median of 12.3×.

EV / Revenue
4.5×
Net debt / EBITDA
-2.8×
Peer median EV / EBITDA
12.3×

Trading comparables

FMP market data · 2026-05-10

CompanyEV / EBITDAEV / RevNet debt / EBITDARevenueM&A 2023–2025
16.7×3.7×-0.9×$13.7B$12.7B
13.9×3.0×-0.7×$58.4B$126.1B
Nicolet Bankshares, Inc.NIC
13.9×4.5×-2.8×$524M$1B
10.7×3.2×-2.1×$3.4B$7B
9.3×2.2×-0.3×$14.5B$72.6B

Trading multiples from FMP market data; disclosed M&A spend from the SE-Cluster EDGAR 10-K corpus. Peer set = top disclosed buyers in Regional Banking. Bars scaled to the highest EV/EBITDA in the set.

§ VI·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Target landscape.

Public-issuer targets that fit this buyer's archetype and target categories from filing-derived signal. Scores reflect cross-signal fit; reasons cite the EDGAR-anchored facts that drove the match.

No qualifying public-issuer targets surfaced from the current signal mix.

Stated target categories

No target categories enumerated in the audited corpus for this issuer.

§ VII·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Filing activity & signal stream.

Filing cadence and event-driven signals visible on EDGAR. The signal stream below is curated from restatement / spin-carve / activism categories, providing context for any near-term call.

Filing cadence

  • 10-K (annual)132026-02-27
  • 10-Q (quarterly)402026-05-06
  • 8-K (event)1442026-04-21
  • Proxy / DEF 14A172026-03-24
  • Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)0N/A

Signals on file

  • elevated

    Auditor change

    2021-06-03

    2 Item 4.01 filings on file; certifying accountant change.

  • info

    Signal

    Serial acquisition history

  • info

    Signal

    10-K strategy themes

  • info

    Signal

    Recent transaction activity

§ VIII·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Audited corpus.

No audited record on file for this CIK in the current v6 corpus.

This issuer has not been extracted into the v6 audited acquirer corpus yet. The brief above pulls from ranking-level aggregates and issuer-index signal only.