Earnings Call Transcript - DGICA Q3 2024

Operator, Operator

Good morning and thank you for joining us today. This morning, Donegal Group issued its Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Release outlining its results. The release and a supplemental investor presentation are available in the Investor Relations section of Donegal’s website at www.donegalgroup.com. Please be advised that today’s conference was pre-recorded, and all participants are in listen-only mode. Speaking today will be President and Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Burke; Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Miller; Chief Underwriting Officer, Jeff Hay; Chief Operating Officer, Dan DeLamater; and Chief Investment Officer, Tony Viozzi. Please be aware that statements made during this call that are not historical facts, are forward-looking statements and necessarily involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary materially. These factors can be found in Donegal Group’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The Company disclaims any obligation to update or publicly announce the results of any revisions that they may make to any forward-looking statements to reflect the occurrence of anticipated or unanticipated events or circumstances after the date of such statements. With that, it is my pleasure to turn it over to Mr. Kevin Burke. Kevin?

Kevin Burke, President and CEO

Thank you, Karin, and welcome everyone. In today’s call, we will provide commentary on our quarterly financial results and an update on strategies and actions that we expect will continue to drive favorable results in future periods. We will outline the factors that contributed to the highest level of quarterly earnings we have achieved since 2020. We achieved net income of $16.8 million, or $0.51 per Class A share, despite incurring $6 million of pre-tax catastrophe losses related to Hurricane Helene. We will provide more details about weather-related losses and other key earnings drivers later in the call. Having completed our strategic non-renewals of all commercial policies in the states of Georgia and Alabama in July, our commercial lines growth in the quarter reflected higher levels of commercial lines new business in targeted states and classes of business, as well as solid renewal premium increases and retention levels. We are now ramping up our small business commercial underwriting strategy for all four of our operating regions to build momentum in small business growth, which will be a key area of focus for us in 2025 and the years ahead. We completed our fourth annual state strategy sessions in August, and we are refining our strategies and action plans as we finalize our 2025 business plan. Our team is fully aligned, and we are looking forward to capitalizing on opportunities for profitable growth in 2025. We are making excellent progress on the final two major software releases within our systems modernization project. In fact, over this weekend, we will deploy the first phase of one of these releases, which will facilitate the automated conversion of our remaining legacy homeowners and dwelling and fire policies, converting to our new platform as they renew starting with policies effective in January 2025. As you will hear from the other presenters today, we remain focused on solid execution, and I am confident that our strategies and actions will continue to generate favorable results through the fourth quarter and looking ahead to 2025 and beyond. I will now turn the call over to Jeff Miller to review our third quarter financial results.

Jeff Miller, Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Kevin. For the third quarter of 2024, net premiums earned increased 6% to $238 million. Net premiums written increased by 5.9%, as strong premium rate increases and retention were offset partially by planned attrition in states and classes of business we have targeted for profit improvement. Rate increases achieved during the third quarter of 2024 remained in double-digit percentages, averaging 12.6% in total, and 13.6% when excluding workers’ comp. The combined ratio was 96.4% for the third quarter of 2024, compared to 104.5% for the prior-year quarter, with a decrease in the loss ratio primarily accounting for the improvement. The core loss ratio declined 6.6 percentage points from the prior-year quarter due to a combination of higher earned premiums and improved claim frequency and severity, and we were pleased to see improvement in the core loss ratios of all of our lines of business. Weather-related losses of $24.4 million, or 10.3 percentage points of the loss ratio for the third quarter of 2024, were slightly lower than the $25.7 million, or 11.5 percentage points we incurred for the third quarter of 2023. The lower impact was primarily due to reduced severity of commercial property losses, with $5.3 million of losses contributing 10 percentage points to the quarterly commercial multi-peril loss ratio, compared to 17.5 percentage points of the loss ratio for that line of business in the third quarter of 2023. In our homeowners line, weather-related losses totaled $16.3 million, or 45.2 percentage points of the loss ratio, compared to 49.2 points in the prior-year quarter. In total, the quarterly weather claim impact was higher than the previous five-year average for the third quarter of 9.4 percentage points. Our insurance subsidiaries incurred $6 million in net losses from Hurricane Helene, which caused significant homeowners losses in Georgia in late September. That $6 million impact reflected our insurance subsidiaries’ full aggregate reinsurance retention amount under their property catastrophe reinsurance agreement with Donegal Mutual. Large fire losses, which we define as over $50,000 in damages, contributed 3.7 percentage points to the loss ratio for the third quarter of 2024, which was lower than 4.9 percentage points for the prior-year quarter. The decrease reflected lower average severity of commercial fire losses as homeowners fire loss activity was comparable to the prior-year quarter. Our insurance subsidiaries had $6.2 million of favorable reserve development for losses incurred in prior accident years, which decreased the loss ratio by 2.6 percentage points for the third quarter of 2024, compared to $7.3 million that decreased the loss ratio by 3.3 percentage points for the prior-year third quarter. Breaking the development down by line of business, we had favorable development of $4.0 million in commercial multi-peril, $2.2 million in other commercial, $933,000 in workers’ compensation, and $800,000 in personal auto, offset partially by $1.6 million of unfavorable development in commercial auto, due primarily to higher-than-expected severity of a handful of claims. The expense ratio was 34.5% for the third quarter of 2024, compared to 34.1% for the third quarter of 2023. Dan will provide more details about our expense ratio and our ongoing expense reduction initiatives in a few minutes. In summary, the combined contributions of underwriting and investment income for the third quarter of 2024 resulted in after-tax net income of $16.8 million, compared to a net loss of $805,000 for the third quarter of 2023. As Kevin stated earlier, we are pleased with this improvement in our net income, particularly considering that the main driver of the favorable performance was an improvement in our core loss ratio. For more details about that improvement and specifics about our commercial and personal lines segment results, I will now turn the call over to Jeff Hay.

Jeff Hay, Chief Underwriting Officer

Thank you, Jeff. In the commercial lines segment, net premiums written grew by 6.4% this quarter, mainly due to new business in specific regions and sectors, along with strong rate and retention performance. We successfully completed our exit from commercial lines business in Georgia and Alabama, which significantly improved our profits but did slightly offset our premium growth over the past year. Our focus moving forward is on growing small commercial accounts as we enhance our automation and service capabilities for this segment. We've seen improvements in our straight-through processing and success rates for our new small commercial products, allowing underwriters to focus more on high-quality middle market accounts. We will continue to be a comprehensive account writer and expect growth rates to remain largely similar across all commercial lines of business. Last quarter, I mentioned several initiatives aimed at enhancing our commercial lines book, including new underwriting tools like a comprehensive fire analysis for property risks, aerial imagery enhanced with artificial intelligence to address roof issues, and integrating point of sale data with catastrophe modeling tools. These innovations are helping us maintain the quality of new business while also impacting our renewal business, leading to non-renewals of property risks identified as having a higher loss potential. We are actively updating underwriting guidelines for specific business classes and implementing mandatory wind/hail deductibles in catastrophe-prone areas. We believe these actions are contributing to the improvement in our core loss ratio in this quarter across all lines of business. Renewal rate increases remained strong, with an average increase of 12.8% across our commercial lines, excluding workers’ compensation, driven by a 14.5% increase in commercial multi-peril and an 11.6% increase in commercial automobile. The statutory combined ratio for commercial lines in the third quarter improved to 89.8%, a 7.7-point enhancement from the previous year. We noted a 39% decrease in large fire loss activity year-over-year, primarily due to lower average severity. We anticipate further reductions in the likelihood of large fire losses as we implement strategic measures. Weather-related losses in our commercial lines also decreased due to a mild weather quarter, aside from Hurricane Helene, which made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on September 26th, affecting areas in our footprint such as Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, and Tennessee. Fortunately, the storm's impact on commercial lines losses has been minimal so far. Regarding other loss trends, commercial auto continues to see the end of post-pandemic frequency increases, returning to a longer-term downward trend. While auto physical damage severity is stabilizing and aligns with our historical patterns, liability severity showed a slight decline just below historical averages this quarter. Mixed results are seen in commercial multi-peril loss severity, which, although still high, is decreasing due to reduced large fire losses, though we remain vigilant about rising liability severity trends linked to social inflation and legal system challenges. Favorable frequency trends have so far balanced out rising severities, but we are watching closely and adjusting pricing accordingly. For the workers’ compensation line, medical severity has returned to our longer-term trends, confirming our prior expectation of an unusual increase in early 2024. Overall, workers’ compensation loss frequency continues to decline, with recent increases in indemnity severity tied to wage inflation. The workers’ compensation market remains competitive with continued downward rate pressures from bureaus expected to persist into 2025. Nonetheless, we believe we can maintain rate adequacy due to ongoing negative frequency trends in this line. In personal lines, net premiums written increased by 5.4% in Q3, driven by aggressive premium increases and solid policy retention, although this was impacted by a reduction in new business writings aimed at preserving profitability and the non-renewal of our legacy personal lines business in Maryland, representing about $20 million in premiums. This initiative is expected to offset some of the rate increases on premium growth until the run-off ends in August 2025. As a result of these factors, personal lines policies in force decreased by 7.3% year-over-year, although overall retention remained strong at 86.4%, showing that policyholders are accepting higher renewal premiums. Personal auto and homeowners renewal rate increases were 15.7% and 13.2%, respectively, for Q3. We believe we are effectively rate adequate overall in personal lines and will continue pursuing rate increases to combat loss trends. Our net premiums earned reflect that rate increases are surpassing loss cost increases, leading to margin expansion. Regarding personal lines profitability, the statutory combined ratio improved to 104.7% from 119.4% last year. The personal auto loss ratio decreased by 10.3 points compared to the third quarter of 2023, due in part to lower core losses and favorable reserve development. Homeowners also improved by 9.8 points year-over-year, despite the impact of Hurricane Helene, which primarily affected our policyholders in Georgia, resulting in $5.8 million in losses for our personal lines segment. We recognize the significant challenges faced by our policyholders in Georgia after the hurricane, and supporting them is our highest priority. Our claims team was well equipped to provide necessary assistance. Following Hurricane Helene, we did not receive claims from Hurricane Milton, which impacted Florida. We extend our sympathies to those affected by these disasters. As part of our personal lines strategy, we are diversifying the geographic footprint of our property book to enhance the diversification benefits and reduce weather-related losses. We are strategically targeting areas for growth and reduction at the county level across the ten states where we operate personal lines. In Q3, we successfully reduced our policies in force by 12.8% in counties where we aimed to decrease exposure, compared to a 3.0% reduction in areas deemed acceptable, helping us manage concentrations and achieve more predictable weather-related loss impacts.

Dan DeLamater, Chief Operating Officer

Thank you, Jeff. I will begin my comments by providing an update on our expense reduction initiative that we discussed in previous calls. For the third quarter, we operated at an expense ratio of 34.5%, compared to 34.1% for the third quarter of 2023. The modest increase in the expense ratio primarily reflected higher underwriting-based incentives for our agents and employees incurred during the quarter as a result of the improved loss ratio versus the third quarter of 2023. Excluding those incentives, our expense ratio decreased by approximately half of a point compared to the prior-year quarter. We have recognized significant improvement due to the impacts of various expense reduction initiatives, including agency incentive program revisions, commission schedule adjustments, targeted staffing reductions, and deferred replacement of open employment positions, among others. As a result, we are now operating at a year-to-date expense ratio of 34%, which compares favorably to 34.9% in the same period last year. And as a reminder, these expense reductions are even more noteworthy considering we are realizing the peak expense impact of Project Nautilus, our multi-year systems modernization project, in 2024. Because of multiple targeted initiatives across virtually every department in the organization, we are on pace toward our expectation to reduce our expense ratio by one full point in 2024 and two points by the end of 2025. We are proud of our teams’ commitment and resilience they have shown in this effort. These initiatives are difficult and have full visibility across the company. And for every high-profile initiative, there are dozens of smaller initiatives that contribute meaningful and sustainable expense improvement. One of the initiatives that is meaningful but reported as a separate income line item rather than an expense reduction is our implementation of a surcharge on credit card payments. The surcharge became effective in the second quarter of 2024 and explains the substantial increase in installment payment fee income in the third quarter of 2024. In summary, we recognize the need for broader efficiencies and long-lasting expense improvement to contribute to our operating profitability. I’d also like to provide an update on our state strategy initiatives that define our desired product mix, rate targets, marketing strategy, and growth objectives in every line of business within each state where we are active for either commercial lines, personal lines or both. We recently completed our annual state strategy meetings, where representatives from our regional product, underwriting, and marketing teams collaborate with senior leadership to align plans for the year ahead. These efforts are especially important as we actively manage our property concentrations in weather-prone areas. They also help guide our regional and national accounts teams toward intentional product mix and growth plans in all lines, and even identifying specific classes of business we want to emphasize for profitable growth. Many of those discussions involved action plans to expand our small business strategy and to build on early successes. As we leverage our capabilities to provide specialized services to this market segment, it enhances our ability to bolster our middle market presence for our independent agency partners across the country. Furthermore, we collaborated on refining growth postures for each state to ensure an intentional alignment of our strategic objectives and growth expectations across our operating regions and functional disciplines. This alignment will translate to a cohesive business plan for 2025, resulting in an effective allocation of resources where needed and cascading down to coordinated regional business plans and, ultimately, specific plans for our independent agency partners. We are pleased with the progress realized in the third quarter of 2024 and recognize it as a step forward toward the operating results we expect. We will continue to obtain appropriate rate increases to offset economic inflation, large loss activity, social inflation, and claims costs generally; and we will continue to maintain discipline in our expense reduction efforts. Executing on each of these initiatives is paramount to the achievement of sustained excellent financial performance.

Tony Viozzi, Chief Investment Officer

Thanks, Dan. Our investment strategy, as always, aligns with our conservative principles. We continue to focus on holding high-quality credits that are characterized by strong investment income and low volatility. Ultimately, our goal is not only to preserve capital, but also to manage a portfolio that is resilient, adaptable, and capable of generating consistent returns, regardless of market conditions. During the third quarter of 2024, net investment income increased 2.8% from the prior-year quarter to $10.8 million. The average net investment income yield for the quarter was 3.28%, up from 3.22% for the third quarter of 2023. Current market interest rates remain generally elevated compared to the past decade, allowing us to reinvest our portfolio cash flow into bonds with significantly higher yields. Overall, our average reinvestment rate of 5.25% during the third quarter represented an 89 basis point improvement over the bond cash flow yield during the quarter. We expect approximately $100 million in cash flow from maturities, calls, and pay-downs over the next 12 months. The average yield we are currently receiving on those bonds is 3.70%. During the third quarter, we continued our move out of agency debt and shifted into corporate debt. We actively monitor macroeconomic indicators and market conditions to identify opportunities that may arise during periods of volatility. With that, we have continued to increase our equity position gradually, with a 39% increase in equity holdings compared to year-end 2023. We achieved a $1.9 million net investment gain on equities in the third quarter, compared to a loss of $1.2 million in the prior-year third quarter. Year-to-date net investment gains on equities were $4.7 million compared to $930,000 last year-to-date. As of September 30, 2024, our book value per share was $15.22, an $0.83 increase compared to $14.39 as of December 31, 2023. The increase in book value was primarily attributable to net investment income along with our gains on available-for-sale bonds and the equity portfolio, which was partially offset by a modest year-to-date underwriting loss and declared cash dividends. With that, I will now turn it back to Kevin for closing remarks.

Kevin Burke, President and CEO

Thanks, Tony. As we shared throughout the call today, our underlying results are beginning to reflect all the efforts our entire team has put forth. For several years, I have been optimistic and hopeful that the significant organizational changes and investments in systems, capabilities, and talent would yield positive results. That optimism has led to a growing confidence that our strategies will yield the intended results, and we look forward to providing further updates to you in our year-end call. I’ll now turn the call over to Karin.

Operator, Operator