Kinsale Capital Group, Inc. Q1 FY2024 Earnings Call

Before we get started, let me remind everyone that through the course of the teleconference, Kinsale's management may make comments that reflect their intentions, beliefs and expectations for the future. As always, these forward-looking statements are subject to certain risk factors, which could cause actual results to differ materially. These risk factors are listed in the company's various SEC filings, including the 2023 Annual Report on Form 10-K, which should be reviewed carefully. The company has furnished a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission that contains the press release announcing its first quarter results. Kinsale's management may also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures in the call today. A reconciliation of GAAP to these measures can be found in the press release, which is available at the company's website at www.kinsalecapitalgroup.com. I will now turn the conference over to Kinsale's Chairman and CEO, Mr. Michael Kehoe. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. As is our usual approach, Bryan Petrucelli, our CFO; and Brian Haney, our President and COO, and I will each make a few comments, and then we'll move on to the Q&A. In the first quarter of 2024, Kinsale's operating earnings per share increased by 43.4% and gross written premium grew by 25.5% over the first quarter of 2023. For the quarter, the company posted a combined ratio of 79.5% and has posted an operating return on equity of 28.9%. The company's strategy of disciplined E&S underwriting and technology-enabled low costs drive these results and allows us to generate attractive returns and take market share from competitors at the same time. As just mentioned, growth in gross written premium grew in the first quarter to 25.5%, from 33.8% in the fourth quarter of 2023 and down from 40% growth we've experienced over the last several years. This deceleration over the last couple of quarters is mostly driven by the property market's return to a normal level of competition from the crisis-like environment in 2022 and early 2023. Property continues to be an attractive opportunity with favorable pricing and growth rates, and we remain optimistic about this area of the E&S market looking forward. The casualty market remains attractive as well with levels of competition varying by product line. Our growth rate in casualty differs from one line to another, but in general, we see this area as steady to slightly improving. Brian Haney will offer some additional commentary on the E&S market here in a moment. Overall, the P&C industry continues to work through challenges around frequency and severity, catastrophes, inflation in general, and rising loss cost in particular, and expanding and at times unpredictable litigation financing and loss reserve adequacy, particularly on longer-tail occurrence lines. All of these challenges and a variety of others should contribute to drive stability and growth opportunity in the market for the foreseeable future. Beyond the industry-wide challenges noted above, it's our own business strategy here at Kinsale that drives our confidence and prospects for significant future profit and growth. It's the focus on smaller risks within the E&S market, the absolute control we exercise over our underwriting and claims management operations, the best-in-class service level and risk appetite we provide to our brokers, and our technology-driven low-cost operation that differentiate Kinsale from competitors across the industry. In many ways, the competitive advantages we have become even more significant as the market becomes more competitive in the years ahead. Finally, just a reminder that establishing conservative reserves to pay future claims is a fundamental part of our business strategy. As we have noted before, some of the original conservatism of the 2016 through 2019 accident years has been eroded away by inflation, although with booked ultimate loss ratios in the low 60% range, these accident years remain highly profitable. These years have developed favorably on an inception-to-date basis, except for the 2018 year, which is slightly adverse. From the 2020 accident year looking forward, our pricing has exceeded loss cost trend, and we have been more cautious with leasing reserves, giving us full confidence that our overall reserves are in the best position in our company's history. Likewise, investors should have confidence in the strength of our balance sheet and the prospects for continued favorable development in the years ahead. With that, I'm going to turn the call over to Bryan Petrucelli.

Thanks, Mike. Another great quarter from a profitability perspective with net income and net operating earnings increasing by 77.3% and 43.8% respectively. The 79.5% combined ratio for the quarter includes 2.7 points from net favorable prior year loss reserve development, compared to 3.7 points last year with negligible cat losses in either period. As Mike mentioned, we're taking a more cautious approach to releasing reserves and encouraging current year loss ratio picks. The expense ratio continues to benefit from higher ceding commissions from the company's casualty and commercial property proportional reinsurance agreements as a result of growth in the lines of business ceded into those treaties. The expense ratio decreased by 1 point from 21.7% in the first quarter of 2023 to 20.7% this year, with almost all coming from lower net commissions. On the investment side, net investment income increased by 59.1% over the last year, as a result of the continued growth in the investment portfolio generated from strong operating cash flows and higher interest rates. With a gross return of 4.3% for the year compared to 3.7% last year, we haven't made any significant changes to our investment strategy and continue to monitor inflation, interest rates, and related Fed policy commentary and will adjust as circumstances warrant. New money yields are averaging in the low to mid-5% range with an average duration of 2.8 years consistent with year-end. Lastly, diluted operating earnings per share continues to improve and was $3.50 per share for the quarter, compared to $2.44 per share for the first quarter of 2023. With that, I'll pass it over to Brian Haney.

Thanks, Bryan. As mentioned earlier, premium grew 25.5% in the first quarter. We continue to see growth in most of our divisions. Casualty and Property continue to grow, and we are seeing particularly strong growth in our small property, entertainment, and general category divisions, as well as in some of our newer divisions like High Value Homeowners and Commercial Auto. We operate in a wide range of markets, not one monolithic market. There are areas where there is much more competition and growth is harder to come by, such as our Life Sciences and Management Liability divisions. Submission growth continues to be strong in the low 20s for the quarter, consistent with most of 2023. This number is subject to some variability, but generally, we view submissions as a leading indicator of growth, and we see the submission growth rate as a positive signal. Turning to rates, in past quarters, we reported real rate changes, nominal rate changes adjusted for trend. While we felt that was a better measure of how rate adequacy was changing, given that the rest of the market reports nominal rate change, we felt our approach created potential confusion. Therefore, we are pivoting back to reporting nominal rate changes. We see rates being up around 7% on a nominal basis, down from around 8% last quarter. The market isn't a monolith; in some areas, our rate increases are higher than 7%, while in others, they are lower. In some targeted areas, we've reduced rates because the margins are so high that we feel the trade-off between rates and growth is worthwhile. Overall, that 7% still puts us ahead of trend, and we believe the business we are putting on our books is the best priced in our history. Regarding inflation, we feel the adverse development seen in the industry on some longer-tail casualty lines is partly due to a spike in inflation. The challenge with long-tail lines is that you set prices in initial reserves with the knowledge at the time, but there is a long lag between pricing the business and paying claims, during which unforeseen events can impact the value of those claims. It's fair to assume no one in the industry anticipated the pandemic, nor the significant expansion of the money supply that followed. That additional money in the economy created a wave of inflation that disproportionately affected certain costs more than others, like construction costs. This effectively repriced the reserves for the longer-tailed casualty lines. The uncertainty created by this longer payout pattern in some lines reinforces the wisdom of our conservative approach to reserves that Mike referred to earlier. There are many unknowns in setting reserves, and a lot can happen between setting those reserves and paying claims. We must be cautious. While inflation has moderated somewhat from its highs, it seems it will take longer to return to the Fed's target of 2%, which many prognosticators had forecast. This may continue to create reserving issues for some of our competitors in a weaker financial position. This gives us a sense of optimism, particularly regarding the technical difficulty in the biggest market. This was another good quarter, and we are happy with the results. With that, I'll hand it back over to Mike.

Okay. Operator, we're ready for any questions in the queue.

Your first question comes from Michael Zaremski from BMO Capital Markets.

This is Jack on for Mike. Our first question is on the loss ratio. Historically, we've seen a pattern of seasonality in that reserve releases tend to be higher in the early part of the year and then decelerate, then the opposite trend occurs for the underlying asset. Your loss ratio starts out higher and then improves. Given your comments about adding conservatism to reserves in light of inflationary trends, do you expect that to change the historical seasonality pattern?

I don't think we expect it to change. I think the starting point is just slightly higher because we're setting slightly higher loss picks and we're releasing reserves at a slightly slower pace. And that's purely kind of an additional measure of conservatism against a backdrop of inflation, et cetera, in the economy.

Got it. Has Kinsale opportunistically grown in property in recent years, and that's paid off well for shareholders? If property pricing decelerates, will you consider looking to grow less in those lines of business, or are absolute margins still excellent even if pricing is less positive? Is any property business expected to lead the E&S marketplace? If it does, can Kinsale access it in the standard or non-E&S marketplace as well?

I would say that property pricing is likely at a 20-year high. As mentioned in our prepared remarks, we see this as a very attractive opportunity for growth. We will always prioritize profitability over growth. Therefore, the future trends in the market will significantly influence the pace of growth in that line of business. We're very optimistic. Currently, we are not witnessing any significant inroads from standard companies.

We're not. To specifically answer one question you had, we do not have an admitted company. So we would not write admitted business.

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Hughes from Truist.

Mike or Brian or Bryan, what do you make of the state E&S data that seem to show a meaningful deceleration, particularly in March? What do you make of that? Did you see anything like that in your own experience? Any kind of volatility at the end of the quarter?

I don't know what to make of it, Mark. Other than the E&S market has grown at a double-digit clip for 6 years in a row. So I think the 7% growth in Q1 is not a surprise. I don't know if there can be lags in the reporting of some of that data or not. So I don't really have anything additional there. Our overall growth slowed slightly compared to where it's been. But given the dramatic growth of 40%, give or take, over a 6-year period, it was not unexpected, right? We're still growing at a very rapid rate, and we're still very optimistic about growth prospects looking forward.

Are you able to share the breakout in terms of growth, the growth rates in property versus the growth in casualty in the quarter?

We don't break it out, but it varies quite a bit from one division to the next. We've got 24 different underwriting divisions, each of which is organized either around an industry segment or a coverage. So you see a rapid growth or pretty material variance from one to the next. As Brian has indicated, it's really a mistake to look at E&S as one monolithic market. There's a lot of submarkets within that, and that's reflected in the relative growth. He hit on some of the divisions that are growing more rapidly and some that are growing more slowly already.

Yes. One exercise you could consider is reviewing the statutory data, which would illustrate the pattern Mike mentioned. The property segment experienced a significant crisis market, contributing to its 40% growth rate for an extended period. Meanwhile, the underlying casualty market has remained robust and, as Mike stated, continues to show strength.

What should we think about the 2Q? You had such a strong growth rate in this quarter last year. Should we assume that you're going to renew all that business and grow on the side as well? Or does this present an unusual comparison? And so Q2 might be slower just because of the tough comp?

We don't forecast growth. We won't offer growth guidance, but I think that's an interesting observation, Mark. Tough comp.

Yes. And then finally, the tax rate, what's a good full year tax rate?

Yes. So, I think Mark, if you take a look at our tax rates sort of over a 12-month period, that would give you a better sort of guide as to what to pick. There were a fair amount of stock options exercised in the first quarter, so that drove it down. But I think if you go back and look at the past 4 quarters, you could come up with a pretty good take from that.

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Andersen from Jefferies.

I think on the 4Q call recognizing you're not really trying to give guidance, but I think you said you wouldn't take issue with thinking flat underlying loss ratios for '24. Does that still stand, or does the increase in accident year picks this quarter mean that full year '24 could perhaps be 1 point higher compared to '23's 57.4%?

Yes, Andrew, this is Mike. We review actual loss activity each quarter and reassess all our actuarial assumptions. I can say that this past quarter, as with previous years, our actual loss activity was lower than expected. We are considering factors like inflation and loss cost trends, and we aim to keep the company in a very conservative position. Therefore, your observation about the one point is valid.

Okay. I think you mentioned some new divisions launching for growth, Commercial Auto and homeowners. Where are we in the development for that? Is that contributing meaningfully to growth currently? I think the Commercial Auto comment was new. Is that correct?

No, it's not new. We've been in that for a while. If you look at the 10-K, we break out production by underwriting division on an annual basis, but we don't do it quarterly. The annual numbers will give you a pretty good insight into...

I would say they are not contributing significantly at this time. However, if you consider how our product works, we start off slowly; we don’t aim to dominate the market immediately, and then we grow over time. In three, four, or five years down the line, it starts to have a more substantial impact. Since we launched the company, we've added around 14 divisions, all following that same growth trajectory.

Your next question comes from the line of Bill Carcache from Wolfe Research.

As the industry is a low-cost producer, do you think Kinsale is leveraging its competitive advantage to the extent possible? How much room is there for Kinsale to potentially nudge pricing a little bit lower to sustain longer growth? Your operating ROEs are certainly very strong, but is there room for you to sort of accept a slightly lower ROE in exchange for incremental growth? This sort of raises questions around how you think about the trade-off between returns, growth, and pricing?

Bill, this is Brian Haney. Yes, obviously, what we're trying to do is maximize the wealth building for the investors, and I think that starts with maximizing underwriting profit. What we're really trying to solve for is what combination of ROE and growth is the right number to maximize that? I think you're absolutely correct. We don't have to have a 30-ish ROE to maximize book value. In certain areas, we're looking at cutting rates to grow faster. In certain areas, in some of the Casualty lines, we don't need to do that because we're growing fast enough as it is. Yes, division by division, we're looking at that exact calculation regularly. Again, the goal is not to have a certain ROE; the goal is to drive as much value to the company and the investors as we can. But there is definitely room. You're correct that being a low-cost operator gives us leeway that our competitors don't have.

That's why I made the comment earlier about the fact that in a more competitive market, that low-cost feature of our business model becomes even more powerful.

Understood. And if I could squeeze in one last one. I guess one could argue that many of the top carriers in the E&S space are also the same players writing admitted business. They have a little of a gain from seeing that business migrate back to the Admitted markets. Could you speak to whether you're seeing any evidence of admitted carriers trying to use pricing to win business back from E&S?

The short answer is no. We're not seeing business flow out of E&S into Admitted. I think you're correct that most of the big admitted companies also have big E&S operations. To the extent we're seeing increased competition or where we're seeing increased competition, it's not from Admitted; it's generally from MGAs.

Our next question comes from the line of Pablo Singzon from JPMorgan.

First one, just about the conservatism you're adding to your accident year loss pick. Is that justified by the data you're seeing today? In other words, are you sort of assuming a better spread with nominal pricing and loss trends? Or are you just setting an extra level of conservatism beyond what you're actually seeing in the data and the loss results now?

Well, this is Mike, Pablo. Our actual losses are coming in below expectations, okay? And that's this quarter, and that's been a trend for a number of years. On the other hand, there are a lot of assumptions in our actuarial model that are forward-looking, loss cost trend, and the like. Given the heightened inflation in the economy, I think it just injects a little bit more uncertainty. So we're offsetting that uncertainty with a little bit more conservatism.

Understood. Just a follow-up, Mike, on your comment about actual losses running light here. I think one area where you see that is in your incurred, which has been running low for several years already. I think that's part of the reason why you've been releasing reserves from more recent accident years. Just your thoughts on what you're trying to do there?

Yes. I want to mention that we are gradually releasing reserves compared to previous years. We've consistently highlighted the accident years from 2016 to 2019, particularly concerning our long-tail occurrence business that is largely construction related. These accident years have developed later than we expected, prompting us to respond accordingly. There are various actuarial assumptions we evaluate as we post our financials each quarter. We continuously examine actual loss activity and reassess those actuarial assumptions. If we find an area where we may have been too optimistic, we make adjustments. However, in this setting, where we cannot delve into too much detail due to the complexity of the topic, it's crucial for investors to understand that prioritizing the posting of loss reserves today to cover future claims conservatively is a major focus for management. We aim to ensure that we have more than enough funds allocated. This is our objective, and while we haven't achieved perfection, we have been quite successful over the course of our 15 years in business. We are committed to maintaining that strong track record, even with the increased uncertainty related to inflation and other factors.

Yes. Understood. And last one, Mike, I'm going to ask you some thoughts to give a bit here, but just given all the reserving issues that are sort of bubbling under the surface now and slowly emerging, do you think that creates another pricing lag for casualty? Clearly last year was property, but do you think this creates more opportunities in casualty?

Yes. I think we're seeing that right now in the deals we're looking at in casualty.

Yes. I think there's also this enormous expansion in the delegated underwriting authority market over the last number of years is kind of an interesting anomaly, if you will, in that normally hard markets are associated with a contraction in delegated underwriting. In this market, we've had this hard market the last several years at a time when we've had an expansion in delegated underwriting authorities. Clearly, some of those are very well managed, and we're not indicting that model of business even though we're not engaged in it. But there are a lot of those delegated underwriting authorities that can be wildly aggressive in their underwriting and pricing. We see that as an area for likely future contraction, which I think is bullish for the market, and I think it's bullish for Kinsale.

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Andersen from Jefferies.

Just wanted to go back to the rate increase number of 7%. Just to be clear, that's what we can think of as a pure rate number, and then we could perhaps add on a few points of exposure that acts as rate.

Yes, that's correct.

The loss trend against a 7%, plus a few points would be approximately 8%?

Somewhere in the neighborhood, somewhere 4% to 5%.

And there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Michael Kehoe for some final closing remarks.

Okay. Well, thanks, everybody, for joining us, and we look forward to speaking with you again here soon. Have a great day.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.