Ryan Specialty Holdings, Inc. Q4 FY2022 Earnings Call

Greetings, and welcome to Ryan Specialty Group Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. At this time all participants are in listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Noah Angeletti, Head of Investor Relations and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today for Ryan Specialty Holdings Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. In addition to this call, we filed a press release with the SEC earlier this afternoon, which has also been posted to our website at ryanspecialty.com. On today's call, management's prepared remarks and answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements. Investors should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statement. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed today. We encourage listeners to review the more detailed discussion of these risk factors contained in the Company's filings with the SEC. We assume no duty to update such forward-looking statements in the future, except as required by law. Additionally, certain non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed on this call and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most closely comparable measures prepared in accordance with GAAP are included in our earnings release, which is filed with the SEC and available on the Company's website. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to the Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Ryan Specialty, Pat Ryan.

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us to discuss our fourth quarter results. Joining us on today's call is our President, Tim Turner; our CFO, Jeremiah Bickham; and our CEO of Underwriting Managers, Miles Wuller. Before we discuss Ryan Specialty's 2022 performance, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the passing of Andrew J. McKenna. Andy was an invaluable member of our Board since its inception in 2012, serving on the Compensation and Governance Committee and as our Lead Director. Andy was a national voice on the topic of corporate governance, a Chicago institution, a business icon, humanitarian, philanthropist, husband, father, brother, and dear friend. He will be missed by all who knew him. 2022 was an outstanding year for Ryan Specialty. The tireless efforts and dedication of our brokers, underwriters, and the entire Ryan Specialty team are evident in our results. For the full year, we generated record revenue of over $1.7 billion, driven by organic growth of 16.4% on top of 22.4% in 2021, and produced a strong adjusted EBITDAC margin of 30%. I want to take a few minutes to highlight some noteworthy achievements in 2022, which were significant for our firm. We invested in exceptional talent while onboarding the largest production class in our history. We enhanced our capabilities through new product offerings and integrated our 2021 acquisitions of Keystone and Crouse, both of which exceeded their growth goals for the first year as a part of the Ryan Specialty team. We were pleased to announce a highly strategic acquisition, Griffin Underwriting Services, which closed on January 3 of this year. With approximately $23 million in revenue, Griffin deepens our offerings in the Pacific Northwest, broadening our geographic scope and our capabilities in binding authority and brokerage specialties. Importantly, Griffin's consistent underwriting results, deep bench of talent, and focus on training and development are a clear cultural match with Ryan Specialty, further enhancing Ryan Specialty's role as a trading partner to our retailers. Continuing our winning culture, I'm pleased to report another year of 97% retention of our producers, consistent with 2021. For the fourth quarter, total revenue grew 14.9%, led by 10.3% organic growth. We also grew our adjusted EBITDAC and generated another quarter of solid adjusted net income. In the fourth quarter, the specific headwinds we noted on our prior call were in line with our expectations. We anticipate that these headwinds will persist into at least the first half of 2023. That said, we were very pleased to see the strength in property manifest itself late in Q4, which drove the modest outperformance versus our expectations for the quarter. As we progress through 2023, there are three things we believe you can expect from Ryan Specialty. First, we see continued solid growth in the business. Although there is heightened macro uncertainty, the complexity of risk continues to increase, and as a result, we believe the E&S market will continue to be a standout within the insurance industry. We expect our growth will be balanced across our diverse portfolio of products and solutions, enabling us to capture the broader E&S tailwinds while capitalizing on specific areas of accelerated growth. We expect to grow our business through M&A. Our pipeline remains robust, both in tuck-ins and some larger platform opportunities. We continue to focus on M&A opportunities with the highest quality specialty distributors, including wholesale, delegated authority, and benefits. We will also look to grow our business through our alternative risk strategy, arranging alternative capital to support our clients, expanding our addressable market and building on our culture of innovation. Second, we will continue to invest in our business. We expect another year of targeted hiring, adding industry top talent in both underwriting and broking as needed, as well as continuing to build our internship program at Ryan Specialty University. We will also make additional investment in our delegated authority specialties, including the systems and technology to further enhance our actuarial risk management and loss control teams. And third, we will execute on strategic initiatives to increase the scalability of our operating platform. Today, we are announcing the launch of Accelerate 2025, a two-year restructuring program effective in Q1. Through this program, we're making changes and investments that will enable continued growth, drive innovation, and deliver sustainable productivity improvements over the long term. Accelerate 2025 is a natural progression of our strategy that brings together our people and assets in a way that allows us to continue to rapidly innovate and more efficiently provide new and improved solutions to the most complex challenges that our clients face. Jeremiah will provide more details in his remarks, but we anticipate a cumulative special charge of approximately $65 million through 2024. We expect the program will deliver approximately $35 million of annual savings in 2025 and further enhance our ability to scale our platform in the years beyond. Accelerate 2025 is designed in concert with our growth strategy, and we will continue to make investment decisions including hiring and M&A based on a disciplined return on capital both now and in the future. Looking forward, I'm confident that 2023 will be another strong year for our firm. We expect sustained growth and have a flexible business model that allows us to quickly adapt and pivot to changing market conditions. As we've noted previously, risks across industries are only becoming more complex, and the E&S market has continued to outpace the overall P&C insurance market. Our products are larger compulsory, and our clients and trading partners value the unparalleled expertise we bring as we anticipate their needs and work tirelessly to provide the right solutions for our insurers. This, along with our other secular growth drivers, should allow us to continue generating double-digit organic growth over the long term. In summary, I'm very proud of our entire team for delivering outstanding results for our clients, trading partners, and shareholders in a challenging insurance market and macro environment. Through innovation and exceptional customer service, we have once again validated our differentiated business model and continue to be a trusted partner to substantially all of the top 100 retailers. Now, I'll turn it over to Tim.

Thank you very much, Pat. It was another solid quarter and year across our specialties. These results are a testament to the teamwork across the firm, from our producers to our underwriters and their teams. As Pat noted, the E&S market continued to grow in importance to the insurance industry, and we capitalized on these industry trends. Diving into our specialties. Our Wholesale Brokerage specialty achieved another quarter of solid growth spread across many lines of business. Property continues to experience a historically hard market as rates rose significantly and capacity tightened. We are seeing a large volume of new business flow into the non-admitted market, and we remain very encouraged by Property's potential looking ahead. As we've noted previously, major events such as Hurricane Ian, winter storms, and other climate events, as well as a tougher reinsurance renewal process, have led to less capacity as well as even higher rates. This is producing increasing demand for insurance solutions and recurring opportunities for our experience and expertise to fill that need. Cyber performed well in the fourth quarter and for the year. While we continue to see a moderation in rate increases, we believe there is ample runway for us to pursue regardless of short-term pricing trends. Our technical expertise in areas like cyber is playing a significant role in our ability to build large towers of capacity for our clients. Our transportation practice, particularly in trucking, continues to see substantial flow fueled by social inflation, ensuring a need for continued rate increases. We continue to win new business and remain well positioned for 2023 to capitalize on additional growth opportunities. In our Binding Authority specialty, we saw another quarter of solid growth in traditional binding, which includes small commercial business that has historically been economically sensitive. This growth was partially offset by our personal lines Binding Authority, which was still experiencing capacity constraints prior to renewals. We continue to see the potential for panel consolidation as a long and steady growth opportunity, and we are well positioned to execute. Our underwriting management specialty posted another strong quarter led by property and casualty, healthcare, and our reinsurance MGU, Ryan Re, despite headwinds in our transactional liability lines, driven by lower M&A volume. As Pat noted, in the fourth quarter, the specific headwinds in certain lines we raised on our prior call, are rapid rate declines in public company D&O, lower external M&A and IPO volumes, transactional liability, and delayed project-based starts in construction were in line with our expectations. We anticipate that these headwinds will persist into at least the first half of 2023. We remain confident that we have the right teams in place to grow these lines over the long term. In terms of the E&S market, our observation is that pricing has remained firm in January and into February in most classes of business with public company D&O being the ongoing exception. In addition, the standard market carrier competition we observed on the periphery and which we flagged on prior earnings calls has yet to meaningfully impact rate or flow in the aggregate. As we've said previously, we expect the flow of business into the non-admitted market to continue to be a significant driver of Ryan Specialty's growth, more so than rate. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Jeremiah Bickham, who will give you more detail on the financial results of our fourth quarter. Thank you.

Thank you, Tim. In Q4, we grew total revenue 14.9% period-over-period to $435 million, fueled by another solid quarter of organic revenue growth at 10.3%, reflecting ongoing tailwinds in much of the E&S market and continuing to win a substantial amount of new business. We were pleased to see the strength in property late in Q4, specifically in the last two weeks of December, which drove the modest outperformance versus our expectations for the quarter. Net income for Q4 '22 was $46 million or $0.14 per diluted share. Adjusted net income for the quarter, which excludes IPO-related and other unusual items, was $74 million or $0.27 per diluted share. Adjusted EBITDAC for the fourth quarter grew 6% period-over-period to $127 million, while adjusted EBITDAC margin declined 250 basis points to 29.3%. Our adjusted EBITDAC margin was impacted by continued investments in the business and T&E continuing to return to normalized levels, which were partially offset by higher fiduciary investment income. As Pat noted, in 2023, we expect to continue bringing aboard top underwriting and broking talent wherever we see clear opportunities to grow lines of business. We also expect to recruit a significant class of new talent at Ryan Specialty in the months ahead. In addition, as we noted in our release earlier today and in Pat's earlier remarks, we are embarking on our Accelerate 2025 program, which will strengthen how Ryan Specialty operates and further improve our efficiency and unlock additional value for our clients and shareholders. Over the last four years alone, our revenue has more than doubled, headcount is up 50%, and all while the U.S. E&S market has grown by over 80%. We believe this is the right time to continue building on our success and have thoughtfully designed a program that will prepare Ryan Specialty for the next cycle of growth. Accelerate 2025 will result in approximately $65 million of cumulative charges through 2024. In turn, we expect it to generate annual savings of approximately $35 million in 2025 and facilitate even greater operating leverage thereafter. Based on our current forecast, we expect to record GAAP interest expense, which is net of interest income on our operating funds of approximately $120 million in 2023. As Pat and Tim mentioned, we remain very excited about our long-term growth opportunities and value proposition. As a result, we are guiding full year 2023 organic revenue growth to be between 10% to 13%. We believe the first half of 2023 will see continued headwinds in certain areas, but we expect that pressure to ease in the back half of the year. In addition, we are guiding adjusted EBITDAC margin for the full year 2023 to be between 29.0% and 30.0%. We will continue investing in talent during the year, as well as the annualization of our 2022 headcount growth, which from a margin perspective will be partially offset by increases in fiduciary investment income during 2023. These investments, particularly in the recruitment of new colleagues, offer the highest returns for our shareholders, and we continue to aggressively recruit and build out our teams to meet the challenges, demands, and opportunities of the marketplace. In summary, we were very pleased with our overall performance in 2022, and we remain very excited for the path ahead. The current economic and insurance cycles present both challenges and opportunities, and our flexible and diversified business model positions us well to best serve our clients in a time where we are more relevant than ever before. With that, we thank you for your time, and we'd like to open up the call for Q&A.

The first question today is from Elyse Greenspan of Wells Fargo.

My first question, the Q4 organic was 10.3%. And, like, you saw the headwinds that you guys spoke about last quarter, and it sounds like you expect them to persist in the first half, right, and then get better but property rates, right, it sounds like you only saw the benefit of that for two weeks, and perhaps you get the benefit, right, throughout '23. So wouldn't the baseline expectation be that all quarters of '23, I guess, should show growth that's a better level than the fourth quarter?

Elyse, we believe our guidance range for the year should be viewed with a focus on organic growth on an annual basis rather than quarter to quarter, as trends can be difficult to identify in short timeframes. You are correct that the challenges we mentioned that impacted us in the third and fourth quarters occurred as anticipated. As Tim noted in his prepared comments, we believe these challenges will continue at least through the first half of the year. We did see an improvement from property in late fourth quarter, which we expect to benefit us throughout 2023, but it remains early to determine how significant this improvement will be on an annual scale due to numerous variables and overall macroeconomic uncertainty. Additionally, we face particularly challenging comparisons in the first and second quarters. Tim can provide more insights on the property market specifically. However, looking at the bigger picture, we are confident that the overall results of the challenges and opportunities should yield a positive outcome for us and the E&S market as a whole. Our value proposition for our clients remains strong at this time.

And then with your property book, do you have a greater concentration in one quarter versus another? Or would the revenue from property be even throughout the four quarters with some slight variation?

We do. It's well recorded that the second quarter is the strongest wind buying season, and we expect the flow of business that has increased month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter to continue to increase, and we'll capitalize on that. We're very well positioned on the broking and the underwriting side for that.

And then lastly, you guys pointed to what sounds like an active M&A pipeline. Can you just provide a little bit of color on just how it looks today, what types of deals you're looking at? And just do you think we might see some deals sooner than later? Or do you have a sense of timing on transactions?

We mentioned that there is a strong pipeline, and it's quite interesting as many companies are considering coming to market. We are actively encouraging some to make that move. As you know, we aim to identify really promising companies and help improve them. I believe we have a successful history in this regard. The pipeline I’m referring to includes those we have been in discussions with over the past year, many of whom weren't ready before. Some are still not fully prepared, but they are getting closer, while others appear to be nearing readiness, and we are having productive conversations with them. To summarize, as we start 2023, the potential for attracting high-quality companies that align with our overall strategy looks encouraging. While we cannot specify the timing, we are engaged in serious discussions with a few candidates.

The next question is from Mike Zaremski of BMO Capital Markets.

On the cost efficiency initiative, I was hoping you can just give some more color whether the program is weighted towards distinct buckets. Some of your peers have talked about collapsing back offices, outsourcing, and less real estate. Is there anything you'd like to call out? And just on the cost program as well, just some clarification. Just the margin guidance, is that inclusive or exclusive of the charges over the coming two years?

Well, thanks, Mike. I'll just start out and turn it over to Jeremiah. These are proactive strategic initiatives. We're always challenging ourselves to improve our ability to serve our clients. So we believe we're taking a great platform to the next level of operating excellence so we can better serve those clients and prepare for the next wave of what we believe is exceptional growth ahead of us. Jeremiah, do you want to pick up?

Yes. Thank you, Pat. So Mike, I know it's hot off the press. But in the 8-K we filed today, we do list out the buckets of all the action areas. You'll see that the vast majority of the charge and the savings are going to come from ops and technology optimization, which we're really excited about. We think that those actions, those investments will lead to sustainable productivity improvements and savings over time. To give you some examples of where we expect efficiencies to come from, streamlining our mid- and back-office processes, consolidating and upgrading technology platforms that should drive automation, consolidating vendors, and then expanding our shared service model. I'll also note that the investments we're accelerating in our data and analytics will help us innovate faster, serve clients with more distinction, and help us further differentiate ourselves from our competitors. We're very excited to kick this program off.

And just a clarification. The margin guidance for next year is exclusive of the charges, correct?

Correct. Correct.

Okay. As a follow-up, Tim mentioned in the prepared remarks, and I believe you addressed it in Elyse's question, that property performance was very strong in the latter half of the fourth quarter. Is that trend continuing into 2023? You have made it clear that there are some challenges in the first half of the year. I’m curious if the strong property momentum, which exceeded expectations, has extended into the beginning of the year.

It certainly has. It continues to increase in submission flow rate. The entire channel is growing and expanding rapidly. We're seeing the start of the conversion rates picking up, and we expect that to continue. Reinsurance treaty renewals are expected to be very difficult, and we see more dumping and shedding of CAT property business in the standard market flowing into our channel.

But just as a follow-up, just to be clear, you're saying, though, you're not seeing much price acceleration in the E&S marketplace inclusive of property, which may be seeing some pricing hardening.

Well, we're definitely seeing the increases in CAT property, but the entire flow of business in property and casualty and E&S ebbs and flows. We have some moderating, some price deceleration, but we see prices going up in certain classes like transportation, habitational, healthcare, sports and entertainment, and higher education rates continue to climb and terms continue to be difficult in those long-tail casualty classes.

The next question is from Rob Cox of Goldman Sachs.

So it looks like just on the margin guide that the midpoint is lower than where you were at for 2022 and double-digit organic growth, the tailwind of a fiduciary investment income. So I'm just wondering what the offset there is you talked about talent investments. Is that the only thing that's really offsetting the margins here? Or are there other investments you're making?

Rob, that's a great question. To provide some context, our platform has shown it can scale effectively. We've increased our margins by 500 basis points since the end of 2019. If you had asked any of us a couple of years ago, we would have said that our performance at the end of 2022 was slightly ahead of where we expected to be in terms of margins. As we've indicated, most years we can demonstrate scaling on a reported basis. Last year, we were very clear and pleased to announce our goal to onboard the largest production class in our history, which we accomplished. This will have a positive impact on our run rate in 2023. As Tim mentioned earlier, we will continue to make strategic production hires this year. These investments offer the best return on investment we can make, and we believe they are essential for our long-term growth. We are confident in our strategy. Moreover, the Accelerate 2025 program, which both Pat and I have referenced, is set to significantly improve our margins by 2025 and will facilitate further annual scaling afterward. Overall, we are optimistic about our current margin situation and believe we are making the right investments to promote sustained growth in both revenue and margins over the long term.

Appreciate that. And just next, on the organic guide and the different businesses you have, maybe you could talk about how you think the three businesses could perform relative to the consolidated guide? And how you feel about the capital backing you have on the underwriting management side of the business?

Yes. I think we've shared in past meetings that our growth is not constrained by capital. We're well supported by our carrier partners. We've got a great track record of delivering underwriting profit to the community, allowing them to help support new products and incremental capacity to current lines. To the heart of your question, what is going to prompt continued growth is we're pleased to share we're coming into the year with incremental property capacity and capability, again, reflective of our great results across the platform. We believe that we continue to build new facilities and add capacity to existing as a source of ongoing growth.

I'll take the first part of the question. Following up on what Miles said, we have experienced and we expect to continue to experience significant organic growth in delegated authority underwriting and managing underwriting. I have every reason to believe that the open market wholesale brokerage will have very strong growth. As we've said, we started our Alternative Risk vertical, and they've had good organic growth, and we look forward to significant organic growth there. As you know, we've been working on the launching of the benefit strategy. These numbers are not in the forecast because we haven't executed yet. However, when we execute on the benefit strategy, it will be a higher growth rate than normal in the industry with higher margins than the normal in the industry.

The next question is from Weston Bloomer of UBS.

My first question on $35 million in sales in 2025, should we expect any of the sales to come in 2023 or 2024? Or when should we kind of start to see that ramp up? Is it after you take the charges? Or how should we think about that?

Yes. So I'll take you through the high-level path on the charges and the savings. You'll see charges trickle in, in Q1 and Q2 of this year, but they really ramp up in H2. By the end of this year, or let's call it, end of Q1 '24 at the latest, we'll be through more than half of the $65 million charge and then take the remainder through the end of '24. No savings in '23, some savings in '24, which we'll report on as we go. The full $35 million will be realized in fiscal year 2025.

Great. Regarding my second question, could you clarify the uplift you are observing in property? Based on rough calculations, it appears to have contributed positively by approximately 200 to 300 basis points in the fourth quarter. Can I assume that you anticipate a similar uplift in 2023? I understand this might vary, but I'm interested in your outlook and how it factors into your guidance.

There are many factors included in our guidance. I don't want to suggest any false precision regarding the figures you mentioned. Our guidance range for Q4 was between 3% and 9%, and we slightly exceeded it at 10.3%. This was primarily due to property. As Tim mentioned, the property market is quite challenging at the moment and may continue to become more difficult. We anticipate that will have a net positive effect. However, when it comes to estimating the basis points for the 10% to 13% guidance for this year, it's quite challenging to determine accurately.

Great. And then on the cadence for organic growth throughout the year, is there any way to quantify maybe first half versus second half? Like is the first half of the year going to be in the mid-single-digit range or upper single-digit range or close to the low end of the guidance? I know you said there's difficult comps in the first half, and we should look at it on a full-year basis, but any additional granularity for the 1Q or 2Q would be helpful.

You've got the key points. The tougher comps are in H1, and then we expect the worst of our headwinds to manifest in H1. So H1, there's going to be a lot of challenges on an annual basis. We think that we're going to come through quite well, but there's a reason that we only guide on an annual basis; the quarters can be difficult to predict or to read into. So let's just stay focused on the 2023 number, which we think will ultimately be a really solid year of organic growth.

The next question is from Tracy Benguigui of Barclays.

A quick clarification question. You mentioned in the third quarter call that no single product line, including public D&O, represents 10% of your overall book, and property is multiples ahead of D&O. But then when I think about the proportion of property to the overall E&S market, it's something like a quarter or a third. Can you clarify the proportion of property placements more broadly to your overall book? And if that's becoming a larger piece?

So Tracy, we've publicly stated that our portfolio reflects the wider E&S market and that 25% to 30% is the appropriate range.

Okay. So it was a more narrow view when you previously discussed 10% of a particular product?

When we were talking about products on the Q3 call, Tracy, we were giving public D&O as an example of a product and trying to compare that to an entire category of our portfolio in the insurance world overall, right, property and casualty, as since our portfolio is representative of the broader market, we were just drawing attention to the difference in scale between our exposure in property versus a single product line like public D&O.

Okay. So that's what I thought. I just wanted to bridge those two comments together, thank you for that. And this one may be a bit of a wildcard question. Can you discuss your process of placing business on behalf of an MGU? What due diligence do you do to ensure that the risk is backed by a rated insurer and also on the back of higher financial line rates? I'm wondering as a corporate buyer of insurance if you're expecting higher E&O insurance costs and if that's meaningful in any way?

Tracy, we've got industry-standard procedures whenever we're onboarding a new MGU. We make sure that they're licensed. We verify that the quality of their security meets our standards for counterparties and things like that. So very much in line with industry standards there. What was the other part of your question?

I mean, on the back of just higher financial lines rates in general, a lot of brokers buy E&O insurance. So as a corporate buyer, are you seeing higher costs, and if that's meaningful in any way?

Well, certainly, our D&O insurance went up significantly when we went public. It's been pretty stable since then. It's too early to talk about any of the renewals for our professional lines, which come up later in the year. So right now, everything looks stable.

The next question is from Derek of KBW.

My first question is on fiduciary investment income. It looks like it stepped up $3 million quarter-over-quarter. Is that kind of the sequential step-up that we should think about for 1Q '23?

For modeling purposes, what we recommend is to take 30-day term SOFR, minus 50 basis points, and multiply that by our fiduciary income balance, which is broken out on the cash flow statement. At year-end, it was around $770 million. That's what we earn investment income on.

Got it. And then my second question is on the compensation costs for next year. It looks like you're hiring pretty significantly, but are you anticipating any upward pressure on comp expenses? I know this is just in context of one of your competitors sold a stake to a private equity firm to create equity incentives for their producers. I'm wondering if that has any impact on your comp costs?

So we are expecting increased comp costs, like I think probably every other company now. But fortunately, the majority of our comp cost is production-related and so it's variable to revenue. Wage inflation doesn't affect a wholesale broker the same way it does a salaried employee. We're dealing with it like everyone else, but it hasn't gotten out of control for us yet just because of how our comp structure is organized.

Okay. And just to follow up on that. Do you anticipate that impacting your retention of producers? I know Ryan is obviously a great home for talent, but just kind of curious about the impact maybe throughout 2023.

We expect to continue to have a very high industry-leading retention level for brokers and underwriters and all of our staff. No change at all.

The next question is from Jimmy Bhullar of JPMorgan.

Most of my questions were answered. I just have one about margins. If we consider the midpoint of your guidance for 2023, it indicates a lower margin than in 2022, even though your growth has been quite healthy despite the slowdown. Additionally, you have a restructuring charge, where the costs will be reported below the line and the benefits above the line. I'm curious if this is due to many of your expenses being variable, resulting in less leverage from revenue growth, or from any sort of pressure on fees or commissions. I understand your desire to grow the business, but it is a bit surprising that margins aren't improving despite the strong growth you've experienced and the positive growth you are projecting.

Jimmy, as I said, the business model is proven to scale. We were at 25% margin at the end of 2019, we're at 30% at the end of 2022. What we've tried to be upfront and consistent about is that making long-term investments in talent is the right thing to do to keep up our differentiated growth. We saw a big opportunity last year, and we made it. There's a run-rate impact for this year. There is an opportunity this year that we want to capitalize on. Like, that's the right playbook, and we're planning to stick to it. It won't be the case every year that we have an outsized opportunity like we saw in 2022. Many years, not all, but many years, you will see scaling. One thing we're excited about for Accelerate 2025 is that we're going to get a step change in margin once the program is fully built out. The capabilities and efficiencies we gain will make our continual annual scaling that much more rapid. So the model scales, Jimmy, it's just about when we have the opportunity and think it makes sense to reinvest in our talent.

Okay. And then on the uptick in sort of activity that you saw in your business in late December, are you able to comment if that's continued through January and February as well, recognizing that certain business is booked more in a certain quarter and less in another quarter? But has that uptick in activity continued through the first half of this quarter?

Sorry, Jimmy, when you say uptick in activity, what are you referring to?

Or you're just saying you saw stronger activity in the last two weeks of December, which caused you to do better on growth than you had previously indicated?

Yes, the comments on the late surge in property that benefited the quarterly organic growth are accurate. Tim mentioned the current situation regarding property, and we are still observing benefits from that as we speak.

Is your expectation for growth in the first half being lower than in the fourth quarter due to booking fewer property revenues in the first half or specifically in the first quarter, or is there another issue that has worsened?

We actually haven't made any statement about the growth of H1 relative to Q4, just that we've got tough comps. There's headwinds we know about, so we know that it's going to be a challenging H1. But the important thing to do is to focus on the annual growth rate, which we think is going to be a very healthy 10% to 13%.

The next question is from Ryan Tunis of Autonomous Research.

I guess, just thinking about the 2023 organic growth guide, it sounds like which is being explicitly contemplated are some comp issues and project-related business like D&O, construction and also a net benefit from property. But I was just curious if what other assumptions you might be making on how market conditions might evolve through the year to come up to the 10% to 13%?

In any given year, there are pluses and minuses; Tim referenced ebbs and flows with related to business that moves between the E&S market and the admitted market. There are lines that are still firming and there are lines that are going the other direction rapidly. We've talked extensively about public D&O as an example of that. We're factoring all of that in. Fortunately, the sum of all the opportunities and challenges for '23 is what we anticipate to be a really positive result.

Got it. I have another question regarding P&C brokers. We often consider many of the businesses to be recurring. I was interested to know if a significant portion of your annual commissions comes from project-based activities, such as construction or D&O linked to M&A transactions. Could you provide an estimate of what percentage of your portfolio is project-based?

We don't disclose the specific percentage, but most of it is recurring type business. In fact, nearly all of it is commercial. We've publicly disclosed that we're over 70% E&S. Most importantly, the majority of the products we work, we place, or underwrite on behalf of our clients is compulsory.

Got it. My last question is regarding your mention that property performed well in the last couple of weeks of the year. From a timing perspective in the fourth quarter, is there a higher percentage of property renewals that occur at the end of that quarter, or are they fairly evenly distributed throughout the fourth quarter?

No, they continue to increase as we go into the new year. The wind buying season is well known to peak in the second quarter actually. But as I said earlier, the reinsurance treaty renewals will have a further hardening impact on the flow of CAT property business into our channel. We expect it to continue to grow and expand, and we're set up perfectly to absorb it and convert it. So the market is definitely going to get harder in property.

Sorry, let me clarify my question. I wasn't sure if maybe there were some renewals in the fourth quarter that were just standard property that got pushed to late in December just because the market was becoming more challenging. I just didn't know if there were an outsized percentage of renewals that ended up taking place in those last couple of weeks.

No, nothing to measure, but definitely rate increases and premium increases.

There are no additional questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back to Pat Ryan for closing remarks.

Well, thank you all for your participation and your interest in our company. As I look to the year ahead, we're really filled with optimism. We've got a great team. The impact in the marketplace is strong, very strong drive, unwavering drive. We think world-class expertise and a deep commitment to serving our clients. So we're confident that we'll continue to drive growth and success in this year of 2023. So thanks for your participation and your very good questions. Have a good evening.

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.