Earnings Labs

The Allstate Corporation (ALL)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 4, 2016

$215.91

+0.80%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+2.13%

1 Week

+0.44%

1 Month

+4.08%

vs S&P

+0.53%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to The Allstate Fourth Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's program is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's program, Mr. Pat Macellaro, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Patrick Macellaro

Analyst

Thank you, Jonathan. Good morning and welcome, everyone, to Allstate's fourth quarter 2015 earnings conference call. After prepared remarks by Tom Wilson, Steve Shebik and myself, we'll have a question-and-answer session. Yesterday following the close of the market we issued our news release and investor supplement, and posted the results presentation we will use this morning in conjunction with our prepared remarks. All of these documents are available on our website at allstateinvestors.com. We plan to file our 2015 Form 10-K later this month. As noted on the first slide, our discussion today will contain forward-looking statements regarding Allstate's operations. Allstate's results may differ materially from these statements, so please refer to our 10-K for 2014, the slides and our most recent news release for information on potential risks. Also, this discussion will contain some non-GAAP measures for which there are reconciliations in our news release and in our investor supplement. We're recording the call today and a replay will be available following its conclusion. I'll be available to answer any follow-up questions you may have after the call. And now, we'll turn it over Tom Wilson.

Thomas Wilson

Analyst

Well, good morning. Thank you for investing time to keep up on our progress at Allstate. I'll cover an overview of the results and then Pat and Steve will take you through the details. Our comments today are more detailed on four topics to make sure we provide you with good transparency. I will spend some time discussing our rationale for 2016’s underlying combined ratio outlook, Pat will provide more detail on the auto profitability plan, Steve will discuss the asset liability investment decisions including Allstate's financial – operating income and the impact that has on operating income. And then Steve is also going to provide some prospective on the overall investment portfolio. That will include both the investments including limited partnerships and energy. Also in the room today to answer any questions on any and all topics are Matt Winter, our President; Don Civgin, who leads our Emerging Businesses; Judith Greffin, our Chief Investment Officer; and Sam Pilch, our Corporate Controller. So let's begin on Slide 2. We finished 2015 with a strong fourth quarter that was driven by our repositioned homeowners business, continued progress in executing our auto insurance profit improvement plan and reducing expenses. The underlying property liability combined ratio for the fourth quarter was 87.4, which brought the full year result to 88.7, which was within the original annual outlook range we gave last year at this time. The recorded combined ratio in the fourth quarter was 92.0, which generated $611 million of underwriting income. The comprehensive program we implemented shortly after a significant increase in auto accident frequency and claim severities include seeking higher approval for auto insurance prices, making changes to our underwriting standards to slow new business growth and addressing underperforming segments that does both of those, and reducing expenses. This proactive approach…

Patrick Macellaro

Analyst

Thanks Tom. Let's start with a review of our Property-Liability results on Slide 5. Beginning with the chart on the top of this page, Property-Liability net written premium of $30.9 billion in 2015 grew $1.3 billion or 4.2% over 2015. The recorded combined ratio for the year of 94.9, increased one point versus 2014 driven by an increase in auto losses, which was partially offset by lower expenses, strong homeowner underlying margins and catastrophe losses of $1.7 billion, which was 13.7% lower than 2014. As Tom mentioned earlier, the year-end 2015 underlying combined ratio of 88.7, while 1.5 points higher than 2014, finished within our original annual guidance range given the strong results in the fourth quarter. Net investment income for the Property-Liability segment decreased 4.9% from the prior year due primarily to lower performance based investment income. Property-Liability operating income in 2015 was $1.9 billion, which was 8.2% lower than 2014. The chart on the lower left-hand side of this page shows Property-Liability net written premium and policy in force growth rates. The red line representing policy in force growth versus the prior year shows a slowing growth rate of 1.3% given the actions in place across all three underwriting brands to improve auto margins. Even with these headwinds, we grew policy counts 449,000 to 34.6 million in 2015 compared to 2014. The Allstate brand accounted for almost all policy growth in 2015 as Esurance policy growth slowed and Encompass policies were lower than 2014. These policy growth results exclude 5.6 million Allstate Financial policies, which grew by 6.1% in 2015 driven by 11.1% policy growth in Allstate Benefits. Average premium increases to reflect higher costs resulted in the net written premium trends you see shown by the blue line. The bottom right-hand side of this page shows property…

Steven Shebik

Analyst

Thanks Pat. Slide 9 provides an overview of Allstate Financial's results for the fourth quarter and full year 2015, as highlighted on the top of the slide. Overall we have made good progress and narrowed Allstate Financial's focus and positioned the business to support long-term value creation. In 2015, we continued our efforts to fully integrate the life and retirement business into the Allstate brand customer value proposition, and repositioned the investment portfolio supporting our immediate annuities. Premiums and contract charges in 2015 increased 4.2% when excluding the impact of the 2014 results of Lincoln Benefit Life Company driven by 5.7% growth in Allstate Benefits' accident and health insurance business as well as a 7.3% increase in traditional life insurance premiums. Operating income for 2015 of $509 million was 16.1% lower than 2014 driven primarily by higher life insurance claims, the disposition of LBL and lower investment income. In the fourth quarter operating income of $98 million was $30 million below the prior year quarter driven by a lower fixed income yield and a decrease in performance based long-term investment income. The bottom half of the slide depicts the liabilities and investments of our immediate annuity business. The approximately $12 billion of liabilities payout over the next 40 plus years our investment strategy is to match near term cash flows with fixed income and commercial mortgages. However, for longer-term liabilities we believe equity investments provide the best risk-adjusted returns. As such in the third quarter we sold approximately $2 billion of long duration fixed income securities to make the portfolio less sensitive to rising interest rates. Sale proceeds were invested in shorter duration fixed income and public equity securities, which will lower net investment income in the near-term. Over time, we will shift the majority of the proceeds to performance…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Ryan Tunis from Credit Suisse. Your question, please.

Ryan Tunis

Analyst

Hey, thanks. Good morning. My first question I guess is just on the expense side. I appreciate there's a good amount of flexibility there whether it's advertising expenses or slower incentive comp. But I guess in the base case that you highlighted in your guidance that assumes I guess some step-up in severity and frequency. How should we think about the Allstate brand expense ratio?

Thomas Wilson

Analyst

I'll make an over a comment and Matt might have some perspective as well. First, you should expect the expense ratio to go up because we this year to make our goal, we did cut advertising, I wanted to improve some of the effectiveness to the advertising stuff anyway which move through advertising. And then we took some nice to do technology stuff and differed it and decided not to do it and cut some other expenses. And if you look at it, over the quarters you can see we increasingly reduced our expenses throughout the year which was a focus. That said, there were a number of things we're investing heavily and in one investment in term of either long-term growth or short-term growth, everything from technology I mentioned to things like telematics. Matthew, you want to add anything to that?

Matthew Winter

Analyst

I think the only thing I would add Ryan, is that as Tom said in his prepared remarks, as we see the combined ratio in each local geography getting to an appropriate point in our loss ratios, getting where they need to be in the profit improvement actions fully taking hold in rate burning in. We will want to be able to stimulate growth in selected areas as long as we're earning appropriate return and growth requires some investment. And so, part of the expense ratio this year will be influenced by our growth plan and when we're able to turn on growth in certain areas and when we want to invest. We're focused on long-term value creation. And long-term value creation does require some investment, but it requires investment with appropriate levels of profitability. And so, it's flexible, it will go up, the degree it goes up will depend upon thoughtful analysis of whether or not we add appropriate profitability, appropriate margin, and whether or not we're going to earn an appropriate return on the investment.

Ryan Tunis

Analyst

Okay. That's helpful. And then my follow-up is just, I guess in the supplement, you guys a few quarters ago started breaking out gross versus paid frequency. In a way I understand it as you incur the losses based on what the gross frequency is and that's also what I think you guys tend to talk about what the investment community tends to talk about. But the paid frequency number has been running significantly below the gross, over the past several quarters. I'm just wondering how we should think about that, is there a possibility that you've been over-estimating what frequency is?

Thomas Wilson

Analyst

Ryan, at first we think our reserves are properly established. So, we do that in a bunch of different ways. We look at both gross and net. We look at what the original amount -- we do it by claims. So, when a claim comes up, we put up some dollar amount toward, then as they adjust -- more they keep building that up and at least to an incurred. And then obviously we think that we have to factor in future upward development in that. So, we look at that as well. So, we look at paid, incurred, incurred but not reported, and we come up with a number, obviously for things like physical damage claims where they really settled out in about 90 days. That tends to run through pretty quickly. The bottom of the injury where it takes about four years before you get 80% paid out, has a little bit longer trend line on it. And as a result of that longer trend line, you tend to have more process changes along the way because you do things differently every year. And so, that never tends to bounce around a little more. But I think we're appropriately reserved. I don’t think you should think there was more or less in there then than we thought it. It's the right number.

Ryan Tunis

Analyst

Thanks. I'll stop there.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Josh Shanker from Deutsche Bank. Your question, please.

Josh Shanker

Analyst

Yes. Thank you, very much. A two question. Tom, the first one's a revisiting last quarter actually. We talked about the 4Q auto acts and seasonality that did not seem to appear this quarter. In the end, is it just a dream or is there something really there or what do you think?

Matthew Winter

Analyst

Josh, its Matt.

Josh Shanker

Analyst

Hi, Matt.

Matthew Winter

Analyst

How are you? I'm going to refer you to a page in the appendix that we put in there. If you look at the presentation slide 14, there is a whole bunch of drivers of the combined ratio and whole bunch of drivers, are these in frequency. Some of them are controllable, some of them are uncontrollable. Some of them we can manage and some we can't. Even within the ones that are somewhat manageable like new business quality and volume of new business and geographic mix, there's also some things that you just can't predict. Seasonality and weather especially is one of those completely unpredictable pieces of this puzzle. And so, when we look at year-over-year, you can look back, we have some charts to show fourth quarter seasonality that tend to spike up and then you have last year where we had almost no catastrophes and benign weather and this year much more normalized catastrophe year but I would say also a more normalized weather environment. Seasonality is one of those high level generalities that tends to pan out over multiple years, but you can have dislocation and abrasions in that on a year-by-year and quarter-by-quarter basis. So, I would not draw trend line conclusions based upon one or two quarters and how they appear versus previous quarters.

Thomas Wilson

Analyst

And Josh, I don't know if I'm reading into your question but it sounded like frequency was actually up quite a bit in the fourth quarter. So, I couldn't tell what your underlying assumption is. Matt has slide in there as well and the increase in frequency in the fourth quarter.

Josh Shanker

Analyst

I would -- just look in the past and I have always am anticipating fourth quarter being a tough comp every year. My other question, look I listened to your prepared remarks and I know you are going to invest in the future and home owners can change a little bit, but you did an 88.7% underlying combined ratio firm wide for 2015. And you have a 5.5% rate increases coming through on the auto side, that you've guided to 88% to 90% underlying for 2016. It seems to me a very hard thing to believe that there is world where the underlying combined ratio is going to be worse in 2016 than it was in 2015. Are you just being conservative or I mean do you really think that that's the right range and 89% with a plus or minus one around it?

Thomas Wilson

Analyst

We think it's the right range. I think we've been doing this since I became CEO. I think it's like it's maybe the ninth or 10th year that I've done this. We've never missed it. So, we do it. So, that we think it's the right range but that's reasonable. You get a point swing either way from frequency and severity. I mean you can get, as Matt mentioned, you can't predict frequency and to be honest it's really difficult to predict severity within a point. So, that alone gives you two points spread. There have been some years, Josh, where we've had a three point spread but that was when we weren't sure how quickly the home owners business is going to take hold and we did quite well. We got ahead of that and it was faster than we had done in our modeling. But we do a lot of statistical modeling around this. We think it's about right I mean if you are right we will see a lot of rate come through that $1.1 billion. And if loss cost and which is result of frequency and severity keep going up which is what we have in our projections, we'll put more in rate increases. So, no, we think it’s the right number. I am not, we set it up to get there and if you want to assume your case, then that would in the middle of the range. We don't get to a precise, so we do at this tangible point. It's like I like to give just round numbers and we think 88 to 90 will be in that range.

Josh Shanker

Analyst

All right. Well, good luck and I hope it will be even better than that.

Thomas Wilson

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Amit Kumar from Macquarie. Your question please.

Amit Kumar

Analyst

Thanks and good morning and congrats on the trend. Maybe two quick follow-up on Josh's question. First of all, just going back to the discussion on guidance and rate increases, how should we think about future rate increases, you've obviously have meaningful rate increases over the past few quarters. Are you factoring in that based on where we stand, that number to diminish or continue to ramp up from here?

Thomas Wilson

Analyst

It will be reflective of our results in the cost basis. So, if frequency and severity continue to increase, you'll continue to see us going to individual states with targeted rate increases. If it moderates, and I think we should expect to see it come down but we can't we don't know for sure.

Amit Kumar

Analyst

So, I guess, related to that is what -- I mean, what are you baking in for frequency and severity here?

Thomas Wilson

Analyst

We have a plan, obviously, that we have frequency and severity, but when we move to do -- when we got away from EPS guidance, which I thought in our business didn't make a lot of sense. We said, we'll give you an underlying combined ratio guidance which excludes catastrophe. So, things we can pretty much predict, we think at 88 to 90 what happens with increases in frequency and severity, we can manage to it with the premium increases we will be able to get next year.

Amit Kumar

Analyst

Okay.

Thomas Wilson

Analyst

We don't give out this specific sub-components. They just ends up being, it helps people do their models but it turns our conversations into one of modeling as opposed to the pace of the business. We feel good about the business where it is, we'd like to make more money in auto insurance even though the returns are above our cost of capital. We've made much higher returns in that at our competitive position and strength enabled us to do that and we are headed down that path. When we get there, we will be dependent what happens with the external environment.

Amit Kumar

Analyst

Got it. That's fair enough. And just like there are some external factors, I know Josh was asking about this. One of the questions you were getting was the benign sort of weather in Q4. If you were to normalize it, would it be materially different what you are looking at in charts I guess 21 and 22 or would it be modestly different?

Thomas Wilson

Analyst

Well, let me talk about, so the fourth quarter we came in and we were able to get with insight our range. So, at 88, seven, for the year. The good weather really was a result -- wasn't really good weather necessarily. The home owners business feel a little better because we had fewer fire losses, which tend to be big losses. I don't know whether that's weather or just luck. We obviously on the other end of that which is completely controllable as Matt pointed out, is expensive. We did a good job getting expenses down because we want to be within the range. And then, the profit improvement actions did start to go through, but Matt, maybe lets -- maybe Matt taken to Slide 15 which shows the frequency. Just so because I think everyone saying it's like benign weather and like we had a big increase in our frequency in the fourth quarter and I don't want you to walk away thinking that it wasn't there.

Matthew Winter

Analyst

Yes. So, Tom referred to Slide 15. What Slide 15 does is show what we believe is one of the primary drivers of frequency as we talked about on almost every call frequency is driven by primarily miles driven but also weather distracted driving, new business volume, new business quality and underwriting and miles driven itself is driven by employment or even gas prices. We know what's happened to both of those over this last year. One of the confusing things is that I have referred in the past to the fact that the frequency trend is wide spread. But I think some of you have taken that to me that it is consistent across the country. It is widespread but it is not consistent across the country, in fact it's geographically varied. And Slide 15 is just some data from the federal highway administration that shows how miles driven as of November versus prior year has gone up in each of the different regions and you will notice that in the North East it only went up 2.9 while in the West it went up 5.5 and South Atlantic 5.1 etcetera. So, this is one driver but it's a major driver and it does help to explain some of the other questions that you've been raising about why different companies have different experiences. They have different geographic concentrations of their business, books of business, and the miles driven in those areas is different. It will clearly impact results.

Amit Kumar

Analyst

Got it. Okay. This is very helpful. Thanks for the answers.

Thomas Wilson

Analyst

Thanks, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bob Glasspiegel from Janney Montgomery. Your question, please.

Bob Glasspiegel

Analyst

Good morning, Allstate. Just an observation to when you hit your forecast nine years in a row, I guess it's another way of saying you tend to be conservative with your outlooks because no one is that good to be able to forecast. My question --.

Thomas Wilson

Analyst

And that's your way to say. And Bob, I will say that we have a good system, we have a great team. They are goal driven. They know how to deliver what we said we would deliver. If you had asked me as last year when we gave our range of 87, 89, did I think frequency and severity were in a clip up at above five points, I would have said "No". So, the point is you really can't forecast frequency and that what I -- we can do is tell you given the strengthen of our system and the transparency we have our management process is in place, we think we can manage to 88 to 90 next year and so that we've set out to do. If we do better than that, then that will be because we reacted well and did well but we don't set it up so we can be below it. I guess it's not the goal here because obviously as you would expect, you want to be balanced, thoughtful, and transparent with your shareholders. You don't want to under-promise and over deliver because then everybody will think well the whole world's falling apart, nor do you want to over promise and under deliver. So, we try to do it and what we think the system can delivery and we think 88 to 90. We did not set it up to be too optimistic or set out to be too conserved. It's right down the middle.

Bob Glasspiegel

Analyst

I hear you. My question is, I understand all your profit moves and am encouraged by the fourth quarter underlined showing some improvement, which suggest that you are on track. I guess I understand what you are doing in Allstate brand and Encompass, on insurance, trying to slow the growth dramatically, certainly fits within your profit objective and it seems like its own way to go to achieve your short-term plan. But I guess my question is are you where you want to be in scale in that business in long-term and what is your overall sort of long-term game play in insurance, how big you have to be in that business to be a long term player?

Thomas Wilson

Analyst

Let me make an overall long-term comment and then Don can give you some specific. So, insurance is twice the size from when we bought it three years ago. So, and we think it is of scale at a billion six because if you look at normal direct marketing company should be 10% of your premium you would spend on advertising and at a $160 million, that's enough media weight to make sure people hear you. If you're half that size, you don't, you just don't have enough throw weight in the marketing world. So, I think it's up scaled today. That said, we have good growth plans and I don’t want you to think that this is the backing off of insurance growth. Don can talk about the things we're doing to get into home owners and motorcycles and Canada and new market. So, there is plenty of growth up there. We just were managing this year to some objectives that Don had set with the teams. Don, maybe you want to comment about it?

Don Civgin

Analyst

Yes, Bob. First remember when we acquired insurance, we did it for the strategic reason of going into the lower right hand corner with the self serve rent sensitive customer and really focusing the customer value proposition against the GEICO and progressive direct model. And when we acquired it, what we said we were going to do is was run it for economics as opposed to GAAP accounting. So, as you know, in the direct model, your expense, all your marketing expense is up front. And as a result, the first year or the first quarter looks particularly bad when you are growing, but then in later years you tend to make money as the business retains and you don't have to spend in the marketing again. As Tom said, the business is now twice as large as it was when we acquired it a little over four years ago. It does have meaningful impact on where Allstate reports. And with twice as much growth we were having some pressure on the loss ratio. And so what we decided to do this year was slow the growth down, really focus on getting more efficiency out of our model that meant both on the marketing side and on the operation side. And I would tell you I am absolutely delighted with how they responded and how the business is doing. I mean you talk about slowing it down dramatically. It's still growing 4% to 5% in the fourth quarter and more than that for the year, not as high as it had been, but given the reduction in marketing, still a good growth rate. And the underlying combined ratio is down over eight points from last year in the quarter. So, we feel really good about where they are. Having said…

Bob Glasspiegel

Analyst

Thanks for the thoughtful answers.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kaypaghian from Morgan Stanley. Your question, please.

Daniel Kaypaghian

Analyst

Good morning, thank you. First question on capital management. And it looks -- [Audio Gap].

Thomas Wilson

Analyst

So, if we look back over the last couple of years, we set up our share buyback program really in a basis of as you put a capital that we have available. We sold Lincoln Benefit Life which we'd both on capital and also the proceeds from the sale. So, we move that up to the parent company $1.2 billion in 2013 and 2014. So, in 2015 we used a fair amount of backup, increased that buyback program but what may normally had been to a $3 billion level we're talking about. In addition, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we've done a fair amount of work at kind of bringing our risk profile down in the corporation which once again has freed up some capital. We do need to grow the business at the moment as we said I like that we are going to pool in more money into our investment portfolio to back that into the equity type investment. We will need some to put some money aside, it should grow the business and will also we have to pay our dividend obviously and what we free up essentially from net income, we pay out on a year lag generally in and our share buyback.

Daniel Kaypaghian

Analyst

Okay. So, we're looking more probably like payout ratio run 100% levels?

Thomas Wilson

Analyst

Well, we don't do it that way, then of course where the banks do it, but we do it with [indiscernible] which is so we look at how much capital we need, then we say how much do we earn, how much do we have, and so we don't do it as a percentage of earnings.

Daniel Kaypaghian

Analyst

Okay. It's great. And second question for Tom, it looks the change on Slide 4 of your operating priority seems to be down 16. Two thing, one is the number one is better serve a customer through innovation, in fact, in efficiency. Could you give some example of that and then the [indiscernible] item, basically the long term gross platform now you mentioned about acquiring. I just wonder what platform Allstate current lack that you would like to grow into and what's the [indiscernible] of your acquisition?

Thomas Wilson

Analyst

Okay. So, let me answer the last one in there, let Matt answer the first one. So, first, in terms of priorities, they are all important. So, they are not like we don't fight over which order they are in. And so Matt will talk about the customer which is obviously very important to us, but as important as all the other ones. We did add, was good catching [indiscernible]. We added the acquired to the bill long-term growth platforms. Long-term growth platforms are [Audio Gap] to acquire something to help accelerate those efforts where we would do that. Secondly, we believe that there is additional propensity in particularly the Allstate agency channel but also some in insurance to pick up adjacent products and services which are consistent with protecting and preparing people particularly as Matt makes progress on the trusted adviser model in the Allstate agency channel. We think there are other things we could sell in. We could either decide we want to get into the business, do filings, [indiscernible] and that kind of stuff, it's unique. Or if somebody has a platform that we can buy and we can bolt it onto ours, we would do that. So, that's the concept behind acquisitions. We didn’t put it in there because we have some specific target and I think will not talk about. Matt, you want to go through the customer piece?

Matthew Winter

Analyst

Sure, Kay. So, you correctly pointed out that its customer base. So, it's all that customer centricity and using innovation effectiveness and efficiency not just to manage financials and manage margins but to better serve our customers. And there is three primary tracks of work going on under that category. The first is Tom just mentioned just trusted adviser and trusted adviser is all the work we have underway to help our agency owners and their staff and our exclusive financial specialists better serve our customers through personalized customized tailored solutions geographically based, that are advised based, not product push, that are solutions as opposed to transactions and based on long-term value relationships. And so, we have a lot of work underway there. And that goes to both the effectiveness of our agency system as a distribution model and the efficiency with which we put through product. The second major line of work that we have underway, is we refer to it as our continuous improvement, others refer to it as lean engineering. And we have installed continuous improvement in a good portion of the company already. It's a set of management principles and practices that empower frontline employees, get them involved in root cause problem solving, create flow of information, creating environment where they are engaged in their work and we have seen dramatic increases in productivity and efficiency of those operations that we've installed continuous improvement. We've also seen customer satisfaction and employee engagement in those areas. The third, and this is on really the innovation side the track of work we have underway, we refer to it as integrated digital enterprise but you've also heard me refer to it as a set of projects that take data predictive analytics and emerging technologies and combine those capabilities to better serve customers. And that includes a range of things that both use internal sources of data as well as external sources of data to provide more predictive guidance to our agency owners in serving their customers to help them better serve those customers, tell them what the next logical product for them might be. And to use those emerging technologies to deliver that in a way that's more accepted by the customer, more intuitive to the customer, and is more respectful of the customers time and energy. And so, you will continue to see a lot of focus there. As Tom referred to in his opening remarks, as he explained why the expense ratio may float up a little bit, we will continue to invest in all these core initiatives because they are all about long-term value creation. If we're able to better serve our customers through innovation effectiveness and efficiency, we will create a more valuable organization and we are all about that. And so, I thank you for asking the question.

Daniel Kaypaghian

Analyst

Thank you, very much.

Matthew Winter

Analyst

Hey, Jonathan, we'll take one more quick one.

Operator

Operator

Certainly, our final question comes from the line of Alison Jacobowitz from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your question please.

Alison Jacobowitz

Analyst

It's actually Jay Cowan as you could probably tell by the voice. Two questions. One is, you're obviously taking action as you've talked at length about to improve the auto profitability and you suggested that certainly the effect will depend partly on what your competitors do. Question is, what are your competitors doing, what are you seeing out there. And then secondly, relative to miles driven, arguably one of the reasons is lower fuel prices, would you suspect that oil going from 100 down to 40 has a bigger effect than oil going from 40 to 30, in other words the effect one might suggest would be declining over time.

Matthew Winter

Analyst

Jay, its Matt. Those are two really good questions. First of all, what we are seeing part of our competitors, some of our competitors is a significant rate action in the filings that we're reviewing. As we make our filings, we see competitor rate filings as well. Some of them are quite significant, some of them are more moderate, most of it depends upon if you look back three or four years the level of rates they started this period. And so those who had a greater GAAP to cover in order to deal with the frequency and severity pressure are taking greater rates. So, we expect that to generate some increased turmoil in the environment and it will certainly generate shopping behavior in the industry and shopping behavior can be a positive or negative depending upon how you approach it, where you positioned and its all part of competition. So, we believe we are well positioned. We believe we are prepared for it. We believe we are monitoring their actions, but we are mostly focused on what we need to do to earn appropriate returns and serve our customers. And so, I would say our primary focus is always on managing our own business with an eye towards what the competitors are doing as opposed to trying to react the competitors all the time which I find can just drive you crazy. On your second question, it's a great point. There is a point of diminishing impact with gas prices on miles driven. We've always said that we thought the unemployment rate and economic activity had even a greater impact than the gas prices because economic activity impacts employment driving and gas prices typically impact only discretionary driving activities because if you have to go to work you have to go to work and you're going to pay $3 a gallon or you're going to pay $1.90 a gallon. If you are thinking about a vacation this summer and you're deciding whether to stay at home or drive down to Florida, if gases are a $1.60, it's probably going to influence you differently than if gas was at $3.50 a gallon. Now, there is a point at which though it's just plain cheap and it's no longer a question and I think we're probably at that point. So, I think you are correct in that from what we look at we think the biggest influence of the drop in gas prices has already occurred and it's unlikely that that will drive much further increase in miles driven. But that being said, we also don't know what economic activity is going to look like and what all the other influences on frequency will look like.

Thomas Wilson

Analyst

So, thank you all. I will leave you with a couple of thoughts. Allstate has been extremely strong operating platform. First, that enables us to react quickly to whatever peers in the world. Secondly, we proactively manage our risk and return on a consolidated basis, whether it's catastrophes, auto margins, investment returns or our capital structure; we look at it in total. And thirdly, we are focused on long-term value. We pay attention to current earnings because it is set along the way, but we will not give up long-term value equation [secured to earnings] [ph] because we believe that's what shareholders want which is creating long-term economic cash value. Thank you very much. We will talk to you next quarter.