Earnings Labs

Donegal Group Inc. (DGICB)

Q1 2023 Earnings Call· Sat, Apr 29, 2023

$19.32

-2.23%

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Transcript

Karin Daly

Management

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. This morning, Donegal Group issued its first quarter 2023 earnings release outlining its results. The release and the supplemental investor presentation are available in the Investor Relations section of Donegal's website at www.donegalgroup.com. Please be advised that today's conference was prerecorded and all participants are in listen-only mode. Speaking today will be President and Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Burke; Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Miller; Chief Underwriting Officer, Jeff Hay; and Chief Investment Officer, Tony Viozzi. Please be aware that statements made during this call that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements and necessarily involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary materially. These factors can be found in Donegal Group's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The company disclaims any obligation to update or publicly announce the results of any revisions that they may make to any forward-looking statements to reflect the occurrence of anticipated or unanticipated events or circumstances after the date of such statements. With that, it's my pleasure to turn it over to Mr. Kevin Burke. Kevin?

Kevin Burke

Management

Thank you, Karin, and welcome, everyone. I will begin the call with an update on several strategic initiatives before turning it over to Jeff Miller for a review of our quarterly financial results. Jeff Hay will then provide details about the segment performance and action plans for the remainder of 2023, followed by Tony Viozzi who will provide an investment update. I reported in our year-end earnings call just a couple of months ago that we successfully launched new personal lines products in 9 of the 10 states where we offered personal lines during 2022, and we were awaiting approvals of our product filings from regulatory authorities in Michigan. I am pleased to report that we have now received those approvals and are preparing to implement new products in Michigan, thus completing the 10-state rollout. We are actively monitoring our personal lines new business growth, which has exceeded our expectations. Jeff Hay will provide more commentary about the actions we are taking to control the pace of our growth and ensure rate adequacy in light of ongoing inflationary pressures on loss costs. We successfully deployed our third major software release as planned at the end of March. This release includes new business owner product and modernized commercial auto and umbrella products with new advanced pricing models and enhanced straight-through processing capabilities. These products and systems will allow us to focus on the small commercial market as our primary source of profitable growth over the next few years. The products are currently available for new business in 3 states for policies effective beginning in June, and we are on track to implement them in our 19 remaining states in the third quarter. We also plan to begin converting our legacy policies on the new platform in the fourth quarter of 2023.…

Jeffrey Miller

Management

Thank you, Kevin. Net premiums earned increased 8% to $215.2 million for the first quarter of 2023. Net premiums written grew by 8.6%, with premium rate increases and continuing strong retention contributing to growth across our lines of business despite planned attrition in several regions where we are working to improve profitability. The combined ratio of 101.2% for the first quarter of 2023 was higher than we targeted due primarily to a 5 percentage point increase in the loss ratio compared to the first quarter of 2022. The core loss ratio decreased by over 2 percentage points from the prior year quarter, but that improvement was more than offset by the impact of higher weather-related and large fire losses as well as lower net favorable reserve development from prior year losses. Weather-related losses were $14.1 million or 6.5 percentage points of the loss ratio for the first quarter of 2023 compared to $8 million or 4 percentage points for the first quarter of 2022. Homeowners impact was $7.3 million, and commercial property impact was $5.3 million, with the remainder in the auto lines. We incurred close to $4 million in losses from severe wind and hailstorm activity on March 31. As a result, the first quarter weather claim impact was higher than the previous 5-year average for the first quarter of 4.8 percentage points. Large fire losses, which we define as over $50,000 in damages contributed 5.1 percentage points to our first quarter of 2023 loss ratio, slightly higher than 4.8 percentage points for the prior year quarter, with an increase in commercial fire severity due in part to our higher per risk reinsurance retention for 2023 as well as inflationary repair cost increases. Our insurance subsidiaries experienced net favorable development of reserves for losses incurred in prior accident years…

Jeffery Hay

Management

Thanks, Jeff. Overarching, we have remained focused on our long-term profit objectives by taking the actions to improve our underwriting performance and responding to the macroeconomic trends that have continued to impact our results. As we continue to take these aggressive pricing actions and implement go-forward strategic initiatives, we expect to generate more favorable underwriting performance in the future. Starting with commercial lines specifically, we are diligently pursuing profitable growth while also striving to improve profitability in certain identified geographies by implementing significant rate increases in areas and segments of our book that are the most challenged. Rate increases across commercial lines of business averaged 11%, excluding workers' compensation during the first quarter. Premium retention remained strong at just over 90% despite our intentional pullback in areas targeted for profit improvement. Our claim severity trends reflect ongoing macroeconomic trends and the impact of higher cost of labor as well as parts and materials, especially in commercial property and auto physical damage. Our commercial multi-peril line of business was impacted by several fire losses in the quarter, contributing 6.1 points to the first quarter commercial lines loss ratio. While it's in the nature of our business to insure for fire losses, we have implemented a number of specific actions and underwriting guideline changes that are designed to reduce the likelihood and frequency of these large fire occurrences. Weather-related losses in the quarter contributed 4.8 percentage points to the commercial lines loss ratio. These losses were primarily driven by 3 storms. In late February, ice and winter storms toured through Michigan, leaving our insureds without power for several days. In the first week of March, a wind event impacted Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Ohio and Indiana. And then on the last day of March, a wind and hail event caused losses that we estimated…

Tony Viozzi

Management

Thank you, Jeff. We are pleased to report another quarter of higher investment income driven by an increase in average investment yield. The first quarter of 2023 was our fifth consecutive quarter with increased portfolio rates with the quarterly average tax equivalent yield of 3%, up 42 basis points from the prior year quarter. Rising market rates and attractive spreads in certain fixed income sectors have contributed to our investment performance. The average reinvestment yield of 4.91% was approximately 133 basis points higher than the yield of bonds that were called or matured in the quarter. Net investment income increased 20% to $9.4 million during the first quarter. The increase was the result of higher cash equivalent yields and higher market reinvestment rates as we made strategic allocations into U.S. treasuries and wider spread agency debt and mortgage-backed securities. We continue to expect improvement in our investment income throughout 2023, with the assumption that short term and fixed income rates remain elevated. Net investment losses were $331,000 in the quarter compared to $76,000 in the prior year quarter. While we maintain a modest percentage of our portfolio in equity securities, our equity performance was in line with the S&P Index. We consciously decreased our equity exposure in late 2022 and will continue to have a lower emphasis on equities through 2023 based on our expectation for volatility in the equity markets. We continue to maintain a conservative investment approach and given uncertainties in the macro environment, we believe our portfolio is well positioned. We had a $4 million increase in our after-tax available-for-sale bond market value, contributing a $0.13 improvement in book value per share. Coupled with our operating results in the first 3 months, book value per share increased 1.5% to $15.01 compared to $14.79 at December 31, 2022. I will now turn it back to Kevin.

Kevin Burke

Management

Thanks, Tony. While the first quarter earnings did not meet our targeted profitability, we are pleased with the solid execution of various strategic initiatives and the favorable impacts we are beginning to recognize. We remain confident that the transformational improvements and enhancements will lead to improved results and shareholder value in the years ahead. Thank you for your continued interest and support, and I'll now turn it over to Karin.

Karin Daly

Operator

Thank you, Kevin. While we requested and received questions in advance of today's call, we have worked answers to these questions into our prepared remarks as appropriate. If there are any additional questions, please feel free to reach out to us. This now concludes our first quarter 2023 earnings webcast. You may now disconnect. End of Q&A: