Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Goosehead Insurance Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Dan Farrell, VP, Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good afternoon. Before we begin our formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that part of our discussion today may include forward-looking statements, which are based on the expectations, estimates and projections of management as of today. Forward-looking statements in our discussion are subject to various assumptions, risks, uncertainties and other factors that are difficult to predict and which could cause the actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore, undue reliance should not be placed upon them. We refer all of you to our recent SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties and that could impact future operating results and financial condition of Goosehead Insurance. We disclaim any intentions or obligations to update or revise any forward-looking statements, except to the extent required by applicable law. I would also like to point out that during this call, we will discuss certain financial measures that are not prepared in accordance with GAAP. Management uses these non-GAAP financial measures when planning, monitoring and evaluating our performance. We consider these non-GAAP financial measures to be useful metrics for management and investors to facilitate operating performance comparisons from period to period by excluding potential differences caused by various variations in capital structure, tax position, depreciation, amortization and certain other items that we believe are not representative of our core business. For more information regarding the use of non-GAAP financial measures, including reconciliations of these measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures, we refer you to today's earnings release. In addition, this call is being webcast. An archived version will be available shortly after the call ends on the Investor Relations portion of the company's website at www.gooseheadinsurance.com. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Mark Jones.

Thanks Dan, and welcome to our fourth quarter and 2022 earnings call. I will provide an overview of the key strategic accomplishments for 2022 and how they helped position us for our next phase of top and bottom line growth. President and COO, Mark Miller will then take you through some greater detail around driving operational excellence across the organization and Mark Jones Jr., our CFO will review our financials and outlook for 2023 and beyond. I'd like to start by sharing that Q4 2022 gave us another opportunity to demonstrate the strength and resiliency of our business model. We overcame housing market headwinds, delivering premium growth of 44% and revenue growth of 43% compared to Q4 2021. Core revenue growth for 2022 was 41% and EBITDA grew 76% as we gained nearly 400 basis points of EBITDA margin. 2022 was a year of substantial change that we believe was critical for sustaining future high levels of profitable growth as we become a much larger organization. Among these many efforts included an upgrade of the management team across the organization. We've now completed a repositioning of corporate sales to enable us to return to profitable growth in that segment of the business. Early results have been excellent with December, new business productivity growing 44% from a year earlier in January 2023, new business productivity also up to 44% year-over-year. What's most exciting to me and what bodes so well for our future growth is that January, 2023 new business productivity for first year corporate agents was up 77% from January, 2022. We've begun implementing the program to facilitate migration of select corporate agents over to the franchise network very successfully. We market this to recruits as a form of paid apprenticeship. So far in 2023, we've launched six new agencies…

Thanks, Mark and hello everyone. I'm extremely pleased with the progress we made in 2022. We are very well positioned to drive high levels of revenue and earnings growth moving forward. During the year, we sharpened all aspects of our operations across sales, service and technology. We did this by upgrading talent and tightening our most critical operating levers. Growth remains our highest priority, but we're now relentlessly focused on quality and operational excellence in all areas of our business so we can also optimize profitability. Let me be clear about our priorities for 2023. We're focusing on increasing productivity across both distribution networks, improving our recruiting function to drive strong and sustainable growth of total producers across corporate and franchise distribution, continuing to invest in our service function to protect our client base and support our growing renewal book, expanding our digital marketing efforts to drive more cross selling and other referral business and improving our technology platform to support our core business and expanding distribution through partnerships. Let me take a few minutes to expand a bit more on some of these priorities. I'll start with our corporate sales function. Over the past couple years, we saw deterioration and per agent productivity levels. In mid-2022 we took swift and decisive action to remove underperforming agents. We strengthened our sales leadership team and redesigned our recruiting processes with greater emphasis on quality. By year end, the strategy resulted in corporate sales agents returning to their historically high levels of productivity. In the fourth quarter, corporate agent productivity increased 24% year over year. This momentum continued in January with average agent productivity up 44% and first year agent productivity up 77% year over year. We expect to begin ramping up corporate sales headcount again in Q3 after our new class…

Our financial results are much more correlated to the total number of agents and their production, not the number of agencies. We ended the year with 2,101 franchise producers. This was up 15% from a year ago. We expect overall franchise producer growth to significantly accelerate in the back half of 2023. This growth will be driven by the addition of net new agencies as well as organic agent growth from our enhanced recruiting efforts. Now switching to the service function, we've made substantial progress in 2022. We grew our service agents 50% to around 600 and materially improved service agent turnover through the year. This investment has resulted in substantial reduction in our call wait times and has sustained our NPS of 90. Our service team is now well positioned to support our growth as we continued to deliver high NPS and retention in a tough operating environment. We are now also focused on driving automation and reducing cost per policy in force. Last year we also made substantial progress on various digital marketing efforts, driving higher cross sell and other referral business from our existing book, increasing new franchise leads to our recruiting team and increasing our brand recognition. While we have made quick and substantial progress through our marketing efforts, I feel like we're only beginning to scratch the surface of our potential in this area. On the technology front, we're continuing efforts on direct quote to issue with a number of carriers and I'm looking forward to giving you more updates on our progress as we move through the year. With our existing capabilities and new investments, we are in an enviable position to lead the digital transformation of our industry for the benefit of our clients, agents and carriers. I see no other company with the opportunity we have to shape the direction of the industry and to drive strong profitable growth for a sustained period of time. I couldn't be more excited to help drive the next phase of this already incredible organization. With that, I'll turn it over to Mark Jones, Jr.

Thanks, mark and hello to everyone on the call. Our strong results in the fourth quarter further demonstrate the embedded strength and consistency of our business model. Insurance is a necessary product for the majority of the population and our ability to gain increasing market share is enormous. Our choice product platform, expert agents and industry leading technology provide an easy seamless shopping experience for clients. Our client value proposition is even more powerful as consumers navigate the challenges posed by the current hard insurance markets. We are in a unique position in the marketplace as a fast growing disruptive model with strong and expanding profitability and cash generation with limited balance sheet risks. We do not see a peer in the market that matches our abilities and we believe our competitive mode will only continue to expand. 2022 was a year of significant change as we addressed challenges emerging in our business. We saw an increasing disparity of performance among our agents, both corporate and franchise, where the most successful producers drove the majority of our growth. We also identified a significant number of underperforming producers whose low productivity was eroding profitability and consuming valuable corporate resources while creating management distraction. We took decisive steps in 2022 to improve the quality of our recruiting process and manage out unprofitable agents, leaving us with a much stronger and more efficient sales force. While executing these strategic improvements, we continue to drive strong results. For the fourth quarter of 2022, total written premium, the key leading indicator of future core and ancillary revenue growth increased 44% to $585 million. Performance of our renewal book, which represents the majority of our underlying profit, has been exceptional. This is driven by investments in execution and servicing, high client retention of 88%, and benefit…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Meyer Shields with KBW. . Go ahead.

Sorry, thanks. Good afternoon everyone. One, I guess big picture question. You talked, I think several of you in your prepared comments talked about a wide range of productivity. Is that only in the newer recruits? Are you seeing that variance in productivity among longer tenured agents as well?

I'll take that. This is Mark Miller. I would say it's predominantly in the less than two year agencies, but there have been some in the, you know, beyond two years agencies, but mostly newer ones.

Okay and do you have the ability to sort of identify where some of the longer tenure agents might also be facing productivity challenges going forward?

I'm not sure I quite understand the question. Can you try it one more time?

Yes, I think, Meyer, it's Mark Jones. I think if I understand you correctly, it's are we able to identify productivity down to the agency level, so that we can help support those that maybe facing productivity challenges? The answer to that is, yes. We’ve got kind of all the data down to the agent level, not just agency level cut by line of business and geography and every other way that you can cut it.

Yes. And Meyer, we’re taking all the steps that we can to continue to drive productivity through the agent’s lifecycle. We have all kinds of training programs that they continue to go through, not just in their first year, but in years two, three, and four, as they develop their business to make sure that they are onboarding, they are hiring, they know what the carrier portfolio looks like in their region today, help maximize their time so they can drive higher levels of productivity. Some of that is still just working its way through the system like we talked about in Q3, right. We’re still churning out some of those underperforming agencies. We just want to drive more productivity out of fewer agents to maximize profitability.

Okay. That’s helpful. And if I can fill in one last question, I guess it’s for Mark, Jr. It sounds like you are still cautious on 2023 contingent commissions despite the rate related tailwinds that you’re seeing in written premium productivity. I was hoping you could talk that through that.

Yes, we’re continuing to see rate maintain very high levels. I still think carriers have a decent amount of work left to do to recover from some of the 2020 and 2021 rate give backs. I think loss ratios have remained very high for a lot of carriers. We’re seeing a very hard P&C market right now. And there’s maybe potential for upside in that in 2023, but I don’t want to promise something that’s outside of my control than, I would rather tell you a number that’s 40 basis points and maybe we could outperform.

Okay, fantastic. Thank you so much.

The next question comes from Matt Carletti with JMP Securities. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. Good afternoon. I had a couple of questions, and the first one, yes, this will be high level. I know you can’t drill down into numbers on it, but maybe I’m just looking for more of a gut feel. You referenced a number of times on the call, kind of the housing market headwinds and also, and the release and on the call, kind of the benefit from auto and home rates and kind of expecting those tailwinds to persist. And so the question is kind of how, if you put those two together where do you think you'll land? Is the pricing that’s coming through an auto and home a bigger than the housing headwind, other way around or just can’t tell?

Yes, Matt, I would say, housing initially when we were still trying to figure out how to get agents out pounding the pavement more, developing more RP relationships and trying to recover that lead flow, six or eight months ago, maybe that was a little bit of a different story. Now we’re seeing agents hit all-time highs still every month even in a more deteriorated housing environment. And so I really, like, we’ve been messaging for the last six or eight months is that housing is not impacting us as much as I think the market is expecting it to. Our agents are still out there being very productive. We’re seeing huge productivity increases on a year-over-year basis especially with our corporate agents and we’ve got the P&C pricing tailwind to boot on top of that. So my expectation is when that pricing tailwind starts to slow down, we get product, better product on the shelf across the nation, and that’s going to allow us to drive even higher levels of productivity. So it’s kind of two sides of the same coin and I think we’re well positioned to win in either environment.

Okay, great. And then just a followup on, some of the partnerships that you mentioned that, you’ve already announced and I think mentioned there should be some other ones coming, just high level, like how do you look at those in terms of how big a contributor they could be to your growth, over a several year period, look out three to five years? And just functionally, if you have figured it out yet, kind of how will that kind of, how will that work in terms of, flow going to the agents and in commissions and things like that if they come, if it’s a referral from one of those partnerships?

Yes, Matt, I don’t -- this is Mark Miller. I don’t really want to go into the specifics on how it’s going to flow yet, because each one of these relationships is different. I can talk to you about the ones that we’ve done so far with the Mortgage Broker Association. So those are two of the largest Mortgage Broker Associations, I think they are the two largest mortgage broker association in the United States. We have a clear, they've announced us as their exclusive agency partner. It’s still early innings, but some really nice wins there. So it’s cracking the door open and some large mortgage brokers that we’ve been trying to get inside of for quite a while. We had one really good win in Austin this last week where it opened up a whole bunch of referrals. So I’m very optimistic about what it could do for the future. Until we get one of the major partners that we’re talking to right now in the boat, I don’t really want to speculate on how big it could be, but I think it is upside; it’s not built into our models at this point.

Yes. And Matt, these two that we’ve just announced, are really hardening our current go-to-market strategy, that should help drive additional lead flow and kind of maximize agent productivity. Some of the other ones that we’ve kind of got in the hopper from mortgage services companies or real estate organizations, those could have the potential to be a brand new channel of distribution for us outside of what we’re doing today. So I think there’s very material upside in future partnerships and we just kind of continue to work at those throughout the year.

I will just add, I appreciate some of the mortgage strength. Yes, some of the Mortgage, it’s Mark Jones, some of the mortgage companies that we’re in discussions with right now, we’re talking to them about not just helping them with kind of inbound deal flow that will go up or down based on what’s going on in the housing market, but also their enforce block of business that they’re servicing. So if you think about it, every year that escrow payment comes up for review, and when there’s a significant increase in escrow payment because of insurance, we can provide a clean, simple solution to them that is completely decoupled from the housing market. It’s just it’s coupled with the calendar, but not the housing market. So we’re pretty excited about that.

Great. That’s really helpful color. I appreciate all the answers.

Thanks Matt.

The next question comes from Paul Newsome with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thanks for the call. So just to maybe step back a little bit on the commentary about productivity and continuing to cull a little bit and the expectation for a resumption or an acceleration of franchise growth in the back half of the year, should we expect that, both the revenues should be if we sort of mix all these things together, should also be a little bit more backend loaded because of the continued culling or should we expect a sort of similar seasonality for what we’ve seen in the last year or so?

Yes, Paul, I would expect probably similar seasonality, because when you think about what a franchisee begins to add to revenue when they onboard somebody, and they’re very heavy new business bias as opposed to having anything in their renewal book, we’re only getting 20% of that. But I would point you to the gap between premium guidance and revenue guidance for the year and so that can help show the difference of how we’re transitioning some corporate agents into franchise and where that revenue split. So we’re still keeping those policies on the book, but now we’re recording 20% of new business revenue as opposed to a 100%.

Fantastic.

And then failing of the existing agencies as well, as they continue to add producers throughout the summer months, that new business is going to come in the second half of the year, but again, it’s a $0.20 on the dollar type deal. So you would expect that to follow the kind of the normal seasonality, but really start to take hold in the renewal block in 2024 and 2025.

But with our corporate agents, we should see -- with the kind of recruiting cycle, the place that we’re in the recruiting cycle right now is that we’re not going to have a lot of incremental corporate agents really before the start of the third quarter. But once we hit the start of the third quarter, we’ve got our new college graduate classes coming in, and so a 100% of that revenue is recognized. So we should, that will help us in the back half of the year.

Yes.

That’s it from me. Thanks, I Appreciate that.

The next question comes from Andrew Kligerman with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Hey, good evening. First question is around the retention ratios. So we calculated 78.5% for franchises and I guess prior to COVID it was in like the low mid-80s. During COVID 2021 period, it was like 90 to 92. So do you kind of anticipate getting back to that sort of mid-80s retention and would that timeframe be as soon as the second half of the year?

Yes Andrew, I would say we are, we’re focused on driving success out of the existing operating agencies, but as well as adding total producers less totally focused on the operating agency number, more totally focused on the total number of producers out there, but our expectation is the culling of underperforming agencies will be largely complete by the end of the second quarter, which is when you would start to see the turnover rate start to slow down. You might not see the growth rate in operating agencies as high as you would have historically, but that’s because we’re funneling those resources into the agencies that are producing a disproportionate amount of our new business growth, so that we can work with more scale individual franchises and maximize the total producer count, not necessarily the total operating agents account.

So some improvement, just hard to say at this stage in the game and more focused on productivity, I got you. And then with respect to kind of the, I was kind of reading the press release and you increased terminations of signed franchises that have yet to launch. And then I think about this, these 180 franchises that didn’t work out, but they only generated 2% of volumes. Could you, two parts to this question, one what was it in the recruiting of these franchises that didn’t work and what is the solution that’s going to fix it? I mean, I think I heard that you were saying, you’re going to, you’ve hired more servicing people and so forth, but very curious as to kind of what went wrong with this group and what exactly is the fix?

I’ll take that. We had this weird market phenomenon of the COVID pandemic that none of us really knew with certainty how we were going to manage through it. Recruiting became very easy. Franchise recruiting became very easy, particularly early on in the pandemic because people thought they were going to lose their corporate jobs and they were looking for another way to earn a living as things progressed. So they signed up, but they didn’t really commit. And so, we had a bunch of people on our books that we hoped would launch, but their lives changed when they realized they could go back to their corporate jobs and so we had a number of them that sort of just didn’t materialize. So there’s a few things that we’re doing to make sure that that doesn’t happen again. So one is, we are increasing our kind of quality threshold. We’re letting much fewer, many fewer potential franchisees through we’re trying to make sure that we’re very comfortable that they’re going to actually be able to build an agency. We have changed compensation for both the recruiting team and the team that manages those franchises, so that they’re sharing in the success of the new business that’s being generated by those new franchises that tends to sort of focus everyone on what we need them to do. But importantly, we’re really kind of doubling down on investing where it is going to really move the needle. And that is helping scale agencies that are in the, at the stage of their maturation, where that’s possible. And we indicated that we have that dedicated recruiting group in corporate. Each agent that we add to a successful franchisee has been generating about 1.7 times the new business of an entire new franchise. So we’re getting a lot of leverage out of that. The other lever that we’re pulling there is opening the aperture for corporate agents to convert into franchisees. And that is really, that’s recruiting on steroids because those guys have been generated. So far the ones that we’ve opened this year have been generating six times the new business that another, the average new franchise was. So if you think about it, the impact of us recruiting into agencies, the impact of us doing just the planned corporate conversions this year, could get us the impact of in the ballpark, in the zip code of another 500 launches. And we are being just, like I said, much more careful about who we let through. So there’s basically, there’s a, that’s a long answer to a short question, but it’s -- there’s a bunch of levers that we’re pulling.

Excellent answer, very helpful. And maybe just one last quick one, just in terms of who you’re recruiting into the franchises, are they predominantly coming from these exclusive agent channels or are you getting people that are not necessarily insurance producers at the time?

Yes, this, Mark Miller, I'll answer that question. I would say probably at least 75% of them come from a captive sort of environment where they were an insurance agent or they were an independent agent at one point in their time. It’s one of the things we look for when you were asking, how do we qualify these people? That’s one of the qualification that we look at is, do you have prior insurance experience? But not exclusively. We’ve got some excellent agents that never sold insurance before when they entered our model. So it’s both, but more heavily weighted towards people that have sold insurance before.

Very helpful. Thanks a lot.

The next question comes from Mike Zaremski with BMO. Please go ahead.

Hey, good evening. Hoping you could help unpack the margin expansion guide for full year 2023 over 2022. Maybe it’d be helpful if you could offer any color on what kind of drove some of the margin gains in 4Q, maybe that’s some of the momentum we should be thinking about it into 2023 because it sounds like contingence isn’t a big driver based on the commentary, so that maybe there’s some upside there. But anything, a lot of pause momentum you guys have given color about on the call, anything specifically you’d want us to think through?

Yes, so productivity, especially with corporate agents, drives a significant amount of earnings. When you have an agent that’s producing below what we would expect from a breakeven perspective, that is makes it really challenging to drive really high margins. And what we’ve seen is in Q4, 24% increase in corporate agent productivity. That’s very helpful for driving margin expansion. The other thing is our renewal buck is performing extremely well. 88% client retention layer that on top of P&C pricing. I think we should take credit for where we are in the value chain, to the tune of a 100% premium retention. Renewal business is far more profitable than new business. So that was also very helpful from a market perspective. And on top of that, we’ve got a lot of cultural shifting to really create smarter and tighter controls in the way we’re investing capital. So people are making better decisions from an expense perspective today than we have in the past.

Okay. Thank you very much.

The next question comes from Mark Dwelle with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Yes, good evening. Just building on that last set of questions related to the margin guidance. Just to be clear, we’re the baseline guidance we’re starting with is the 18% adjusted EBITDA margin that you achieved for 2022, that’s the baseline and you’ll grow off of that base?

Correct.

Okay. And then in some of your comments, you suggested getting to sort of a 30% EBITDA margin over, say a three to five-year timeframe. Would it be right to assume any linearity between the 18 that we’re at now and 30 in say five years, that would be 2 or 3 points a year or is it going to be more non-linear than that?

Yes, there’s puts and takes in any given year. Contingencies can swing that number relatively wildly, but if you normalize for all of that, that would not be an unreasonable assumption. A relatively linear fashion, I mean a contingency year in excess of historical average could make that happen faster. A contingency year that’s below what we’ve seen this year could cause that to slow. But in general, we’re expecting to scale our G&A and our compensation expense on core revenue growth.

Okay, thanks. And then on that topic of contingencies and I’m, if I’m doing my math right, at the midpoint of your premium guide range, that would be contingence for the year in the $11.5 million range, again kind of just at the midpoint using 40 basis points. Is that, am I thinking about that the right way?

Yep. You’ve got that ballpark about right.

Got it. And then the other question that I want, well, one other -- two other questions. One question, can you just talk through again, you indicated some increases that impacted the tax rate in the quarter and I couldn’t write that fast. So could you talk through those real quick again?

Yes, so some non-cash deferred tax asset changes related to management departures as well as a couple of effective state effective tax rate changes that impacted deferred just flipped from deferred to current. So that’s how I would explain it without having to have a tax degree.

So the management departures part, that would be hopefully unlikely to be a recurring component that the other part would be presumably somewhat ongoing.

Right.

Got it. And then the last question that I had, this [indiscernible] of all of the things that have already been previously discussed about, how you plan to, kind of reposition your franchise intake rate and so forth, would it be right then to assume that the initial franchise fee component of revenue, that that would also probably see a lower growth rate than it has in the past and potentially be a little bit more backend loaded this year relative to, the more linear that it’s, it has tended to be or is, am I over interpreting that?

No, I think that’s about right. I mean, really what’s driving that level of increase in this year were some of the increased culling of agencies, because from a GAAP perspective, you fast forward the franchise fee revenue to the extent you have cash when you terminate an agency. So there’s no cash flow impact. But there’s just regular P&L impact. By the time we get through the second quarter, that termination rate should slow down which would then cause that franchise fee revenue piece to slow down from a growth perspective. But it also, the offset of that is you should not see as much bad debt expense be flowing through from culling of the sign, but yes to launch franchises, we’re getting relatively close to being done with that pipeline as well. So you may see franchise fee revenue not growing as quickly, but in reality that is just a cost recovery mechanism. That’s not what we’re trying to do to drive long-term profitability in the business. We’re focused on adding new business and retaining the existing clients. And then the other side of that is, you’ll see bad debts slowdown in the second half of the year as well.

Understood. Thank you very much.

The next question comes from Pablo Singzon with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you. Most of my questions have been asked already, but I just wanted to, I guess, follow up on comments you can give on the corporate side, because you sort of discussed the changes you’re making on the franchising side, but maybe talk through, changes that you’re going to make on the corporate with regards to maybe recruiting or even compensation sort or how to think about, what you’re doing differently now versus what you did the past couple of years?

Sure. Hey Pablo, this is Brian Pattillo. So as you know, we have been seeing kind of a lower productivity in corporate sales, so we took aggressive action this past quarter to really get that turned around. So to your point that’s the first thing is we had to raise the bar on recruiting and make sure that we’re slowing down hiring to make sure we have just absolute top quality talent coming into the team. And then, yes we managed out bad performers and really those things combined really shifted the culture to courage, the culture of excellence where just mediocrity isn’t tolerated which led to significant productivity gains that we saw in December and January. But I think most importantly is the fact that we were able to produce more new premium in Q4 with significantly fewer agents. So that’s a much more profitable business and really just a stronger foundation to grow on in the future that I think now we have stronger absorptive capacity because we’re plugging in new agents through a highly successful, highly productive team with a great culture that’s ready to win. So it’s across the board, it’s changing recruiting, managing low performing agents, improving the culture and just getting back to a point, where we’re seeing productivity, where we want it to be.

Yes. And Pablo, just to piggyback off that, for the future of corporate sales, we should be looking at this as an awesome feeder program into very successful franchisees that we know are going to grow and scale. And so it’s not necessarily like we want to hold onto a corporate sales agent for 10 years. We want them to turn into a business owner and multiply themselves and create an army of producers underneath them.

Understood. It sounds like you didn’t change much in the compensation site in the corporate channel.

We made a couple of little tweaks changing some manual things to monthly type things, nothing wholesale.

Understood. And then last one from me, just a quick numbers question. The revenue retention above a hundred, I might have understood, but do you expect just in the first half of 2023 or through most of 2023?

Sorry, Pablo, I didn’t quite get your cash question. Could you repeat?

Yep. The revenue retention over a hundred, right? So basically your renewal premiums being, more than new business you wrote last year, right? Like for like, because of pricing, do you expect that positive com to persist through most of 2023 or just through the first half, right, because you do end up bumping against the first half?

We expect premium rates to continue to be a tailwind through at least the second quarter. There’s a potential that that could continue through the back half of the year. I’m not counting on that. Our guidance doesn’t include continued acceleration through the back half of the year. But it’ll really depend on how successful the carriers are on generating underwriting profitability.

Understood. Thank you.

The next question comes from Ryan Tunis with Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. So yes, I just, I guess listening to, I guess the two issues are sort of the disparity of productivity in the franchise channel, some of that in the corporate channel as well. And you have fewer corporate agents selling and I guess just like looking at the results, it’s surprising a little bit to me that it’s difficult to really see that much of a negative impact from a new business standpoint. And I guess, for whatever reason what you’re describing, it would seem to me like maybe I see renewal well down quite a bit more than they actually are. So I’m just wondering is, are there headwinds associated with this from a new business perspective that we should expect to see in the coming quarters and we haven’t yet?

So we talked about in the prepared remarks that in 2023 you’re going to see that premium growth gradually decline as the lower new business for 2022 converts to lower new business and or lower renewals in 2023. But we plan on pivoting that new business growth back to accelerating by the second half of 2023 as we add producers into existing agencies. That we talked about our 1.7 times as productive as a new agency as we launch corporate agents and the franchises that are six access productive as a new agency. So there’s a lot of levers we’re pulling to juice productivity and get the new business growing again faster. But we had to take all of those actions in 2022 to make sure that we could maximize profitability and get a foundation to drive productivity and the right culture in the entire organization.

Got it. And then I guess just, I mean, it’s pretty interesting that you’re finding that you’re actually more productive with so many fewer corporate agents, and yet it still sounds like there’s a strategy to continue to, or to accelerate growth later on in the year. And I guess, are you rethinking that? Why is that the solution rather than to try to figure out like what the right size of the business should be and then continue to, I guess, right size the cost base and continue to grow a decent clip?

Yes, so we’re going to grow corporate sales, but not indefinitely and forever to an infinite number. We have the productivity now to where it can sustain growth at a reasonable and responsible level, and we would be foolish to not take advantage of that. And we’re creating a pipeline of future highly successful franchisees, as well as creating a pipeline of talent that can manage things like initial partnership lead flow. We don’t have a force of well-trained and highly talented corporate agents. Some of the economics on partnerships maybe a little bit more challenging and so it’s important that we have this W2 workforce that we know we have high quality and we have good control of that we can move around. So corporate is not just a source of new business policies, it’s a great lead flow into the rest of the organization as well.

Thank you.

With that, I would like to turn the conference back over to Mark Jones for any closing remarks.

Just want to thank everyone for your participation and good night.

This concludes today’s conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.