Richard McCathron
Analyst · Yaron Kinar with Jefferies. Your line is open
Good afternoon. And thank you for joining us Hippo's business model is proving itself and our investments in technology are paying off. We've executed on our dual goals of growth and improve loss ratio. Despite this year's challenges from inflation, supply chain dislocation, and one of the worst hurricane losses in history. We remain confident that we're building a superior underwriting model and an industry leading technology stack. In Hippo, we strive to help our customers enjoy the homes through enhanced home protection and services. But some events like major hurricanes are unavoidable. At such times we do our best to help customers get through those difficulties and back to enjoying their homes. This quarter, I'm proud of Hippo's response to the tragedy of Hurricane Ian. As we speak, well over half of Hurricane Ian reported claims have been paid. We are delivering on our service promise to our customers in a crisis while also executing on improving our financial performance. Our customer base reached 332,000 by quarter's end. Customer acquisition and retention is driving accelerating net commission revenue and steady total generated premium growth. Included in our customer account our Hippo homeowner's insurance policyholders as well as Hippo agency customers who still receive the Hippo experience while placed with third-party carriers. Our Hippo blended premium retention across both Hippo policies, and agency customers was 90% in the quarter, up from 89% in Q2. Our customers are happy and are staying with us. GGP growth accelerated and was up 36% versus the prior year quarter. We continue to see strength in our builder channel, which is our best loss ratio segment. Despite some slowdowns in housing markets, we expect the attractiveness of our model for distribution partnerships will lead to new relationships and continued strong growth. We also increase the geographical diversification of our portfolio with growth in the states where we have entered over the past year, including New York, North Carolina and Massachusetts. We're having great success in attracting our target customers, a group we call generation better, which we estimate to account for a third of all U.S. homeowners. A key characteristic of generation B is a desire to proactively protect and maintain their homes, and the willingness to use technology to be better homeowners. Through a, targeted marketing efforts in Q3, 2022, we estimate that over 75% of our new business was generation better customers. With this cohort, we expect higher consumer retention, better loss ratios, and an opportunity to cross-sell as we expand our offering of home care services. Excluding the impact of Hurricane Ian, our gross loss ratio in Q3 was 58%, and improvement of 70 percentage points from Q3 last year, despite challenging market conditions, where inflationary pressures have dampened results across the industry. Our industry leading technology platform leverages rapid data integration and quickly re-underwrite and re-price our book to incorporate inflationary trends into our pricing. In addition, we've gotten better at attracting our target market, and have improved our geographical balance. We expect these improvement trends to continue and the superiority of our underwriting platforms to become increasingly apparent over time. While Stewart, we'll say more about Hurricane Ian in a moment. I wanted to note that the net losses to Hippo at a consolidated level from this event were only $4.7 million and of that only 900,000 related to Hippo's homeowners programs. Our small net losses in Florida from Hurricane Ian, was not a simple stroke of luck. We've made strategic decisions that limit our exposure in that space. First, we have been cautious about adding Florida exposure to our portfolio due to both the unique weather and legal environments. Second, our Hippo homeowners business in Florida is exclusively through our builders program, new home construction with the latest in design and technology and craftsmanship better able to withstand nature's fury. Hippo's third quarter adjusted EBITDA loss was $54.8 million, including $4.7 million of losses related to Hurricane Ian. When we reported our 2Q 2022 adjusted EBITDA loss of $55.8 million, we said, we expected Q3, 2022 to be our peak loss quarter. We beat that expectation despite one of the worst industry events in history. Because revenue growth and underlying gross loss ratio improvements are accelerating, and that the expense reduction actions we've taken are beginning to have their intended effect. Barring unusual whether we expect our Q4, 2022 adjusted EBITDA loss will be below $50 million with continued improvements thereafter. We have also continued to invest in our technology and service capabilities to drive long-term growth and superior customer experience. In the fourth quarter, we expect to launch our Book a Pro feature for Texas customers via our mobile app. This new feature will connect homeowners who need help from home improvement professionals like plumbers and electricians with a highly rated provider in our network. Additionally, our customers will be able to message our home care experts to get advice via our mobile app. We aim to aggressively scale these capabilities across more locations, services and providers as part of our goal of becoming our customers' go-to-destination for home care. We're very proud of what we have achieved this quarter, and of the business we're building. Thank you. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Stewart, our CFO.