Hippo Holdings Inc. (HIPO) Q3 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Hippo Holdings, Inc. Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Charles Sebaski, Head of Investor Relations. Charles, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining Hippo's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. Earlier today, Hippo issued an earnings release announcing Q3 results and a financial results presentation, which will be webcast during today's call, both of which are available at investors.hippo.com. Leading today's discussion will be Hippo President and Chief Executive Officer, Rick McCathron; and Chief Financial Officer, Guy Zeltser. Following management's prepared remarks, we will open up the call for questions. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that our discussion will contain predictions, expectations, forward-looking statements and other information about our business that are based on management's current expectations as of the date of this presentation. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from historical results and/or from our forecast, including those set forth in Hippo's Form 10-Q. For more information, please refer to the risks, uncertainties and other factors discussed in Hippo's SEC filings, in particular, the section entitled Risk Factors in our Form 10-Q and 10-K. All cautionary statements are applicable to any forward-looking statements we make whenever they appear. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties and other factors discussed in Hippo's SEC filings. Do not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as Hippo is under no obligation and expressly disclaims any responsibility for updating, offering or otherwise revising any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. During this conference call, we will also refer to non-GAAP financial measures such as adjusted net income. Our GAAP results and description of our non-GAAP financial measures with full reconciliation to GAAP can be found in the third quarter 2026 earnings release, which has been furnished to the SEC and is available on our website. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Rick McCathron, our President and CEO.

Thank you, Chuck, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Hippo continues to execute on our strategy of growth, diversification and improving profitability at reduced volatility. This quarter, we delivered on all 3, including marking our fifth straight quarter of underwriting profitability. For the quarter, we generated $9 million of net income and $20 million of adjusted net income, which represents 17% annualized adjusted return on equity for the quarter. We had strong growth across the business with gross written premiums of nearly $500 million, up 60% over last year, led by the continued expansion of existing program partners in our casualty and CMP lines of business and an acceleration of growth in our homeowners business. This growth did not come at the expense of underwriting discipline. Our combined ratio for the quarter improved 1 percentage point year-over-year to 98.4%. However, on a year-to-date basis, our combined ratio improved 20 points to 97.9% compared to the same period last year. I would like to provide a few thoughts on what we are seeing in the overall competitive environment. In general, the property market remains soft with increased competition as plentiful reinsurance capacity is allowing for reduced rates and softening terms and conditions. In casualty, while we have seen some increased competition, we are still seeing higher renewal pricing and the impact of loss cost trends really depends on the line of business and where you are attaching. Combined, we still see an overall operating environment in which we can grow our business profitably. Now let's discuss where this performance is coming from. The program and MGA market remains one of the fastest-growing and most innovative sectors of insurance. This market now generates gross premium of over $125 billion in the U.S., growing at 15% annually since 2019. And I am proud that Hippo is one of the leading program carriers supporting this growth and innovation. Last night, we announced our latest endeavor into the program market, a partnership with Greenlight Re, whereby we will have the opportunity to be a preferred program carrier for emerging MGAs as well as invest alongside Greenlight Re into these businesses. One of the ways we intend to support emerging programs and current program partners is by offering a broad suite of services beyond capacity, including claims administration, customer support and technology, which we have built to operate our own MGA, HHIP. We see the cultivating of emerging programs as a pathway to build strategic partnerships with some of the leading programs of the future. Now turning to our current portfolio. In homeowners, we wrote $112 million of premium, up 11% over last year. Growth continues to come from our admitted book more than offsetting the headwinds in the E&S channel. We view our homeowners book as rate adequate, achieving a mid-single-digit renewal rate this quarter, and we combined with nearly 10% of increased exposure, we had nearly 14% of renewal premium increase in the quarter. Overall, we are seeing favorable loss trends across the book with low single-digit loss cost, which we expect rate to keep pace with. As we announced last quarter, we continue to ramp up our footprint with our national distribution partners, including an additional 14 states this year for quoting existing homes. We also are actively working to expand the options for how we reach potential customers. Supporting the expansion has been the rollout of our AI initiatives, one of which is now showing a success rate in 9 of 10 first notice of losses with Clara. This technology provides our claims operations the bandwidth to keep growing profitably. Additionally, the launching of these new states has also been significant more efficient, requiring 70% less engineering effort per state than our initial 8 states. We continue to refine our underwriting and technology integrations and see a lot of runway ahead for our homeowners business. Commercial multi-peril had another strong quarter, up 63% over last year to $108 million of gross written premium, which on a year-to-date basis, makes CMP our second largest line behind casualty. Our retention of 19% came back in line with our previously communicated expectation of a low 20s retention for the year. Casualty was our fastest-growing line again this quarter with gross written premium up sharply to $188 million, now our largest line on a gross basis, though only third on a net basis year-to-date. As we said last quarter, this year, we have begun to retain more casualty risk primarily from a program with a 20-year track record, and we are doing so as both a means of managing the insurance cycle and managing the overall exposure concentrations given the growth we expect in our property book. As indicated last quarter, we expect the retention level to normalize with mid-teens for the full year. Our net expense ratio came in at 41.7%, down over 10 points from last year and nearly 30 points from the beginning of 2024. This improvement was driven by both increased operating leverage, which improves with scale and our changing of mix of business, including more casualty business. We believe our investments in technology have us in the position to keep driving expense ratio down in the near future. The result of these efforts is the steadily improved and stabilized underwriting performance, which has now produced a combined ratio underwriting profit for the last 5 quarters in a row with a 98% for the quarter despite experiencing a more normalized cat loss quarter. As we continue to see the market in various lines of business, especially cat-exposed E&S property, the need to remain ever more disciplined is increasingly important. We believe this type of discipline is embedded at Hippo. This quarter, we continue to make excellent progress towards our long-term goals, which we have raised last quarter to over $2.5 billion of gross premium and over $140 million of adjusted net income. Our business continues to evolve into a more diversified, stable and profitable enterprise. We are making the investments in technology and talent today, which will drive Hippo into 2028 and beyond. Now I'll turn it over to our CFO, Guy Zeltser, to walk through the numbers in detail, and then we'll take your questions. Guy?

Thanks, Rick, and good morning, everyone. In the third quarter, we continued to deliver strong top line premium growth, improved underwriting and increased profitability. Q3 gross written premium grew 60% year-over-year to $498 million, up from $311 million in Q3 of last year. Growth in the third quarter was achieved across all our lines of business with especially strong performance in casualty and commercial multi-peril lines and more modest expansion in both renters and homeowners. The intentional diversification of our gross written premium continued in the third quarter when 3 of our 4 major lines generated over $100 million of gross written premium. Homeowners grew 11% to $112 million and accounted for 23% of the total gross written premium, down from 32% in Q3 of last year. Renters grew 25% to $74 million and accounted for 15% of the total gross written premium, down from 19% in Q3 of last year. Commercial multi-peril grew 63% to $108 million, accounted for 22% of total gross written premium, up from 21% last year. And casualty grew 146% to $188 million, representing 38% of total gross written premium, up from 25% last year. I would like to provide a little additional color on our casualty growth in the last few quarters. While the rate of growth has been elevated, where the growth is originating from is equally important. During the year, we added several large existing programs with in-force books, resulting in over 2/3 of the casualty GWP growth coming from renewal business rather than chasing business in a softening market. Net written premiums in Q3 grew 26% year-over-year to $149 million, trading the extension of gross written premium as we are intentionally retaining less risk in the fastest-growing commercial lines. Consequently, our blended retention rate in the quarter was 30% compared to 38% last year. In general, we view retention levels on a full year basis as timing of program renewals can lead to quarterly variances in that metric. The change in mix was also reflected on a net basis. Homeowners generated $74 million of net written premium, representing 50% of the total net written premium, down from 64% last year. Renters generated $29 million and accounted for 19% of total net written premium, down from 22% last year. Commercial multi-peril generated $20 million and accounted for 14% of total net written premium, up from 12% last year. Casualty also generated $20 million in the quarter compared to roughly $4 million in Q3 of last year. It is worth noting how this mix shift has already started impacting our underwriting results in Q3 and is expected to continue doing so in the future. Casualty and C&P lines generally have a higher non-cat loss ratio than our property lines, but also lower cat loss ratio and expense ratio. So as we continue to diversify into C&P and casualty lines on a net basis, we expect to see the components of consolidated combined ratio moving in the direction I just mentioned, while we still aim to achieve normalized combined ratio in the mid-90s by 2028. In Q3, our net combined ratio improved 1 percentage point to 98.4% compared to Q3 of last year. This was achieved by improvement in expense ratio, which more than offset a slightly more normalized loss ratio. Our Q3 net loss ratio increased 9 percentage points year-over-year to 56.7%. Accident year ex-cat loss ratio came in at 49.9% compared to 48.4% last year. The increase was driven both by a more normalized loss experience in a business owner property line as well as by the continued shift to a higher percentage of casualty and CMP exposure in the book. However, we still view sub-50% underlying loss ratio as excellent results. Cat loss ratio came in at 6.5% and was higher by 7 percentage points over last year, a period which had no cat losses. Seasonally, Q3 contains our most elevated modeled cat exposure, and this quarter's results still came in below expectation. There was no material prior accident year reserve development for the quarter, similar to Q3 of last year. In Q3, expense ratio improved by 10 percentage points year-over-year to 41.7%. This improvement was driven mostly by operating leverage, which improved with scale and was also supported by the lower expense ratio of C&P and casualty line. As Rick mentioned previously, we believe that our continued focus on operating leverage through AI enables us to grow our business while keeping fixed expense largely flat, which in turn has helped driving the expense ratio improvement. Revenue in the quarter was $156 million, up 29% over Q3 of last year. During the quarter, revenue included a $19.7 million of commission, service and fee income, which was up 45% over Q3 of last year. Q3 net income came in at $9 million or $0.33 per diluted share. Net income was down $89 million year-over-year as the prior year period included a $91 million net gain on sale of the homebuilder distribution network. Excluding the onetime gain on sale last year, our net income has improved roughly 28% year-over-year. Q3 adjusted net income grew 9% year-over-year to $20 million or $0.74 per diluted share. The year-over-year improvement was primarily due to the continued improvement of underwriting results and strong premium growth. Total Hippo stockholder equity at the end of the quarter was up 8% to $469 million, up from $436 million at year-end 2025. Total book value per share at the end of the quarter was $17.62 per share, largely in line with the $17.65 per share at last quarter as unrealized investment losses offset the net income in the quarter. Following this quarter's results, we are raising our full year guidance. We're increasing gross written premium from a range of $1.65 billion and $1.7 billion to a range of $1.7 billion and $1.75 billion. We're increasing revenue from a range of $580 million and $585 million to a range of $585 million and $590 million. We are lowering our combined ratio from a range of 99% and 101%, inclusive of a 10% cat loss ratio to a range of 97% and 98%, inclusive of an 8% cat loss ratio. And finally, we're increasing adjusted net income from a range of $62 million and $70 million to a range of $77 million and $80 million, while maintaining the expected impact from both stock-based compensation and depreciation and amortization to roughly $42 million. And with that, operator, I would now like to open the floor to questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Randy Binner with Texas Capital Bank.

I guess my question, and it's somewhat in the context of looking ahead to revenue growth in 2027, but the retentions were a little bit lower, as you mentioned this quarter. Is this the right level? Or do you think you kind of continue to retain less in light of soft market dynamics? And the question applies, I think, more to the commercial and casualty side, but also to the property side.

Randy, this is Guy. Thanks for the question. So generally speaking, because of the mix shift we're seeing between the lines of business, and as you mentioned, the fact that we are retaining less in C&P and casualty, we do expect the blended retention of net written over gross written in 2027 to continue to go down a bit, I would say, a few percentage points. So if the average in 2026 is about 33%, 34%. We do expect it to come down to probably to the low 30s area, low 30s to 30. So -- so that would be the retention, but we do expect, I would say, from a revenue growth perspective, probably a similar number to what we have been seeing and continue that trend into 2028.

Randy, this is Rick. I appreciate the question as well. I just want to add a couple of things more on a strategic view. We've mentioned on many occasions that we will not sacrifice underwriting quality for growth. And so when we're in a soft market, we are very comfortable retaining less business, yet we still believe we will hit the growth numbers that we have put forth. In fact, we've increased the guidance, as you know, on this call because we are operating with more partners and more channels. So the opportunity for us to be more selective while we're growing in other channels with other partners more than offsets the retention numbers from my perspective.

Okay. And just to double check, I heard that right, while the -- I'm sorry, the overall number goes down to 30%? Or is it -- you're more talking about in casualty and C&P?

The overall number.

Okay. And so that tracks closer to 30%. Yes, I guess just relatedly, just like a little -- the housing market is slower because of higher mortgage rates. Can you just touch a little bit on how like how submission and binding activity is with the Westwood partnership in light of the slower housing market?

Absolutely, Randy, again, this is Rick. Happy to talk about that. So one, we don't specifically share the numbers of what they look like. But I can tell you, one of the thesis we had by doing the Westwood partnership and the greater Baldwin partnership is that it gives us access to far more builders than we had access to previously. So even if individual builders are producing fewer homes, our access now is to a significantly larger number of builder partners. So we still believe that there's significant upside in the builder distribution channel even with the decreases that any individual builders might face due to the rising interest rate environment.

Your next question comes from the line of Tommy McJoynt with KBW.

One of the slides, I think it was Slide 4, you had a bullet there about beginning to offer a broader suite of services, and you mentioned claims, customer support and technology. Is this sort of a new endeavor or offering that you guys are rolling out and thinking about monetizing better? Or what's sort of the strategy around you guys are offerings in the go-to-market?

Yes. Thanks, Tommy. This is Rick, and I really appreciate this question. One of the things as we continue to take more and more risk with our various underlying program partners, I think it's incumbent upon us to make sure that the quality of the business from an underwriting perspective, a claims perspective, oftentimes driven by some of the technological improvements we have in our own MGA gives us better view, vision and insight on what those individual programs are doing. So as an example, if I'm taking 20%, 30%, 40% on a particular program, I would much prefer actually being the claims TPA with that partner program because we believe that our claims handling at Hippo would surpass the quality of any individual claims TPA that does not have the same interest aligned as we do, which is underwriting profitability. So most of the services that we are providing, those are generally to enhance our participation and partnership with individual programs and giving them sort of services that are aligned with our expectation of being an underwriting partner with them and also helping those programs leverage the years of technology, data and AI build that we've done with Hippo. So we're not looking at it as a revenue center. We're looking at it as an opportunity for us to continue to have appropriate oversight on programs in which we retain risk. Does that help?

Yes, that does. That's a sort of useful explanation for us to think about it. Yes, I appreciate that. Yes. When we sort of -- any time we see a high-growth insurance company, that naturally raises questions around sort of the capital and capacity to fund that growth. So can you talk about as you think about growth into next year, certainly reaching into the double digits on a net written premium growth basis, how much capital is available at Spinnaker to support that growth? Or is there any need potentially for capital injection to support that?

Tony, this is Guy. Happy to take this question. So just to reiterate something that we've said in the past, we have enough capital to support all the organic growth that we put out or to achieve the targets we put out for 2027 and 2028. And just to reiterate, these are more than $2.5 billion of gross written premium and more than $140 million of adjusted net income. So we'll have plenty of capital to accomplish that. I think the easiest way to think about that and one ratio that we are looking at very closely, not just at the Spinnaker level, but at the consolidated entity level is the NWP leverage ratio over the surplus. So if you look at our GAAP surplus alongside with the surplus note that we raised, we have more than $500 million of capital. And if you stretch that 1.5x, that gives you $750 million to $800 million. And our net written premium this year is going to be under $600 million. And even if you assume the growth into next year, it's going to be probably in the -- again, in the $750 million area. So we are now into the position where we start accumulating net income and accumulate the capital such that this additional capital can also support the growth into 2028 and beyond.

Yes, Tommy, one thing that I would add is that I think we disclosed a few quarters ago that we have also put a whole account gross quota share in place. It's a very small percentage, like 5% of our total portfolio is very small. But that is a lever we can use if we have an opportunity to grow more than what Guy had just indicated. We always have that lever that we could feed off more in the whole account Hippo and Spinnaker quota share to allow us to take advantage of an opportunity where we think there would be a quality operator or new partnership we might have on the HHIP side. So we feel very good with the capital that we have to achieve the 2028 goals, and we have a lever if we think there's an opportunity for us to increase those further.

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Anderson with Jefferies.

This is Sid on for Andrew. First, just hoping you can expand a bit more on the announced partnership with Greenlight Re. And I think the announcement mentioned emerging MGA business. So maybe you could clarify if that means it's programs with limited underwriting history and if we should think about Hippo keeping retentions lower on premiums from that business?

Yes, Sid, this is Rick. I'll go ahead and take the beginning of this question. So a couple of things. One, we're always looking for growth, not just in the near term, but also in the long term. And our experience has shown that if you pick partners early in the process and you're able to help and support them throughout their start-up phase into their high-growth phase. You have an opportunity really to be an integrated partner in what they're accomplishing over time. So as an example, if you go back several years ago, when Spinnaker first started as a fronting carrier, it essentially had 2 start-ups that were the vast majority of the business. It was Hippo and it was MSI. We fast forward today, those 2 programs on Spinnaker paper account for close to $1 billion of total premium, maybe a shade below that. But those were 2 start-ups. And so we believe that partnering with Greenlight and the capabilities that they've demonstrated on finding good partners and the services that we had sort of just talked about with Tommy, so adding more value to those partners because of our expertise in particular lines is seeding the future growth with these partners. So it's starting small, of course. We will continue to grow and expand it as we have success in this. But frankly, it's really planting seeds for long-term growth within Hippo Holdings.

Okay. And then maybe just pivoting to the loss ratio. I think you called out some mix shift headwinds and maybe those continue. But curious if you kind of expect accelerating homeowners growth to provide any offset there or if we should consider the third quarter underlying loss ratio is a reasonable baseline moving forward?

Yes, Sid, thank you for the question. This is Guy. So just to give you an idea on the mix shift, when we look at it on a year-over-year basis, our ex-cat loss ratio ex reserve development was higher by about 160 basis points. But if you just look at the mix shift, so if you keep everything else constant just changing the mix in lines of business, it actually went up by about 3 points. So everything else being equal, we actually had a better quarter because we kept seeing homeowners performing better because we saw premium coming ahead of loss trend. In terms of what we expect into the future, just to do the full math, we still expect to have a combined ratio in the mid-90s in 2028. And Rick also said before that we expect on the same period to have an expense ratio in the mid-30s. So what you're going to see is just a mix shift between the components of combined ratio, whereas we do expect to see the ex-cat going up. But against that, the cat loss ratio to go down as well as the expense ratio, which is an operating leverage play as well as mix shift that will push the expense ratio down.

Yes. So this is Rick. Just to elaborate a little bit on what Guy said. This is part of the strategy. This is intentional. So when we put the strategy forth a little under 2 years ago, what we said was we wanted to produce a highly curated, positively selected portfolio of risk that comes from our own program and partner programs. In order -- and we would want that positively selected portfolio to be diversified across geographies, across product lines and offerings. And so by doing that, we intentionally are adding program lines that look different than HHIP from both a loss ratio component and an expense ratio component leading to the combined ratio component. So currently, we are performing better than our long-term projections on loss ratio. We're performing worse than our long-term -- excuse me, we're performing on line with our long-term projections of expense ratio. And the mix shift will ultimately equate to the loss ratio -- or excuse me, combined ratio targets that we put forth. And so we would expect there to see gradual increasing in loss ratio, gradual decreasing in expense ratio, providing a much more positive combined ratio component. So again, intentional actions on our part to create that diversified portfolio.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to the management for closing remarks.

Well, I appreciate you joining us. Thank you for that, and we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Have a great day, everyone.

And this concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect. Goodbye.