Earnings Labs

Universal Insurance Holdings, Inc. (UVE)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 25, 2015

$41.32

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Transcript

Frank Wilcox

Management

Hello and welcome to the Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2014 Earnings Presentation for Universal Insurance Holdings, Inc. I’m Frank Wilcox, the Chief Financial Officer. Making the presentation with me today are Sean Downes, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer; and Jon Springer, Director, Executive Vice President, and Chief Operating Officer. Earlier today, we filed our Form 10-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission and issued our earnings release. To find copies of these documents, please visit the SEC Filings and Press Releases sections of our website at www.universalinsuranceholdings.com. Our SEC filings can also be found on the SEC’s website. An audio recording of this presentation will be available on the homepage of our website until March 25, 2015. Before we begin, please note that this presentation may contain forward-looking statements about our business and financial results. Forward-looking statements reflect our current views regarding future events and are typically associated with the use of words such as believe, expect, anticipate, and similar expressions. We caution those listening, including investors, not to rely on forward-looking statements. They imply risks and uncertainties, some of which cannot be predicted or quantified, and future results could differ materially from expectations. We encourage you to carefully consider the risks described in our filings with the SEC, available on the SEC’s website or the SEC filings section of our website. We do not undertake any obligation to update or correct any forward-looking statements. With that said, I would like to turn the presentation over to Sean Downes.

Sean Downes

Management

Thank you, Frank. I like to start by providing some highlights from the quarter and year. Jon will then discuss our operational highlights and then Frank will conclude by discussing our financial results for the quarter and full year period. We are pleased to report our best fourth quarter and full year results in the history of the company. Our results underscore the merits of our strategy to grow our business organically and through prudent expansion into new markets, increase profitability and deliver value to shareholders. For both of full year and fourth quarter, we delivered record total revenues, earned premiums, and net income indicating that the initiatives we put in place starting in early 2013 to drive profitable growth are paying off. Frank will provide specific details of our financial results later in the presentation. Our results in the quarter were driven by our continued focus on maintaining disciplined underwriting standards and writing high quality rate adequate business. This disciplined approach coupled with our decision in 2014 to reduce our quota share reinsurance to retain a greater portion of our rate adequate business to support our strong bottom-line performance. We also continue to make steady progress on our geographic diversification and expansion efforts and maintained strong organic growth momentum in 2014. We received approval to write business in Delaware and Indiana in 2014, bringing us to a total of nine states in which we are currently licensed and operating as of December 31 2014. For the full year, policy count for business outside of Florida increased by approximately 37.2% year-over-year demonstrating that our proven business model is also delivering results in newer markets. This momentum has continued in 2015 as we received approval in January to write business in Pennsylvania with an additional application pending in Minnesota. In terms…

Jon Springer

Management

Hey Sean. I would like to expand a little on the Nephila transaction. The capital generated from this transaction, along with strong retained earnings from 2014 puts the company in its strongest capital position in history. From a quota share reinsurance perspective, this enhanced capital position will afford us the opportunity, as Sean mentioned previously, to retain 100% of our own business effective June 1, 2015 to further drive profitability. One minor point of clarification related to the Nephila transaction, the originally signed agreement in early December contained a provision whereby Universal would repurchase the original shares from Nephila at Nephila’s option at $19 per share if any catastrophic event occurred that triggered a recovery by Universal Insurance Holdings from its $80 million covered loss index swap. This provision was subsequently removed from the agreement. However, from an accounting perspective, this provision was technically in place as of December 31, 2014. So therefore the equity was required to be temporarily classified as mezzanine equity. The equity is now permanent equity and as of February 19, increases our stockholders equity by a full $19 million. You will see some notes on this in the year-end financials. With respect to our plans for the upcoming reinsurance renewal, we continue to explore ways to maximize efficiency in the catastrophe coverage space through both enhancements to traditional products and the possibility of alternative mechanisms like a catastrophe bond. The number of additional parties providing capital to the reinsurance arena has created an extremely efficient buying environment for companies with a proven track record like ours. We plan to continue reinsuring both of the insurance subsidiaries to similar conservative levels as past years. I will now turn the discussion over to Frank Wilcox for our financial highlights.

Frank Wilcox

Management

Thank you, Jon. I would like to provide a little bit more detail around the financial results for the quarter and full year and their drivers. Net income for the fourth quarter totaled $21 million, an increase of 35% compared to $15.6 million in 2013. This reflects our efforts to build a higher quality and more rate adequate portfolio of policies that led to beneficial changes in the structure of our 2014-2015 reinsurance program effective June 1, 2014 including a reduction in our quota share session rate to 30% compared to 45% for the prior period. Diluted EPS for the fourth quarter was $0.59 which is a $0.44 or 34% increase from the same quarter in 2013 reflecting an increase in net income. The increase in net earned premiums of $28.9 million or 44% for the quarter compared to the same period in 2013 reflects a decrease in ceded earned premiums of $28.3 million and an increase in direct earned premiums of $0.7 million. The reduction in the cession rate of our quota share reinsurance contracts was significant factor behind the increase in net earned premium. Commission revenue of $3.3 million for the quarter was down by $0.9 million or 21% as a result of both a decrease in the cost of certain reinsurance contracts and differences in the structure of our reinsurance programs. We generated net realized gains on investments of $274,000 during the fourth quarter of 2014 compared to $1.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2013. These gains were generated as a result of selling securities ahead of potential volatility in the equity markets. Net investment income decreased by $596,000 for the fourth quarter of 2014 compared to the same period in 2013 reflecting a shift to a higher portion of conservative fixed income investments in the…