Brown & Brown, Inc. ($BRO)

Good morning, and welcome to the Brown & Brown, Inc. First Quarter Earnings Call. Today's call is being recorded. Please note that certain information discussed during this call, including information contained in the slide presentation posted in connection with this call and including answers given in your response to your questions, may relate to future results and events or otherwise be forward-looking in nature. Such statements reflect our current views with respect to our future events including those relating to the company's anticipated financial results for the first quarter and are intended to fall within the safe harbor provisions of the security laws. Actual results or events in the future are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties and may differ materially from those currently anticipated or desired or referenced in any forward-looking statements made as a result of a number of factors. Such factors, including the company's determination as it finalizes its financial results for the first quarter that its financial results differ from the current preliminary unaudited numbers set forth in the press release issued yesterday. Other factors that the company may not have currently identified or quantified and those issued -- I'm sorry, and those risks and uncertainties identified from time to time in the company's reports filed in the Securities and Exchange Commission. Additional discussion of these and other factors affecting the company's business and prospects as well as additional information regarding forward-looking statements is contained in the slide presentation posted in connection with this call and in the company's filings in the Securities and Exchange Commission. We disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. In addition, there are certain non-GAAP financial measures used in this conference call. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in the company's earnings press release or in the investor presentation for this call on the company's website at bbrown.com by clicking on Investor Relations and then Calendar of Events. With that said, I would now like to turn the call over to Powell Brown, President and Chief Executive Officer. You may begin.

Thank you, Towanda. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter earnings call. Overall, we delivered good financial results for Q1, reflecting the continued dedication of our nearly 23,000 teammates to provide best-in-class solutions to our diversified customer base. These results are a continuation of the industry-leading top and bottom line performance we delivered in 2025. I'll provide some high-level comments regarding our performance along with updates on our customers, the insurance markets and the M&A landscape. Then Andy will discuss our financial performance in more detail. This quarter, we also wanted to take some time to provide an update on our technology and data journeys with a focus on how we are leveraging these capabilities in combination with artificial intelligence to provide even more value to our customers, teammates and carrier partners. Lastly, I'll wrap up with some closing and forward-looking thoughts before we open up to Q&A. I'm on Slide #4. For the first quarter, we delivered revenues of $1.9 billion, growing 35.4% in total. Beginning this quarter, we're also presenting our organic growth with contingent commissions as another comparable measure to other publicly traded brokers. Andy will get into more detail how this metric gives a good correlation to our margins and cash flow generation. For the first quarter, organic revenue growth was flat with the prior year and with contingents increased 2.2%. Both growth metrics were impacted by prior year flood claims processing revenue and continued pressure on CAT property rates. The flood claims revenue represented a negative impact on our organic growth metrics of nearly 100 basis points. We had another great quarter for profitable growth. Our EBITDAC -- adjusted EBITDAC margin increased 40 basis points to 38.5% and our adjusted earnings per share grew nearly 8% to $1.39. For the first quarter, we generated good cash flow from operations of over $260 million. Overall, we're pleased with the solid top and bottom line results for the quarter. I'm on Slide 5. From an economic standpoint, conditions during the quarter were stable. Customer hiring and investment activity levels were generally consistent with prior periods, which continue to drive demand for creative insurance and risk management solutions. Customers remain focused on balancing cost and coverage decisions while prioritizing value and risk management. At the end of the quarter, the geopolitical issues and specifically the cost of oil and gas did influence some of our customers. As a result, they began to make slightly more cautious take a slightly more cautious outlook and are balancing the implications of absorbing cost increases versus passing them on to their customers. From a commercial insurance standpoint, the changes in rates remain relatively consistent with prior quarters, except for CAT property, which declined further than in the fourth quarter of last year. Pricing for Employee Benefits was fairly similar to prior quarters with medical costs up 8% to 10% and pharmacy costs up over 10%. We continue to consult and advise our customers on multiple strategies that can be employed to manage high-cost claimants and pharmacy spend. We leverage our extensive consultative solutions to deliver high-impact strategy for population health, captives, stop-loss and carve-outs for certain services. Shifting to the rate environment, the admitted P&C markets continue to be in the range of flat to up 5% versus prior year, but did moderate slightly as compared to last quarter. Workers' comp rates remained flat to down 3%, while we saw a few states increased rates modestly. For non-CAT property overall, rates remain down 5% to up 5%, depending on the loss experience and the location. For casualty lines, rates increased 2% to 5% for primary layers with excess layers increasing materially more. For professional liability, rates remained similar to the last couple of quarters and were down 5% to up 5%. Shifting to the E&S market, let's split the conversation between property and casualty. For property, both wind and quake, rates declined -- rate declines were modestly more than we experienced in Q4 of last year. Most of our placements for the quarter were down 15% to 35%. At the end of the quarter, we saw placements above and below this range. Generally, customers are capturing most of the savings. However, some are utilizing the savings to decrease deductibles, increase limits or buy other lines of coverage. These tactics are common when rates are moderating or declining. On the casualty front, not much has changed versus prior quarters. The ability to get higher limits is extremely challenging. Pricing continued to increase, primary layers are becoming more expensive and carriers are decreasing the limits they'll offer. We do not expect this trend to change materially over the coming quarters. I'm on Slide 6. Let's transition to the performance of our 2 segments for the quarter. Retail delivered organic growth, including contingents of 1.3% and organic growth, excluding contingents of 1%. This was due to the combination of rate, the change in our revenue model of one of our pharmacy consulting businesses and lower net new business in the quarter. The revenue model of this business in terms of the consulting business is changing and is expected to negatively impact organic growth by 50 to 100 basis points over the next couple of quarters. Then we expect this business to start growing towards the end of the year. In connection with our integration efforts to bring both companies together and position us to leverage our combined capabilities, we've been very deliberate regarding augmentation of our operating model. Legacy risk strategies was more of a regional sales model, while legacy Brown & Brown middle market was more of a local sales model. Steve Hearn and his leadership team have taken the best of both to create a new sales model that's underpinning with industry in line and coverage specialization. We believe these enhancements will drive higher net new business as leaders establish their operating rhythm. While it's still a bit early, we're already seeing increased activity gives us optimism about the second half of the year and heading into 2027. Based on the rate environment, the changes in one of our pharmacy consulting businesses and the operating model enhancements, we're projecting modest organic growth improvement each quarter this year as compared to the first quarter. Now let's talk about specialty distribution. For the quarter, organic revenue, including contingents, increased by 3.9% and decreased by 2% when excluding contingents. These organic revenue metrics were negatively impacted by nearly 300 basis points, driven by the $12 million of flood claims processing revenue we recognized in the first quarter of last year. We believe the results for the first quarter were strong, considering CAT property rates were down 15% to 35% and even more later in the quarter. We have a highly diversified and specialized business. And when we look at the underlying volumes for policies in force, exclusive of any rate impact, most of our businesses had good growth. From a contingent standpoint, it was another great quarter. As we look forward, we anticipate relatively flat organic growth, excluding contingents in Q2 due to heavy weighting of CAT property placements. In the second half of the year, we're expecting improving growth as we place less CAT property in the 180 businesses from a session helped drive our organic growth. Remember, 180 has a comparatively smaller amount of property and heavier weighting of casualty as compared to the legacy Brown & Brown specialty distribution business. Now I'll turn it over to Andy to get into more details of our financial results.

Thank you, Powell. Good morning, everybody. Before we get into the financial details, we want to talk about a few items. The first is reporting organic growth with contingents as another measure of our performance and a reference point to other public brokers. As we've discussed in the past, our ability to generate contingent commissions is a core part of our business model and can fluctuate quarterly. Contingent commissions are a higher percentage of total revenues in the specialty distribution segment as compared to retail due to the fact that we substantially control underwriting discipline. While organic growth has been pressured in certain parts of our business, primarily due to CAT property pricing, we have realized a substantial increase in contingents due to underwriting profitability. Generally, when E&S rates are decreasing, our contingents will increase. This inverse correlation creates more stability in our revenues, margins and cash flow. Transitioning now to our consolidated results. As a reminder, when we refer to EBITDAC, EBITDAC margin, income before income taxes or diluted net income per share, we're referring to those measures on an adjusted basis. The reconciliations of our GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures can be found either in the appendix of this presentation or in the press release we issued yesterday. Now let's get into more detail regarding our financial performance for the quarter over on Page 7. On a consolidated basis, we delivered total revenues of $1.9 billion, growing 35.4% as compared to the first quarter of 2025. Contingent commissions grew by an impressive $54 million with $22 million coming from a session. The underlying organic increase was driven by minimal storm claim activity and higher underwriting profitability, primarily within our Specialty Distribution segment. Income before income taxes increased by 28.7% and EBITDAC grew by 36.6%. Our EBITDAC margin was 38.5%, a 40 basis point increase over the first quarter of the prior year. This was a strong result considering the impact from a session, which we'll talk about in a few minutes, and the prior year of flood claims processing revenue. The underlying margin expansion was driven by significantly higher contingent commissions, along with our continued disciplined management of our expenses. Regarding the session, we recognized total revenues of approximately $445 million for the quarter. Due to legacy Brown & Brown's high margins in the first quarter associated with our employee benefits businesses and the expected quarterly phasing of revenue and profit for a session. Our adjusted EBITDAC margins were negatively impacted by approximately 200 basis points for the quarter. For the full year, we still expect the overall adjusted EBITDAC margins for the Accession business will be around 35%. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 22.8%, a slight increase over the prior year of 21.8%. The incremental rate was driven by an increase in certain state taxes. Diluted net income per share increased 7.8% to $1.39. Our weighted average shares increased by approximately $52 million to $337 million primarily due to shares issued in connection with the acquisition of Accession. During the last 6 months, we reduced our share count by approximately $5 million or 1.4% through $350 million stock repurchases. Lastly, our dividends paid per share increased by 10% as compared to the first quarter of 2025. We're over on Slide #8. The Retail segment grew total revenues by 33.4%. This growth was driven primarily by acquisition activity over the past year and organic growth, including contingents of 1.3%. Since we're in litigation with the start-up broker, we are excluding the impact on organic revenue growth associated with individuals that left and joined the start-up. The impact for the first quarter was approximately $10 million. At the end of March, the start-up has taken customers representing approximately $31 million of annual revenue as compared to the $23 million we announced last quarter. Our EBITDAC margin decreased by 130 basis points to 36%, resulting from the quarterly weighting of revenue and profit for legacy Brown & Brown as compared to risk strategies. This impact of more than 300 basis points offset good underlying margin expansion, driven by disciplined expense management. Additionally, there was a net benefit to our margins of approximately 40 to 60 basis points due to individuals that departed to the start-up. As we hire new teammates over the coming quarters, a portion of this margin benefit will moderate. We're over on Slide #9. Specialty Distribution grew total revenues by 40%, driven by the acquisition of Accession and a substantial increase in contingent commission. The higher contingent commissions of $52 million were driven by $22 million of acquisition activity and $30 million from favorable underwriting performance. We realized approximately $5 million of contingents associated with adjustments to prior year accruals based on finalization of the calculations and approximately $10 million of contingents this quarter that were recorded over the third and fourth quarters of 2025. Our EBITDAC margin increased by 30 basis points to 40.8% due to higher contingent commissions and our disciplined management of our expenses. These were partially offset by the profit associated with lower prior year flood claims processing revenue. Turning to cash flow and the balance sheet. We had another strong quarter and generated over $260 million of cash flow from operations, increasing approximately $50 million or 23% versus the prior year. Our ratio of cash flow from operations to total revenues was approximately 14% for the quarter, down slightly as compared to 15% in the prior year. The decline reflected Accession integration cost and higher-than-anticipated final earn-out payments related to acquisitions that outperformed our original estimates. These items offset strong underlying cash conversion. We continue to anticipate good cash generation for the remainder of the year and will balance our deployment of capital between share repurchases, M&A, dividends and delevering. With that, let me turn it back over to Powell for some comments regarding technology, data and artificial intelligence.

Thanks, Andy, and great report. I was going to clarify that on the share repurchases, we reduced the share count by about 5 million shares in terms of the purchasing and $350 million of share repurchases. So let's change gears and discuss technology and data as those topics are shaping how we're thinking about the future of insurance brokerage and how we're positioned to capture the opportunities on the horizon. I'm on Slide 11. Our technology and data journey commenced over 10 years ago, specifically when we began platform rationalization and data standardization across our business. These investments were foundational as AI is only effective when built on clean, standardized and scalable data platforms. Like most companies, our data journey is ongoing as we're always integrating acquisitions, seeking to better capture data and enhance our analytics. Over the past few years, we've been shifting more of our technology focus towards innovation and artificial intelligence. Our technology strategy is aligned with our goal to be the leading global provider of insurance solutions for our customers on Slide 12. Throughout our technology evolution, the focus has remained consistent, drive revenue growth, enhance the customer experience and improved teammate effectiveness and productivity. Our efforts are focused on developing enhanced solutions to increase sales velocity, improve customer interactions and reduce manual low complexity or repetitive work. These efforts will empower our teammates to spend more time advising customers, underwriting and helping companies and individuals better manage risk. Our progression is intentional, and therefore, we did not jump directly to AI. We're investing in the fundamentals first which is enabling us to innovate and deploy AI reasonably at scale and in ways that directly support growth across the company. We view AI as an enabler and an accelerator of our existing strategy. As we deploy AI capabilities, they are led by the business and are focused on targeted use cases that have measurable success metrics that can be scaled. Our value proposition continues to be built on trusted advisory relationships, delivering outstanding service, strong carrier relationships and disciplined underwriting. We're in the early stages of a multiyear journey that has already delivered value through enhanced capabilities. We believe embracing AI will support incremental revenue growth and operating leverage over the long term. I'm on Slide 13. Now let's talk about how we're building an AI-powered organization with enterprise capabilities that empowers local development to solve real business needs. Our organization is designed to incubate AI solutions quickly and then deploy the capabilities at scale. We're investing in world-class data and AI teammates, enterprise-grade technologies and a strong ecosystem of technology partners. Our approach is to combine out-of-the-box AI tools and proprietary Brown & Brown AI products that embed our data, workflows and deep insurance knowledge. We're embracing an AI-first culture built on failed fast incubation, cloud-native platforms, modern APIs and a scalable data foundation. Our framework is anchored in secure design principles and reinforced by strong governance and responsible AI practices. This structure allows us to prove value early subject ideas to rigorous scrutiny and scale quickly across the company. I'm on Slide 14. Here are just a few of our AI-powered solutions that are live and delivering value. We're scaling AI agents that will automate more than 25% of the end-to-end submission process for many of our programs and wholesale businesses, achieving material cost reductions and removing throughput limits. This incremental underwriting capacity is being redirected to high-value revenue growth activities. These agents are enabling more processing in the same day, thereby improving the customer experience accelerating growth through higher win rates and driving stronger underwriting results for our carriers. In retail, our policy checking agents automate traditionally manual proposal comparison and policy reviews improving risk insight while reducing E&O exposure. We have also created capabilities that pull key features from complex policies to create clear customer summaries, simplify customer conversations and improve retention. Lastly, we've built a proprietary platform that electronically interfaces with carrier billing portals, automatically extracts and validate billing data flags exceptions for review and then file the customer policy in our agency management system. This platform is already saving more than 50,000 hours annually and continues to be rolled out across the company. I'm on Slide 15. This slide frames how we think about our customers that pay under $25,000 in premium. In retail, commercial and employee benefits accounts under this threshold and monoline personal lines represents between 1% and 2% of total retail revenues Keep in mind that some of these policies are placed through an intermediary, making them more complex and less likely to be disrupted. We believe the primary risk is that customers think they no longer need a broker and choose to go direct. This can happen today with or without AI. Our differentiators remain breadth of carrier relationships, a solution and mindset technology, industry experience, service and claims advocacy. Our opportunity is to leverage these differentiators to grow market share over the coming quarters. In Specialty Distribution, we've built a highly diversified and scalable specialty insurance distribution and underwriting platform with technology powering the core part of our value proposition. We think business segments with the highest theoretical AI exposure are admitted aggregators and highly standardized small accounts businesses. These are not areas where we have invested significant capital or have material revenue. Specialty distribution business model is built on niche specialization with a significant portion of our revenue and profit generated by businesses with structural moats. These include regulation, capital or technology intensity, underwriting complexity, historical data, omnichannel distribution networks claims management and the capacity for long-standing trusted carrier relationships. The opportunities created by AI and further industry automation would include higher submission flow and new revenue channels thereby helping us capture more market share. In summary, we believe technology is an enabler that will drive incremental revenue growth and margin improvement in the future. Now I have a few closing comments, and then we'll open it up to M&A. As has been the case in recent quarters, there are ongoing sources of volatility in the broader environment. Currently, geopolitical turmoil is causing some business leaders to have a more cautious bias. The impact of higher oil prices and inflationary ripple effects may influence growth in certain sectors. What we've learned from our customers post COVID is that they're resilient, creative and adaptive. Therefore, we feel comfortable our customers will navigate the current challenges and capture growth opportunities. From a pricing standpoint, we expect admitted rates will continue to moderate slightly. E&S rates will remain bifurcated with casualty increasing in CAT property decreasing at levels similar to the first quarter. However, we would not be surprised if in the second quarter as certain carriers or MGAs become more aggressive related to CAT property placements. From our perspective, we will remain disciplined and will not compromise the quality of our underwriting. From Accession integration standpoint, we're focused on bringing teams together enhancing collaboration and leveraging our capabilities to win and retain more customers. Integration activities are on track for us to deliver our EBITDA synergies of $30 million to $40 million this year. The team is doing a great job, and I'm extremely pleased with our progress. We talked earlier about the positive impact of AI on our business. We feel confident that it will improve the customer experience the underwriting and placement process, the productivity of our teammates and drive incremental growth in revenue and margins over the coming quarters. Our balance sheet and cash flow are strong, and therefore, our focus will continue to be on delevering, investing in our teammates, enhancing our technology capabilities repurchasing shares and acquiring smaller or specialized firms that fit culturally and make sense financially. We will continue to invest our capital with the goal of driving long-term shareholder value. We feel great about the business, about our activity levels, the integration efforts and how the team is leveraging our capabilities for the benefits of our customers. With our laser focus on execution on the customer, we're positioned to deliver solid top and bottom line results over the coming quarters. With that, we'll turn it back to Towanda and open up the lines for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Rob Cox with Goldman Sachs.

First question I had for you was on the operating model in retail. It sounds like you're moving to a specialization model versus the local and regional models that Brown and Accession had previously. I was just hoping you could talk through how is this changing how your business operates. Does this change how producers are incentivized and is it right to think that this model is moving towards the model that a lot of your larger competitors have today?

I wouldn't want you to think exactly the way you described it, Rob. Think about they had, they, meaning strategies had a regional sales model, and we had a local sales model, and we're blending -- they're picking the best of both which is enabling, we believe, producers to have access to more capabilities and will enable them to be successful. So I wouldn't want you to draw the conclusion that we're trying to move towards what you were referring to on some of those larger competitors. I think it's kind of unique onto ourselves. And I think it's actually been very positively received by our producers.

Okay. Great. And then just a follow-up on the specialty pharma revenue model change. Just curious how this came about. Is this shifting from commission to a fee? Why make this change and why now?

All right. So first of all, let's talk about what the business does. The business helps our customers and their employees reduce their pharmacy spend. And so the model is going from a volume-based model to a PEPM model over the next several quarters.

Our next question comes from the line of Tracy Benguigui with Wolfe Research.

I appreciate seeing your statistic about personal lines, small and micro commercial policies with less than $25,000 in premium to be about 1% to 2% of your retail revenues. But can you unpack why looking at that level of premiums is the right starting point? Like why not $50,000 or $100,000.

Well, I think -- well, the way we view it is we are working with complex and customized commercial risks. And so you can have that absolutely in accounts that pay in excess of $25,000. So that's how we've defined it. And again, if the business is highly standardized and not complex, then I think your point is valid. But I would tell you that in the middle market that we are so active in, that is the space that we operate in, the complex and the customized commercial risk. So that's why we define it at $25,000.

I wonder if you could provide a new outlook for contingents. Last quarter, you guided $50 million of less contingent and specialty distribution for the full year '26 and you're trending so far ahead of that?

Exclusive year, you're breaking up.

Okay. So I was wondering if you could provide an updated outlook on contingents. Last quarter, you guided $15 million of less contingents within Specialty Distribution. And I'm just wondering, given your 1Q performance so far, you're trending ahead of that. And it seemed like there have been some onetimers as well. So how should we put those pieces together?

Tracy, can you hear us okay?

Yes.

Okay. Sorry, I didn't know as you were breaking up on our end. Is based upon the performance in the first quarter, we are anticipating that our contingent commissions for the entire company will be up this year. We had an outstanding first quarter.

Okay. Is there any direction you could provide for that?

Let's see last year, we were up -- I think we were about $255 million -- sorry, let me double-check here. We were -- yes, we were about $255 million last year. Obviously, we had a really nice upside in the first quarter. So we would anticipate most of that continuing to flow through on a variance for the full year.

Okay. I guess part of that was you mentioned $30 million from favorable underwriting performance. But if we're in a soft market, should we see some of that margin abating?

Yes. So I think that maybe one of the things worth just clarifying real quickly because keep in mind, in the specialty distribution space, at least for us, is that we calculate our contingents on a program-by-program basis. They're not built upon overall industry profitability. And so some people have asked us about that in the past. In our prepared comments, we said that we substantially control all of the underwriting rigor and discipline, and we believe that we run some of the most profitable programs in the industry for our carrier partners and deliver great products for our customers that are out there. And so we're very, very in tune with making sure that we maintain profitability.

Our next question comes from the line of Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo.

My first question, if you look at your contingents over the past year, what percentage is volume based versus profit-based. And would you expect the mix between the 2 to change over the course of the next year?

Elyse, on the contingent commissions, Almost all of those are based on profitability. There's a few of them that have a combination of volume and profit, but that's a pretty small percentage. You normally don't get into the volume side until you get into incentives and GSCs.

Okay. And then on retail, on the organic. I think you guys said a 50 to 100 basis point impact from the change in the revenue model over the next couple of quarters. but then you also guided to organic improving sequentially relative to the Q1. So I guess, what's the offset that's driving the sequential improvement if you have a negative impact? Or was the model change, I guess, a similar magnitude in the Q1.

No. I think what we were trying to help everybody understand there is, one, we know we've got some headwinds from this business as it goes through the revenue model change. But as we said, improving organic growth by the quarters, and that is our expectation based upon the discussion on the change in our sales model and to Powell's comment earlier about starting to see some of the initial activity levels improving.

And then the guidance for retail and specialty distribution, the organic color, does that assume similar property CAT weight declines over the course of the year? I know mix impacts a little bit less property in the Q2, but are you assuming a similar level of rate declines for the remainder of the year?

So at least for the second quarter, we're anticipating that rates are definitely going to be under pressure like they were in the first quarter. And again, it won't surprise us if we see some unusual things towards the end of the quarter on rates. Remember what happened in June of last year. right before storm season. So things could definitely move around. And then we don't place a lot of CAT property in the third quarter, Elyse, the industry doesn't either. And then we won't see it until the back end of the year. We wouldn't opine on potentially what CAT property rates would look like for the fourth quarter right now because that will be subject to a storm season.

I would just add, Elyse, two things. One, remember, Q2 is a heavy property quarter.

Exactly.

And number two, we -- that also doesn't assume if there was a wind event. So don't know if there'll be a wind event. But if there's a wind event, that could change the dynamics and the pricing as well.

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Zaremski with BMO.

First question, just any update on the litigation impact on the top line as we progress throughout the year. The number -- the $10 million number was, I think, much lower, better than the consensus had.

Mike, what we did, we provided just an update as to where the lost business is right now on it. So that's the $31 million we were previously at $23 million. I think maybe one area where potentially folks thought it would be different. When we reported the $23 million, we said that was an annualized number. is not anticipated that all of that was going to come out in the first quarter because of when ex dates are throughout the year. So we'll continue to see quarterly impacts this year. And that's just going to be the delta between the $31 million and the $10 million, getting that number probably move around a little bit, but that gives you an idea of how it will flow by the following quarters.

Okay. Got it. I'm just -- I guess I'm assuming, just given that you updated us on the 275 people that departed that number will grow. So I think the consensus is embedding a very much higher number than $31 million. But got it. My follow-up, this might be an unfair question, but if we look at kind of Brown's organic growth with contingents, by the way, versus peers, it is expected to be a bit lighter than its historical relationship to peers. So I guess my question is, if -- are there idiosyncratic things that are impacting brown that we know of that under normal circumstances you would have expected Brown's organic to be just maybe a little bit better under current conditions? Or really, is it just more of an issue of Brown being a bit overweight property and properties under a lot of pressure. Thanks.

So Michael, I think it's a combination of a couple of things. So let's acknowledge several of the obvious things. One, we have a large acquisition where we're bringing people together. Two, we've had the issue or disruption around the start-up Three property rates are down more than we anticipated, although we thought property rates were to go down substantially. And we've been saying to you all that this is a year later than we anticipated. And finally, it's the situation in this pharmacy business. So I put those 4 things in there. Those are not excuses. Those are just an observation. And we are very pleased with the team. We're very pleased with the capabilities that we brought together and how we're going to the market. But at the end of the day, we are, at the present time, slightly lower than the peers.

And again, Mike, keep in mind that in specialty distribution prior to the acquisition of Accession is that we did have a higher weighting to CAT property in that business because of the programs that we operate there, right? So when capacity was tight a few years ago and rates were tight, that definitely helped drive growth for the overall business. With the addition of $180 million, as we mentioned in our commentary, that is much more weighted towards casualty, very little at property in there. So that will probably, over time, you'll see that will start to level out some of the peaks and valleys in that business. And again, it's just something that we try to focus on as an organization of the more diversify and that we can put across the company, more stability we can have in our revenues, our margins and our cash flow.

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Hughes with Truist Securities.

On the organic growth, you've talked about sequential improvement. Last quarter, you talked about getting to the point for the full year where you're ahead of 2025 with a weighting towards the back half of the year. Is that still what we should anticipate or just assume sequential improvement, but not to reach or exceed last year.

Probably think about it from a sequential increase over the quarters, knowing that some quarters will be higher some quarters will be down because it always obviously moves around back and forth. But when we look into kind of the back end of the year, we think organic growth rates would should be higher than the first quarter, but probably an upper bound of 2.5%, somewhere in that ballpark and you're just going to -- some quarters are going to move around as they always do for us. But we feel really good about at least when we look at the activity and the structure of the organization, having the $180 million business coming into organic and specialty distribution in the back end of the year. At least everything gives us good confidence as to the direction that it's going.

Very good. And then just the Howden issue, again, the you initially called out $23 million and then that increased modestly, let's say, to $31 million. When these sort of things happen as the pace of the potential losses flow as time goes by. So the sequential increase in 2Q would be less than 1Q, perhaps.

Yes. Maybe, Mark, a couple of things. Keep in mind and sure a number of folks have seen this. But we have a quite expansive TRO that was issued in Massachusetts back at the end of December, right? And that has very, very tight restrictions that TRO is still in place today with all of it. And so I think just keep that in mind around, I guess, how you're thinking about potentially the outlook. It doesn't mean that the number might not change back and forth, but...

Are you saying the -- I guess you're talking about restraining order, you're seeing that it's had an impact. You saw the slowdown in lost business in 1Q and so therefore, maybe the build from here is decelerating, so to speak?

So Mark, we don't, as you know, typically talk about ongoing litigation and there is more going on not just in that state. And so obviously, there are certain things that are filed that you all can look at and you can see what has been the judge has come forward with and in other states when and if that happens. But we really can't get into it. So I'd rather just not say anymore.

Our next question comes from the line of Bob Huang with Morgan Stanley.

So my first question, I want to shift gears a little bit towards the employee benefit business. You talked about the fairly solid pricing environment and employee benefit right now. Can you maybe give us a little bit more color in terms of how you think about the employee benefit business will evolve towards the rest of the year? And then curious how you think about the growth there as a contributor going forward?

So I just want to make sure that I heard the second part. I heard about the growth going forward. What was -- Bob, can you repeat that -- the first part of that question?

Yes, sir, sure. Yes. So I just want to ask about a little bit more details around the employee benefit pricing has been strong based on your disclosures. Just curious about how you think about the employee benefit business going into rest of the year going forward and how that becomes a contributor.

Perfect. I just wanted -- I thought that's what you said. Number one, we like the Employee Benefits business very much. And we think that it is an opportunity for us to continue to solve what I call complex problems for our customers. That said, the pricing pressure continues to be a challenge on any buyer of health insurance. And so everybody we talk to is looking for ways to terms like then the cost curve or moderate or what could they do and some will even consider skinnying down the benefits that their employees are receiving. But we continue to find lots of opportunities for us to help our customers with what is a very complex, expensive coverage that is utilized on a frequent basis. So we view it as a positive. We continue to invest in it. We have a lot of very talented teammates in it. It's a big part of our retail business and is going to be bigger going forward.

Okay. No, that's helpful. My second question really revolves around your AI commentaries about the capabilities that you're adding on to the platform, right? It's more of a buy versus bill of a question. As you're investing in AI, just curious your philosophy around acquiring AI capabilities from third-party vendors versus what are the things that you feel -- it is necessary to kind of maybe develop internally from a code-based perspective? Just curious your thoughts on that.

Sure. So I think there's really 2 ways to approach AI in a very broad sense. You can do it internally, and that's typically where you're nibbling around the size, and it takes longer, typically but it's probably overall less expensive. Conversely, you decide to partner with some firms that can help you accelerate and make big jump forward. And I believe that we actually -- or at least to this point, but going forward, I believe we will do both. And so we are not at a point where we're going to discuss who those people are, but the answer is we look at it as sort of a combination. And depending on what we're trying to achieve will dictate what portion of the business and what we're trying to achieve would probably dictate which way we lean into.

Our next question comes from the line of Josh Shanker with Bank of America.

My first question, the business has evolved a lot, but you're still a pick Florida participant. Can you talk about your pricing, how much Florida is impacting those numbers and the extent to which there's a variance between your experience in Florida on pricing your experience nationwide.

So let me take the second part of the question first. First of all, as a Josh, as a point of reference, the rates that we're seeing in coastal property today are similar to those that we saw in 2016 and '17. So I want you to think about that for just a moment. So I don't remember exactly the year it started going up, but let's say it was '18 or '19 and then it went up for 5 or 6 years. And then it has reduced all of that in a 2-year period, let's say. That's the first thing. The second thing is impacts on the pricing is not limited to Florida. You have it also in other CAT-prone areas where they're seeing substantial decreases. The third thing is we are seeing in places around the country, which might be defined as CAT. I'm talking inland CAT convective storms, we're seeing more downward pressure there in pricing than the traditional down 5% to up 5%. So from a standpoint of the property thing -- and by the way, we haven't been surprised that property is under pressure. We have been surprised at the the decrease in the amount of decrease that has occurred. So let me give you an example. If you tell me that you have a condominium in Southeast Florida, and it's a superior construction and the rate is below $0.20. I would tell you that of that $0.20 $0.07 to $0.08 of that is the fire rate, even though it's a superior construction building. So that means the rest is all other perils, including wind. That's pretty unbelievable. Did you want to address that? Can you hear us?

Okay. And then so in casualty, you're not seeing any difference in the Florida market versus the rest of the country?

Not so much.

And one other question. I'm surprised, I guess, on disclosure that $25,000 under is only 1% to 2% of your business I mean a $25,000 property policy, that's a pretty juicy policy. Can you talk a little bit about the industry. And I mean you don't have to talk about your competitors, but who is going after the policy, if not Brown & Brown?

Well, like I said, there are lots of independent agents in the United States that write lots of business that would be defined as small accounts. So again, from a standpoint of -- and they have people that actively service -- I mean, actively go out and solicit them. And what we're saying is, typically, our producers are going after accounts that are in excess of that. That's just the way I want you to think about it.

There's also -- there might be an opportunity there, I guess, maybe who knows?

We've got to keep rolling, we've got a bunch of people in the queue here.

Our next question comes from the line of Alex Scott with Barclays.

For the first one I wanted to ask you about margins. over time, it's been somewhat linked to organic growth and the ability to get margin improvement is a lot better when you're growing. Just based on what you're seeing with the potential of AI, does it change the amount of growth that's needed to still get that margin improvement. Can you talk a bit about how you're thinking through that over the next few years if we do stay in a softer market here?

Sure. And remember, I think the important thing, Alex, is this. We think that there are opportunities to invest in talented people to help us grow our business going forward. So you can actually under-invest and margins could stay flat or go up. And that's not how we look at it. And so we've said -- I know there are other brokers that say, you got to have X amount of organic growth in order to have margins go up. We actually would say depending on the quarter or the time period that's different with us. But I want to clarify that we are actively looking to continue to invest with high-quality people to help us deliver solutions for our customers. That said, is there is absolutely a positive impact from AI and the potential of that going forward.

And then Alex -- and the other reason why we included the additional performance metric of our organic with contingents is that's another really good metric in order to have a correlation down to margins and EPS because I think in the past, people have said, well, wait a minute, how can your margins go up if your organic goes down or vice versa? Because the contingents, because they're a core part of our model to move the margins around in quarters, okay.

Yes. Got all that. Next one I had is on the revenue opportunities you see from AI. I mean I think you got into it somewhat Josh there. But I mean, is it about specializing, is it about going down market? And then can you elaborate on any investments that are more concrete that we can think through on how you're advancing towards some of that?

So like I said, we tried to give you a good peak in the box on the 3 examples that we've used. I believe that -- and we will talk more about that in the future. But if you think about it, there are lots of people that think about it in the men and back-office efficiency. We don't view AI as a teammate replacement tool. That's number one. Number two, we absolutely believe it improves the customer experience, and we talked a little bit about that as it relates to 25% of the stuff in specialty distribution going through and routing, which makes us more efficient. And then number three, it helps us identify growth opportunities with new or existing customers. And so what I would say is that we've kind of laid out what we want to talk about today. And as we move further into the year, we'll bring more information to you on that. But we feel positive about our steps we've put in place in terms of our AI journey.

Next question comes from the line of Meyer Shields with Keefe, Bruyette, & Woods.

One question on the Howden revenues? Is that $31 million of annualized revenues, still all employee benefits?

No.

Okay. Go ahead, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off.

No. Go ahead.

Okay. This is an unrelated question, but I think we're probably like within spitting distance of seeing pricing on June property renewals because it's less than 90 days out. And I'm wondering there's a thesis that the rate decreases on CAT property will slow down once we've gone through a full renewal cycle. And I'm wondering whether you're seeing any of that.

I haven't seen that yet.

Okay. And then final question. Are the higher state tax rates likely to be an issue for coming quarters?

Sorry, one more time on that. You broke up.

Sorry, you mentioned some higher state tax rates as a factor in the quarter, and I'm wondering whether we should expect that to persist in the rest of 2026.

Yes, that's probably fair to include that, Meyer.

Our next question. next question comes from the line of Pablo Singzon with JPMorgan.

Given your commentary about 2Q being a heavier property quarter, would it be reasonable to think about some sequential deterioration in organic ex-contingents? Or do you think your comments about the cadence of quarterly improvement holds?

We believe what we said holds true.

Okay. And then this one is not related to the quarter, but right flood is one of your larger businesses within specialty. Do you have any perspective on how your position as the government is contemplating potential changes to the NFIP that might push business into the private market.

Sure. I think, first of all, we like that business and [indiscernible] has been very successful. As you know, the government has had a hard time reauthorizing for any extended period of time and they're on multiple extensions. And so the answer is the government would like to see more depopulated. But I don't believe that the private market will absorb the areas in the worst flood zones. So it's all relative. So don't allow somebody that says we're writing private flood to lead you to believe that they're writing that in downtown New Orleans. I think that's a very important distinction. So we believe -- and we have private flood capabilities. We've invested in that. We have all kinds of opportunities to go along with that, both on an FYP and on the private side. But remember, that carriers are not going to want the desire to go into areas that flood on a regular and consistent basis.

Towanda we've got -- we're going to go until 2:15. So we've got 10 minutes. And we've got, I think, 2 or 3 people to get from so again, we try to get through each person in about 2 or 3 minutes, please.

Our next question comes from the line of Yaron Kinar with Mizuho.

Two quick ones on AI. First, there is a school of thought that says, look, most of the value in the P&C ecosystem falls to the brokers. And as such, maybe AI creates an opportunity for the insurers to take some of that value back. How do you think about that? How do you respond to that?

You're saying the insurers or the insurers, I want to make sure I heard you correctly, who takes the value back.

The insurers.

Yes, I got it. Actually, I actually would counter that. They do, in some instances, have a direct model on the very simplistic, not complex, not customized commercial risks. So I think that will continue. But I actually think anytime there's complexity that leads much more in the favor of the brokerage community. So I actually would not agree with that statement.

Got it. And then the second one on AI, maybe going back to Josh's question with the $25,000 or less in annual premiums. Given that, that slice of the market tends to go more to the small independent agencies, does that impact your appetite for smaller tuck-in M&A over the long run?

Depends on those businesses, and we have to evaluate that on a constant and consistent basis going forward. We like small and medium-sized tuck-in M&A. But we want to understand exactly what they've got in there and then how we would service it and continue to add additional value. Here's the 1 thing that I want to raise then I think is important. AI this intermediates house. AI does not disintermediate trust. And so our business is built on trust and good advice. And so when people are spending, it depends on -- I would ask you rhetorically, at what point -- what is the largest purchase you've made on the Internet ever without ever talking to someone or having engagement. Many people say the television or repair golf clubs. But let's say you bought a car. I made that up, right, a used car or something, okay? But many people want to talk to somebody and have the advice. And this is not, as you know, just a product. There is -- this is a complex intangible sale. So just starting to think about it. I know you knew that, but let's take the next question. Thanks, Yaron.

Our next question comes from the line of Brian Meredith with UBS.

Two quick ones here. First on AI Pol, do you think it has any effect on the kind of long-term commission rates? Or would you charge your clients given the productivity benefits you're likely to see from it?

I don't like to say never or always. But I actually think that if you look at the way the risk-bearing community is looking to grow and people are trying to come to market as evidenced by reinsurance companies trying to get into the insurance business and get closer to the market. I believe that there is possible, but I don't think it's highly probable.

Brian, and one other piece on that. I think maybe that folks aren't always keeping in mind is there's the presumption that the cost of technology will not go up Yes. And so I don't know what that will actually look like in the future, but do we expect our overall cost of technology to go up as a result of implementing all these capabilities? Yes, it probably will.

Makes sense. And then second question, just quickly on Ascension here. It looked like that revenues were kind of flattish on a year-over-year basis. How are you thinking about Ascension as you kind of look in the second half of the year on your kind of organic revenue growth improving. Maybe I've got that wrong.

I think split it into 2 pieces is, one, overall, we feel good about the business. As we mentioned in our commentary, we see that the 180 business as it rolls into organic in the back end of the year will be contributory to the organic and specialty distribution. And then the overall risk strategies business is performing relatively similar to the other. So it's probably not going to have any major movements in either direction just because of the pure size of it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am showing no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn the call back over to Powell for closing remarks.

Thank you, Towanda, and thank you all for your time today. We look forward to talking to you next quarter. Good day.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.