Doha Insurance Group Q.P.S.C. (DOHI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Doha Insurance Group Conference Call. Please note that this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] Now, I would like to turn the call over to Phibion. You may begin.

Thank you, Elie. Good afternoon to you all, and I would like to welcome you to the Doha Insurance Group Q2 and 1H 2026 Earnings Conference Call. On the call today from Doha Insurance Group's management is Ghaith Jardaneh, the Chief Financial Officer -- and as usual, Ghaith will first give us an overview of the numbers, and then we will have a Q&A session immediately afterwards. Let me turn over the call to Ghaith. Over to you, sir. You can begin.

Good afternoon, everybody. So, I'll go over some of the main aspects of our financial results of the first half of 2026. First of all, our gross written premiums have decreased by 3% in the first half of 2026 compared to the first half of 2025. We had QAR 1.367 billion in premiums last year. We have QAR 1.322 billion this year. Despite the drop in gross written premiums, still our insurance revenue grew substantially in the first half of 2026, reaching QAR 1.344 billion compared to QAR 928 million last year. The main reason for the major increase in insurance revenue is because last year's insurance revenue, a lot of the gross written premiums from last year were still unearned at the end of the first half of 2025, resulting in a reduced insurance revenue. However, a lot of these unearned premiums have now, by the first half of 2026, been earned, resulting in a much higher insurance revenue. The composition of insurance revenue has shifted in 2026. So, a huge part of the growth has been seen in the life and medical insurances. And this is because we had a huge amount of business coming from our newly established branch in India. And a major and a huge part of that business came from life and medical insurance. Resulting in life and medical insurance currently constituting 39% of total insurance revenue compared to only 20% -- 21% in 2025. This increase came at the expense of all other primary lines of business composition decreasing. The overall loss ratio at the company also increased substantially in the first half of 2026, reaching 66% compared to only 57% last year. However, this outcome was expected because of the business that we have in India, the new business, which already existed in 2026 and during the first half of 2025 did not yet start registering. This business tends to have a much higher loss ratio than other lines of business that we have across the group. This higher loss ratio resulted in the overall loss ratio of the company increasing to 66%. Net commission cost also increased from QAR 39.8 million last year to QAR 89.5 million this year. This was -- this can be attributed to 2 factors. One is the huge policies that we underwrote in our newly established branch in India, where through a broker, which received brokerage commission for this business. And also, we also incurred a major increase in business through our MENA RE branch in Dubai, which also incurred major commissions to be paid to the ceding companies that offer us this business. Overall, despite the increase in revenue that we have, our insurance service results increased from QAR 86.2 million last year to QAR 87.8 million this year, representing a 2% growth. However, here, it must -- we should also highlight that a huge part of this result also reflects the allocation of certain OpEx to the business, and we did have a major increase in OpEx during the year. Should we remove OpEx from this allocation, our net technical results would actually have improved by 24% despite the increase in loss ratio that we were talking about. Operating expenses, the ones that were not allocated to the insurance service expenses, has increased from QAR 15.7 million to QAR 17.5 million. But as a percentage of insurance revenue, they've declined from 1.7% to 1.3%. Investment performance during the first half of 2026 reached QAR 60 million compared to QAR 45.8 million last year. So, they have improved by QAR 15 million. The main reason for this increase was a huge increase in our investment portfolio from QAR 1.5 billion last year to QAR 2.2 billion this year. The major reason for this increase in our investment portfolio is the major cash inflows coming from our newly established Indian branch with a lot of the policies having very favorable payment terms, resulting in a major improvement in our cash position. Furthermore, most of the allocation of our investment portfolio is into fixed income and bank deposits, with both these asset classes representing now 68% of our investment portfolio compared to 65% in the first half of 2025. The combined ratio at the company also increased from 83% to 90%, and this is in line with the growth that we incurred in the loss ratio. Net income at the group reached QAR 130 million compared to QAR 116.5 million last year. However, the net income margin decreased from 13% to 10%. This is, again, mainly due to the increase in combined ratio and the increase in loss ratio that we have referred to before. Return on equity has improved from 17.7% to 18% -- so the total assets at the group are now QAR 4.2 billion compared to QAR 4 billion last year. The asset classes that have increased mostly are cash and investment and investments in general. The increase in -- the corresponding increase in liabilities is mainly from the increase in insurance-related provisions and reserves. The shareholder equity increased from QAR 1.437 billion to QAR 1.455 billion, reflecting the net income of QAR 130 million, decreased by a change in fair value of QAR 20 billion -- QAR 20 million, sorry, and the payment of dividend of QAR 92.5 million, resulting in a QAR 1.455 billion closing balance for equity. The company continues to enjoy a very strong solvency position. Currently, the amount of assets -- investment assets at hand to cover the insurance -- the net insurance liabilities stands at approximately 240% compared to 250% last year. So, it's only decreased by 10%. Accounts receivable at the company has increased substantially from QAR 563 million to QAR 633 million. However, much of this has decreased as of -- after the end of the first half of 2026 due to certain receipts that were expected from several insurance local insurance companies that have since been settled. And the solvency ratio as per the QCB guidelines continues to be very strong at 241%, improving from the 223% reached at the end of 2025. We'd like to turn it back to you for any questions you might have for us.

[Operator Instructions] Ladies and gentlemen, since there is no question asked, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.