Grupo Catalana Occidente, S.A. (GCO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. It is a pleasure to be here with all of you to give you the information about the evolution of the Catalana Occidente Group during the first quarter of 2022. The accounts were approved by the Board of Directors yesterday. My name is Francisco Arregui, CEO of the group. And here with me, as usual, I have the CFO, Carlos Gonzalez. First of all, I would like to thank you not only for being here and remotely online, but also for the follow up you always conduct on the performance of our business and the value of -- the share value of Catalana Occidente. You can, of course, ask any questions online. We will try to group them and answer them at the end. And at any rate, we will answer the rest of them via the usual channels. I was saying we're going to analyze in detail how we're doing in 2022. But without further ado, I would like to say that in a still difficult context, we -- the financial recovery not being complete yet because of this high inflation rate close to 10% in Spain. And with the Russian conflict in the background, we have closed the first quarter that we consider very good with very significant advances in the 3 basic pillars of our general policies: growth with an increase of 8.5% in turnover; profitability with an increase of the consolidated result of 19%; and insolvency confirming the estimation that we made of a solvency ratio of 220% with an improvement of 4 points versus year-end last year. We will tackle the topics that you can see on screen. We will start with the global economic environment. You know the environment perfectly well, even better than ourselves. We've had many years of continuous growth. It is true that there's been volatility due to globalization in a very specific environment with very low inflation and very low interest rates. Everything changed radically with COVID at the end of 2019 with the supply problems and then the lockdown and stopping of the industry. And these led to what you can see on the screen. The economy dropped in 2020 by 3.1% globally; 3.4% in the U.S.; 6.4% in Europe; and in Spain, unfortunately, a higher drop, closer to 11%. The good side of things, fortunately, is that from the macro point of view, the economic recovery has been, in 2021 -- has taken place globally in 2021 with a growth higher than the reduction that we had experienced in the United States, similarly, in the Eurozone and in Spain. Spain has grown less than we dropped, 5.1%. The expectations were good. The expectations were of growth for 2022, and now the focus is not so good. There is more uncertainty. We will again see the impact of the increase in the price of raw materials and energy, which is causing a very significant inflation and, of course, the consequences of the Russian conflict. You know the financial markets perfectly well with interest rates that are still very low, but that are picking up in all areas with very significant valuations in 2021. And in 2022, a poor performance of the stock markets. As from the point of view of the insurance sector in Spain, our main market, truth is that for many years, since 2015, we have been growing with uninterrupted growth. The year of the crisis, the COVID crisis 2020. We had a drop of 8% in premiums. And in 2021, as you know, the sector grew by 5%. And the first quarter of this year, as per the recent ICEA data, the sector has grown by 4.3% with the breakdown that you can see on screen, growing -- with growth in all lines, 3.4% in life and 4.9% growth in non-life. Specifically interesting is this increase in 1.6% in motor because of the highly competitive nature of this sector and 5.1% in multi-risk. In the context described, I said things have been going well for us in the first quarter with growth both in turnover and results, both in traditional business and credit insurance. We will see this in the summarized P&L, income and results. In turnover, we have grown by 8.5%. And the breakdown is as follows: Traditional business, a growth of 3.7%; 5.1% in recurring premiums, which are the ones that contribute a high value; growth in all lines of business, and the CFO will give us more details about that later; but growth in all lines of business, including motor, a bit above the sector, 2.1% in our case, which is especially relevant since we come from exceptional results, and the market is extraordinarily competitive in motor in Spain. And in credit insurance, as you may all remember, in the year of the crisis, 2020, we dropped by 5% in turnover. And in 2021, we grew more than 13%. And we are in a good position in the first quarter of 2022 with 15.2% growth, which translates into 14.9% increase in acquired premiums. This is all due to multiple factors, some improvement in new production, cancellations that despite having gone up a bit, they stay at very reasonable levels. It's true that the renewal rates are dropping in the first quarter, but we have the impact of the higher sales of our policyholders, part of this with the impact of inflation. And regarding results, you can see these on screen at the moment. Consolidated result increases by 19%, 19.8%, if we talk about the attributed result. And this 4.6 million of nonordinary results help somewhat as compared to the minus 2.1 of last year. But the important thing is the improvement of the operational results of our -- both of our businesses, the traditional business, 8%, a very good evolution in all lines of business. And I would like to stress, and the CFO will explain this later. I would like to stress the exceptional behavior of performance of multi-risk with a growth of 162% versus the same period of the year before, despite the fact that the increase of claims ratio is consolidated due to the higher use of the lack of weather events as we had last year. Secondly, a significant reduction of the motor result, 42%. As a consequence of the normalization of the situation, the use of vehicles versus the first quarter 2021 in which there were still mobility restrictions, but I would like to say that the results in motor that you will see soon EUR 14.9 million in the first quarter is better than the results we had both before the pandemic in the first quarter of 2020 and even the first quarter of 2019. And in credit insurance, an excellent result, EUR 79.6 million with this increase of 17.8% based on a still very low inflow of claims. Gross claims ratio of reinsurance is at a level somewhat higher than last year's, but very low, which is 34.5%. And what I can assure is that we continue to book provisions very cautiously and conservatively because we are foreseeing a potential worsening. Once the situation is completely back to normal, it may have an impact on the current situation and, of course, the Russian conflict. As you all know, we have a global system for calculation of provisions, which anticipates claims ratio from the moment the sale is produced based on parameters that we adjust based on the circumstances. It's also true that as you will see, the high cost of reinsurance is still affecting us very much, some EUR 80 million, EUR 31 million of which are a consequence of the government agreements that, as you know, were extended exclusively until the month of July last year. And we are still seeing some aftereffects of this. The repayments have been somewhat better than expected. We have continued to receive profit. We have to share that with the governments. But as I always say, these agreements despite being at a high cost, had led to the advantage that we have not had to take more drastic underwriting measures. And of course, this has improved our relationship with our customers in the mid and long term. As to the makeup of the portfolio, nothing new. The weight of credit insurance is obvious since the incorporation of Atradius in our group, 60-40, even somewhat higher 42% at the moment due to the higher increase of turnover in credit insurance. And from the territorial point of view, we are an international group, even if this is limited to credit insurance. And anyway, Spain continues to amount to almost 2/3 of our business. And the rest of our business is basically in Europe. You can see here, the bottom of the chart, we see rest of the world is some 6%. And finally, before I pass the floor over to Carlos, I would like to stress with this slide. It's very similar to the one that we saw in the last presentation, that without a doubt, in the current context, we continue -- as I said last year, we continue to focus on the ordinary management of our businesses, but we are not losing focus on strategic aspects such as digitalization innovation that our future depends on. And sustainability, which is not only a legal demand, but also, at the moment, already demand of our investors and even in the near future, our customers. So we have done a lot in the field of sustainability. You will find an explanation of all of these in the sustainability report on the website of the group. And what I would like to stress is that we have obtained at the end of the 2021 year, at year-end, we've got an excellent rating by Sustainalytics. Third message, we maintain a strong solvency position. We'll see this later. And the fourth message is that we have a conservative dividend policy, but with growing dividends in absolute terms. And we always maintain our strong commitment to shareholder remuneration even in the hardest of times. The share price evolution, you know this as well. Just a couple of ideas here. Very good in the long term with annual revaluation rate of 10.52%, much better than the indexes that are closer to us. It is true. We cannot see on screen that 2019, we were worse than market. And in 2020, we dropped less. In 2021, the share price went up, but less than the market, this 2.92% that you can see on the screen. And in this first quarter of 2022, the share price has dropped, as you all know, by 7%. At any rate, I was saying that we maintain -- we have a conservative dividend policy. But at any rate, with a growing dividend in absolute terms, we stick to our strong commitment even in the toughest of times. On the slide that you can see at the moment, you can see that even at the moment of the financial crisis of 2008, 2009, that impacted credit insurance greatly, we were able to maintain and even slightly increase the dividend. And from 2010, we've been having consistent dividend increases that had been between 6% and 7% in other years. But as you perfectly well know, regarding the dividend charge to results of 2019, specifically the complementary dividend, we were forced following the recommendations of the supervisory bodies, EIOPA [indiscernible] Insurance. We were forced to reduce the dividend, the complementary dividend of May 2020 by 45%. As you also know, last year at the April AGM, we agreed on a complementary dividend that went back to previous track. We doubled the dividend, and the increase was close to 30%, the highest in the history of Catalana Occidente. And in '20 July and February 2022, we paid out three dividends of an approximate amount of EUR 20 million, which means 5% increase as compared to the same dates of the previous years. Year-end, at the moment, the AGM that we had yesterday, agreed on a dividend charged to results of 2021 to be paid out on the 11th of May of EUR 53.55 million, 10% above that of May last year, which means an increase of the total dividend by 7.3%. Now Carlos, if you shall continue with the breakdown of the P&L.

Very good. Perfect. Good morning. As usual, I will give you a greater breakdown of the performance of the businesses. We'll start with the traditional business where our diversification of products and the high retention of customers has allowed us to promote the growth of turnover with an increase of recurring premiums of 5.1%, up to EUR 843.4 million. So the technical result also a favorable performance of general insurance, especially multi-risk which allows us to compensate the normalization of the motor result. The combined ratio is now 88.7%. We have reduced it by 0.2 points. On the other hand, we've also had a favorable evolution of the financial technical result of life with a growth of 9.4%. All of this leads us to a growth of almost 12% in the technical result and 8% of the ordinary result. Now on to different lines of business, starting by multi-risk, which grows by 7.5%, better than the sector, growing at 5%. And here, we can see the growth of the different premiums of around 6% and a favorable contribution of industrial. The combined ratio is 88.5%, almost 7 points above last year. And this is a consequence of the lower impact of weather events during this year. Last, last year, remember that -- last year, we suffered from the effect of the Filomena weather event with an impact of EUR 11 million net of reinsurance in the previous year. So the increase of premiums and the reduction of claims ratios in this line of business leads to a leap in the result tripling and going up to EUR 20.7 million. And now on to motor. We should stress here that after several quarters of drop, we increased the turnover by 2.1%. And this 2.1% is in line or somewhat better even than the behavior of the sector. And here, we have detected a drastic recovery of commercial activity on our side. And together with the maintenance of the good retention of customers has allowed us to grow in terms of number of customers. Common ratio is at 90.6%, with the normalization of the technical cost, 66.8%, 6.3 points above 2021. And 2021, a year that we're comparing with, which was still affected by the reduced mobility due to COVID. The result has finally reached EUR 15 million. And here, we should stress this result comparing it with years that are directly comparable in which COVID was not present. For example, 2019, EUR 11.4 million; and in 2018, EUR 10.3 million. And now if we continue with tradition -- with other, 7.4% increase of turnover affected by the recovery of the economy. And we maintained an excellent combined ratio around 85% with the technical result a bit higher than EUR 12 million. In life, we continue with a growth in periodic premiums, in health products, funeral insurance, which offsets the 10% drop in single and supplementary premiums. As mentioned on previous occasions, it's not very commercially attractive. As to results, the technical financial result improves by 9.4%, continuing with the good claims behavior in the combined ratio and also health products with a combined ratio of 94.4%. As a summary for the traditional business, the increase in turnover and the good behavior of the combined ratio and the lack of weather events allows us to offset the normalization of motor results and increased technical result by almost 3% up to EUR 70.8 million. On the other hand, the financial result is still impacted by the interest rates that are still low. The financial result drops by EUR 2.1 million. And in the end, the ordinary result increases by 8%, as you can see on screen, up to EUR 81.6 million. Now on to the credit insurance business. In this business, the premiums go up to EUR 521 million, a growth of 14.9% due to the good performance of the turnover of our customers, mainly due to the economic reactivation and the effects of the increase of inflation on the turnover of these customers. As a positive effect affecting greater commercial activity, we have the increase of risk exposure, obviously, in a selective manner. On the other hand, there's still downward pressure in prices in the renewal of the portfolio, but not so much in the prices of new production. Regarding the technical result of the business, we continue to improve by 20.1% up to EUR 106.3 million due to the low number of claims, leading to increase of ordinary result of 17.8% up to EUR 79.6 million. And if we now look at geographical areas, we see this increase is relatively homogeneous, stressing America with an increase also with positive impact of exchange rates. And the measures adopted due to Ukraine and Russia do not affect this slide due to their limited nature now. The combined risk ratio is 66.2% with the important growth of turnover, allowing for a reduction of cost ratio. Claims ratio increased by 6.3% up to a comfortable, historically speaking, 34.5%. The number of claims increases, but this is rather as a consequence of the low starting level as compared to last year. Because we have not detected yet, we have not had increases of claims directly related to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. I would like to say again here that we continue with our cautious provisioning criteria as in 2021, and that Mr. Arregui already mentioned. In terms of risk exposure, it increases by 4.6% despite our exposure to Russia dropping almost in half. Ever since the last presentation in February this year, around 0.5% of our total risk exposure at the moment. And finally, as a summary, the drivers of the year. Income has increased notably, mainly due to the increase in turnover of policyholders and this is related to the higher economic activity and the inflation. The result, net of reinsurance, has increased moderately also due to the lower number of claims. And in reinsurance, we've also mentioned that the better behavior of collections and the lack of weather events has reduced impact. After closing all of the government agreements last year, we stayed at 37% with our regular reinsurance. On the other hand, the financial results also improved basically due to the positive results obtained by our associated companies, offsetting the negative effects of exchange rate. Ordinary result is at almost EUR 80 million with this 18% increase that was already mentioned. And that was all from me. Mr. Arregui, I'll pass it over to you.

I'll continue. Francisco Arregui again. We're living behind the P&L now. And the word -- a few words on capital investment and solvency from the point of view of permanent resources at market value. You can see that they go up to EUR 5.101 billion, a reduction of 1.7% since the end of the year. We'll talk about this in a minute. But at any rate, permanent resources have had a spectacular evolution in the century, multiplying times 13.5, at least, without capital increases or dilution of the shareholders simply by retaining a significant part of results with the application of a cautious dividend policy. Direct shareholders have allowed us to conduct, to finance these expensive period. In the first quarter, we continue to have very good consolidated results. We need to deduct the paid out dividend. But this year, here, we see a significant impact of capital losses from financial investments via the valuation adjustments, a negative valuation adjustment of EUR 218 million net of taxes and with the participation of the life insurance. As to solvency, which is, of course, an essential magnitude in any insurance group, as you can see on screen, we can see this is not -- we can say now this is basically final. We have the report of the auditors, and we can finalize these results. 120%, an improvement of 4 points versus year-end of the previous year. You will receive all sorts of details, including sensitivity scenarios, et cetera, when we publish the report on the financial situation insolvency, the consolidated report on May. But I can already tell you that the main drivers of the improvement are many, but the main ones, the retained profits in the group and also very significantly, the fact that the rate increase, even if moderate, clearly impacts the value of liabilities more than assets because of their different durations and, of course, the excellent claims ratios in credit insurance. At any rate, this is a solvency ratio that we're very comfortable with, very good solvency ratio, better than most of our competitors. All of the companies of the group are above 180%, around 160% even in the most adverse scenarios. And our own funds are of high quality. You can see 95% are Tier 1, [ 98% ] of our equity. The rating agencies acknowledge our solvency position and the solidity of our business model. AM Best for all of the operating entities of the group and Moody's for the current insurance business rate us at A and A2, respectively. And on screen, you can see the investments of the group. Here, we can see the distribution coming up to a bit above EUR 15.5 billion, with a minus 1% variation as compared to year-end 2021, as I said a minute ago. And I don't want to bore you with details. You will find all sorts of details, both in the annexes of this presentation and the quarterly report. I would only like to stress again we have a cautious investment policy, and at any rate, a very stable one with diversified investments, as you can see on the screen. And as an insurance group, we have assets that are befitting our liabilities, liquidity, profitability, duration, et cetera. So as a whole, in all of the terms of the joint asset and liability management. And that will be all. Here, you have all of the annexes, all of the information. And let's see if we can now answer some of the questions that you have asked remotely.

Thank you very much, Francisco and Carlos, for your presentation. Next, we will start with the Q&A session, answering the questions that we've received during the presentation. As usual, the questions received have been grouped by topics. We will start with questions about the traditional business. In the line of multi risk, given the increase in turnover and the better claims ratio, there is a significant increase of the result vis-a-vis the first quarter of 2021. Could you go deeper into the causes of these improvements?

I understand that the question refers to both turnover and the claims ratio, so the results. Starting with the turnover. All lines that are related to home and similars. Well, in those, we continue to see a growth of around 6%. But industrial lines, additionally, have had an increase in turnover over 15%, as a consequence of the constitution of relevant transactions in this first quarter. This growth will, of course, normalize throughout the year. And regarding claims ratio, let me remind you that last year, I already said this in the presentation, we had the negative impact in the P&L, net of reinsurance of around EUR 11 million, as a consequence of different weather events during the first quarter. Remember Filomena, Hortensia. And in this first quarter 2022, we have not had any significant weather events. So this has led to an improvement of more than 6 points in the claims ratio. And this has led the combined ratio to 88.5%. Of course, the maintenance of the combined ratio will depend on weather events throughout the year, if they existed. We understand that the claims ratio would go back to levels similar to those of the last 2 years.

We continue with questions on credit insurance. Can you explain in more detail the result of credit insurance results, the increase of premiums and the TPE given the uncertainty in Europe is not concerning to you? And finally, what can we expect for this year in credit insurance, given the Russia-Ukraine conflict?

These are several questions wrapped into one. Truth is that the behavior of credit insurance is the one that always generates more doubts, especially in the past few years, where, unfortunately, we've been going through exceptional situations. The pandemic in 2020 with everything that has involved in 2021 and now the price increase and the invasion of Ukraine. So I will try to respond in an orderly manner. First of all, it's true that the result of credit insurance has been very good and has increased by almost 14% as compared to the same period the year before, and premiums by almost 15%, basically due to an increase in the activities of our customers with the help or the influence, of course, of inflation. It is also true that we continue to observe a downward pressure in renewal prices. As to claims ratio, it is somewhat higher than the year before, which was very special, but still far from pre-COVID levels with 34.5%. As we've already said, this claims ratio includes very cautious provisions as a consequence of the uncertainty that we observed, especially in European markets. On the other hand, the collection levels that we are seeing is better than expected. And the consequence is deviations in the government reinsurance contracts by EUR 31 million. And this leads to the fact that the net combined ratio is 71.4 versus 66.2 gross of reinsurance. As to the increase of risk exposure, it is true that we have that, but you can analyze the exposure and exposure by countries and sectors in the annexes. The truth is that the growth focuses on a greater exposure to Australia, Asia and America and a lower exposure to Spain, Portugal and Eastern Europe. The distribution of countries and sectors seems well diversified enough and the rates enough, a varying amount of risks under region. Finally, as to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the group has taken all of the necessary steps to minimize risk. As a consequence of the invasion, risks have aggravated. The group is not making new sales in Russia since the beginning of the conflict. Secondly, from the point of view of the underwriting strategy, we have made a decision also from the beginning of not covering new transactions in a general manner. Position limits to the amount spending payment at each moment. And we have reduced our total exposure in the region by approximately 50%. It is around 0.5% vis-a-vis the total exposure of Atradius. At any rate, the company is in very close contact with its customers to assess the actions that we need to take. And on the other hand, the numerous restrictions imposed on Russia and Belarus by the authorities are more than obvious, especially by European and American authorities. All of this is analyzed in great detail by the organization to ensure that we comply with all of them in our operations. We have established a team that works together with risk manager, compliance, legal and sales. All of these departments work closely together in this task force. Despite the uncertainty of this moment, we feel comfortable with the risk management that we are conducting.

Third question related to inflation. One of the greatest challenges that companies are facing this year is the strong inflation. Could you tell us in what business and how can the generalized price increase impact you? And especially increases in the prices of energy?

Well, obviously, inflation is valuable which has an impact on most companies. In our case, fortunately, the generalized price increase is not directly transferred to a cost increase given our structuring activity. For example, if we go through the different businesses in motor, there is obviously a pressure on costs for the repairs of material damage, but we have mitigation measures in place to mitigate costs basically because we have a network of workshops and professionals, trusted professionals who try to apply the best repair practices, but at the same time, adjusting costs while offering the same top level of quality and service to customers. Same thing happens in other lines of business. For example, multi-risk, especially in home. We have a very close relationship with our repair network, which allows us to partially mitigate the effects of inflation. In health, for example, we have hospital agreements in place that protect us from inflation because the increases are limited, and this applies both to 2022 and 2023. As to the impact of inflation on credit, we have already analyzed this. On the one hand, it means an increase of our income as well due to higher sales by our policyholders affected by inflation. It is possible that liquidity tensions deriving from cost increases are factors that may affect us. But at any rate, we bear in mind the selection of risks in the application of rates and risk selection. And finally, general cost is also very important. The main component of this is personnel costs. And very recently, we have underwritten the sectorial agreement of insurance companies in Spain placing salary increases below the current level of inflation. We've also [ said ] this, time and again, as the inflation translates into an increase of interest rates whenever it is moderate and, fortunately, this is normally favorable for insurance companies because it will allow us to obtain more profitability from the assets that we have in our portfolio. And at any rate, I will take this opportunity to inform you, as I said at the beginning, that on May 19, we will publish the solvency and financial situation report, which contains, amongst others, the sensitivity scenarios based on interest rates going up or down.

We have received one question about the AGM held yesterday. Did you talk -- you talked about the merger of the traditional business companies. Could you tell us when this is going to take place? And what do you expect to gain from it?

I think we've already talked about this. I have talked about this in previous occasions. At any rate, as you know, our group has grown a lot via acquisitions in this century. The first acquisition of this era was in 1999 with [indiscernible] to the point where we have changed all of the main managers of the group, multiplying invoicing turnover x9 and permanent research x19 and results x13. So in this context, at GCO, we have been working on an integration process of operational and service platforms for years, which has allowed us to be more efficient and to simplify and optimize processes, reduce costs and obtain a competitive advantage in the provision of services to our policyholders. And we have also continued with the strategy with the integration of our product platforms that allow us to have an homogenous offering with our companies. And at this point, we have to continue to make headway in this strategy via the unification of the business companies, which is something that shouldn't happen this year. It should happen throughout 2023. And of course, this will allow us to become a simpler organization, more agile, quicker to adapt to the demands of the market, and in the end, it will allow us to continue improving in the future.

And just to finish, a question about share price performance. Despite the good results that you are having, it seems the market is punishing the share price especially, why do you think this happens?

I think there's no doubt that the company is far from having the share price that we deserve. Based on the fundamentals, you may know this better than us, but there are many reasons. It is obvious that the degree of liquidity of the share does not help, but when there's been a significant drop in the market, the share price has performed rather well. But we believe that credit insurance is the big unknown of the market. And in the face of potential crisis, it is punished in excess without knowing the true drivers of this business. Those of us who know the business well, we know it is a business that is very profitable long-term as long as you manage risks adequately. We saw this throughout the financial crisis in 2008, 2009, 2012. And in this regard, of course, our communication task to explain how this business [indiscernible] is essential. But it is as it is. We are around EUR 27 per share at the moment. And the general recommendation of analysts is buy with prices around EUR 42 and EUR 38. So we expect that as the market feels more comfortable, the share price will come closer to the real value of the share. And despite the potential punishment of this -- of the good capital on the share, this dividend policy that our shareholders have allowed us to conduct has allowed us to fund this period of acquisitions we referred to in my previous words. I can assure you that we continue with an eye on the market actively. And for now, unfortunately, no opportunities have crystallized in the past year and this year.

Thank you very much, Francisco. And with these answers, we conclude the presentation of results of the first quarter 2022. As usual, I would like to remind you that any pending questions will be managed directly via the Investor Relations team in the coming days. And I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to the next presentation of results on Thursday, 28th July, 2022, where we will be presenting the results of the first half year. And finally, I would like to remind you that you can visit our website where you will find all of the sustainability and financial information that may be of interest to you. And as usual, we would like to thank you for your attention and participation. Thank you very much. And see you soon.