OUTsurance Group Limited (OUT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My pleasure to welcome you to the 14th Annual General Meeting with shareholders of OUTsurance Group Limited. We may refer to it as OGL in this meeting. I'd like to welcome the directors and shareholders who may be present online. And there's also one shareholder present in person. So welcome to all those. The order of events for this morning will constitute the meeting. We'll ask Marthinus to reflect on the year. We'll say farewell to a retiring director. And thereafter, we will go into the special and ordinary resolutions that we'd like to pass today. There will be an opportunity for questions and answers. You can also pose them when Marthinus is reflecting on the year, but there will be a specific question-and-answer session also dealing with the resolutions if we need to. We will then vote, close the voting and announce the results before closing the meeting. So that would be the order of events this morning. Shareholders are advised that the voting will be conducted electronically and will remain open until the Q&A session has been completed. And shareholders will be able to ask questions verbally or submit typed questions. All questions will be relayed to management. So there will not be an [ edification ] or a change to any of the questions that we will see from shareholders today. So we believe that's open and transparent process of dealing with any shareholder comments or questions that we may have. Computershare has been appointed as our scrutineers today. They will tell you the votes and will advise you of the results of those votes when we get to that point in the meeting. I'd like to start the meeting by constituting it. We hold 14 letters of representation and 19 proxies in favor of the Chairman and others to vote those resolutions. And the letters and the proxies represent 88.15% of the issued share capital of OGL. Therefore, a quorum is present in person or by proxy and I declare this properly constituted Annual General Meeting with shareholders of this company. Proper notice has been given of the meeting and the resolutions that we'd like to propose in terms of the Companies Act and both in terms of the memorandum and cooperation of OGL and was included in the summary financial results, which were posted to shareholders. As is our custom, we would like to hand over to Marthinus, our Group CEO, to state on the 2024 financial year. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. This financial year 2024 was a good year for OUTsurance with ongoing strong translation of top line growth, bottom line growth. Gross written premium growth was robust at 20.5% year-on-year, boosted by ongoing elevated premium inflation. But contrary to 2023, when we had a tailwind in terms of the exchange rate, it turned more neutral in financial year 2024. The pleasing feature of the growth was the improved quality of growth with higher growth of Youi [ Direct ] and lower growth of Youi BZI, the broker business. Operating profit growth was robust at 15.5%, benefiting from strong underlying performance on our key ratios, that's the claims ratio and the cost ratio for both OUTsurance South Africa as well as Youi. The second factor benefiting operating profit was the strong premium growth. And then a third factor benefiting, it was high investment income on technical reserves, courtesy of elevated interest rates and increased free float, courtesy of writing more long-tail business and more annual business. Nonetheless, we had to navigate a few headwinds, which negatively affected profitability. These included higher natural payroll retained claims than the very benign financial year 2023 at Youi. The high cost of the legacy share option scheme, which is in runoff for the record that was ZAR 335 million in excess of budget for the financial year and ZAR 296 million higher than the prior year. The third factor was ongoing elevated claims inflation. And then the fourth and last factor was underperformance of the BZI unit in Australia, which recorded a ZAR 241 million operating loss. Looking at industry results, I think our teams did really well to navigate these headwinds and I want to thank the teams for the effort. Normalized earnings at an OUTsurance Holdings level was up 15.7% to ZAR 3.83 billion and that was influenced by similar factors to the operating profit. Then looking at normalized earnings at an OUTsurance Group level, that was up 20.3% to ZAR 3.536 billion. The earnings growth benefited from the OUTsurance Holdings earnings growth, but also from a reduction in head office costs because of the simplification structure post the listing transition as well as the increasing shareholding of OUTsurance Group in OUTsurance Holdings. Other highlights for the year included the successful launch of OUTsurance Ireland on a brand-new in-house developed technology stack. The ongoing simplification of our group structure by disposing of noncore businesses, demonstrating our capital discipline in the last year, this included OUTvest and AutoGuru. And then lastly, the last highlight for the year was OUTsurance retaining its Level 1 BBB status. So that's in a nutshell the summary of financial year 2024. Thank you, Chair. We can take questions.

Thank you very much. If there are no questions from the room, I'll also ask [ Scott ] to check on his system as well as [ Louis ] [indiscernible]. We'll leave one more chance for questions for later. I'd like to move on -- thank you, Marthinus. I'd like to move on and say farewell to George Marx, Professor George Marx was on the Group's -- the OGL and OHL Boards from 2008 on the OHL Board and since 2022 on the OGL Board. He also served as Chairperson of the Audit, Risk and Compliance Committee, good management skills and he was a sage adviser to the -- sage adviser to the group for many years. I'd like to thank him for his dedicated service so many years. George retired from the Board effective 12 September, 2024, as we informed shareholders at the time. I'd like to move across to the formal part of the meeting and tabling of the ordinary and special resolutions. The ordinary resolutions 1 to 1.5, 3, 4.1 to 4.3 and 5, those numbers will require approval of more than 50% of the votes and ordinary resolution 2 and a special resolution 1 to 6 require the approval of at least 75% of the votes exercised by shareholders present or represented by proxy. I assume all shareholders have received a copy of the notice and it's therefore not my intention to read the full ordinary and special resolutions. I'll just refer to them when we ask the shareholders to cast their votes. The audited consolidated and separate annual financial statements for the financial year-ended 30 June, 2024, as approved by the Board of Directors of the company, including the reports of the external auditor, the directors and Audit, Risk and Compliance Committee and the integrated report, including the report of the Social and Ethics Committee, the Remuneration Committee and the remuneration policy and implementation report, all of which are available on the company's website are presented to the meeting today. We're going to start with the advisory endorsement of the remuneration policy and the remuneration implementation report. I propose that the remuneration policy be endorsed. And I also propose the remuneration implementation report be endorsed. That's the first order of business. Then we move to the ordinary and please -- both online and in the room, please interrupt me or raise your hand if you'd like to make any comment. Ordinary resolution numbers 1.1 to 1.5. In terms of the company's Memorandum of Incorporation, the following directors retire and being eligible, offer themselves for reelection. And the reelection of these directors will be done on an individual basis. I propose the following person for reelection as directors. Resolution 1.1, Ms. Albertinah Kekana; resolution 1.2, Ms. Mamongae Mahlare; resolution 1.3, Mr. Willem Roos; resolution 1.4, Mr. James Teeger; resolution 1.5, Hantie van Heerden. We move to ordinary resolution #2, which is the resolution granting general authority to the Board of Directors to issue ordinary shares for cash. I move to ordinary resolution #3, which is the appointment by the Audit, Risk and Compliance Committee of KPMG as the auditor of the company. It's actually a reappointment. Ordinary resolutions 4.1 to 4.3 deals or deal with independent non-executive directors to be elected as members of the Audit Committee. Resolution 4.1, Ms. Hantie van Heerden; 4.2 Ms. Venessa Naidoo; 4.3 Ms. Tlaleng Moabi. Ordinary resolution #5 has to do with authorizing each director and/or the Company Secretary to do such things as may be necessary for the implementation of these resolutions. Moving to the special resolution #1, which is that the remuneration of the non-executive directors are approved. Special resolution #2 is general authority to the Board to repurchase shares. #3 -- special resolution #3 is authorizing the issue of shares and other instruments to -- and also for the purpose of a reinvestment option. And special resolution #4 is the authorization to issue shares in connection with the group share or employee incentive scheme. Special resolution 5 is special assistance to directors and others as set [indiscernible]. Special resolution #6 is to do with financial assistance to related and interrelated entities. Those are all the special and ordinary resolutions being proposed today. And I'll give another chance for questions in this regard. Nothing in the room? Scott?

No further questions, Chairman.

Louis, any questions that you see on your side?

Chair, there are no questions on the phone.

Thank you. We then close the voting and we will just wait for the results of the voting. We are looking on the screen at the various votes, both the advisory votes as well as in the special and ordinary resolutions. We will publish this as per normal, but I'm very pleased to say that all resolutions, including the advisory vote have passed with resounding majority. Thank you for the confidence that shareholders are placing in the company as well as the individuals who have been proposed as directors and members of the Audit and Risk Committee. There are no -- there's no further business to attend to in terms of the attendees who would like to propose something. I'd like to thank you for your attendance and declare the meeting closed. Thank you.