The Allstate Corporation (ALL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. The presentation is up. Good morning, everyone. I'm Greg Peters, covering the insurance sector for Raymond James. And I'm honored to welcome back Allstate to our Annual Raymond James Institutional Investor Conference. This is our 42nd annual investors' conference. So obviously, it's been going well. Unfortunately, this year, it's virtual, but everyone has learned to accommodate the virtual world. From Allstate today, we have Mario Rizzo, who is the Chief Financial Officer. We also have Brent Vandermause and Mark Nogal from their investor relations office. So the way the presentation and the way the structure is going to go is Mario, I think, is going to have some comments to make, and then we'll open up for Q&A. I have a list of questions. But certainly, as you're listening in, if you want to register a question through the Q&A panel, feel free. Or alternatively, you can send me an e-mail with the question, and I'll make sure to lob it into management. Without any further delay, let me turn it over to Mario.

All right. Thank you, Greg, and good morning, everybody. And thanks for taking some time to learn more about Allstate's strategy and why Allstate is an attractive investment opportunity. So before we start, I want to remind you that I'm going to use some forward-looking statements and references to non-GAAP measures, and they must be considered in the context of all the information we provide you. This presentation and more specific information on potential risks are included within our 10-K for 2020 and other public documents on our website at allstateinvestors.com. So why don't we flip to Slide 2 and jump right into the material. Let's begin with Allstate's strategy and recent highlights on how Allstate is building higher-growth business models. Our strategy has 2 components, as we've shown you in the past. The top oval shows how we're focused on increasing personal property-liability market share. And then the bottom mobile is focused on our expansion of protection services. So if you start with the upper oval, the personal property-liability market provides consumers protection by ensuring automobiles, homes, motorcycles, boats and personal liability. We're going to increase market share in personal property-liability through transformative growth, which includes expanding customer access and improving customer value by offering simple, affordable and connected products and services and experiences. We're also expanding protection services and increasing our total addressable market, as highlighted in the bottom oval. Leveraging the Allstate brand, customer base and operating capabilities has been highly successful for the businesses in the bottom oval. As we look back at 2020, despite the disruption caused by the pandemic, Allstate really had an exceptional year. We delivered attractive returns while building higher-growth business models, as you can see from a few of the highlights in the box on the right. Net income was $5.5 billion and adjusted net income was $4.6 billion or $14.73 per diluted share for the full year. This translated into a 19.8% return on equity, far in excess of most insurance companies, driven by lower frequency of auto accidents, continued strong profitability of homeowners insurance despite an active hurricane season and strong performance by our Protection Plans business. We took decisive actions, and despite the operational complexities, we've positioned the personal property-liability business for higher growth while delivering excellent profitability with a recorded combined ratio of 87.6%. We took advantage of the decline in auto accident frequency and our cost reductions to improve our competitive price position in auto insurance and expanded access to Allstate's broad portfolio of simple and connected products. Additionally, the acquisition of National General will increase personal property-liability insurance market share in 2021 by a full poll point and provides another platform for growth in the independent agent channel as we expand its product breadth. Protection services growth continued, led by Allstate Protection Plans, while investments and capabilities expand the total addressable market in the protection services segment. These changes position Allstate for sustainable long-term growth and value creation. We also announced the sale of Allstate Life Insurance Companies -- Company, which represents a near culmination of reducing Allstate's exposure to investment spread businesses and redeploys capital out of lower growth and return businesses. Allstate's capital strength and income generation enabled excellent cash returns to shareholders while simultaneously investing in future growth. Allstate returned $2.4 billion to shareholders through dividends and repurchasing 5% of common shares in 2020. Let's flip to Slide 3 and discuss Allstate's strategy in the property-liability business. Transformative growth has really become more than just a plan. It's about creating a business model, capabilities and culture to deliver market share growth on a consistent basis. This is done by focusing on the customer through expanding access and improving value. Expanding access includes fully leveraging our capabilities across all the ways customers choose to interact with us, exclusive agents, directly through call centers and the web and independent agents. Starting with the Allstate exclusive agents who serve customers that value local advice and relationships, we're focused on accelerating growth and improving efficiency. Allstate agents continue to be a strength, and we're adapting to changes in customer needs by focusing the channel on growth, lowering costs and enabling more efficient service. Leveraging Esurance's direct capabilities under the Allstate brand, we've created an omnichannel experience that meets the customer where, how and when they want to interact with us. We completed the transformation of direct processes and systems in 2020 and expect direct sold business to continue to accelerate. National General is another exciting platform for us. National General's independent agency-facing technology is among the best in the industry, and the combined agency footprint covers the vast majority of the U.S. market. As we expand products on the National General platform, we'll be well positioned to grow share in the independent agency market. This go-to-market model with strong capabilities in each major channel is designed to generate higher growth while maintaining attractive returns. We also made great progress on improving customer value last year as we maintained attractive margins through cost reductions while investing in growth. This includes improving the competitive price position of auto insurance through targeted rate reductions and a direct pricing discount. While most of the rate decreases were due to lower frequency of auto accidents, we are also reducing costs to ensure we continue to generate attractive margins. We're also expanding our industry-leading telematics offerings, Drivewise and Milewise, to further improve our value proposition and improve pricing sophistication. Our goal is not just to execute a plan but to continually generate transformational growth. We have the brand, market position, resources, capability and the strategy to deliver for our shareholders, including an extensive Allstate agent platform that provides more value per dollar to customers than the competition, a direct business utilizing the Allstate brand, competitive prices, a broad product portfolio and deep insurance expertise, an independent agent business with national distribution effective agency-facing technology and strong position in both the auto and homeowners insurance and protection services with innovative business models and expanding total addressable markets. So if we move to Slide 4, let's discuss in more detail how we expanded customer access to affordable, simple and connected products across these 3 distribution channels in 2020. Beginning with Allstate agent distribution, we shifted agent compensation to refocus existing agencies on growth by increasing new business incentives. Excluding the declines in March and April due to the pandemic, Allstate brand-new business grew through existing agents. We also stopped appointing new agents under the existing contract while we developed lower cost and higher growth alternatives to have local agents with less real estate and more efficient service. While some of the actions we took limited near-term growth, they were critical to create a distribution model capable of sustainable market share gains with lower distribution expenses. Moving to the direct channel. New business was transitioned to be sold under the Allstate brand. Esurance brand advertising resources were shifted to the Allstate brand while simultaneously increasing overall advertising spend. In addition, we introduced lower prices for directly sold business to reflect the lower costs associated with not having the benefits of a local agent. These actions allow us to compete more aggressively in the direct channel while we improve customer value. Looking at the chart on the lower left, you can see the impacts of these actions on auto new business in 2020. The red bar on the far left side of the chart shows the estimated unfavorable impact of the pandemic on auto new business in March and April. Moving to the right, you can see the negative impact of stopping new Allstate agent appointments. This was partially offset by an increase in existing exclusive agent production. This shows the viability of growth in the existing agent platform as compensation was shifted to new business from retention. Moving to the center of the chart, the total direct channel increased compared to prior year as the increase in the Allstate brand direct applications more than offset the decline in the Esurance brand. We anticipate continued growth in the direct channel as we optimize web and call center sales capabilities. A relatively small number of independent agents operate under the Allstate brand and had a positive impact on overall growth. A key component of expanding customer access to more affordable, simple and connected products relies on the ability to reduce costs. Cost structure improvements will position Allstate to be more competitively priced while continuing to generate very attractive margins. As you can see on the lower right, the property-liability expense ratio has improved as we've continued to bring down costs over time. The expense ratio in 2020 of 23.2%, excluding the impacts from restructuring and the coronavirus, represents a 1.9 point improvement compared to 2018. Let's flip to Slide 5 to discuss how innovation is improving customer value and growth. Allstate has a strong history of prioritizing innovation to create sustainable competitive advantages. Allstate's industry-leading telematics solutions is 1 example of successful innovation. Arity was created outside of the insurance operations to be the telematics provider for Allstate and to third parties. Arity's access to third-party information, along with Allstate-specific data, is a competitive advantage. We have over 410 billion miles of data collected. And with over 27 million active connections, we score 1.3 billion trips per month. Advanced analytics use insurance claims data to create proprietary driving scores that accurately price each individual risk. These industry-leading telematics capabilities improve customer value for Allstate's customer base, Arity's partnerships and ride-sharing companies. Innovation has also expanded into telematics products for Allstate customers with Drivewise and Milewise. Allstate is the only major insurer offering a pay-per-mile auto insurance product, which is very attractive to customers since they're driving less during the pandemic. Allstate is innovating by digitizing processes throughout the organization. We believe we are one of the leaders using digital processes to resolve claims with quick photo claims, virtual assist and aerial imagery for property inspections. This lowers costs while improving effectiveness and customer satisfaction. We also have a strong track record of innovative product solutions, with features such as accident forgiveness and new car replacement that are being copied by many of our competitors. We recently launched the digital footprint product, which expands identity protection. Allstate Protection Plans just introduced a 2-day appliance repair guarantee with the Home Depot. Our innovation extends beyond products and includes data analytics to assess and address risks across our business system. As customer needs evolve, we're reinventing protection with innovative solutions. Leaning into digitally enabled technology improves customer value and efficiency across the organization, better positioning Allstate for sustainable growth. If we go to Slide 6, we're going to discuss the National General acquisition, which closed on January 4 this year. The acquisition will accelerate profitable growth in the independent agent channel as it increases market share by 1 percentage point in 2021. It also improves future growth prospects with an upgraded independent agent platform and opportunity to expand the product offering. Over time, Encompass and Allstate independent agencies will be consolidated into National General's operating and technology platform under National General, an Allstate Company. Allstate is now a top 5 personal lines carrier in the IA channel with significantly improved capabilities. This channel serves about 1/3 of the personal property-liability market or $125 billion in premium. Additional growth is expected by rolling out new standard auto and homeowners' insurance offerings starting later this year. As standard offerings are rolled out, independent agents will have an offering that fully meets customer needs across the product portfolio and risk spectrum, ranging from nonstandard to mass affluent. Consistent with past acquisitions, we've developed measures of success, shown on the bottom of this slide. First, we expect the acquisition to be accretive with growing earnings, adding to both returns and profitability; second, we expect to achieve cost synergies by consolidating our 3 IA channel businesses into one, further improving our competitive position; third, we will grow IA channel policies in force by broadening our product offering. Jumping to Slide 7, let's discuss protection services and the continued growth experienced in 2020. As these innovative platforms continue to expand, they are becoming significant in size and more meaningful to total corporate results. Protection services revenues, excluding the impact of realized gains and losses, increased 17% to $1.9 billion. Adjusted net income increased $115 million in 2020 to $153 million despite significant growth investments made during the year. These increases are driven by the profitable growth of Allstate Protection Plans. As shown in the chart on the lower right, Allstate Protection Plans has experienced a 48% compound annual growth rate since being acquired while generating $137 million of adjusted net income in 2020. Allstate Protection Plans is also increasing its total addressable market as we protect a wide range of products, including furniture, appliances, consumer electronics, tablets and cell phones, both domestically and internationally. If we flip to Slide 8, we'll talk about the highlights and the recent announcement to sell Allstate Life Insurance Company. The pending sale to Blackstone for $2.8 billion will increase transparency into Allstate's industry-leading returns generated by their property-liability and protection services businesses. The transaction represents a near culmination of deploying capital out of lower growth and return investment spread businesses with minimal impacts to our strategy. Allstate will continue to protect customers with life insurance solutions, leveraging nonproprietary products. While the transaction is economically attractive, generating $2.2 billion of deployable capital, it will result in a financial book loss of approximately $3 billion to be recorded in the first quarter of 2021. However, with the upcoming adoption of the long-duration targeted improvements accounting standard, a larger reduction in equity would have been recorded had we not sold Allstate Life Insurance Company and instead adopted that new accounting standard. If we move to Slide 9, we'll discuss how Allstate's capital strength and earnings power enables investments in growth and excellent cash returns to shareholders. Allstate has a history of generating attractive returns. The property-liability combined ratio has consistently performed at industry-leading levels, driving consistent and sustained increases in adjusted net income, as you can see by the lower left chart. This sustainable and consistent earnings generation has created the capacity to both invest in growth and provide significant cash returns to shareholders. We've strategically deployed $5.9 billion of growth capital over the last 5 years to acquire National General, Allstate Protection Plans and Allstate Identity Protection. These investments, along with transformative growth, create excellent growth platforms in high-returning businesses across an expanding total addressable market. Our strong earnings profile has also enabled a significant cash return to shareholders through both dividends and share repurchases, as shown on the lower right chart. Last week, we announced a 50% increase in the quarterly dividend per common share to $0.81 per share. This results in a material increase to the current annualized dividend yield to about 3%. The reduction in shares from buybacks and our ongoing earnings generation potential enables this sustainable increase, this substantial increase in the dividend per share while continuing to maintain excellent fixed-charge coverage and financial flexibility. In summary, the change reflects our ongoing commitment to meaningful cash returns to shareholders and continued confidence in the earnings power of the enterprise. Moving to Slide 10. Allstate remains an attractive investment opportunity. Allstate generates industry-leading returns with a proven business model, strong competitive position and operating expertise built from a long history of success. The acquisition of National General and pending sale of Allstate Life Insurance Company further enhances Allstate's strong return profile. Leveraging analytics and technology while expanding our total addressable market will enable continued adoption -- adaptation that will fuel growth and attractive returns, generating significant shareholder value. Despite delivering strong returns with extensive growth opportunities, stock valuation metrics have not kept pace, as shown in the table on the bottom of the slide. Allstate's valuation is attractive relative to peers and does not appear to fully reflect our growth potential. With that context, we'll open it up for questions.

Thank you very much for those opening comments. And we agree. We've been recommending your stock as strong buy, so we agree with your assessment on valuation. I'd like to pivot to a big-picture question around financial technology, fintech, use. And I know you talked about transformative growth and reinvesting in growth businesses. We've seen a number of companies in the capital markets get funding, either through SPACs, through IPOs, through private equity fundings, and we're talking about companies that are getting me into your business. Using telematics, using pay by mile, using different tools to get at renters' insurance. And if you were to apply those valuation metrics to your company, your stock would be a lot higher. But I guess, what the market is suggesting is that you guys are going to stand still and let these guys eat your lunch in terms of competition. So Mario, maybe you could spend a minute and just tell us what Allstate is doing to counteract these start-ups that have captured the imagination of some investors.

Yes. It's a good question, Greg. And I guess where I'd start is we certainly pay attention to what's going on across the industry, both from traditional competitors as well as the start-ups that you mentioned. And I think that's a healthy approach to take, right? So the first thing I'd say is we certainly don't ignore some of the things they're doing that are new and unique and different. At the same time, I think we're focused through transformative growth on building and further leveraging a lot of the same capabilities that we've built over time. So again, with transformative growth, we want a -- we're looking to deliver simple, affordable and connected products and experiences. And a lot of the technology that you talked about are things that enable that -- all 3 of those dimensions. It's making things simple, affordable and connected. So if you think about telematics, as an example, the -- we've been at telematics for over a decade. And I would put our telematics capabilities at the top of any list that we compile across either traditional or start-up competitors. And we've -- in terms of the miles we've been able to accumulate, the sophistication of our insurance scoring and how we've applied it with Drivewise and Milewise and what we're going to do to continue to leverage and build on those capabilities, we -- again, I feel confident that we can go toe to toe with the telematics capabilities of anybody in the insurance space. And we're going to continue to invest in those capabilities. The same would be true across the product portfolio, across our technology and our ability to interact with customers across the entirety of the value chain. The things we've done to digitize the claim experience with quick photo claims to take cost out and enhance the customer experience, these are things we're focused on and we're going to continue to focus on and invest in through transformative growth. And they're really designed to not just compete today but to compete effectively for the long term. So we feel confident in our ability to compete with not only, again, the traditional competitors in our space but the new start-ups because we're focused on building capabilities that are every bit is good, if not better, than the ones they're going to deliver.

That's a good point and probably a good segue into the next question around competition pricing and really what the industry benefited from, which is reduction in accident frequency from this work-from-home environment. It seems -- as much as some of us don't like it, it seems like some of that's a structural change, which is going to be here to say. Can you give us an update on your view of work from home and what this means longer-term in terms of accident frequency? And more importantly, how that all meshes with price competition and where you sit in that vertical of your peers?

Sure. So as you can imagine, we spend a lot of time slicing and dicing frequency trends. And the way we think about it is prepandemic and, I think, on an ongoing basis, there's a component of frequency that will continue to benefit from just improvements in technology that are in cars. And that is -- as more vehicles with more sophisticated technology continue to enter into the fleet, there's a tailwind there from a frequency perspective that I think will persist. So we've actually done, I think, a really good job of trying to isolate what that might look like. But then you have layered on top of that in the near term the impact that you saw from the pandemic and people driving less and driving less during peak hours, right? So -- and you certainly -- we saw that we and the industry benefited from a reduction in frequency that was driven by just fewer miles driven. As miles driven has started to come back kind of after, say, the first half of 2020, the component that I think has come back fastest is the people driving more but in off-peak hours. So we haven't quite seen the return of the level of rush hour traffic where most accidents tend to occur. And what's -- the way that's shown up for us is we've continued to benefit from pretty significant drops in auto frequency throughout the balance of the year. In the fourth quarter, there was a mid-20% reduction in auto frequency compared to the same period prior to that. And the industry has benefited from a continued reduction in frequency. But I think if you look across companies, the level of that benefit varies across companies depending on their geographic mix in terms of their books of business as different states have opened up at different points in time, as different risk classes within books of business might skew more towards, say, frontline workers or workers who are -- who started driving more faster, say, than those who work in an office environment and have the benefit of being able to work from home. So we've benefited, I think, also from that because most of our book tends to skew standard and preferred. I think that's helped our frequency trends. As we look forward, I think certainly with things like the vaccine and the rollout of now a third vaccine in the U.S. and people returning to work at different points during the year, we'd expect the benefit of that component of our frequency improvement to begin to diminish over time. But I think it'll be offset by what is likely to be a permanent change in how people work. So I don't think you're going to go back across the U.S. to everybody who worked in an office going back and working full-time in an office environment. I think you're going to have a shift in that, and I think that'll continue to translate into some benefit in frequency on a go-forward basis. And again, that's going to vary by company and by book of business. But I do think there's -- there will be a permanent component to frequency improvement. That is to be determined at this point. I don't think we know enough at this point to be able to project the magnitude of that improvement. And I think that'll be additive to this tailwind from safer cars and better technology in cars. I think what we've observed throughout 2020 are a number of things from a pricing standpoint. We were among the first to give money back to customers through shelter-in-place paybacks, and that totaled almost $1 billion. And then we took other actions around new business pricing and discounting to enhance our competitive position. There have been some others that did the same kinds of things we did, while others took significant rate reductions -- when you look at say, for example, what State Farm did, GEICO did more discounting, others did combinations of things, so it varied. But I think we like the actions we took to maintain our competitive position. And now, as I mentioned during the presentation, we're in the process of taking targeted rate reductions to reflect better frequency, to reflect the margins that we have and to continue to enhance our competitive position. We feel good about the improvements we've made in competitive price positioning, both from the actions we've taken as well as through our cost reductions that we've been able to take. Again, almost a 2 point reduction in our expense ratio over the last 2 years. Those, coupled with ongoing targeted rate reductions, I think, will enable us to maintain and strengthen our competitive position. That will generate an opportunity to grow at an accelerated pace and continue to deliver really attractive margins. And we think we're going to be well positioned to be able to do that going forward.

Great. I'd like to pivot to the property business for the next question. It's actually a question in 2 parts. First of all, most obvious and pressing event that's on everyone's mind would be Texas catastrophes. I know you've mapped out a pretty robust reinsurance plan, but maybe you could comment on that? And then the second piece of the property discussion would be around technology. I know you've -- Allstate has invested a lot in the House & Home product in terms of technology. And you talked a little bit about, during your presentation this morning, private equity firm, Centerbridge, invested in an artificial intelligence property solution from one of these small little competitors. So what I'd like you to do is just talk to us about your -- the competitive position of your homeowners product after you give us sort of the statement on Texas catastrophes.

Sure. So on Texas, obviously, it's just a horrible situation with the freeze. And first and foremost, our response efforts have been to meet customer needs and help them kind of restore their lives. So that's really been our focus. It's premature for me today to comment on either claim volume or an estimate, but as soon as we have that information pulled together, we'll certainly, through our monthly catastrophe disclosure process to the extent our cat losses exceed $150 million, we'll certainly disclose the information in that time frame. But first and foremost, we're focused on helping customers restore their lives. The losses are part of -- depending on where they fall, Texas is part of our national reinsurance program, which has a $500 million per-event cover. The other part, too, aside from the per-event cover, is over the last few years, we've bought catastrophe bond coverage that's served as both an excess of loss cover as well as an aggregate cover. So we're on risk -- we're in the risk period for the aggregate bond. We'll see whether our aggregate losses pierce that threshold. So we do have coverage through a couple of different parts of the reinsurance program. And again, we'll provide more information on that as we gather more information. In terms of property, we like the property business. We generate, I think, industry-leading margins and returns in property. It's an area that we want to accelerate growth both within the Allstate brand, and we think there's a real opportunity through National General to accelerate our growth in the property business. We have capacity to take on more risk and generate really attractive risk-adjusted returns. So the place I'd start is we really like how we're positioned in property, and we're going to look to lean into the growth opportunity. You mentioned House & Home. And I think that's one of the reasons we like the property business is we've got a product offering that generates the right risk-adjusted returns. And we're going to continue to look for ways to enhance the House & Home product, and we're not standing still in terms of the product offering. And the same would be true in terms of pricing sophistication. We like our competitive position in homeowners, but we'll continue to look to further enhance our pricing sophistication and our underwriting capabilities. I talked a little bit in my presentation about how we're using capabilities like aerial imagery for home inspections. We're also using aerial imagery on the claim process as well. But the other thing we have the ability to leverage is the sheer amount of data that we've accumulated over the years in homeowners, and we can leverage our data analytics capabilities and that data. I mean we've captured data on a significant percentage of the homes in the U.S. over time because we've insured a significant percentage of the homes in the U.S. over time between the Allstate brand and Encompass and Esurance and certainly with National General going forward. And I think leveraging analytics, both in the underwriting and the claims process, but also making it easier, we're leveraging analytics in the customer acquisition space so that we can use third-party data versus having to ask a bunch of questions to write new homeowners business. And we can leverage what we already know with our own data and the data we can acquire through third-parties to just make that a lot -- a simpler and more seamless process. And I think if you look across the entirety of the value chain, our ability to leverage technology, digital capabilities, data and analytics, I think, positions us to, again, as I said earlier, be successful in the property business, not only today but for years to come. But we're not standing still in that space either. I mean we're continuing to invest in our property capabilities because it's a business while it attracts more capital because of the volatility and the tail risk, we like where we're positioned from a pricing, product and an underwriting standpoint. We've got a track record of generating really attractive returns in that business, and we want to grow it.

Well, we've run out the clock. There's less than a minute left, Mario. So I guess I wanted to thank you for your participation in our conference. It's not lost upon me, the company's record of capital management and return of capital. The dividend announced, it was an important piece of, actually, a long-standing policy you have of being very responsive to shareholders. But listen, Mario and Brent and Mark, appreciate your time. And I'd like to, Mario, just let you have the opportunity to make a closing comment or 2 before we sign off.

Yes. I guess the last thing I'd say, Greg, and it's related to what you said from a capital perspective is the -- we have the benefit of significant capital strength and flexibility. And what that translates into is the wherewithal to be able to continue to make the growth investments I talked about, both organically, inorganically, while we continue to return cash to shareholders. The dividend is another example of our ability to do that. But we're -- as we think about our capital position, we start from a position of strength, and we really have the flexibility to invest across the entirety of that spectrum. So again, thanks, everybody, for taking the time. And I look forward to talking to all of you going forward.

Perfect. Thank you very much, Mario.