The Allstate Corporation (ALL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. Greg Peters here with Raymond James, I'm the insurance analyst. And for as long as I've been here at Raymond James, one of the companies I've followed, Allstate, has been a willing participant in getting pegged and coming to the conference for us. So we appreciate their continuing support and participation in our conference. So today, we have the management team, including Jesse Merten, who's the CFO. And I'm going to turn it over to Jesse to give us some opening comments.

All right. Thanks, Greg. So good morning, everyone. It's great to be back up at the Raymond James Conference in Florida. We're back again this year and ready to talk about the year and take a look forward and take some questions. So I'm going to start out with an overview of Allstate's strategy and our recent results that will help create some context about why we think Allstate is an attractive investment. And I think it will set a good foundation for the balance of the time we have to set some questions. So first off, I got the clicker. Here we go. I want to remind you that I'm going to be using forward-looking statements in reference to non-GAAP measures. Evaluate my remarks in the context of all the information that we provide, including information on potential risks in our recently filed 10-K for 2024 and the other public documents that we issue. This presentation and more specific information is available on our website at allstateinvestors.com. Many of you are familiar with Allstate's strategy, but some of you may not be so I want to provide a high-level overview before I go through results in more detail. Allstate's strategy has 2 components: increasing personal Property-Liability market share while expanding protection services that we provide to customers. On the right, you can see a summary of financial results for 2024 as well as our strategic priorities for 2025. 2024 was an excellent year for Allstate, both financially and strategically. Total revenue increased 12.3% to $64.1 billion with net income of $4.6 billion. Adjusted net income return on equity was strong at 26.8%. We're confident that successful execution of the 4 priorities that you see here are going to generate shareholder value. We're going to deliver attractive financial returns through a disciplined execution of our strategy. We're going to remain focused on executing Transformative Growth, which is our multiyear initiative to increase personal Property-Liability market share. Expanding protection services is going to allow us to build stronger customer relationships and meet more customer needs. Lastly, as we demonstrated with our dividend and share repurchase announcement last week, we will proactively manage capital to create value for our shareholders. Now let's dive a little bit deeper into our financial results for 2024. Property-Liability earned premium of $53.9 billion, was up 11.2% and was primary driver of the 12.3% increase in total revenue for last year that I mentioned on the previous slide. Net investment income was up almost 25% for the full year, reflecting the benefit of higher rates and portfolio growth. Adjusted net income was $4.9 billion for the full year, which represented about $18.32 per share. Our approach to managing risk and return delivered exceptional results with the 26.8% percent adjusted net income return on equity that was driven by strong performance both in underwriting and in investments. Before I move off this page, I want to remind you of the progress that we've made on our strategic decision to sell our Health and Benefits businesses. We previously announced the sale of the Employee Voluntary Benefits business for $2 billion to The Standard, and we expect that to close in the first half of the year. The Group Health business will be sold for $1.25 billion to Nationwide, and we expect that to close later this year as well. These sales were both financially attractive and will generate approximately $2.5 billion of additional capital to the corporation. Before I move on and go a little bit deeper in the results, I do want to spend some time on Transformative Growth, which, as I mentioned before, is our multiyear initiative that we launched in 2019 to grow personal Property-Liability market share. Yes, that's right. Sorry, I want to make sure I'm on the right slide. Transformative Growth includes 5 components and the objective of this program is to increase market share, as I said. The 5 components are to increase customer value, expand customer access, increase sophistication of customer acquisition, develop new technology and drive organizational transformation. I'm going to focus on 2 of those today just so that we can get to questions and take time. First, our focus on improving customer value required us to lower cost and provide differentiated products. Our adjusted expense ratio, which excludes advertising expense and includes claims expense, has improved nearly 5 points since 2019. While the reduction was helped by higher average premium increases, we've substantially changed our cost structure through streamlined operations, digitization, real estate reductions and lower distribution costs. This has allowed us to have more competitive pricing without impacting margins. Substantial progress has also been made on enhancing products to create more value for our customers. Affordable, Simple and Connected auto insurance, which is our new auto product, is available in 31 states in our new ASC homeowners product is available in 4 states. Custom360 is our middle market standard and preferred auto and homeowners product, which is available in the independent agent channel, and it's been introduced in 30 states. If you look at the bottom half of the slide, one of the most significant changes that we made with Transformative Growth is the expansion of customer access through all distribution channels. The effort has 3 components: improving agent productivity, expanding direct sales and increasing independent agent distribution, all of which have been successful. As you can see on the right, in 2019, more than 3 out of every 4 new business policies came through Allstate agents. Last year, new business was 9.7 million items, which is 76% higher than 2019, with significant contributions coming from each channel. Policies in force have increased to 37.3 million items despite the negative impact of the post-pandemic price increases. There's a lot more to Transformative Growth that I don't have time to cover, but we're confident that successful execution of this strategic initiative has positioned us for Property-Liability market share growth. So now if I turn back to results, the Property-Liability business delivered excellent results in 2024. As you can see in the table on the left, auto insurance generated $1.8 billion of underwriting income and homeowners contributed an additional $1.3 billion, both significant improvements compared to the prior year. We show auto margins on the top right of the chart, and you can see how the successful execution of our auto profit improvement plan has restored profitability back to target levels. 2024 finished the year with a combined ratio of 95%, which is squarely within our mid-90s combined ratio target. In the bottom right chart, you can see the homeowners insurance business achieved a 90.1% combined ratio, again, meeting our low 90s target for that line of business. And this represents a 16.7 point improvement when compared to 2024, which reflects lower catastrophes as well as stronger underlying performance in the homeowners line. It's important to evaluate our homeowners business over a longer-term period and extended time frame because catastrophe losses create volatility period to period. You can see that over a 10-year period, our track record is very, very good. We had a combined ratio of 92% from the 10-year period of 2014 to 2023, which outperformed the industry's combined ratio of 103% and the industry's underwriting loss for that same period. So we have a long track record of successful execution in homeowners. We have an industry-leading product, advanced pricing, underwriting and analytics, broad distribution capabilities as well as a comprehensive reinsurance program, all that allow us to win in the homeowners business and it's a line we continue to want to grow. I'll shift to a topic that many of you may be more focused on, which is growth. The Property-Liability business has 37.4 million policies in force with auto representing 24.8 million or 2/3 and homeowners comprising about 20% of that total. As of January 31, we introduced a new disclosure and you could see that auto policies in force declined by 1.3% as lower retention, particularly in states with large rate increases, outweighed the increases in new business applications. However, at year-end, we did see policies in force increase on a year-over-year basis in 31 states, representing approximately 60% of countrywide premium. For the year, homeowners insurance policies in force increased by 180,000 or about 2.5%, which was driven by strong retention and increases in new business in homeowners. As I mentioned before, we view homeowners as a growth opportunity across all distribution channels. For 2025, our objective is to grow total Property-Liability policies by improving customer retention, maintaining strong new business sales at the same time. And on the bottom of the page, you can see what we're doing and what we're deploying with regards to tactics to achieve policy growth. First, we're proactively contacting customers to review their needs and lower the cost of protection by making adjustments to their policies. We believe that a proactive approach is going to help us retain more customers. Second, we're completing the rollout of our Affordable, Simple and Connected auto and homeowners products, as I mentioned before, and we believe that rollout will enable growth. The new products include our most sophisticated rating plans and improved customer experience that includes telematics offerings that will help customers save money. Lastly, we continue to invest in marketing and develop products that allow us to leverage our broad distribution network and grow Property-Liability market share. I do want to touch briefly on investment performance and asset allocation. Through our proactive portfolio management, we optimize return per unit of risk across the enterprise with a comprehensive monitoring process of economic conditions, market opportunities, interest rates and credit spreads. Investment income for the year increased 3.1 -- increased to $3.1 billion in 2024, which was 24.8% above the prior year due to repositioning into higher-yielding fixed income securities, portfolio growth and stronger performance-based results. Market-based investment income increased to $2.7 billion, which was 23.2% above the prior year due to higher fixed income yields and investment balances. Our fixed income yield shown below the chart, has steadily improved from 4% to 4.4% over the past year as we repositioned again into higher-yielding, longer-duration assets. Performance-based investments increased to $618 million -- income increased to $618 million or 23.8% above prior year, primarily due to private equity valuation increases. We make these investments for long-term value creation. We do expect quarter-to-quarter net investment income volatility from these investments. The pie chart on the right shows our asset allocation. As of the year-end 2024, our portfolio is largely comprised of high-quality liquid interest-bearing assets. Public equity holdings did increase by $2.4 billion in the fourth quarter to $3.3 billion, representing 5% of the total portfolio. Fixed income duration stands at 5.3 years, which is unchanged from the prior quarter and up from 4.8 years at the end of 2023. Before I wrap up and move to questions, I do want to discuss how our proactive approach to capital management supports growth and provide strong return to shareholders. Allstate's diversified portfolio of businesses has a proven history of generating substantial cash flow from operations, and we generate significant value for shareholders at target margins as evidenced by our 26.8% return on equity for 2024. Over the past several years, Allstate has also created shareholder value through the acquisitions of National General and SquareTrade, which we now call Protection Plans. And these transactions support a strong track record of successfully evaluating and integrating companies that bring capabilities to all state to complement our strategy to grow market share and expand protection to customers. We also have a long history of returning cash to our shareholders. As we announced last week, the Board authorized a $1.5 billion share repurchase agreement that represents most of the additional capital that we'll generate through the divestiture of the Employee Voluntary Benefits business. At the same time, we announced an increase of 8.7% to our quarterly common dividend, which is now $1 per share. And since 2015, Allstate has returned $24.5 billion to shareholders through $17.4 billion in share repurchases and $7.1 billion in dividends. The dividend increase, combined with the new share repurchase program, demonstrates our commitment to proactively managing capital to create value. Our balanced approach creates both immediate returns and long-term value, which I believe positions us well for years ahead. Before we go to questions, I do always like to end where we start, which is reiterating our strategic priorities for 2025. Allstate is going to create shareholder value by delivering financial -- attractive financial returns, executing our Transformative Growth initiative to increase Property-Liability market share, expanding protection offerings and by proactively managing risk and return and capital. So with that as context, let's move to questions and answers, Greg. How's that sound?

Sounds great.

I'll leave the good hands up.

[indiscernible]

Yes, so the question was can I comment on New York, New Jersey rate approvals and new product filings. We do need additional rate in both of those states, which is why we're not growing new business in New York and New Jersey. It's hard to say exactly when we're going to get the approvals that we need to get to rate adequacy. But you did touch on an important dimension in the question, which was the new products that we have filed. New products are filed on a rate adequate basis, right? So to the extent that the new products are approved and implemented in the market, those will be rate adequate. So we won't have to file additional rate to get those where they need to be. They'll be in market at rate adequate levels and so we'll be able to turn on new business in a measured way in those states when the new -- when our Affordable, Simple and Connected products are filed, approved and in place in those states. That will help with some of the profitability issues we have on the older policies.

Just as well, can we talk about California and [indiscernible] fire loss. Just talk about how you're doing in that market right now [indiscernible]

Yes. So the question is talk about California, how we're looking at the market. We have disclosed the fire loss and so I think that's all out there. I think the bigger question, Greg, is about the market itself, right? And so if you look Allstate stopped writing new business in 2022 in California. We started getting smaller in 2007, which is part of why our market share looks like it does right now. So effectively, we have a lot of customers, homeowners customers, in California. We write new auto business in the state. But really, we've gotten smaller is because you have to make an adequate return on capital. I think right now, the market is in a state of turmoil, right, and we want to engage with the commissioner and the state to get to a point where carriers can write new business and make an adequate return on the homeowners line. And so there's been things that we've talked about that the commissioner has embraced, conceptually at least. So wildfire modeling needs to be part of rate-making. We have to be able to pass along the cost of reinsurance. But we also need to get -- to the extent we can do that, we have to get rates approved on a timely basis so that we can make return. There's a lot of details still to be worked out. I think in general, there's still -- you've got other carriers making decisions in the market that are creating some significant turmoil. I won't comment on that, but that's all adding to what feels like a very tumultuous homeowners market. You have a lot of folks that are in the FAIR Plan. The FAIR Plan is making assessments. It's just -- there's a lot going on in California. So the way that I'm looking at it is I think we're still early days in seeing what the market is going to be. And I think a lot of carriers, and Allstate included, are going to sit back and wait before you would even think about something that looks like new business in that state until you're really sure that you could earn adequate returns. And so we're focused, we're engaged. We want to be part of the solution because we do have a lot of customers in the state, but we're also approaching with a cautious lens because I do think there's a lot of work to be done to get the market back where it needs to be and get it to a point where, quite honestly, citizens in the state can get the insurance that they need to protect their homes. That's the most important thing.

I was wondering if auto is -- the EV population increases. Is that good news or bad news for you?

So in auto, question is if the greater number of EVs in the auto fleet is good news or bad news. I would say we're neutral to the method of propulsion of a vehicle, right? Allstate underwrites automobiles, whether they're internal combustion, hybrid or fully electric. So more -- there's unique dimensions to an EV versus an ICE. There's different repair costs. There's different things that have to be repaired. That's what we've done for years, right? So we can adjust and adapt to that dimension and we can price for that. So all in, I would say we're neutral on it. We embrace EVs the same way we embrace every other car, and we know we can work with collision repair centers to get them fixed just the same way.

[indiscernible]

When I say we adjust and adapt, isn't it on a lag? We have a lot of history and a lot of data on repairing vehicles in general. Everything that insurance companies do is on a lag. I don't think the difference in the cost to repair those vehicles is so dramatic that it's a lag that would be notable in our results because the reality is a lot of the expensive parts, set aside the battery, are parts that are on every vehicle, including ICE vehicles, right? It's the parking sensors, it's the sensors for cruise control. Like there's just a lot of technology that's built into every vehicle and so we're pricing for that on a current basis as it is.

Yes. Can you talk about the [indiscernible]. Can you talk about that environment and [indiscernible]

Yes. So I'll summarize that into 2 questions. Can I talk about the competitive environment and tariffs. Competitive environment certainly because carriers across the industry are seeing profitability and auto insurance return to target margins is heating up. From Allstate's perspective, what I'm encouraged by is we started investing in Transformative Growth, as I said, in 2019 to position us for this growth cycle by lowering our cost structure, so we have more competitive prices; by broadening distribution, so that people can come to us, however they want, EA, IA direct, people can come and get Allstate. So I feel like we're well positioned. Certainly, as profitability comes back, you will see ad spend go up. You will see customer acquisition go up because people want to grow. We're very disciplined in the day-to-day operation and function of how we look at marketing spend. So we understand what the value of leads are if you're talking lower funnel. And we're very disciplined about what we're willing to pay for that based on what we're seeing day to day the results that we're seeing. So we'll remain disciplined. But what I'm really encouraged by is that we've made the investments so that we're well positioned competitively in that environment while we stay disciplined. So I'm excited about our growth prospects even into a competitive environment, which is undoubtedly more competitive than it's been in the past as others have returned to profitability. As it relates to tariffs, it's difficult -- I'll start with it's difficult to predict the future. These things change on a pretty routine basis. We've seen some tariffs go in today. I'm also -- I was hearing, well, maybe there will be some exceptions for autos. Look, we'll have to see how all that plays out, right? I think what I've been focused on is it's less about trying to predict exactly what's going to happen and what the effect is going to be. I think at one point, we said, well, if you do the math, it could be low single digits, mid-single digits type of effect to Allstate's underlying loss costs. What we learned through the last inflationary cycle was you have to react quickly. You have to watch trends. You have to react very quickly to those trends. So what we're going to do is run the same play that we ran through that period where you look and say, okay, what are you actually seeing through -- come through loss costs? How do you make sure that that's reflected in pricing because you're going to have offsetting impacts. As you noted, profitability is good in the industry, so there are some favorable loss cost trends that fed that. This is going to offset some of that. So what we have to do is get really tactical about the way that we think about the loss cost trend going forward, pricing for that and just make sure that we're staying on top of small rate increases to reflect the potential impacts, and to the extent that those impacts get larger because of the tariffs, we'll adjust. I'll end with it's a complicated system that isn't just the tariff impact on the part that goes into the vehicle. We're very dependent on what that does to used car values because used car values determine whether we call a car a total loss. So there's a lot, labor inflation matters a lot to us as well. So I think there's just a number of dimensions to that question that can affect us. So what we're going to do is just get really laser-focused on what's coming through in actual claims and adjust for that. Yes.

Question is actually what kind tools have you come across [indiscernible]. Secondly, have you seen the piece of [indiscernible]

So 2 questions. Where are we seeing AI use cases in claims? And are we seeing fewer claims because people are either paying cash and not wanting to submit a claim or it doesn't make sense. Anecdotally, I've heard -- I don't have data to support exactly that people are paying claims more because they're not submitting. What's happening is people are adjusting deductibles up. And so if you think -- I was on a panel yesterday and we were talking a $500 deductible 20 years ago is very different than a $500 deductible today. And the reality is you can -- there's almost nothing that you can get from a collision perspective that's going to be less than $500, right? And so I think what you're seeing is $600, $700 repairs, people are weighing making that claim. In a lot of cases, they're not, right? And they also have increased deductibles because people have looked and said, okay, the cost of insurance is going up. What we need to -- one way to offset that is to increase deductibles. So you're seeing that as well. So I think what that does result in is there's probably a few more folks that are paying cash. Again, I don't have the actual statistics. The collision repair centers, again, do and they're a little closer to it. But I've definitely heard that feedback coming from both investors and others within the industry that it is up a bit. Your second question was AI use cases. There's a lot of things that you can do in claims to make both the experience better. So there are simple things like allowing someone to tell their story effectively, like what happened? Just talk and -- speak it into your phone and AI can go through and summarize that. It can pull out the key details that we need for a first notice of loss, which is it's great, it's great for our customers, it's great for us. There are other use cases post claim where we can use AI to go through and better identify both what happened in the claim and potentially flag we need to follow up on this because this individual mentioned something that we didn't catch in sort of the intake process where there's higher risk in the claim. And so we'll go in and we'll make sure that the claim adjuster goes back. So AI is complementing our claims adjusters because the claims adjusters are still critically important to getting the process, right? But there's a real complement that you can have there. AI also can do really neat things like if you submit a photograph of the accident, we can use AI to go in and check to make sure there's consistency because -- and it's not that we think people are trying to deceive us necessarily. But if you get into an accident, sometimes you're a little shaken up and you have to answer a question about was someone else in the vehicle or did the other vehicle's airbag deploy. And you may or may not know, you can use AI to tell. Like it's not -- right, you can -- AI can go in and say, the airbag deployed for sure. And so we're trying to use tools like that to make our claims adjusters and our claims processes better for both them but our customers as well.

Great. Maybe if you can close out because you mentioned this in your comments, the efforts about improving retention, the entire program. What does that look like in the agent level. How has that process evolved?

Yes. So the question is I mentioned in my comments that we're going and trying to help customers save money to improve retention. What that looks like is we're reaching out to a significant number of people, many times through their agent, Greg, many times through call centers. If you came to us direct, like we're going to reach out to every customer, not just those that came to us through our exclusive agents. But our exclusive agents are fantastic at this. They've done it for a very long time. So what it looks like is those agents either are going to have a relationship or going to have an opportunity to build a relationship with our customer and reach out and just say, I know the cost of your premium has gone up a lot. Let's look at your overall coverage needs. Let's look at whether we can make adjustments to potentially save you some money. To us, it's risk-neutral. It's good for the customer, right, because there's a business outcome that any discount that we give drives. Even something as simple as how you pay, you get an easy pay discount. I promise you, agents will be calling and saying, "Hey, you have an opportunity here." That's good for us because if you use that method of payment, we get better retention, like the economics work. So there's little things that we can do. In some cases, people will pay more premium, I suspect, because they'll do a coverage review and say I need more coverage here. In many other cases, they'll identify an opportunity to adjust limits, change deductibles, as we talked about. They may have a $500 deductible and say I can easily have a higher deductible than that. And it's all focused on engaging better with our customers and helping them save their hard-earned money from a premium perspective, all in as a risk-neutral way as possible. We're excited about it.

All right.

That's it. That went fast.

So thanks for your time. We'll have a breakout session downstairs.