AMERISAFE, Inc.

recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Catherine Shirley, Chief Administrator Officer. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Welcome to the AmeriSafe 2024 Second Quarter Investor Call. If you have not received the earnings release, it is available on our website at AmeriSafe.com. This call is being recorded. A replay of today's call will be available. Details on how to access the replay are in the earnings release. During this call, we will be making forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the results expressed or implied in these statements. If the underlying assumptions prove to be incorrect, or as the results of risk, uncertainties, and other factors, including factors discussed in the earnings release, in the comments made during today's call, and in the risk factor section of our Form 10-K, Form 10-Q, and other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements. I will now turn the call over to Janelle Frost, AmeriSafe's President and CEO.

Thank you, Katherine, and good morning, everyone. The state of the workers' compensation market remains profitable despite continued rate softening. The industry-wide data published by NCCI in May was similar to what we've seen over the last few years, an accident year combined ratio below 100 and redundant reserves driving approved loss cost declines. These conditions translate to a competitive marketplace, one in which AmeriSafe's disciplined underwriting is critical to long-term profitability. For several quarters, we have discussed our investment in profitable growth through greater agent engagement and pipeline efficiency. These actions drove year-over-year gross premiums written growth of 6.6% in the quarter. We saw policy count growth in the quarter, and we continue to see strong retention for policies for which we offer renewal, with 93.3% retention. Audit premiums supported by wage inflation was also a boost to top line. Turning to losses, our accident year loss ratio was in line with the prior year at 71%. Lost cost trends remain in line with previous quarters. We continue to monitor medical inflation. However, medical fee schedules are, in general, containing costs. The company experienced $8.1 million in favorable development on prior accident years, primarily from accident years 2020, 21, and 2022. We attribute our favorable development to lower claim severities and proactive claims handling. Despite challenging market conditions, AmeriSafe's focus on providing protection to small to mid-sized businesses and caring for their workers has a track record of strong retention and delivering robust returns to shareholders throughout the cycle. With that, I'll turn the call over to Andy to discuss the financials.

Thank you, Janelle, and good morning to everyone. For the second quarter of 2024, AmeriSafe reported net income of $11 million or $0.57 per diluted share and operating net income of $11.1 million or $0.58 per diluted share. During the second quarter of 2023, net income was $15.6 million or $0.81 per diluted share and operating net income was $14 million or $0.73 per diluted share. First written premiums were 76.4 million in the quarter compared with 71.7 million in the second quarter of 2023. The increase in the top line was driven by a combination of increased sales efforts with agents, which drove increased new business and strong retentions. Audit premiums increased the top line by 7.3 million compared with 4.8 million in the second quarter of 2023. Our total underwriting and other expenses were $20.4 million in the quarter compared with $20 million in the second quarter of 2023, resulting in an expense ratio of 29.8% compared with 30.4% in the prior year. We continue to invest in our business, leveraging AmeriSafe's disciplined approach to take advantage of attractive market opportunities. For the quarter, our tax rate was 20% compared to 20.1% in the prior year. Turning to our investment portfolio in the second quarter net investment income decrease 3.6% to 7.4 million due to a lower asset base versus the prior year. On a consecutive quarter basis net investment income increase 1.1% for Q2 of 2024 versus Q1 of 2024. For the quarter, the yield on new investments increased approximately 165 basis points in relation to roll-off, driving our tax-equivalent book yield to 3.79% or 17 basis points higher than the second quarter of 2023. The investment portfolio is a high-quality, carrying an average AA minus credit rating with a duration of 3.9 years. The composition of the portfolio is 58% of municipal bonds, 28% in corporate bonds, 3% in U.S. treasuries and agencies, 6% in equity securities, and 5% in cash and other investments. Approximately 57% of our bond portfolio is comprised of health and maturity securities. As a reminder, these health and maturity securities are carried at amortized cost, and therefore, unrealized gains or losses on these securities are not reflected in our book value. Our capital position is strong with a high-quality balance sheet, solid loss reserve position, and conservative investment portfolio. At quarter end, AmeriSafe carried roughly $884 million in investments, cash and cash equivalents. Companies' board of directors declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $0.37 per share on Friday, July 26, 2024, to shareholders' record of September 6, 2024. And finally, a couple of other topics. Book value per share was $15.78, and operating return on average equity was 14.4%. Our statutory surplus was $280.6 million at quarter end, up 10.1% from $254.9 million at December 31, 2023. And finally, today, July 30, 2024, we will be filing our Form 10-Q with the SEC after market close. With that, I would like to open the call for the question and answer portion of the call. Operator?

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing Star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, you can press Star 1 to ask a question, and we'll pause for just a brief moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. And our first question is coming from Matt Carletti with Citizens JMP.

Good morning, Janelle. Good morning, Andy.

Good morning, Matt.

I guess my first question, I was hoping, Janelle, maybe you could expand a little bit on the growth in the quarter. I know you've made a comment in your opening comments about some of the recent efforts and investments you've made in kind of agency relationships. I'm hoping maybe you can give a little more color. You noted it was the voluntary grew nicely. The press release referenced PIF growth. Just kind of how you feel about the sustainability of that as we move forward or kind of the ability to build that going forward.

Certainly, Matt. This is our fourth quarter, I want to say, of either slight growth in voluntary debt premium or relatively flat. So that's something that we have made a concerted effort on and with our employees and with our agents and just trying to make the pipeline more efficient in terms of easy doing business and building on those agent relationships. So I do feel like we're gaining some momentum there through our employee effort. It's really not a change in AmeriSafe's approach to the business at all. It's really just about creating efficiencies and valuing those relationships. So I feel pretty good about the growth. You're absolutely right. We've had voluntary debt growth of 2.7% in the quarter. We've grown policy count, I believe, for the last five quarters. So those are all signs there pointing to the efforts that we're putting in place are generating business growth for us.

Wonderful. And then here's a couple of numbers questions, if I could. One is, what was the ELCM in the quarter? 148. 48. Okay. And then on audit premium, do you have handy what third quarter of 23 audit premium was just to get an idea of kind of the potential comparison this quarter?

Exactly. Third quarter last year was 5.6 million. Second quarter was 4.8.

Wonderful. All right. Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Our next question is coming from Mark Hughes with Truist. Your line's open.

Morning, Janelle. Morning, Andy.

Morning, Mark.

Janelle, if I heard you properly, it sounds like the 148, I think that's up year over year, which I think you had a flat result in 3Q, but then that's the first positive number. Still scrolling, still scrolling. Yeah.

It's been quite a while. That's a good – Yeah, that's right, Mark. I mean, when I think of when we report the ELCM, I have to remind myself and like to remind others that that's really an index over the underlying loss cost. So, as we all know, the underlying loss cost, the approved rates coming out of the states continue to decline. Because we individually underwrite every account, we have to make sure that we are doing so profitably. Just like every other carrier right now, we're battling the fact that rates continue to soften. The results for the industry, while below 100, if you look at accident year combined ratios for the industry as a whole, each year there is some deterioration there. I just feel like we are reaching that point where we have to be very protective of that.

Right, yeah.

Any details on the approved loss costs? Obviously, they're down. Any trend of new state data in the quarter that's worth noting?

No. The overall approved loss cost is somewhere around 8% and 9% decrease for the year, for the 2024 filings. So, you know, I think that's pretty much on course with what NCCI was predicting. Again, because at this point, the industry is, you know, even on an accident year basis, the industry is below 100% combined.

Yeah. You talk about medical inflation, that the fee structures or the fee schedules continue to restrain that. Is that ever going to separate? I mean, is there ever any reason to think that's not going to just keep a lid on it and you'll continue to benefit from kind of the government rate suppression, one might say?

You know, Mark, I believe that's actually where we're going to see pressure. For the most part, fee schedules have been doing their job in terms of containing costs. But I do believe there are pressure, and particularly in certain types of services, there is pressure from the provider side of what they're being reimbursed for workers' compensation. And when I talk about we're keeping our eye on medical inflation, that's actually what I'm referring to, the fact that at some point the rubber hits the road in terms of what providers, whether it's hospitals, physicians, surgeons, whatever the case may be, are being reimbursed for workers' compensation and what fits within their own operating models. There will be, in my opinion, in my humble opinion, there will continue to be pressure there.

Yeah. Does the uptick in the ELCM, does that reflect a little less competition? I know you're being disciplined around it.

I wish. I know. No, it does not reflect less competition. It is still a very competitive marketplace.

Yeah. And then anything on the large claims, how have they trended through the six months?

Through the six months, we are at four claims over a million dollars. So that's, you know, again, I have to, every time I throw out that number, I have to caution. But that is lumpy. I never know what quarters are going to happen. It is or is not going to happen. But at this point, we haven't had a frequency of severity in terms of million-dollar claims.

Yeah. And then on the reserve development, you guys are still performing tremendously, but no deed going unpunished. down a little bit from an even more stellar performance, you know, in recent quarters. Anything you would say as to why, you know, just sort of from a very simplistic perspective, that was a little bit lower this quarter compared to the last couple of years?

Yeah, I like how you phrased that. You know, reserve development, at least for Amerisave, reserve development is not linear, right? I often talk about the favorable case development that we have, or the favorable development that we recognize is truly coming from individual cases. I can't predict which quarters those are or are not going to happen. It's hard for me to balk at $8 million of favorable development, even though, to your point, it is less than the 10.9 that we had in the second quarter of last year. I still consider that to be a very healthy number. I can certainly assure you from a Marisafe standpoint, our reserving philosophy has not changed. I do feel like my claims adjusters, because of their practices and the way they reserve claims and the way they intimately know their claims, are truly reflecting in our reserves what we believe is most likely outcome and have their for lack of a better term, their finger on the pulse of what's happening in terms of survivability and procedures and the assumed inflation that goes into that. So I believe that's built into my case reserves so that when we find the opportunities to help an injured worker move on and return to work and have their medical care taken care of, we find those opportunities and And for us, at least, that has resulted in favorable development. I don't see that pattern, that philosophy has not changed.

Understood. And then how about the construction and market? The question about the next job we've talked about many times over the years, but how does that stand today?

Our insurance are working, hence why we're having this favorable audit premium. We're still experiencing wage inflation within our industry groups. For the quarter, wage inflation was around 6%, 5%. Almost all of that really came from increased wages, less so from new employees. And that's been very consistent. So the fact that we're not seeing a large influx of new employees doesn't really surprise me, given that we insure small to midsize employers. But they're obviously working and insured payrolls are going up. So I think that speaks positively for our industry groups.

Great. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mark.

Again, if anyone would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Our next question is coming from Gregory Peters with Raymond James.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Greg. I was looking at the six-month result on the expense ratio versus last year, and it's up a little bit, say 90 basis points. Just curious if there's anything – structural that's going on driving that expense ratio higher.

Greg, how are you? The growth that you're seeing in the expenses for this six months is really just further investing in the sales side, underwriting, just the front of the house. But again, based on the fact that expenses are never linear either, the investment is is probably more up front now in these first six months, and then it should level off, and then we assume to be back in what the range is for us for an annual expense ratio.

Okay. And then just pivoting back to the growth comment, Janelle, I thought you said in the comment and the call that the policy account growth has been positive for the last five consecutive quarters. I don't want to misquote you, but... Has it been concentrated with certain distribution partners or certain geographies, or maybe you can give us some color of where the growth is coming from?

Yeah, great question. And the answer is no, it's not coming from a particular distribution network. As you know, we use independent agents. That hasn't changed. Actually, if you look at our agent counts, they're probably slightly down here. And that's really because, as I mentioned earlier, we're really working on pipeline efficiency, making sure that we're doing business with the right agents and the agents that we can serve best. So that's been a very positive thing for us. The policy growth has really been, I'm going to attribute this to what I just mentioned, which is just the pipeline efficiency, trying to make things a little bit more efficient for our agents in terms of ease of doing business, the time we turn around quotes, making sure that we're giving we are making the most of the opportunities that we have and because of those things and the efforts of our employees and we have been able to grow policy count but it's not to your point about industry groups or states it's not particular to an industry group it's not particular to a certain type or particular agency distribution nothing nothing and I guess my it goes back to what I was saying earlier in the call it's not I wouldn't say it's nothing It's anything new that AmeriSafe is doing. It's really just being better at the way we're handling our agency relationships.

And I'm going to come at the severity question again. I know you were addressing it in your previous answers, but on some of the other conference calls, you know, the concept, the fact that Florida has – raised its reimbursement schedules, Medicare reimbursement schedules beginning next year. That's come up in a couple other calls. And so I'm just curious, you know, as we look forward, what you think about how are you measuring out or gauging what your outlook is on severity?

Right. Yeah, so Florida is certainly top of mind for everyone because they've made adjustments to both physician charges and surgical procedures. And that seems to be the two that everyone's talking about. Because when you look at the percentages increases, you think, wow, that's pretty significant. I believe a couple of things about that. Those are the kinds of things that I mentioned when I was talking earlier about medical inflation and things we're keeping our eyes on. That's exactly the kinds of things that we're talking about. Now, when you look at those large percentages, one of the things that you do have to keep in mind is that we do have networks within each state that work on containing cost as well. So even, it's not dollar for dollar in terms of, oh, the reimbursement rate's gone up from 110% to 175% for physician services. We also have to keep in mind that we have other cost savings mechanisms on top of that within our provider networks and those type of things. So it's not dollar for dollar. So that's one caveat. The second thing I'll say is I think one of the beauties of AmeriSafe and how we think about severity and case reserving using this Florida example, Florida as an example, I think really speaks to how our model works so efficiently. Because my claims adjusters are experts in their field and they are wholly focused on the workers' compensation reserve because we're a monoline carrier. A, they're very attuned to what's happening in terms of their individual states. And reflecting that in our initial reserves really, really quickly so it's not playing out over a long period of time in terms of a Marisafe loss experience. We're building that into our initial case reserves whenever that accident happens. That's important to us in terms of the severity. and our recognition in the loss ratio. But keep in mind, it also helps us in terms of our pricing because then when we are underwriting a Florida account, we're taking all of that into account as to our real loss costs live and reflecting that in our individual rate. That was a very long answer to your severity question.

Excellent. Well, thank you both for the detailed answers.

You're welcome.

And our final question is coming from Bob Farnham with Jamie. Your line's open.

Hi there. Good morning. I've got more of a philosophical question. I'm thinking of the lost cost and they keep going down. And I'm wondering what is it going to take or what's the market conditions going to look like to have the lost cost bottom out? And how much of a lag will there be for the actual filings to catch up with the actual need to start raising rates?

Yeah, great question. So what's it going to take? As I mentioned earlier, that accident year combined ratio for the industry continuing to tick up and eventually break 100, that will help at least, I believe, slow the bleeding in terms of the rate decreases. Because then accident years will not be considered profitable. To your point about these changes and using, again, using Florida as an example, typically what happens when there's a major change going on, and I'll use Florida as an example since it's an NCCI state, NCCI will take those costs and try to figure out, well, what's that actually going to cost the industry? And even if it's off cycle from a normal rate filing because each state has their own rate filing dates, they can make like a law only filing. So in other words, something changed in the law that needs to be reflected in the rate and that should, you know, theoretically happen. But what happens immediately is when a carrier is aware of it, they start trying to reflect that in their pricing, so hence in their ELCM. So forget if the underlying loss cost, let's use as an example, Florida that wouldn't change anything at all, then I would assume carriers within their Florida, within Florida, would try to, within their own pricing, of course, Florida is an administrative pricing state, so it's a little tricky, but through their own competitive methods, let me just use it that way, try to make sure that they're building that into their premium dollars, the fact that they're going to be paying out more on the lost cost side. I believe that pressure will continue and we're going to see more and more examples of that which hopefully will slow the rate of decline or even flatten out the declines in approved loss costs because I think those pressures are going to continue to happen for the very reason I was speaking of earlier. Physicians have an operating model for which they have a profit margin that they're trying to achieve and if they're getting reimbursed by workers compensation for something less than that there's going to be either a shortage of providers in other words they're going to say you know what I don't want your workers compensation patients or there's going to have to be some adjustment to the pricing right so I mean it sounds like yeah despite the fact the loss costs are going down the fact that even just this quarter you know and for example your ELCM increased

It's kind of taking away some of that lost cost pressure just because you are getting more rate there. Is there a happy point with your retention that you'd be willing to go to if you keep raising rates and customers choose to go elsewhere?

That's a really great way to look at it. If I try to rephrase that, how low would I let my retention go? You know, that's a great question. We've always had really strong retention numbers simply because if you think about loss ratios or loss experience, typically you have better loss ratios and better loss experience on a renewal account than you would on a new account because you know the account. And in AmeriSafe's case, not only do we know the account really well, We've been providing safety services to that account, so we know what their attitude towards safety is. Retention is extremely important to us. Do we test the market or do we think about when we do know, hey, we have to underwrite something at a profitable level and that's going to affect our retention? Yes, we pay attention, but I will say underwriting profit above all other things.

Right. And I'm not saying you should start raising your rates significantly. I don't want to start dragging an adverse selection in there as well. So it's just something to, I was just curious, you know, as you hopefully start to tweak your ELCM up, you know, I just want to make sure your retention stays where it is.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And the other thing I'll say this about rates, I don't think I've really talked about it on this call, Bob. One of the things we have to consider is the fact that, you know, Wage inflation has been really strong for over a year now, and it's starting to wane a little bit, but it's still, you know, 6% is nothing to balk at. And that, in some ways, has effectively acted as rate, for lack of a better term, right? If you have the same employees, but they're making higher wages, and that's the basis of premium, it sort of, you know, helped bridge the gap a little bit in terms of the approved loss cost declines.

Right, right. Okay. Thanks for all the color. Thank you.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to Janelle Frost, CEO, for any additional or closing remarks.

I'd like to highlight AmeriSafe's inclusion in the Ward 50 top-performing property and casualty companies for the 16th consecutive year. This recognition underlies our employees' ability to use their expertise in high-hazard workers' compensation niche to produce financial strength and stability for the company's stakeholders. Congratulations to the AmeriSafe team, and thank you for joining us today.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.