speaker
Sarah
Conference Operator

Hello and thank you for standing by. My name is Sarah and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the American Integrity Insurance Group fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. Before we begin, please note that today's remarks may contain forward-looking statements, including comments about the company's outlook, strategy, plans, and expected performance. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. A full discussion of the risk factors can be found in the company's SEC filings, including its most recently filed annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly report on Form 10-Q. Management undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Furthermore, today's remarks may contain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to their most comparable GAAP measures is included in the company's quarterly press release, and can also be found on the website at www.aii.com. References to American Integrity or the company prior to the consummation of the IPO refer to American Integrity Insurance Group LLC, and after the consummation of the IPO, refer to American Integrity Insurance Group Inc. With that, I'll turn the call over to American Integrity's founder and chief executive officer, Bob Ritchie, please go ahead.

speaker
Bob Ritchie
Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. This is an extraordinary moment in American integrity's journey, and I'm honored to share it with you today. This past year has been a defining chapter in our company's history. In May of last year, we completed our very successful initial public offering, raising gross proceeds of $100 million This was a milestone that not only strengthened our balance sheet, but it also affirmed a message that American Integrity is a company built for scale, resilience, and durable value creation. Importantly, our IPO was not a destination. It was a catalyst. It was a launching point. And today, we're operating from the stronger foundation it created as we diversify our products, as we expand into new markets, and as we serve even more communities. Our robust quarterly and full year results are a testament to the strength of our underwriting discipline, the depth of our agent relationships, the trust of our policyholders, the confidence of our employees, and the improving health of the Florida marketplace. So I'd like to highlight some several key achievements from 2025. First, we grew gross premiums earned by nearly 30% year over year to 885 million. We delivered adjusted net income available to common shareholders of $103 million or $5.97 per diluted share compared to 37.9 million or $2.94 per diluted share in the prior year. We achieved a combined ratio record of 63.7%. This is a more than 17-point improvement from 80.9% that we achieved in 2024. We recorded a 42.1% adjusted return on equity, and this is up from 26.8% in 2024 and we increased our customer count 19% from 356,000 to nearly 422,000 customers. Like many other leading carriers in Florida, our financial results benefited from well underwritten profitable takeouts from citizens in late 2024 and early 2025. As expected, the phase of large, profitable citizens' takeouts is complete. And importantly, our growth engine today is organic and voluntary, supported by deep agent relationships and disciplined underwriting. Our results are underpinned by strong, organic, voluntary growth. Our voluntary customer count increased 16% to 327,000 policies during 2025, based upon a total production of 104,000 new voluntary policies written during the year. In our home state of Florida, which represents 97% of our current in-force premium, we ended the year as the sixth largest rider based upon policy count, having written the third most policies after excluding national carriers and citizens. This voluntary growth positions us among the fastest growing competitors in our entire peer group. Our ongoing policy growth is a direct result of our deep relationships with our agent partners that have been cultivated for over two decades and we believe positions us for sustained success as we execute our growth initiatives, including our recent reentry into the Tri-County region of Florida, our expansion into the middle-aged home market, our newly launched commercial residential product, and our recent entry into North Carolina. We believe we are positioned for diversified profitable growth for years to come, which will create substantial value for our stockholders. Importantly, we remain disciplined and we pursue responsible growth as we strive to maintain a strong balance sheet purposefully built to weather cycles and support our insureds, our distribution partners, our employees, and our shareholders. We've got exciting news. I'm pleased to announce that our Board of Directors has declared a special cash dividend to our stockholders of $1.02 per share, which aggregates to $20 million. American Integrity has a long history of returning capital to stockholders following periods of exceptional performance while retaining sufficient capital to pursue our growth opportunities. With that, I'll turn the call over to John Ritchie to discuss operational execution, and more deeply, our growth initiatives. John?

speaker
John Ritchie
President & Chief Operating Officer

Bob, I'll focus on how we believe our disciplined execution this quarter positions us for sustainable growth into 2026. Starting with our results, we continue to grow in our core Florida market. In the fourth quarter, we wrote 26,025 new policies in the voluntary market. bringing our full year total to over 104,000, representing a 17% increase over the full year 2024. Combined with improving retention levels reaching 82.7% this quarter, our voluntary policies and force has increased 16% over the past year to 332,780 policies. We also assumed almost 8,000 citizens' residential takeout policies in the fourth quarter, representing 24.2 million of assumed unearned premium as compared to approximately 68,200 policies in the fourth quarter of 2024. Our citizens' takeouts decreased as fewer policies met our underwriting and target profitability standards. Importantly, We expected this and our voluntary policy growth remains the driver of our policy growth given the many strategic initiatives that we have implemented over the last year. Starting with the Tri-County region of Florida, we re-entered this market in the third quarter of 2025 and have been building momentum through the fourth quarter and into the new year. At the year end 2025, we had 29,226 policies in force in the Tri-County region representing 7% of our book, which we believe is well below our potential market share for an area representing about 28% of Florida's households. While most of this business in the Tri-County region has come from the citizens takeouts over the last year, we are pleased with the early results we are seeing in our voluntary policy writing in this area. We believe our growth in the Tri-County region will continue through 2026 and represent the multi-year opportunity. Another growth avenue is our renewed focus on middle-aged homes, which represents another large market opportunity. In fact, middle-aged homes represented 76% of our HO3 policies in force as of 2016, prior to the litigation crisis that gripped Florida the last decade. and which declined to 26% of our policies in force as of 2025 as we managed the risk profile of our business. Given the legislative reforms that were passed in 2022, this market has become attractive once again, and we have reoriented our sales and production efforts to ramp up our writings. Importantly, we have completed our extensive underwriting efforts to refine and price our go-to-market and are pleased with the early acceleration we are seeing in our production numbers. We launched our commercial residential product in October 2025, which is designed to deliver comprehensive and reliable protection for Florida's condominium, townhouse, and residential homeowners associations. The fourth quarter of 2025, we assumed 149 commercial residential policies from citizens, representing 5.9 million assumed unearned premium, and began writing commercial residential policies in the voluntary market. Likewise, we are pleased with the early results, which are consistent with our desire to leverage early insights to refine the product and scale responsibly. We also continue to have success growing our writings in Georgia and South Carolina, largely through our Florida home builder agent relationships, and have begun writing policies in North Carolina, though Florida will remain our core market for years to come. At year-end 2025, our out-of-state policies had more than doubled to 26,732 policies enforced. Finally, from a growth perspective, I am pleased to report that we reduced our non-CAT quota share from a 40% session rate to 25% and renewed the treaty with significantly improved pricing. We expect that this will drive additional revenue and reduce the cost of our quota share by approximately 50% during 2026. In 2025, we seeded $248 million of earned premium and generated $276 million of revenue. With the newly lowered session rate, we would have seeded $155 million of earned premium and generated revenue of $369 million. We believe these changes will have a positive impact on net income in 2026. The underlying or non-CAT loss environment and our results continue to be favorable. For every dollar of gross premiums we earn, we paid out 17 cents in non-CAT losses in 2025, consistent with 2024, a strong ratio representative of our underwriting focus and higher market share of newer homes. We introduced this metric in our earnings release and annual report on Form 10-K, to reduce the noise that is inherent in the net loss ratio due to large changes in the quota share and excess of lost CAD expenses, which we believe helps investors better understand our trends. We would expect this number to increase modestly as we increase the proportion of policies in our book in Tri-County and for homes with middle-age roofs. This has also been a favorable year for catastrophe losses, given that we did not experience a catastrophe loss for the first time in many years. That is certainly welcome news for Florida, our policyholders, and our stockholders. Importantly, the combination of the catastrophe lost for a year in Florida and increased capital availability in the global reinsurance market, expectations for favorable pricing for our reinsurance renewal are high. Many market commentators estimate that, depending on region, risk-adjusted rate decreases will range from 10% to 20% for 2026 renewals. With that, let me turn the call over to Ben to walk through the financials.

speaker
Ben (CFO)
Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, John. Now that we've covered the annual results fairly comprehensively, I'll walk us through the fourth quarter of 2025, where our results continue to demonstrate the strength of our distribution network, driving organic growth, prudent underwriting, a favorable loss environment, and increasingly attractive reinsurance pricing environment, which resulted in net income available to common shareholders for the fourth quarter of $20.9 million. or $1.07 per diluted share and adjusted net income was 21.8 million or $1.11 per diluted share. Our return on equity was 25.6% compared to 21.2% for the fourth quarter of 24. Adjusted return on equity was 26.7% compared to 21.2% in the fourth quarter of 24. During the quarter, we wrote 87,000 new and renewal policies in the voluntary market. an increase of 17% compared to the fourth quarter of 24. As John indicated, we are pleased with the early results from our various growth initiatives. Gross premiums written in the fourth quarter of 2025 decreased by 31.2 million to 206.4 million from 237.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The decrease in gross premium written was primarily due to our assumption of more policies from citizens during the fourth quarter of 2024 as compared to the fourth quarter of 25. Gross premiums written from the voluntary market in the fourth quarter of 2025 increased by 15.5 million to 137.9 million from 122.4 million in the fourth quarter of 24. Gross premiums earned in the fourth quarter of 2025 increased by $29.3 million to $229.1 million from $199.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The increase in gross premiums earned was driven primarily by new and renewal policies written through the voluntary market and from our strategic participation in the Citizens Takeout Program. Ceded premiums earned in the fourth quarter of 25 increased by $31.7 million to $169.8 million compared to $138.1 million in the fourth quarter of 24 due to the increase in gross premiums earned and the placement of our 2526 Catastrophe Excessive Loss Reinsurance Program effective June 1st of 2025. The company purchased more reinsurance coverage compared to prior years reflecting an increase in forced premium and total insured value. Net premiums earned in the fourth quarter of 2025 decreased by $2.4 million to $59.4 million from $61.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The decrease in net premiums earned was driven primarily by the citizens' takeout in the fourth quarter of 2024, which created temporary catastrophe reinsurance windfall savings that bolstered net premiums earned in that quarter. Net investment income in the fourth quarter of 2025 increased 2.1 million to 5.9 million compared to 3.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, which was primarily driven by an increase in invested assets resulting from increased premiums in force and the proceeds from our IPO. Turning to underwriting performance, Losses and loss adjustment expenses for the fourth quarter of 2025 decreased $6.5 million to $26.3 million compared to $32.8 million for the fourth quarter of 2024, primarily driven by the lack of catastrophe losses from current year events during the period. The loss ratio was 42.6% for the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to 51.6% for the fourth quarter of 2024. Again, we believe the gross underlying non-CAT loss and LAE ratio to also be useful to investors, as it shows our underwriting performance before the impact of reinsurance. This number remains consistent, increasing from 16.5% in 4Q24 to 17.1% in 4Q25. Favorable development of $3 million for the quarter resulted in favorable development for the year of $1.8 million. Policy acquisition expenses for the fourth quarter of 2025 decreased 51% to $5.8 million compared to $11.8 million for the fourth quarter of 2024. And general and administrative costs for the fourth quarter of 2025 decreased 43.2% to $6.7 million compared to $11.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, both driven by an increase in non-catastrophe seating commissions. As a result, the expense ratio was 20.2% for the fourth quarter of 25 compared to 37.1% for the fourth quarter of 24. The combined ratio was 62.8% for the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to 88.7% for the fourth quarter of 2024. Income tax expense was 8.4 million and 2.3 million for the fourth quarter of 25 and 24 respectively. The increase from the fourth quarter of this year versus last year is primarily due to a change in tax status of American integrity coinciding with our IPO. Shareholders' equity increased to $337 million at year end, reflecting strong earnings generation and the capital raised in our IPO. Our balance sheet remains well positioned to support continued profitable growth. Overall, 2025 was an exciting year of execution and transformation for American integrity. We strengthened the balance sheet through our IPO, continued to grow our voluntary network, and delivered outstanding earnings. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator to open the line for questions.

speaker
Sarah
Conference Operator

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star 1 again. Please ensure that your phone is not on mute when called on. Thank you. Your first question comes from Greg Peters with Raymond James. Your line is open.

speaker
Greg Peters
Analyst, Raymond James

Well, good morning, everyone.

speaker
Greg Peters
Analyst, Raymond James

So, I'm first up. Great. I think I'm going to start with just the competitive environment as we think about 2026. A couple of your peers have reported already And the common theme seems to be emerging that the market is there's a lot more competition for both new business and renewal business than there was maybe a year or two ago. So maybe you could update us on how you see competition across the different cohorts, the new homes, the slightly older homes, and then the commercial space, please.

speaker
Bob Ritchie
Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Good morning, Greg. Bob, good hearing your voice. So when you see that in here and read that there's 17 new competitors, that's not entirely the story. There's only about seven new capital groups, others that form reciprocals, sister companies, et cetera. So of the seven, there's only one very large one. It's like this on a very successful number of deals. The other six or so are very responsible and responsive niche players. And they have continued to take out business and are beginning to write voluntary. Here's where I don't agree with certain statements that might be made by others. And I don't say it to be brash. It's hit 20 years. But we are in a leadership position now. in various distribution channels. Let's start with the IA Florida preferred agents. And it took us 20 years to get there. Preferred agents are giving us top-door business and are awarding us opportunities. And we have to earn these every day. But I can tell you over the series of time here, and we can't really talk about this quarter, but I want to let you know that we are approaching record numbers of new business days on a continual basis on our terms in our pricing. And so this is a position where It allows us to as an example, right in South Florida now, right middle aged, middle aged homes, we continue to dominate the new builders segment, we continue to write three out of every 10 new homes being built in Florida. This is a combination, Greg, of course, the independent agents, but especially the builder agents, like Westwood and others. Furthermore, We are doing business with virtually every national carrier except for State Farm on our terms. That is providing us opportunities. And then finally, we have relationships with mortgage companies, other finance companies, online approaches. You put all that together, it's a very, very strong partnership. loaf of bread called new business. And that's why we are competing and writing record new business on our terms. And I welcome every competitor. We need more, not less. There's 8 million homes in Florida and 130 new homes being built each year. I'm bullish about our growth opportunities at American Integrity.

speaker
Greg Peters
Analyst, Raymond James

Excellent. Thanks for that color. Thank you. The other question I have is just, and it's coming from some of the investors, is with the change in the quota share for 2026, maybe you could spend a second and walk us through how the expense ratio, both the general admin and the policy acquisition lines might change because of the change in the quota share. That would be helpful. Thank you.

speaker
Ben (CFO)
Chief Financial Officer

Absolutely. Thank you, Greg. Because of the quota share program, we get seating commissions that do net against those two expense line items. So even though our underlying expenses will stay constant, pretty much constant, you will see a net increase in those two line items. However, that increase is going to be more than offset by a decrease in seeded premiums we're paying to our quota share partners. So the net result of that is going to be slightly higher expenses versus 25 on a net basis, but also significantly higher net revenues and revenues. And so that is what we expect will drive even additional profitability going into this year.

speaker
Greg Peters
Analyst, Raymond James

Got it. Thanks for the answers.

speaker
Sarah
Conference Operator

Your next question comes from Paul Newsome with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

speaker
Paul Newsome
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Hi. I was hoping you could give us a little bit more thoughts on capital management and how you prioritize where you're going to put the capital in light of this special dividend. Usually, when you see special dividends, that means that there's some sort of signaling that there's not a place to put that capital. Anyway, both prioritization as well as your thoughts on if that is the signal we should be thinking about in terms of special dividends.

speaker
Ben (CFO)
Chief Financial Officer

Paul, thank you so much for that question. It's a great question and one that we're eager to answer. So, you know, when we did the IPO in May, it was in anticipation of having significant growth opportunities across all the areas that you've heard about on this call, tri-county, middle-aged homes, commercial product. And we are more excited than ever about those growth avenues. That said, during our initial conversations, we've always said that to the extent we have windfall earnings, for example, in this year because of no cap storms, that we would always be looking for opportunities to return excess capital to investors. So the fact that we had no caps this year gave us this surplus, and we've got a 20-year history of returning money to the investors whenever we can. That said, the remaining IPO proceeds are still positioned to fund all these growth initiatives that we're so excited about in 2026.

speaker
Max (Analyst)
Analyst

How do you look at the tradeoff versus special dividend versus –

speaker
Ben (CFO)
Chief Financial Officer

Bye, Max. Another great question and something that we've thought a lot about and a question we've taken very seriously. We did a secondary in the last quarter, and the reason we did the secondary was the same reason we did the IPO. We wanted to get our stock in the hands of new public shareholders that understand our business, that are excited the way we are about our future growth prospects, and provide the float and the daily volumes necessary to to create liquidity and make our stock attractive to investors. So because that was the decision point, we didn't want to take float out of the market today. We're trying to get the stock in the hands of as many new investors that will hear our story, that we're excited to tell. So that continues to be our plan going forward, and we believe as we continue to execute on our business plan and deliver positive returns – that folks will increasingly be excited about becoming investors in our stock.

speaker
Paul Newsome
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Thank you. Appreciate the help as always.

speaker
Sarah
Conference Operator

The next question comes from Tommy McJoyant with KBW. Your line is open.

speaker
Tommy McJoyant
Analyst, KBW

Hey, good morning, guys. My first question is asking about the trajectory of the average sort of premium per policy going forward. There's obviously a confluence of inputs from what's happening with primary pricing homeowners versus your business mix changing by adding tri-state and middle-aged homes. And then there's also the commercial policies, which are much higher premiums. As you take all of those together, where do you see your average premium per policy going?

speaker
John Ritchie
President & Chief Operating Officer

Hey, Tommy, it's John. And certainly the The mix of business that we're writing, and you hit the nail on the head, of middle-aged homes and Tri-County in particular, will elevate the average premium of the overall portfolio as we continue to write a large number of new policies in that space. And we're expecting that there is upward trajectory of the average premium of the total portfolio, especially for the voluntary book. In conjunction with that, certainly there is pressure downward on the primary pricing due to the trends that we've seen in the non-CAT losses, particularly over the last several years. But as we've mentioned in, I believe, the last call, the current average rate decrease for the portfolio for the 2025 annual rate filings is roughly 5%. and we'll continue to monitor that and file accordingly. And then lastly, you hit on commercial policies that we're starting to write. That will take time to grow. We're being very prudent and thoughtful as we enter that space, but we are seeing some early success. So long answer to your question, but overall we're seeing the trend of average premium going up over the next 12 months.

speaker
Tommy McJoyant
Analyst, KBW

Got it. Thanks for that.

speaker
Tommy McJoyant
Analyst, KBW

And to follow up on that 5% figure that you just referenced for the average rate decrease, is that referring to your portfolio specifically? And as you look at it across Florida homeowners, across competitors, do you have a view on what competitors are doing with that number?

speaker
John Ritchie
President & Chief Operating Officer

Yeah, so that was our – for American Integrity's portfolio, that 5% reference. And we do monitor rate filings both through the OIR and then also what we hear in the field from our sales department. And certainly that range of rate decrease is pretty consistent with what we're seeing in the marketplace. And certainly we do know that we have an incredibly responsible regulator with Mike Jaworski at the Office of Insurance Regulation. And that certainly is beneficial, and he's being prudent as rate filings are coming through. So we're not seeing anyone out there buying market share at this point in the cycle. And it's also worth noting, Tommy, with that rate decrease, we still have our inflation factor that's on the renewal book that partially offsets that rate decrease. So certainly that, in conjunction with everything else that I mentioned previously, gives us the conviction knowing that the average premium is heading upward at this point.

speaker
Tommy McJoyant
Analyst, KBW

Thanks.

speaker
Tommy McJoyant
Analyst, KBW

And then switching over to the reinsurance side, it seems like it's an advantageous time to be a buyer of reinsurance. You have options coming up at the 6-1 renewal to either take savings, to buy more reinsurance up in the power, perhaps lower attachment points. How do you weigh the pros and cons of those different decisions as you approach this upcoming reinsurance renewal?

speaker
John Ritchie
President & Chief Operating Officer

Yeah, certainly the reinsurance market is advantageous for buyers this cycle. Capacity is abundant. Pricing is going down on a risk-adjusted basis. We have seen early signs of this as we're in the ILS market issuing our cap bonds that are closing this week. And certainly in the traditional market, early conversations that we've had with our Trading partners in Bermuda and London are very favorable. In terms of our buying habits, they will be consistent with prior year, certainly from a vertical perspective of limit, but also horizontal. We will have third and fourth have been covered to cover the 2004 storm season on both a frequency and severity basis. And it's our intent as we continue to place our reinsurance cover for the 26 renewal cycle that retentions will be consistent with prior treaty year.

speaker
Greg Peters
Analyst, Raymond James

Thank you. Thanks, Tommy.

speaker
Sarah
Conference Operator

Your next question is a follow-up from Chris Peters with Raymond James. Your line is open.

speaker
Greg Peters
Analyst, Raymond James

Hey, thanks for letting me come back with a couple of follow-up questions. And I'm going to just go back to this reinsurance comment. You know, one of the things that we have to be mindful of is that, you know, the third and fourth quarter is hurricane season. And, you know, And you said in your comments on about the changing reinsurance conditions that the retentions, the third and fourth events, I'm just trying to map out what you think that the retention might be for your first event and second event this year, obviously knowing that there's still some uncertainty about your placements. But how are you thinking about that?

speaker
John Ritchie
President & Chief Operating Officer

Yes, so we are finalizing the structure as we go to market to place our cover for this year. But on a first event basis, the retention will be consistent with the 25-26 treaty year, and we're looking at options on second event. And then certainly on a third and fourth event basis, we have been able to get additional cover for those events, and particularly some cascading features in the ILS market have returned. and we're able to attach lower for those tranches of cover that we're placing. But we are finalizing our thoughts on third and fourth event, but retention is something that's incredibly important to us to keep that as low as possible.

speaker
Bob Ritchie
Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Especially, Greg, this is Bob on post-first event. So we're being thoughtful, creative, and these cap bonds and their flexibility and pricing are creating, I think, some really good opportunities this year for us. So stay tuned. I think you'll as a group of analysts and shareholders will like the outcome.

speaker
Greg Peters
Analyst, Raymond James

Yeah. And I think you mentioned in your answer that the 2004 hurricane season is sort of a benchmark of trying to . Is that correct?

speaker
Bob Ritchie
Founder & Chief Executive Officer

It is. It's always been my mantra. And I'm very grateful, except for a year or two during the worst of this crisis. Four majors hitting single state, single year. hadn't happened for a century in 2004. So it's always been our testament and our risk management approach to be protected in the event of multiplicity of major hurricanes again.

speaker
Greg Peters
Analyst, Raymond James

Excellent. That's good color. So the other comment that was made during the comments was you talked about the non-CAT loss ratio, 17 cents, I think, of gross. And it's non-CAT or AOP, or I'm not sure what the right acronym is, but 17 seems low. And maybe that's just a reflection that your business mix is skewed towards new homes. I would think that the markets may be twice that, but maybe you could give us some perspective on the comment that you said that you expect that to go up.

speaker
John Ritchie
President & Chief Operating Officer

Yeah, certainly we're very proud of that 17% gross loss ratio for the book, and that's consistent with the prior year. And it's a combination of the mix of business, the quality of re-underwriting of the portfolio that we've done in recent years, and then certainly the legislative reform benefiting us and the entire marketplace. However, it is our belief that at that 17-point gross loss ratio, certainly it will begin to increase modestly a point or two as we continue to write in Tri-County and we write middle-aged homes. However, the premium we're collecting for that type of business is appropriate and offsets that, and we're happy with directionally where the loss ratio is going.

speaker
Bob Ritchie
Founder & Chief Executive Officer

And then also, Greg, as you know, look, the loss ratio is an important number. both for comparison and for analysis of a company's performance, it's all about frequency and severity. And so as the top line with modest rate decreases happens, then it's mathematics. And of course that ratio becomes a point or two higher. I am pleased to tell you, very pleased to tell you a couple of things. Number one, the frequency has normalized to a market performing more normally post reform. That's remarkable. And for us, our frequency is a bit lower, we feel, than competitors because of the robust new business, new construction. On the severity side, inflation is not zero. So we'll see some uptick occasionally on the severity side. So net-net, it's about pure premium divided into the gross premium. And, Ben, you had a comment.

speaker
Ben (CFO)
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, Greg, just real quick, on the math side of it, just to make sure that we're being clear and consistent here, We are introducing the gross underlying ratio to take away the effects of reinsurance, both quota share and CAT reinsurance. So typically when you talk about net underlying loss ratio, you're talking about after your CAT reinsurance load, which can be, you know, 40% to 50% of every dollar. So that would – bring you to underlying ratios along the lines of what you're talking about. We just think it's important to show our losses without the effect of reinsurance because, as we've talked about, changing our quota share arrangements will have impacts on these numbers, and we want to be very transparent with our investors in the community as far as what our actual loss experiences are.

speaker
Greg Peters
Analyst, Raymond James

Thank you. I guess the one final question I'll have, and it just gives you an opportunity to remind everyone and myself included in this, is you've grown the book substantially over the last year. And I'm just curious about your process about managing risk aggregation and concentration as you've expanded into these other areas of the market and how you think about those type of concerns, you know, considering what your objectives are on a long-term basis.

speaker
John Ritchie
President & Chief Operating Officer

Yeah, that's a great question. Greg, thank you for that. Certainly, where the growth initiatives in Florida, where we're targeting in tri-county and then also middle-aged homes, it complements the portfolio geographically and takes some pressure off some peak zones for the company within the state, particularly Southwest Florida, which we're very happy with our market share there. But riding in Tri-County and middle-aged homes coming disproportionately from Central Florida is a region where we had to non-renew a healthy amount of business during the litigation crisis that we faced over the last 10 years. So the strategy that we're deploying offsets the concern that you're raising in terms of disproportionate concentration of risk. And we're really pleased with our new business writings where they're coming geographically within Florida.

speaker
Greg Peters
Analyst, Raymond James

Thanks. Thanks for letting me ask the additional questions.

speaker
Sarah
Conference Operator

Thanks. This concludes the question and answer session. I'll turn the call to Bob Ritchie for closing remarks.

speaker
Bob Ritchie
Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Thank you. And thanks for joining us on our call this morning. I'm very proud of our results. I am incredibly proud of our employees because over this past year, we have created remarkable success and the new chapter ahead of us is even more exciting. I want to thank everyone for their hard work and for all that everybody does each and every day to make us more successful. And so as we look at the year ahead, I've got three things to close with. Number one, we're operating from a position of strength. We surpassed our objectives for 2025 and continue to responsibly return excess capital to our investors. And so fueled by our IPO proceeds, as Ben mentioned, we have the capital to grow organically, sustainably, and in the right markets. Number two, momentum is on our side. You heard me talk about record growth, responsible, profitable record growth. Momentum is our friend, and we're seeing early successes and exploiting various growth opportunities. And finally, number three, we have the people. Some of them are listening today. I'm grateful for every one of you. An excess of 310 dedicated employees, a leadership team that has been with us for at least five years and running some 10, 12, 15 years. We're aligned and we're pulling in the same direction. We build a strong culture. I'm very proud of it that has positioned us for success through market cycles. In conclusion, we remain focused on the drivers we control, underwriting quality, expense discipline, and thoughtful yet aggressive growth. Now is our time to grow. So we believe our performance remains durable and repeatable. But here's the thing.

speaker
Greg Peters
Analyst, Raymond James

We're not just growing. We're building something enduring. I want to thank you for your time today.

speaker
Sarah
Conference Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

-

-