Crawford & Company

I'd like to welcome everyone to the Crawford and Company fourth quarter 2020 earnings release conference call.

In conjunction with this call, a supplementary financial presentation is available on our website at www. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer period. Instructions will follow at that time. Should anyone need assistance at any time during the conference is being recorded today, Friday, March 5th, 2020. Other things, the impacts of COVID-19 are expected future operating results. and financial condition, our ability to grow our revenues and reduce our operating expenses, financial results from our recently completed acquisitions, our continued compliance with the financial and other covenants contained in these actual results, Achieved in future quarters could differ materially from the obligation to publicly release after the date of the call or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

regarding factors which could affect the company's financial performance, please refer to the company's Form 10-K for the quarter ended December 31, 2020, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly the information under the headings Risk Factors and Management Discussion and Analysis of a Financial Condition and Results of Operations, as well as subsequent company filings with the SEC. This presentation also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under the SEC rules. As required, a reconciliation is provided for those measures to those most directly comparable GAAP measures. I would now like to introduce Mr. Rohit Verma, Chief Executive Officer of Crawford and Company. Rohit, you may begin your conference.

Thank you so much, Sharon. Good morning and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings call. Joining me today is Bruce Swain, our Chief Financial Officer, Joseph Blanco, our President, and Tammy Stevenson, our General Counsel. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call for your questions. First and foremost, our thoughts go out to everyone impacted by Winter Storm Marie, a terrible tragedy in the middle of a pandemic. This was undoubtedly a surprise for everyone, and we are extremely proud of how our team has responded to this unprecedented event. We currently have close to 1,000 employees, contractors, and seasonal workers mobilized for it. 2020 marked a year of resilience, tenacity, and innovation. Over the last year, we have seen the world transform and demonstrate a phenomenal ability to adapt during a period of extreme adversity. At Crawford, we moved quickly to acclimate to this rapidly changing environment. We shifted to working from home, ramped our remote claims handling capabilities, helped our clients adopt self-service technologies and continue to introduce new solutions to meet the unique challenges of a world in lockdown. In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted Crawford's strength. It has pushed us to accelerate our innovation but also think differently as we swiftly pivoted to address the demands of a world that changed overnight. At the same time, it reinforced that our purpose-driven approach and prioritizing the safety and well-being of our people is the bedrock of our resilient performance. Along those lines, we introduced new and enhanced business solutions that have specifically targeted the unique challenges of the pandemic. These have included advancements to We Go Look, rapid expansion of a contractor program, special services to address COVID-related workers' compensation claims, event cancellation claims, and business interruption claims. These solutions allow us to thrive amid a rapidly changing environment while establishing Crawford as an innovator within the marketplace. Turning to our financial results, we ended the year strong, delivering full year 2020 results that continue to exceed expectations, driven by the strength of our core business and most importantly, the perseverance of our employees. At the same time, we strengthened our balance sheet by reducing our net debt to $69 million at year-end, its lowest since 2013. For the year, we reported better-than-expected gap revenues before reimbursement of $982 million. Our gap net income attributable to shareholders was $28 million, and our gap EPS was $0.54 for CRDA and $0.52 for CRDB. Additionally, we generated $93 million in operating cash flow during 2020, the highest since 2016. On a non-GAAP basis, we reported full-year revenues before reimbursement of $988 million. Operating earnings were $73 million for the full year 2020, and adjusted EBITDA was $106 million, or 11% of revenues in 2020. As mentioned in prior quarters, our business is affected by the seasonality of weather-driven factors. As such, we tend to see benign weather in the first and fourth quarters and higher claims volume in the second and third quarter given the summer storm season. Although the nature of our operations means weather will remain a driver of our results, we continue to promote the growth of non-weather-related business in our portfolio. According to the Aon Global Cat Recap, we saw a number of US cat events during the fourth quarter. This resulted in about $16 billion in economic losses with an estimate of $12 billion in insured losses. During the fourth quarter, we worked through the inventories from the August and September US cat events and saw increased claims volume from storms in UK and Australia. Total revenue from weather surge events was approximately $131 million for the full year 2020, up from $83 million in 2019, bolstering 2020 results. From an economic standpoint, fourth quarter global business activity generally increased from prior quarters, but has not yet recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels. While COVID-19 continues to impact our TPA business, claims volume is seeing sequential monthly improvement. This was aided by an uptake in COVID-19 claims during December. Additionally, we remain engaged in business interruption claims in key markets, particularly the UK. Let's turn our attention to the global service lines now. Crawford Claims Solutions saw $38 million of additional revenue from two of the top five U.S. insurance carriers in 2020. We also saw a 20% improvement in case intake in the fourth quarter compared to the prior year quarter driven by improved client uptake of WeGoLook. In fact, we saw the highest ever look volume in 2020, marking a 15% increase over 2019 for WeGoLook. True to our vision, we continue to reimagine how we manage claims, simplifying and streamlining the process. A fourth quarter example of this was the launch of new digital solutions across all our operations. and the addition of video functionality to YouGoLook to further enhance the remote adjusting capabilities of our self-service app. In Crawford's specialty solution, we made continued traction from new carrier clients in the US, allowing Contractor Connection to deliver its strongest second half in recent history. Fourth quarter 2020 case volume was 11% higher than the prior year period and average daily assignment levels in the fourth quarter of 2020 were 4% higher than 2019. Our global technical services business saw notable market activity as we continued our business development efforts. Additionally, our GTS business is positioned to continue benefiting from business interruption claims. We remain focused on identifying international opportunities to enhance our GTS business And we are pleased with the number of strategic GTS hires we have made in the US and internationally. In our TPA business, US client retention for full year 2020 was 96%. Claims volume is also seeing sequential monthly improvements. While claims volume continue to be down compared to 2019, we did see improvement in the month of December, which was largely driven by disability and COVID-19 claims in the US. In 2020, we received over 19,000 COVID-19 claims in the US alone, 85% of which were workers' compensation lost time claims. Our medical management services show activities still trending below pre-COVID-19 levels due to a delay in non-essential medical services. Despite these challenges, this business remains a meaningful contributor to our top and bottom line. We expect it to return to normal levels once economic activity resumes. As you likely saw, we recently announced a new operating model. This reflects the strategic evolution of our business to reimagine the claims ecosystem, enhance client service, and drive clarity on execution of revenue and profit expansion initiatives. The new structure simplifies the business by realigning Crawford to three key businesses, loss adjusting, third-party administration, and platform solutions, and positions the company to lead the industry in innovation, service quality, and expertise. Loss adjusting services, the global property and casualty carrier market. By combining our volume and large and complex services into one loss adjusting unit, we create a one-stop shop for the full spectrum of loss adjusting needs for carriers of all sizes, MGAs, and the Lloyd syndicates. Our team approach loss adjusting gives Crawford an unprecedented span of expertise and resources and allows us to provide cost-effective solutions to our clients. This unit will service claims of all sizes, from really small to very large, allowing us to become simpler to access for our customers seeking loss adjusting services at any level and any expertise. Our strategy for loss adjusting is to drive improved margin through efficiency on the volume claim side while growing by investing in the expertise on the large and complex claim side. Moving to the TPA business, our focus will be on building intelligent and end-to-end claim solutions which can be embedded seamlessly into our client's processes. This business provides third-party administration services to customers including corporations, municipalities, MGAs, captives, and small to mid-sized carriers. Our focus here will be to further improve margins through digitization and scaling through organic and inorganic strategies. This new structure will allow us to specialize our approach to local markets and transcend borders for our global clients. Our platform solution business is focused on creating alternatives to traditional loss adjusting. This unit is aimed at attracting carriers of all sizes, MGAs, and the Lloyd syndicates. while exploring, implementing, and executing on solutions that reimagine the loss-adjusting ecosystem. Platform Solutions consists of contractor connection and network services such as CatResponse, WeGoLook, and our newly formed Crawford Inspection Services. We believe business in this segment have compelling transactional economics and considerable growth potential. A focus for this segment will be continued innovation and scaling, and we expect it to be a major top and bottom line contributor in the coming years. Our new organization design also reflects our thoughtful approach to succession planning. As part of this change, we have created several new regional leadership roles that have been filled through internal candidates. This is a strong demonstration of the depth of talent and experience within our teams. In addition to global business leadership changes, the new reporting structure of our international country president has been realigned under Joseph Blanco. This allows us to flatten the structure and reduce layers between strategy and execution while creating a more impactful cultural evolution. Crawford's emphasis on our people and delivering service excellence to our clients remains at the forefront of our priorities. Our investment in new technologies and service capabilities has enabled us to sustain or exceed pre-pandemic client service delivery levels. Further, we are thrilled to announce we ended the fourth quarter with a total NPS of 45. As a reminder, any score above 30 is considered strong for our industry. Having surveyed over 70% of our top clients across all geographies, we collected a record number of 955 client responses through the quarter, marking a 45% increase in scores collected over the prior year. We will continue to reference our MPS as part of our standard operation to further improve client service. We have entered 2021 with a robust financial position. operating with the liquidity necessary to respond and adapt to your new economic reality and the evolving client demand that it brings. As of December 31, our net funded debt to adjusted EBITDA was 1.11 times and operating cash flow increased 24% over the last year to $93 million. Based on our strong financial position and liquidity, on February 11th, the Board increased the quarterly dividend to $0.06 per share for both CRDA and CRDB, an increase of 20% per share from the prior quarter. Crawford has paid cash dividends per share of $0.19 for CRDA and $0.17 for CRDB, providing a meaningful yield to shareholders in 2020. we were also pleased to announce the reinstatement of our share repurchase program as of January 21st, 2021, which remains an important component of our capital allocation strategy. As we navigate 2021, we remain focused on bolstering our cash generation capability while delivering value to our shareholders. Our strong earnings and balance sheet enable us to more confidently make long-term investments allowing us to further extend our global footprint to recent acquisitions and the launch of new innovative solutions. As a reminder, in the fourth quarter, we welcomed Crawford Carvajo, which established Crawford as the largest loss adjusting company in Latin America. We also welcomed HBA Group, which adds to our TPA solution segment in Australia and the larger Asia region. We continue to expand differentiation through digital collaboration and data insights. As part of this, we recently announced the launch of a servio, which will support the digital transformation of property claims. This cutting-edge platform was designed to improve efficiency, accuracy, and consistency in the estimating process, and it's just one of the many capabilities that will position us as the industry leader in digital transformation. On that note, I would like to turn the call over to Joseph Locke. Joseph?

Thank you, Rod. Throughout the pandemic, we at Crawford remained unified by our purpose, which enabled us to transcend the trials and tribulations of 2020. We are extremely thankful to all of our employees, as is their perseverance and dedication to delivering on our client commitments that drove our success in 2020. The global COVID-19 pandemic presented a unique opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to the health and safety of our workforce. At the outset of the pandemic, we immediately formed a global incident response team, transitioned all non-essential staff to work from home, procured PPE for those roles deemed essential workers, adopted safety protocols for field employees, and delivered weekly health and safety updates to our global workforce. Additionally, we modified our sick leave policies to support the health of all of our employees, established physical and mental health and wellness programs, and launched a parent support group. As a key component to our success, we remain committed to protecting the safety and well-being of all of our employees while promoting a culture reflective of our restored values of respect, empowerment, sustainability, training, one Crawford, recognition, and entrepreneurial spirit. This is exemplified in the launch of our Office of Inclusion and Diversity in early 2020 and the subsequent formation of the Global Diversity Council to work with our executive and country leadership teams to enhance our inclusion and diversity policies and practices. Two key accomplishments for 2020 were delivering unconscious bias training to our executive leadership team, our managers, and our employees, and launching two employee resource groups in the United States. Additionally, in 2020, we conducted an employee poll survey as well as a series of surveys throughout the year to help us manage our COVID-19 response. Our overall response rate was 82%, up from 76% in December of 2019, and favorable response rates increased across all categories of questions. The way we execute, the way we lead, the way we manage, the way we see ourselves, and the way we work together. We continue to look for opportunities across our enterprise to become more socially responsible in our increasingly integrating ESG best practices into our operations. With that, I will turn the call over to Bruce to review our fourth quarter and full year results in more detail.

Thank you, Joseph. Company-wide revenues before reimbursements in the 2024 quarter were $257.4 million. up 4.1% over the $247.2 million in the prior year's fourth quarter. On a non-GAAP basis, excluding the benefit of foreign exchange, the company saw revenues of $254 million. On a non-GAAP basis, net income attributable to shareholders was $12.2 million, resulting in fourth quarter 2020 diluted EPS of $0.23 for both CRDA and CRDB, as compared to 2019 diluted EPS of $0.15 for CRDA and $0.13 for CRDB. The company's non-GAAP operating earnings totaled $18.8 million in the 2024 quarter, or 7.4 percent of revenues, compared with $16.7 million, or 6.8 percent of revenues, in the prior year period. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $27.9 million in the 2024 quarter, or 11 percent of revenues, compared to compared to $27.5 million, or 11.1% of revenues, in the 2019 quarter. I will now review the fourth quarter performance of each of our segments, who all enjoyed solid improvements in operating earnings in the quarter. Crawford Claim Solutions revenue totaled $99 million, increasing 17.5% from $84.3 million reported in last year's quarter. absent foreign exchange rate benefits of approximately $1.9 million, fourth quarter 2020 revenues would have been $97.1 million. The segment reported operating earnings of $8 million in the 2024 quarter were 8.1% of revenues, more than doubling the $3.6 million or 4.2% of revenues in the prior year quarter. Crawford Specialty Solutions revenues were $64.3 million in the 2024 quarter, down from $65.9 million in the prior year quarter. Absent foreign exchange rate benefits of $1 million, revenues would have been $63.3 million for the quarter. Operating earnings in Crawford Specialty Solutions totaled $14.2 million or 22.1% of revenues in the 2020 fourth quarter, increasing over operating earnings of $11.2 million or 17% of revenues in the 2019 quarter. Revenues for Crawford TPA solutions were $94.1 million in the 2020 fourth quarter, decreasing from $97 million in the 2019 period. Absent foreign exchange rate benefits of $600,000, fourth quarter 2020 revenues would have been $93.6 million. Crawford TPA solutions operating earnings were $7.6 million during the fourth quarter of 2020, compared to last year's fourth quarter operating earnings of $6.1 million. The operating margin in this segment was 8.1% in the 2020 quarter and 6.3% in the 2019 quarter. During the 2024 quarter, the company realized a $4.8 million benefit to operating earnings from the Canada emergency wage subsidy. For the full year, this benefit totaled $13.8 million. Unallocated corporate costs were $11.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2020, compared to cost of $4.1 million in the same period of 2019. This increase was driven by higher self-insurance expense, incentive compensation, and professional fees, partially offset by benefits from the Canada emergency wage subsidy. The company recognized net restructuring cost of $2.4 million in the fourth quarter, consisting of severance, asset impairment, and lease termination costs of $6.2 million, partially offset by one-time gains of $3.8 million in the quarter. Crawford recognized a non-cash goodwill impairment in the 2021st quarter. The initial income tax benefit related to the impairment was normalized through our effective tax rate as we went through the year, resulting in a lower full-year income tax benefit. During the 2024th quarter, the impact of this treatment decreased the initial income tax benefit by $900,000, or two cents per share. As disclosed last quarter, in October 2020, the company acquired most of the remaining 85% equity interest in Crawford Carvalho and its subsidiaries. The purchase price includes an initial lump sum payment of $11.6 million and a maximum of $11.7 million payable over the next six years based on achieving certain EBITDA performance goals. Also, as previously disclosed, In November 2020, the company acquired 100% of HBA Group in Australia. The purchase price includes an initial lump sum payment of $4.1 million, net of a working capital adjustment, and a maximum $3.2 million payable over the next four years based on achieving certain revenue and EBITDA performance goals. We estimate that COVID-19 negatively impacted our revenues in the range of $45 to $55 million in 2020 as compared to 2019. We expect the ongoing global economic slowdown from COVID-19 could have a material impact to our results of operations, financial condition, and cash flows in one or more future quarters, absent the occurrence of weather surge events or new client growth. The company's cash and cash equivalent position at December 31, 2020 totaled $44.7 million, compared to $51.8 million at the 2019 year end. The company made $9 million in contributions to its U.S. defined benefit pension plan and $500,000 to its U.K. plans for 2020, compared with no contributions to the U.S. plan and $700,000 to the U.K. plans in 2019. The company continued to strengthen its balance sheet during 2020, with total debt outstanding as of December 31, 2020, totaling $113.6 million, compared with $177 million at the 2019 year end. Net debt stood at $68.9 million as of December 31, 2020, marking the lowest level since 2013, while our leverage ratio under our credit agreement closed at 1.11 times. Additionally, our pension liability was down to $53.9 million at the end of the fourth quarter, marking a multi-year low. We are also pleased with our operating cash flow for 2020. Cash provided by operations totaled $93.2 million for 2020, compared to $75.2 million provided by operations in the prior year period. The increase in cash provided by operating activities was primarily due to deferred payroll tax payments in the U.S. under the CARES Act and a benefit from the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy. Free cash flow increased by $1.7 million compared with 2019, reflecting higher operating cash flows partially offset by increased software development and capital expenditures in 2020 compared with 2019. our free cash flow generation remained the top priority for the company. During 2020, the company repurchased over 155,000 shares of CRDA and 161,000 shares of CRDB at an average cost of $8.42 per share. The total cost of share repurchases during 2020 was $2.7 million. The company did not repurchase any shares during the 2024 quarter. However, effective January 1, 2021, the company has restarted its share repurchase program as we continue to believe that our shares trade significantly below their intrinsic value. Consistent with the practice that we began in 2020, the company has chosen not to provide guidance going forward. With that, I would like to turn the call back to Rohit for concluding remarks.

Rohit Naira- Thank you, Bruce. As we embark on 2021, we are confident in our outlook as we reap the benefits of our success from new and enhanced client wins. Our strategy enables our growth plan and envision future as we continue to deliver innovative and market leading solutions. Above all, we remain committed to protecting the health and safety of our employees. while continuing to provide best-in-class service to our clients despite the current global environment. In 2020, we responded, adapted, innovated, and delivered. In 2021, we will continue to progress from a position of strength, finding new ways to excel for our clients while delivering further value to our shareholders. We look forward to the journey ahead as we fulfill our purpose of restoring and enhancing lives, businesses, and communities. Thank you for your time today. Operator, please open the call for questions.

At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before asking your question. We'll pause for a moment to compile the Q&A roster. First question comes from Mark Hughes. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thank you. Good morning. Good morning, Mark. Bruce, when we think about the cash flow for 2021, I know you're not providing guidance. I'm curious whether there's any items that either were an unusual help or hindrance in 2020 and anything that might move, say, in a different direction in 2021. Was it normal run rate and no impacts in the coming year?

Right. So within 2020, we had a couple of benefits in operating cash flow. One, we deferred our U.S. unemployment deposits in the U.S., which was about $13 million. That was under the CARES Act. Those are repaid. in two installments in 2021 and 2022 under the Act. So in 2021, we'll have the normal federal tax deposits that we normally would, plus at the end of the year, we'll have to make up about $6.5 million of what we deferred in 2020. We also benefited from the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy in 2020. That was a program put on by the Canadian government to subsidize companies for retaining their workforce. That was about, on a cash basis, about an $11.8 million benefit for us in 2020. That program is ongoing through the first half of this year, although at a reduced rate. So we won't see that subsidy, but we do expect for our business to, uh, improve as we exit out of, out of COVID. So we're hopeful that we'll have, uh, kind of a, an offset there, but, uh, but, but I would expect to see, uh, you know, a little bit of pressure on operating cashflow just as a result of the, uh, the cares act benefit that we got, uh, going away in 21.

Understood. The, uh, Canada wage subsidy was the $11.3 million in unallocated corporate costs. Was that inclusive of the $4.8 million? But for it would have been meaningfully higher?

The corporate unallocated costs had a piece of the Canadian benefit, about half of the benefit, but the other half sat in our operating results.

And what is kind of the normalized run rate, maybe just looking backwards, and any thoughts about how that will trend in 2021?

For the corporate unallocated cost?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, we certainly think that the fourth quarter was abnormally high, and that's not indicative of a run rate going forward. We can see some volatility there. You know, the thing that tends to impact us the most are self-insurance reserves. But I think if you go back and look over the last few quarters, that's probably more indicative of where we would be on that line item.

Okay. And then the PPA business, you had a nice sequential uptick in revenue. Was that – I think you talked about some more COVID claims, business interruption is so strong. Was that just – and then maybe some normalization in the economy? What drove the sequential increase?

Mark, we are seeing, this is Roy Mark, we are seeing an uptick in the claims volume. Largely that has been driven by the COVID-19 claims. We certainly saw the impact of the increased infection in the U.S. that happened between Thanksgiving and Christmas. That did come through in the month of December. And we're seeing some of that impact come through in January as well. We aren't seeing a secular increase in overall claims activity until economic activity comes back. But, you know, we feel very bullish that economic activity will be back later part of the year. And TPA should be back on its full recovery and not just recovery, but actually doing better because of the wins that we've had in the last 12 to 18 months.

And on that front, any comment as we think about 2021 and the new business, you might have one and will be coming online. Absent these COVID and other economic effects, is your customer count growing?

Yes, the customer count is growing. And I think we're also very encouraged by the carrier wins that we're seeing because there the customer count is one, but the revenue increase opportunity is much higher. Because as the carriers add customers, that claim activity starts to show. On an annualized basis, last year we won about $37 million of TPA business. And as you know, working with us, not all of that shows up in the first year itself, but gradually comes in. So we expect the impact of that to come in as well this year. So we feel very good about our TPA business, where it's heading, and the investment that we've made there over the last 24 to 36 months we feel is really starting to show.

Yeah. I'll just ask one more question. When we think about Q1 with the winter storm, presumably that is the catalyst for claims, and I'm not sure how much of a carryover you had from the fourth quarter. But I wonder if you could just comment, when we think about weather broadly, does it impact contract connection and your adjusting business?

how do we think about the q1 in terms of potentially stepped up activity uh certainly when we look at um q1 we did carry some benefits from australia and uk in terms of the storm activity that we saw um so we believe that inventories are still there for us to work through in q1 so we should see some of that impact um the impact of the storm brewery is is early to comment on but the numbers um look favorable in terms of the claims volume that is that is coming to our end and and we should have some more clarity coming to it in the next a couple of weeks but overall we feel very good and very positive about how the year is unfolding so far thank you very much once again to ask a question please press star one on your telephone keypad once again that is star one to ask a question

We have a question from Alex Bolton. Please go ahead.

Good morning. I'm calling in for Greg Peters. Thanks for taking my question. I guess my question surrounds the margin improvement that you've seen and I guess the specialty and the coin business um you know just kind of curious uh going forward maybe past the pandemic if you think you know how much you're able to uh retain of that margin improvement versus you know maybe some of that uh might return sure and as you know during q3 and q4 there was quite a significant storm activity in the u.s

we benefited from that storm activity, which also showed in our margins. Additionally, we've been adding new carrier clients, both in our specialty services business and in our traditional CCS business, which we believe have strong long-term value to us. So we expect that as the storm activity continues, that we will see better margins and improved margins And then we certainly want to continue to make investment on the technology side to innovate and simplify the claims process, which should further enhance our margins. But as we said, we're not really providing guidance at this moment, but I'd like to reiterate that we feel very favorably about how the year will progress for our loss adjusting business and our contractor connection business.

Okay. Okay, great. And then, you know, my other question is, um i know you're not providing guidance but i was wondering if you could you know comment on the reporting changes and you know if there's uh much change to the revenue mix i guess between the three segments with the reporting changes you want to take that yeah sure i'll uh i'll take that so our our plan is that uh by the end of this month by the end of march we'll issue an 8k that has the uh

the historical financial results for 2020 and 2019, including by quarter, restated for the change in segments. So I think that that will help clear things up for you and other analysts and investors to kind of understand the historical results in light of the new structure change.

Okay, great. I'll look out for that. Thanks for the answers and the insight. Thank you, Alex.

Once again, to ask a question, please press star 1.