Crawford & Company

Good morning. My name is Colin and I'll be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the Crawford and Company third quarter 2022 earnings release conference call. In conjunction with this call, a supplementary financial presentation is available on our website at www.crawco.com under the investor relations section. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. 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 this call, please press star, then zero, and an operator will assist you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this call is being recorded today, Wednesday, November 9, 2022. I would now like to introduce Tammy Stevenson, Crawford & Company's General Counsel. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Colin. Some of the matters to be discussed in this conference call and the supplementary financial presentation may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements may relate to, among other things, the impact of COVID-19, our expected future operating results and financial conditions, our ability to grow our revenues and reduce our operating expenses, expectations regarding our anticipated contributions to our underfunded defined benefit pension plans, collectability of our billed and unbilled accounts receivable, financial results from our recently completed acquisitions, our continued compliance with financial and other covenants contained in our financing agreements, our long-term capital resource and liquidity requirements, and our ability to pay dividends in the future. The company's actual results achieved in future quarters could differ materially from the results that may have been implied in such forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly release revisions to any forward-looking statements made in this conference call to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of the call or to reflect the occurrence of the unanticipated events. In addition, you are reminded that operating results from any historical period are not necessarily indicative of results to be expected for any future period. For a complete discussion regarding factors which could affect the company's financial performance, please refer to the company's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2022, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. particularly the information under the headings risk factors and management's discussion and analysis of 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 SEC rules. As required, a reconciliation is provided for those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. I would now like to introduce Mr. Rohit Verma, Chief Executive Officer of Crawford & Company. Rohit, you may begin the conference.

Thank you, Tammy. Good morning and welcome to our third quarter 2022 earnings call. Joining me today is Bruce Swain, our Chief Financial Officer, Joseph Blancourt, President, and Tammy Stevenson, our General Counsel. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call for your questions. Before we begin, I want to extend our thoughts to all those who have been impacted by Hurricane Ian, particularly those in Florida who are still struggling as a result of this terrible devastation and actually facing a new risk from Hurricane Nicole. As our response continues, we are tremendously proud of the entire Crawford team, especially our adjusters on the ground who are working tirelessly to help restore communities and businesses that have been impacted by this terrible devastation. Our third quarter results reflect continuing top line momentum driven by the strategic investments we have made across the business. Revenues increased 2% or 6% on a constant currency basis compared to a strong prior year period which included pronounced weather events in the US. Looking at our North America business, our efforts to increase penetration with the top five carrier clients continues to bear fruit. This ongoing success is a testament to Crawford's technology and people focus strategy as our clients increasingly depend on Crawford's deep bench of experts and commitment to quality when assessing their outsourcing needs. This has resulted in strengthened relationships and higher claims allocations for us. Platform solutions experienced strong results, delivering yet another quarter of double-digit revenue growth. This was driven primarily by strength from our networks business and contributions from our Praxis acquisition. Within North America loss adjusting, we are gaining traction in the marketplace as we bring more experts on board as well as expand our geographic footprint within our volume business across U.S. This differentiated offering enables Crawford to address the increasingly complex nature of claims. As a result, we are becoming an even more valuable player to our clients. Broad Spire also continues to experience a steady recovery towards pre-pandemic levels aided by increased economic activity and new client wins. In our international segment, we have experienced ongoing margin pressure, which I will discuss more in greater detail. Overall, the investments we have made and continue to make are delivering results across the business. We remain confident that we have the right strategy in place to support increased market share gains and improve profitability. While top-line growth has maintained its strong momentum, there are clearly areas across our business that we know are ripe for improvement. We have experienced attractive margins and continue to make growth investments across our North American businesses. These investments include adding experts, closing geographic market gaps, investing in quality. As these businesses scale, we expect to see further margin and profitability expansion. Additionally, we are seeing improved efficiencies as our new hires ramp. While the lack of US-based weather activity during majority of the third quarter pressured margins in our North American business, we anticipate improvements in the fourth quarter driven by activities related to Hurricane Ian. Our international segment continues to experience margin constraints, particularly in the UK and Europe. We are taking deliberate actions to address the challenges across these businesses. These actions include adjusting prices and addressing pockets of low productivity or underperformance. We've also made changes across the organization to optimize our cost structure in alignment with current market dynamics. While it is early days, we are already seeing the benefit of these efforts in Latin America. In addition to the above measures, in the UK we're addressing legacy client contract issues. Finally, we are enhancing our product offering and improving quality and service with investments and digitization. Overall, we remain optimistic that our positive momentum in North America combined with expected improvement in our international business in 2023 will drive further growth and improve our overall margin profile. As we look at capital allocation, given the volatility in the market as well as geopolitical tensions, we are focused on strengthening our financial position. We were able to leverage our liquidity to fund working capital needs related to the storm activities in Australia, as well as the US. We expect improved cash generation moving forward, which we will use to pay down debt and get our leverage ratio back closer to our target of two times EBITDA. This gives us financial flexibility, which should position us well to weather any macroeconomic issues next year. Overall, Crawford is in a solid financial position. and we feel confident in our ability to continue executing our growth strategy and drive margin improvement. Lastly, I would like to highlight our recent announcement of the election of Cameron Brady to Crawford's Board of Directors. He will serve on our audit committee. Cameron brings over 25 years of global finance, operations, and risk management experience to the board, and we believe his fresh perspective will help to further support Crawford's envisioned future. With that, I'd like to hand the call over to Joseph, who will discuss our business line results for third quarter.

Thanks, Rod. Beginning with North America loss adjusting, revenue growth in the third quarter was primarily driven by continued market recovery in Canada, the inclusion of e-Jester, as well as increased activity related to Hurricane Fiona that impacted eastern Canada in September. In the United States, benign weather for most of the quarter resulted in lower claims volumes compared to a strong third quarter in 2021, which included impacts from Hurricane Ida. We continue to make targeted investments in expertise and have added over 80 specialist loss adjusters so far in 2022. We are well ahead of our previously outlined three-year goal of adding 200 specialist loss adjusters. While this investment has created short-term margin pressures, the results are encouraging. Our new hires enable us to provide improved service to our customers and round out expertise gaps, earning a greater number of loss allocations even when weather activity is low. As claims continue to increase in complexity, Crawford is in a position of strength resulting from our people-focused strategy and the investments we've made to build our bench of experts. For example, we recently utilized a former NASA engineer to review a complex satellite claim. This highlights the expanding breadth of our expertise and exemplifies how Crawford is increasingly becoming the premier long-term destination for talent. We are growing at a steady pace ahead of the industry, resulting in increased market share, which we attribute largely to the hiring and onboarding of these experts. In our international operations, we saw further recovery in our businesses in Latin America, along with weather-driven revenue growth in Australia and Asia throughout the quarter. This partially offset ongoing weakness related to certain business lines in the UK and Europe. In Australia, unprecedented flooding in Queensland and New South Wales continued to drive increased claims activity. As Rod discussed earlier, we have pockets of weakness in international operations where we are taking corrective actions, which we anticipate will lead to improvement next year. We are already experiencing recovery in Latin America, resulting from our cost efficiency initiatives, which drove improved flow through from revenue increases across Chile, Brazil, and Peru. Margins in Asia are improving better than expected due to increased revenue related to major flooding events across Malaysia and the Philippines, as well as other non-flood related growth. We are pleased with this progress. However, margins remain below desired levels and this will remain an area of focus. During the third quarter, our Broad Spire business continued to make a solid recovery toward pre-pandemic levels of claims volumes. Revenue growth during the quarter was driven by increased economic activity with favorable results across all claim services and medical management, resulting from new and existing client growth along with healthy pricing. Platform solutions delivered another quarter of double-digit revenue growth, bolstered by increased activity in our network's business and the inclusion of Praxis. Margins declined slightly in the quarter as we've continued to see some softness in contractor connection assignment volumes. This weakness was related to benign claims environment in the third quarter, along with tougher year-over-year comparability due to Hurricane Ida. We remain confident in the medium-term growth of this business. In fact, we have onboarded a new top five carrier and expect to see contributions in 2023. Weakness in contractor connection was offset by positive contributions from our practice consulting business, CAT, and WeGoLook throughout the quarter. During the storm season, we deployed a record number of adjusters, resulting from strengthened partnerships with two of the top five P&C carriers. This stems from the solid execution we have demonstrated over the past two years. We are making solid progress executing on our long-term strategy. Our focus on quality, expertise, and digital is helping us process claims more swiftly and deliver outstanding customer service to our clients and their policyholders. We are proud of the way in which technology played a pivotal role in our efforts to assist customers during the recent storm season. As Rohit mentioned, our response to Hurricane Ian beginning late in the third quarter has been impressive. Our recent technology investments enabled us to reduce adjuster deployment time by approximately 85%. This rapid deployment not only allows help to arrive to policyholders faster, it also gives us first mover advantage in the market and allows us to capture market share. These are just examples of the progress we are making on our strategy execution and serve as a testament to our relentless pursuit for service excellence that is being supported by our key pillars. Turning now to new business momentum. As we entered the fourth quarter, we continued to deepen our relationships with our existing client base in addition to attracting new business. During the third quarter, we won approximately $25 million worth of new and enhanced business. a strong sign that our focus on a reimagined claims ecosystem is continuing to resonate with our customers. Our NPS remains healthy at 47, and we are actively looking for opportunities to improve our score. Additionally, we retain 95.5% of our Broad Spire business year to date, and we are increasing market share with key clients. Overall, we remain committed to delivering service excellence as we close out 2022. We believe our commitment to environmental, social, and governance principles underpins our ability to execute on our long-term strategy and fulfill our purpose to restore lives, businesses, and communities. Our commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion, sustainable business practices, and ethical behavior are reflected in our purpose, envisioned future, and values. Throughout the quarter, we made consistent progress on our DEI and human capital initiatives. To monitor employee satisfaction and engagement, Crawford conducts employee poll surveys twice a year. More than 75% of our employees completed the most recent survey, and the feedback continues to be positive. The survey items also revealed the state of current employee sentiment around DEI, in which 88% of the respondents indicated that they do not experience bias at work due to their personal identity. This phase rule response is 22% higher than the professional services industry norm. Additionally, 82% of respondents endorse senior leadership support of DEI initiatives. The outcome from the survey underscores the efficacy of our culture and people programs in creating an inclusive workplace. We will continue to focus on areas for improvement in the overall employee experience. With that, let me turn the call over to Bruce for a deeper look at our financial performance.

Thank you, Joseph. Company-wide revenues before reimbursements in the 2022 third quarter were $294.9 million, 2% over the $288.5 million in the prior year's third quarter, and our highest revenues since the 2017 fourth quarter. Presented on a constant dollar basis to the prior year, revenues before reimbursements totaled $306 million. GAAP diluted EPS in the 2022 third quarter was a loss of 31 cents per share for both CRDA and CRDB compared to earnings of 20 cents for CRDA and 21 cents for CRDB in the 2021 period. On a non-GAAP basis, third quarter 2022 diluted EPS was 16 cents for both CRDA and CRDB compared with 24 cents for CRDA and 25 cents for CRDB in the 2021 period. The company's non-GAAP operating earnings totaled $14.2 million in the 2022 third quarter, or 4.8% of revenues, decreasing from $20.8 million, or 7.2% of revenues in the prior year period. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $21.9 million in the 2022 third quarter, or 7.4% of revenues, compared to $29.5 million, or 10.2% of revenues in the 2021 quarter. I will now review the third quarter performance of each of our segments. North America loss adjusting revenues totaled $66.8 million, including $1.9 million from the e-Juster acquisition, increasing 3.9% from $64.3 million reported in last year's quarter. Foreign exchange rate impacts reduced revenues by $900,000. The segment reported operating earnings of $3.7 million in the 2022 third quarter, or 5.5% of revenues. decreasing from 4.4 million, or 6.8% of revenues, in the prior year quarter. Margins were pressured due to the ongoing investments in talent recruitment, benign weather activity, and the absence of Q's benefits in 2022. International operations revenues totaled 86.1 million in the 2022 third quarter, including 1.4 million from the Boss Boone and Van Dyke acquisitions. decreasing 6.3% from 91.9 million reported in last year's quarter. Foreign exchange rate impacts reduced revenues by 10.1 million in the 2022 quarter. On a constant currency basis, revenues were 96.2 million, representing growth of 4.7% over the 2021 quarter. The segment reported an operating loss of 3.8 million in the 2022 third quarter, compared to operating earnings of 1.9 million reported in last year's quarter. The operating margin was negative 4.5% in the 2022 quarter, compared to 2.1% in the 2021 quarter. Weakness in certain UK and Europe business lines drove the earnings decline. Broad Spire revenues were 78.4 million in the 2022 third quarter, increasing 3.4% from 75.8 million in the 2021 period. Broad Spire operating earnings were 6.2 million during the 2022 third quarter, decreasing from last year's third quarter operating earnings of 6.9 million. The operating margin in this segment was 7.9% in the 2022 quarter, compared to 9.2% in the 2021 period. The decline in operating margin was due to higher compensation costs. Our medical management business recovery continues to lag. However, we are encouraged by our client pipeline and recent wins. Revenues for platform solutions were 63.7 million in the 2022 third quarter, up 12.7% from 56.5 million in the prior year quarter. Revenues from the Praxis Consulting acquisition totaled 5.4 million in the current quarter. Operating earnings and platform solutions totaled $10.1 million or 15.8% of revenues in the 2022 third quarter, increasing over operating earnings of $9.7 million or 17.2% of revenues in the 2021 quarter. The mixed shift away from our higher margin contractor connection business towards our networks business, along with our continued investment in technology, reduced margins in the quarter. Unallocated corporate costs were $1.9 million in the 2022 third quarter compared to cost of $2.2 million in the same period of 2021. This decrease was primarily due to a decrease in incentive compensation, partially offset by a reduction in Q's benefits and an increase in self-insurance costs. During the 2022 third quarter, the company recognized no pre-tax benefits from Q's, as compared to $1.8 million in the 2021 quarter. The company does not expect to recognize any further benefits from Q's going forward. In the 2022 quarter, the company recognized a $36.8 million non-cash goodwill impairment. This charge was partially offset by a $15.9 million reduction in income tax expense for a net impact of $20.9 million, or 43 cents per share. Due to the nondiscrete income tax treatment of the goodwill impairment, the income tax benefit of the impairment will normalize during the fourth quarter, resulting in a lower anticipated four-year tax benefit of $3.4 million. We recognized a pre-tax contingent earn-out expense totaling $887,000 in the 2022 third quarter. This was a result of favorable changes to projections of certain acquired entities. We did not repurchase any shares in the 2022 third quarter. For the first nine months of 2022, the company repurchased approximately 2.7 million shares of CRDA and 963,000 shares of CRDB and an average cost per share of $7.41 and $7.32, respectively. The total cost of share repurchases during 2022 was $26.7 million. The company's cash and cash equivalent position at September 30, 2022 totaled $33.1 million compared to $53.2 million as of December 31, 2021. We've made no discretionary contributions to our U.S. defined benefit pension plan for the third quarter of 2022. Although the company has made these contributions for the last few years in the U.S., we don't intend to make contributions in 2022. The company's total debt outstanding as of September 30, 2022 totaled $257.4 million, compared with $175 million as of December 31, 2021, reflecting borrowings to fund negative free cash flow, acquisitions, dividends, and share repurchases. Net debt stood at $224.3 million as of September 30, 2022, while our leverage ratio under our credit agreement closed at 2.84 times EBITDA. Additionally, our pension liability was down to $10.2 million at the end of the third quarter, reflecting a funded ratio of 92.8%. As Roweth mentioned previously, we accessed our liquidity to fund working capital needs related to recent storm activities. As work in progress and accounts receivable wind down, we will use the cash flow to pay down debt in an effort to get our leverage ratio back closer to two times EBITDA. Cash used by operations totaled $16.2 million during the first nine months of 2022 compared with $20 million provided in the 2021 period. The decrease in cash provided by operating activities was primarily resulting from $19.9 million related to the timing of payroll and related taxes and increased incentive compensation payments of $10.4 million in 2022. We also saw an increase in the use of billed and unbilled receivables of $6.5 million and $6.1 million of prior year cash benefits received related to Qs that were not present in 2022. This was partially offset by a $9 million reduction in pension contributions. Free cash flow was negative $41.1 million for the first nine months of 2022 compared with the prior year's negative $580,000. With that, I would like to turn the call back to Rohith for concluding remarks.

Thank you, Bruce. As we enter fourth quarter, we continue to face an uncertain macroeconomic environment and inflationary pressures. Nonetheless, we remain highly focused on accelerating our market-leading position within the industry through innovation and best-in-class solutions while continuing our pursuit of our purpose. Crawford's continued emphasis on our people, purpose, and strategy, as well as our commitment to service excellence for our clients, continue to be at the forefront of our priorities as we close out 2022. Overall, we remain confident in our ability to capitalize on the many opportunities ahead of us, as well as deliver superior results for our shareholders over the long term. Thank you for your time today. Colin, please open the call for questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now begin the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment for your first question. Okay, your first question comes from Mark Hughes from Truist. Mark, please go ahead.

Yeah, thank you. Good morning. Is there, with interest rates being up and your funded ratio being up as well, are you able to do some sort of more comprehensive solution on the pension? Can you do a pension risk transfer? Or are there some limitations?

Hey, Mark, this is Bruce. That's actually something that we're evaluating as a company. You know, we have over the past several years been doing kind of small annuity buyouts under the plan and, in fact, have just done one for this year as well. So we're kind of systematically taking the tail risk down from the plan, but certainly with the funding level where it is, I think that we'll have some opportunities in the future to evaluate a more permanent solution to the U.S. defined benefit plan.

You think contractor connection, does it normally see an uptick in activity related to storms, or is that not part of their focus?

Hi, Mark. This is Roy. How are you?

I'm good. Thank you.

So contractor connection usually benefits more from what we call the severe convective storms than they do from just purely hurricane. And the reason is that when you're having severe convective storms, you're typically getting property damage, which is above the deductible and is directed by the insurer for repair. What we saw as an example with Ian so far is that a lot of damage is below the deductible. So that is the reason why we haven't seen as much contractor connection activity this year because the overall frequency because of weather has been lower other than the impact of hurricane ian in the last month month and a half or so yeah in broadspire you mentioned you're returning to pre-pandemic levels how much further do you think you have to go to get back to uh those kind of levels so i think if you look at purely on our claims volume and the revenue that that we generate from the claim side we're actually not just there but slightly ahead of where we were pre-pandemic mainly because of what we've done with new client wins as well as volume growing. Our challenge continues to be on the medical management side, which had dropped during the time of COVID and has still not recovered. It remains a conundrum for us that what you should see sort of in a correlated manner with medical management to the claims volume that you have, we're not seeing that come back. Now, there are various hypotheses that exist, right? One hypothesis is that You still have individuals not going in for elective procedures because of fear of COVID. You still have the hospitals being constrained from a staffing perspective, which is impacting elective procedures. But we do think that there isn't a structural change in the marketplace where this business has gone away. So we still believe that it's a timing issue and this part of the business should continue to come back over the coming months and quarters.

You mentioned the UK being a little bit more of a challenge. What do you think the timing is on that and how much of the loss in the quarter is related to the UK operation?

So, you know, in UK we have a couple of things going on. We've had one or two problematic contracts that we've been working through. We believe that we have successfully worked those contracts through, so the bulk of that should be addressed. However, we do have a little bit of a tail risk that flows with it because we still have claims that we had taken in as part of those original contracts that we still have to work through, but we're not taking any more new claims as part of those contracts. So we believe that we should see a continuously improving position in UK as we head into the new year.

And then you mentioned the increased penetration with the top five carrier relationship. Could you expand on that a little bit? more geography? What's driving that?

Yeah, it's more wallet share. As we continue to perform for these top five carriers and we continue to deepen our relationships with these top five carriers, it gives us the ability to not just increase volumes in businesses that we have right now, but also demonstrate our capability across other businesses where we could be helping these carriers out. And that's what we're seeing, right? Something which started off as an engagement purely loss adjusting, maybe expanding to include contractor connection, maybe expanding to include contents, maybe expanding to include subrogation. So we're just seeing an expansion of our relationship across these customers, and that's what we're attributing the growth with this customer base to be.

Appreciate your help. Thank you. Thank you, Mark.

Your next question comes from Kevin Stein. from Barrington Research. Kevin, please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, everyone.

Hi, Kevin.

I wanted to start out by asking about the four profitability improvement initiatives that you discussed on the second quarter call. Just maybe if you could update us on progress with each of those initiatives.

Sure. Kevin, this is Roy. How are you?

I'm great. How are you?

Good. Good. Kevin, the four things that we had talked about, let me just go back and reframe. We had said that there are really three sort of issues that are driving, right? One is that we're making deliberate investments in certain places where the margin is lower because we're making deliberate investments. So examples of those would be our North America loss adjusting business where we are making investments both to bring on new experts as well as geographically expand our footprint within U.S. We then have businesses where we believe that there is a temporary pullback on profitability, mainly because of what's happening with weather, and examples of those would be things like contractor connection. And then we have businesses where we need to do some active work, particularly international, to improve margins and get them back to what we would call them as our target margins. From that standpoint, we've had issues with some problematic contracts. We've addressed that already, as I mentioned earlier to Mark. We wanted to make sure that our pricing was in line with the quality and the type of service that we're providing. We're actively addressing that, so that's a work in progress. We had also said that we were going to change our staffing levels to more clearly reflect the market dynamics that we see. We have done a number of those changes, as you can imagine, given the labor laws that we operate under, particularly in the international market. Sometimes those can take longer than what you and I would like them to take. So we believe that we are well on that journey. Places where we've already made impact are places like Latin America, where we've made the changes that we wanted to make and we're seeing signs of recovery from a profitability standpoint already. Australia has always been in a strong position for us and continues to remain extremely strong. So I really, Asia is something that still requires more work from a profitability standpoint, but it's performing better than what we had originally expected it to perform. So it's really the timing has mainly been on the UK and European businesses.

Okay, great. That's a helpful overview. And, you know, when we kind of think about the timing of when we should start to see some of the benefits of those various initiatives flowing through more materially, you think, yeah, I guess, yeah, what's your perspective on timing there, I guess? I'll just leave it open-ended.

Yeah, no, I absolutely understand the question. I would say that we should be able to signal you at the end of Q1 where things are heading and then a more material impact going through the income statement you should see in Q2. That's our target.

Okay, great. So you mentioned the potential for recession or the more uncertain future. economic environment currently are you seeing anything in your any of your businesses that would indicate that they're being impacted by an economic slowdown or what's you know what's your overall view of the economy and potential impact going forward yeah so Kevin if you look at our historical performance

We typically, if you think about our business and break it down into property side of the business and casualty side of the business, the property side of the business typically does not get impacted by recession. As you can imagine, hail falling or wind blowing or rain coming down doesn't really look at what the economic environment is. So I think we expect that that part of our business should continue to perform just the way overall property market and the weather performs. I think 50% of our business, I would say, is casualty-based. which does have a strong tie-in to economic activity. So far, we have not seen any indicator in any of our markets related to a slowdown in economic activity. If anything, we continue to see higher levels of economic activity. As a result of that, we're seeing increase in claims volumes as we discussed in Broad Spire, which is the strongest indicator of economic activity for us in our portfolio. So we don't see any of that yet, but there's clearly a lot of discussion, a lot of talk about it. I'm sure if you saw the Wall Street Journal today, there were some large tech companies that were starting to do some retrenchment. So we're watching it carefully. We want to make sure that our balance sheet is strong, our financial health is strong, our liquidity is strong as we enter into 2023. And that's the reason you heard what the work that Bruce and team have been doing in strengthening that balance sheet.

Okay, yeah, that's helpful. Just wanted to circle back on one of the initiatives you mentioned there and have discussed is just pricing and wondering how you're feeling about traction and your ability to gain some pricing as you're kind of working on that initiative.

We believe that we enjoy a very strong relationship with our partners, whether on the carrier side, on the corporate side, or other sort of risk-bearing entity side. And as a result of that, we believe that when we have true transparent relationship health conversations, pockets where we do believe that we have pricing issues, we can have that conversation pretty robustly. So we believe that pockets of our business or specific client situations where we've got issues in the price adequacy of our business, we're addressing those and we're getting good support and traction from our clients. I have yet to hear or see that we've lost a client because of pricing where we needed price. So we feel good about that and feel that that traction should continue.

Okay, great. I wanted to ask also about your efforts to add specialist adjusters and certainly you mentioned that you're actually ahead of schedule on your goal of adding 200 or, you know, you're ahead of pace, I guess. Is that, can you first of all speak to what you think is driving your success and being able to add those specialists? And if you had the opportunity to, would you look to add more than that 200 goal or is that kind of a, number that you think gives you the right amount of capacity for your business overall?

Kevin, if you look at our strategic pillars, one of our strategic pillars is to have expertise that is deep and eminent. We believe that we are in the business of expertise, so having the right expert base on our bench actively serving our clients is extremely important to us. I don't think that 200 was a good target for us, but I don't have a problem if we exceed that target. because as long as we have the right client base and we can keep our staff utilized and productive, there's no reason why we shouldn't have that. Our people are our largest assets, and having the expertise just adds to that asset base that we have. In terms of why we've been successful in doing that, I would say three primary reasons. One is focus, to make sure that we're focused on adding expertise. Second is having the relationships that we have with clients that allows us to demonstrate and execute on that expertise, which enables experts to come join us and frankly deepen their own expertise, increase their own eminence, and continue that development. And third, I'd say the unique culture that we're building in the industry, which enables individuals to come in and really shine. We've always said that we're building a culture of growth, of a growth mindset and empowerment. And as experts join in and become part of the team, they feel that they can be at their best being part of our team. So those are the three big reasons, I believe, that we're seeing the traction that we have.

Okay, great. Just more of a financial housekeeping question here. What should we expect for... tax rate in the fourth quarter, roughly. You talked about some of the puts and takes related to the goodwill impairment, Bruce. I don't know if it's possible to provide any visibility there or not.

Yeah, you know, our tax rate's going to be a little funny looking given how the goodwill impairment is treated. It's not just treated as a a discrete item that just sits in the third quarter. The tax impact is spread over two. So we're going to expect about $12.5 million of tax expense to come in the fourth quarter related to that impairment. And that's why we mentioned the overall full-year benefit is $3.4 million on the impairment. Normally, but for the goodwill impairment, if you strip all of that noise out, we were kind of expecting our rate to be in the 31 to 32% range, which I think is a rate that's, you know, kind of safe to assume for, you know, normal course business.

Okay, great. And then lastly, in terms of the 25 million of new and enhanced business that you mentioned. That's another solid number. Should we think of that as mostly falling in broadspire? I guess that's how you can measure it most easily. Or is it a little bit more broad-based?

Hey, Kevin. This is Roy. I would say it's more broad-based. We've actually had good traction for new business throughout this year. and we expect that traction to continue. So it's a much more broad-based number than just Broad Spire. Obviously, you're absolutely right. Broad Spire business is a lot more quantifiable, but we have our ways in which we estimate the contribution from other lines of business as well. So this is a broad-based number.

Okay, great. Thank you for taking the questions.

Thank you, Kevin.

Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, should you like to ask a question, please press star followed by one. OK, there are no further questions at this time. I'll turn it back for closing remarks.

Thank you so much, Colin. Thank you everybody. I want to thank all of our employees, all of our clients, everybody who is working in Florida right now supporting supporting the policyholders who've been impacted. Our third quarter results reinforce our confidence in the future of the company, and we look forward to closing out 2022 on a positive and impactful note. As always, we wish you all well. Thank you, and God bless.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.