Progressive Corporation (The)

Good morning and thank you for joining us today for Progressive Third Quarter Investor Event. I'm Doug Constantine, Treasury Controller and I'll be moderator for today's event. The company will not make detailed comments related to its results in addition to those provided in its annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and the letter to shareholders which have been posted to the company's website. Although our quarterly investor relations events often include a presentation on a specific portion of our business, We will instead use the 60-minute schedule for today's event for introductory comments by our CFO and a question-and-answer session with members of our leadership team. The introductory comments by our CFO were previously recorded. Upon completion of the previously recorded remarks, we will use the balance of the 60-minute schedule for this event for live questions and answers with members of our leadership team. As always, discussions in this event may include forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to many risks and uncertainties that can cause actual events and results to differ materially from those discussed during today's event. Additional information concerning those risks and uncertainties is available in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024, as supplemented by our Form 10-Q for the first, second, and third quarters of 2025, where you will find discussions of the risk factors affecting our business, safe harbor statements related to forward-looking statements, and other discussions of the challenges we face. These documents can be found in the investor relations section of our website at investors.progressive.com. To begin today, I'm pleased to introduce our CFO, John Sauerland, who will kick us off with some introductory comments. John?

Good morning, and thank you for joining Progressive's third quarter 2025 investor relations call. We had an excellent quarter with an 89.5 combined ratio, 10% premium growth, and policies enforced growth of 12% versus a year ago. That policies enforced growth equates to 4.2 million more policyholders, or almost 7 million more vehicles enforced than a year ago. While growth is lower than in recent years, we are still gaining significant market share and capitalizing on the opportunities for growth through robust media spend and competitive rates. Year-to-date, our combined ratio is 87.3, with 13% premium growth and comprehensive income of $10 billion, which is over 30% ahead of 2024. Rounding out our key performance metrics, our trailing 12-month comprehensive return on equity stands at 37.1%. Before moving to questions, we'd like to take a moment to offer more commentary on the $950 million estimate for policyholder credit expense for personal auto customers in Florida that we recognized in September. Florida is Progressive's largest market, and we are the leading provider of personal auto insurance in Florida. In 2023, Florida legislators responded to rapidly rising insurance rates by passing House Bill 837, which, among other things, moved Florida to a modified comparative negligence system meaning drivers who are more than 50% at fault for an accident could no longer sue for damages, and disallowed one-way attorney fees. Since House Bill 837 took effect, our average loss costs, or pure premiums, for Florida injury claims are down between 10 and 20%, and the percentage of Florida personal injury protection, or PIP, claims for which we receive lawsuits is down around 60%. While we have been responsive in reflecting these changes in our lost costs through two rate reductions for Florida consumers in the past year and another plan for December, the drop in lost costs was more pronounced than we expected. Additionally, obviously, there is significant risk of very costly storms in Florida, and we have seen virtually none in 2025. The Florida Excess Profits Law calls for the return of profits in excess of 500 basis points better than our filed and approved underwriting profit margin over a three accident year period. And at quarter end, we estimated that liability at $959 million. For perspective, in 2022 alone, inclusive of Hurricane Ian, our personal auto combined ratio was over 100, And those results translated to around a $750 million decrease to the excess profits equation for the periods that included 2022. Our Florida auto business is more than 50% bigger now than in 2022. We applaud the legislative changes in House Bill 837 and the resulting more affordable personal auto insurance premiums for consumers and desire to continue to grow our presence in Florida. Our loss reserves will continue to develop as we handle more claims into the new system. And our estimate for the policyholder credit expense for the 2023 to 2025 period will develop accordingly, with monthly adjustments showing up in the expense line on our income statement. Naturally, going forward, our intent is to manage profitability in Florida to avoid excess profits. And finally, in response to questions we received, While a few other states have statutes covering excess profits, we don't currently foresee other similar exposures. Thank you again for joining us, and we'll now take your questions.

This concludes the previously recorded portion of today's event. We now have members of our management team available live to answer questions. Questions can only be submitted over the phone by pressing star 1 on your keypad. In order to get to as many questions as possible, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. We also ask that you use your string re-entering the queue to ask additional questions. We will now take our first question.

The first question is from the line of Bob Wong with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi. Hi. Good morning. My first question is on advertising spend. Ad spending this quarter in terms of dollar amount is fairly similar to the last quarter. Just given the increased competition, policy-enforced growth has decelerated, specifically in personal auto. Curious if there's a way to think about ad spending going forward. Clearly these policies are very profitable. Do you need to maintain the current level of ad spending in an increasingly competitive environment? Just curious how you should think about ad spending going forward.

Yeah, Bob, we monitor that every month on an ongoing basis. Monitor, most importantly, efficiency. So we want to make sure our cost per sale is lower than our targeted acquisition cost, and that remains to be the case. So Pat Callahan and his team, we do a lot of our buying of advertising internally. They look at it, you know, overall for a year, things you have to buy in advance. But ongoing, we have the lever to increase or decrease, depend on competition. That's what we'll continue to do. Again, our operating goal is to continue to grow as fast as we can, and advertising is a great lever to reach that goal.

Okay, thank you. Maybe just clarifying that point a little bit. When you say that you kind of have – you're buying ads 12 months in advance, does that mean that essentially for the next 12 months your ad spending is more or less set already, and there's some levers around that, or is it just – that most of it still is kind of not so certain. I just wanted to see if there's a clarification on that point.

No, we'll do some buys in advance to get some discounted buys, but a big majority of the ads that we buy are in the auction, and that's where we can have the levers to pull back or go forward that you've seen in the last several years.

Okay, got it. Thank you very much.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Elise Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks. Good morning. My first question, I was hoping you could just comment just on the competitive environment in general and what you observed in the Q3 and I guess like a forward view, right? We've, you know, seen others, you know, pivot to growth as we've moved through the year and just how has that impacted, you know, that combined, right, with the fact that we're in this, you know, environment where, You know, you guys said in the queue you don't need that much rate right now. How does that, you know, help you formulate your view about growth, right, both, you know, in the near term, like in the fourth quarter, but then also as we think about 2026?

Thanks, Elise, and thanks for acknowledging your report last night that we had strong growth in Q3 of 24, because I've been comparing the growth and the fact that we've slowed is sort of – funny to me because of how much we've grown on such a big base. So I appreciate you acknowledging that. So yeah, the competitive environment has gotten stronger, which we knew would happen. That's why we got out in advance of rates to capture all the growth that we did. And we did. This is when the fun starts. So competition is great. It's great for customers and consumers. And so we'll continue to find ways with which to grow. We have a lot out there in terms of as we look at each state, each channel, different factors in terms of Sam's, Wright's, Robinson's, and we have a strategy to grow all of the above. And probably the biggest, you know, growth point for us, Elise, is when we think of Robinson's. So we want to grow in every single persona. So we love Sam's as long as we can make our – our calendar year profit, but we want to grow Robinson's because that market is about a $230 billion addressable market, and we have a low percentage of that share. So there's a lot of opportunity. I'll probably go into a little bit more detail than you need, but I think as you think about not just fourth quarter, but especially as we get into 26 and 27, an area of our focus will be more Robinson's because we're in such a different position than we were a few years ago. So as you know, you know, we needed – rate increases. We needed better segmentation. We needed some cost sharing to go into the policies. We needed to exit DP3. There's a lot of things that we did that I referred you a couple different times of our five-point blueprint to get to where we need to go to. We did just that. We increased rates from 22 to 24, about 55%, and continue, but on a much more moderate level because we're in such a different position. Our calendar year combined ratio now on properties about a 78. And some of that is favorable reserve development as well as we haven't had many storms at all in 2025. But that is a great position to be in. And so as we think about our growth, we think about we have a framework with us that we're using called a new business readiness growth. And we look at the assessment of Adequate rate level, segmentation, so which product is in the market, cost sharing, interstate diversification, regulation of market conditions. And when we look at all those factors, what we look at state by state is where do we want to grow and where we think we can grow and how are we positioned in those states. So currently there's about 30 states, 33 states where we want to, we're going to spur on growth. And about 20 of those are in our growth states that we've called growth states, and 13 are in more volatile. We'll be a little bit more conservative in the volatile states, but that really opens us up broadly for more Robinsons, for more growth. And as you can imagine, in John's opening statement, he talked about this, vehicles in force, which we don't publicly talk about. We talk about PIFs. But when you compare the 4.2 million PIF growth year over year, That equates to about 7 million VIF growth. You can imagine that VIF growth with more Robinsons is much higher because they're multi-car and multi-product households. So competition's there. We have a lot on the horizon to spur on growth, and we're pretty excited about it.

Thank you. And then my follow-up is just, I guess, on margins and tariffs. You know, it seems like from the Q commentary that you guys shared, really have not seen an impact yet. So I just want to make sure I'm reading the comments correctly. And then do you guys still expect that perhaps we could see an impact on lost trend and margins as we move through the balance of the year?

Yeah, you read that exactly correct. We haven't seen much on that. It might be because there's inventory. And of course, the tariff schematic has changed along the way. But we're looking at low single digits And we have the margins to be able to absorb that, so we're not too worried about tariffs at this point. And, of course, that could change, but at this point, we're not too worried about it.

Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mike Zurimski with BMO. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning. My first question is on hopefully teasing premiums per policy, when we just kind of, you know, crudely divide premiums by PIF, and this is for personal auto, you know, it's been slightly negative for a while now, which appears to be different from the kind of the flattish pricing you've been speaking to. So trying to tease out whether, you know, the negativity is coming from just some of the Florida rate reductions? Is the December one going to be a large one if you want to preview that? Or is it coming from just other actions you're talking about, policyholders switching to lower cost policies, et cetera? Thanks.

Yeah, I think, Mike, there's a lot of things happening. Our average written premium is affected by our rate decreases. And obviously, it went up tremendously in 23 into 24 with all of the increases that we took based on inflation. You know, I think, you know, I think the reaction, you know, might be a little bit on growth, although 12% PIF growth on a 14% PIF growth to me is really unheard of. And anytime we're in anywhere near that double-digit growth, we're pretty darn excited. At an 89.5 with the $950 million accrual. So the Florida situation is, is just that. And we're going to tell you what we know when we know it. So as John said, we'll continue to revise our accrual as the year plays out. So in a couple weeks, you'll know if the accrual has gone up or down for October. And then, you know, there are sometimes late year storms. I think in 2024, Helene and Milton were both in September and October. So we'll watch those. But, you know, I feel really good about where we're at. I mean, if we had a crystal ball in Florida, we might have done things differently. But I think we have handled that really well. We're very large. They're the largest. And as John said in his opening statements, I, and I've said this before, I'm going to commend Governor DeSantis and Commissioner Yawarski for this legislative change with House Bill 837. It really has had a profound and a momentous effect on the state of Florida's insurance market. And I I've been in this business about 38 years. I would never imagine these changes and how great they are for the benefit of Florida consumers. So, you know, we'll continue to watch that. But I think from a premium per policy, we're always going to be competitive and segments change. And that kind of all goes into the map.

Okay. Okay, got it. Maybe pivoting to... your remarks about share buybacks potentially being a bigger lever than historically. Can you talk about the framework there? You know, should we, are you alluding to the special dividend being put into buybacks instead of current valuations or both or anything, any color would be helpful.

Yeah, when we have excess capital, we think of it in three ways, and obviously I just talked a little bit when I answered Elise's questions about our desire to continue to grow and our actions around that. And then, of course, we look at share buybacks if we believe it's under our intrinsic value. Of course, we always buy enough shares to dilute the stock compensation in any given year. We have the ability to do that, and you'll see in our monthly release, The actual number of shares we buy back each month as well as the average price and so you'll see that in a few weeks as well We have a ten a company-wide ten be five one that we file with certain price points to buy back stock if we think it's under our value and so you'll see You know our actions that we took in October in a few weeks and then we've been in you know party discussions with the board of directors and last couple meetings and on what we think, you know, could be a dividend. And, of course, that will ultimately be their choice, and we'll have another conversation in December. And, you know, with that, we'll kind of be watching our ability to buy back more as well as what we think if we have a dividend, what it will be. But those are conversations that are constantly happening within our walls and with our board of directors.

So just, Tricia, just to be clear, were you signaling a change in capital management tone by stating the buyback language, or are you saying this is just business as usual discussion with the board?

Thanks. All I was saying was that we're very cognizant when we believe the shares are under our intrinsic value, and we typically, if we have the capital, take action when that happens.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Tracy Bengeke with Wolf Research. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I have a question about your Florida excess profit statute. When you perform the same exercise next year, let's call it September for acting years 24 to 26 to see if you owe any excess profits in early 27, Is there a scenario where you'll be paying another Florida excess profit statute given all the favorable reserve development you experienced in the state in recent years? Or do the excess credits you're paying in 26 basically neutralize a lot of those excess profits that you could owe in 27?

Well, you know, we don't know. And we're going to, as I said earlier, we're going to continue to refine our accrual as each month goes by for this three-year trailing period. It's, you know, and at that point at the end of this year, we'll know the sort of fully, like you said, neutralized amount for that. And, you know, so the hard part, and we've tried to signal this about Florida, is The storm season is typically at the end of the year. So we're putting another decrease in in December. We'll watch that closely. I think John said we'll, you know, do what we can to avoid a similar situation in 27 for calendar year 26, 25, 24. But we feel good about where we're at right now with the accrual, and we'll continue to revise that.

Okay. And you said that Florida auto business is more than 50% bigger now than in 22, and you're managing the profitability in Florida to avoid those excess profits. And you took two rate cuts, and you're going to take another one. So my question is on bundling. Can you share how much of your homeowner policies have grown in Florida and how you're thinking about your property exposure relative to your risk appetite?

Yeah, you know, our property growth in Florida has been minimal. Several years ago, we reviewed our policies in Florida to get to where we are in terms of our readiness growth. We had a lot of DP3. We had a lot of coastal properties. And so we had a lot of non-renewals that we gave to another company to be able to write. We will write a little bit in Florida now, mostly new construction properties. That's a place where, like we say when we talk about volatile states, that we will not have huge aggressive growth, but we'll grow where we think we can and make our target profit margins. But the growth in the property book has not been huge.

Thank you for confirming.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jimmy Bowler with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Good morning. I had a question just on competition and personal auto. Most competitors have been increasing marketing spending in recent months. Many have alluded to potential price reductions as well, just given strong margins. So your comments on competition, is that what they reflect, or are you seeing competitors get more aggressive with pricing and riding business either with sort of implied losses or very low margins? Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say.

I think we're seeing all of the above. I think we're seeing a lot of, you know, we saw a lot of price decreases. We've seen more increase in advertising, and I think that all goes to competitiveness. I think we think that's good for consumers. And when we think of, you know, when we think of the strategic pillars, that's one big piece of it. But you have to have a really great brand, and our brand has continued to evolve and will continue to evolve to get us on that short list. You have to have, for us, broad coverage, where, when, and how customers want to shop. And we have that across the board from our independent agent channel, our direct channel, and then we have multiple different areas with which to buy our products or the products of our unaffiliated partners. And then, you know, we have – and this is sometimes underestimated because part of what's been Progressive's success is our people and our culture. That's really hard to put on a spreadsheet for an analyst. We just finished our Gallup survey. We were in the 99% of culture and engagement. That's really important because when you have times where you want to get something done, whether it's growth or decreased expenses or, you know, roll out a new product, execution is the name of the game, and you have to have a great, culture to be able to do that because people want to be able to rally around a singular goal. So those four things we think about all the time. But as far as competitive prices, we're seeing increased advertising and much more competitive pricing out there.

Okay. And then maybe on a different topic, if I think about your commercial line business, I would have thought that it would be growing at a fairly fast lift since you were expanding your target market, broadening coverage, adding new types of coverages, policies. And if we look at the numbers the last couple of years, they've been high single digits, which is decent, but high single digits, premium growth the last couple of quarters, I think premium growth has actually been negative off of modest comps. So how do you think about, like maybe talk about your aspirations or growth potential of your commercial lines business over the longer term?

Yeah, I think longer term, we have great aspirations. Clearly, FHC has been a headwind. It's higher margin business, but we have slowed growth there, a lot due to both rate and non-rate actions. We've increased our growth in business owners and contractors, which are a lower premium, and we've done some six-month policies. So what you're seeing is real in the data. However, I think you're correct. We have a couple areas. that we have grown over the years and really wanted to understand them more deeply. And we have pretty complex plans to spur on growth in a couple different areas. I'm not going to talk about those today. I'll talk about those maybe as we get into them more specifically. I don't want to show my cards. But, yeah, we believe that the runway in commercial lines continues to be really strong.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Gregory Peters with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Good morning. In your letter and in previous comments, you've talked about new products, your personal auto product 8.9 and 9.0, and then in the property area, your next-gen product 5.0. So, as we're sitting here on the outside, watching these developments, trying to understand what does personal auto product 9.0 mean versus product 8.9, and is the difference that material? And the same question would be applied to the property next generation product, too.

Yeah, that's a great question. First, I would say we're not very creative when we name our new product model, so I'm going to give you that because you'll see we're on 50 and 501 in property, 8991. I'm going to let Pat take that, but what I would say is years ago, probably around 2016 maybe, we decided that we really wanted to have the pace of our models increase to get more and more variables out there that are predictive of of either lost cost or if we wanted to increase a certain segment like the Robinsons. And that's why we end up doing that. And I don't think we're going to go into the specific variables, but I'll let Pat talk about that a little bit more because we have very large R&D groups that work on these product models constantly. Pat, you want to add anything?

Sure. So from a product perspective, we try to do a couple things every time we roll out a new product. And the first is primarily to match rate to risk better than we did in a prior product. And insurance is a scale game. We have more data than most competitors and our product is more complex. So we have more segmented or finite data than virtually all competitors in market. So that data enables us to solve what predicts and fits losses more precisely or more accurately than others can. So the first and foremost is to match rate to risk. Second, though, is to introduce differentiating coverages that meet consumers' needs to transfer risk to us as the carrier to smooth household cash flows. So a couple of examples of that between 8.9 and 9.0. So 8.9, we introduced progressive vehicle protection. Think of it as a mechanical breakdown of coverage for vehicles that supplements a new car warranty and provides things like lost key fob and dent and ding repair, as well as supplementing the OEM warranty as a powertrain warranty or bumper-to-bumper warranty kind of runs off on a new car. In 9-0, similarly, we come out with new segmentation where we solve all the math and the factors to fit the loss curve more precisely. while also introducing with 9-0 embedded renters. So now you can embed and buy a renter's insurance coverage as part of your progressive auto policy. So we recognize that renter's insurance is a potential gateway product for us in the property space, and we want to make sure that we are attracting multi-line customers early in their insurance shopping and buying journey, and we want to protect their property household goods as part of a renter's product and allow them to move them into a home or a condo as they change their living situation. So really a couple of things we do with every product, but primarily it's solve the math to make sure we're as accurate as we can leveraging our massive scale and secondarily get that product to market, as Tricia mentioned, as quick as possible.

Thanks for the detail. It's a follow up question. I'm going to focus pivot to technology and autonomous driving. You know, the new cars coming out have a lot of embedded technology. Some of them actually can drive themselves to locations. The new Tesla I'm thinking about in particular. So I think it's appropriate for us to, you know, as we think about progressive, you know, what's your view on this technology, emerging technology. And in, you know, in that moment in time, maybe 15 years from now, when we get to a fully autonomous type of environment, can you, can you talk about how the company's thinking about that and, and any color that would be helpful?

Yeah, we've been watching this for many, many years. I think we first did our first what we call runway model in 2012 and to try to understand, okay, the implications of cars that are safer. First of all, safer cars are better for the world, so we think that's a great thing. And I think we build that into our product as we think about vehicles that have safer components, just like you would have at any time with, with seatbelts or backup cameras, those sorts of things. So we're continuing to revise our model. In fact, we're in the midst of doing it right now to try to understand when that will impact us. And we see a lot. We, you know, gather a lot of data. We see a lot of data. Even when you compare, like, the Waymo cars in Austin and we look at our relationships with TNC, we have not seen too much of a change. And the change is there with pretty heavy Waymo use. has not muted TNC miles. So we're continuing to watch that, getting as granular as we can. But at a higher level, you know, what we did years ago is we constructed the three horizons to really understand how we can grow across the board, not just in where we've typically grown in our private passenger auto and our commercial auto, which we're still going to continue to do. But that's when we really built our commercial lines product models out. So think of BOP, fleet, our relationships with our TNC partners, and many other things. And then, of course, our Horizon 3, which are smaller now but we believe will be bigger in the future. We're going to continue to look at that. We call it Execute, Expand, Explore to make sure that we have a really robust model as cars get safer and as frequency goes down. And we'll watch that and make determination of what we need to do to continue to grow. And we talk about this all the time because it's It's important for society, but it's also important for us to know areas where we can grow, where we can leverage our people, our data, our scale to grow in different ways, and that's what we talk about as we think about autonomous vehicles. You know, the time frame is always sort of the big question mark, because if you look at articles in 2012, it would have said everyone's driving around playing bridge in the back of their car in 2019, and that hasn't been the case. So we still think there's a lot to go. Again, we don't have our heads in the sand, and we'll continue to think about growth in different areas.

Thanks for the answer.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Alex Scott with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. First one I had is on shopping and retention. I was just interested if you could compare sort of the time period where you're taking bigger increases or the industry is taking bigger increases in the shopping activity that was going on then, you know, in sort of reaction to higher prices as opposed to maybe what you're expecting over the next 12 months on retention related more to, well, you could shop and go get a lower price potentially somewhere. Are you seeing different kinds of sensitivity to that? you know, relative to up in pricing versus potential for down?

Yeah, I mean, I think we're seeing a lot of shopping, which means all customers are going to shop, including ours, and you see that in our PLE. Our feeling is, as we talked about in the queue, you know, oftentimes our customers will reach out to us and we can do a policy review with our cancer preservation team to see if There's something we can do to help them out from a price perspective. If we end up writing a brand-new policy that starts the clock ticking, so that is a little bit of a headwind to PLE, but not when we think about our consumer life expectancy or our household life expectancy. When you look at that, we don't share that data externally. We share PLE. But if you look at our, say, household life expectancy of having a product that's progressive, that's relatively flat. So we feel decent about that. Now, if you shop and you end up leaving us, we believe that is just adverse selection because we believe we have the most current up-to-date price. As Pat talked about and I talked about briefly, our models are constantly changing and revising them to make them more specific to rate versus risk. And if you end up leaving, we believe that we have more data than wherever that customer is going to in terms of profitability. Okay.

Got it. That's helpful. And then going back to the capital discussion, I mean, M&A was something you didn't mention as much relative to like the buyback and variable dividend conversation. And just in light of that conversation you had on autonomous and potentially expanding into other products and so forth, I mean, how does M&A fit into that? How do you think about M&A over a little bit longer of a time period? And why would you use a really strong capital position now to explore that?

I mean, M&A is really complicated. We've done a couple of acquisitions in the last 10 or so years, and they were very specific. So we bought ASI, which is now Progressive Home, because we wanted that bundled customer and access to that customer, especially in the agency channel. We bought Protective a few years ago to increase our fleet capacity, and we'll continue to kind of close the gap on that on the commercial lines part. But acquisitions can be tough and integrations can be tough. So we want to make sure it's the right company, the right culture, and something that can be additive. So if we think, you know, we want to grow and there's a company that has a bunch of private passenger auto that we believe we can get anyway, I'm not sure you want to pay the premium on that. That said, we have a group, a corporate development group, that's always scanning to look to see if something makes sense. And, you know, we always want to have dry powder in case something comes up. But, again, that's something that I think every company does, including us, in terms of just making sure we're on the growth trajectory. John, do you want to reiterate sort of our capital structure and how we think about regulatory contingent nexus? Yes.

Sure. So M&A would be one deployment of excess capital. In our minds, reinvesting capital in the core business is always the first option that we pursue, as obviously our returns in that space have been very good. We also obviously consider, to previous discussions here, the dividend and buyback. And as Tricia noted earlier, as we believe the stock is below what we view as fair market. We will be in market buying back shares when we have the capital to do so. And obviously right now, our capital position is robust. So, you know, we are, as Tricia noted, we have a corporate development team. They're constantly looking at opportunities. And as she said, those opportunities would be focused on expanding the breadth of offerings for Progressive and less so around adding to our core products is our market share growth has shown pretty consistently that we can acquire that business efficiently and effectively in the marketplace, and we think that's the better way to go.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Josh Schinker with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my question. A couple of things. I'm looking at the Travelers numbers and the Allstate numbers and Hartford's, and I have some guesses around Geico's numbers, looking at what they've done. And it doesn't seem like they're growing very quickly as Progressive's net policy count growth has decelerated. I'm not looking for you to name names. Maybe you have some thoughts on where the business is churning to, whether it's mutuals, whether it's smaller competitors who are – stronger than they've been in the past, whether it's direct business that's going to agencies. Where do you think the churn is moving towards?

Well, I think that, you know, and I won't talk specifically about competitors either, but there have been competitors that were, you know, all captive and now have access to a nonstandard independent agent channel. There's competitors that were only direct that are trying to get into the agency channel. We've always been broad, so that's really the beautiful part about our growth and trajectory, and that's an important part to make sure we are where customers are. And so I won't talk about where things are coming from, but, again, I have to reiterate, our growth is substantial based on the best year in the history of Progressive. So much of that growth, you know, comes to us. And so we feel great about that, and we'll continue to grow. And I think I've – said this the last couple of calls, I wanted to make sure as we compare ourselves to the best year in the history of Progressive that we're pragmatic about the fact that we still grew PIPSC 4.2 million year over year, which is substantial, especially at the margins that we have. So that gives us the opportunity to continue to spur on growth, especially with our efficiency around our media spend.

Thank you. And then changing gears a little bit and following up on other questions, from 2007 to 2019, the dividend program at Progressive was pretty formulaic. We could play at home using game share month to month to figure it out. And then I think in 19, you said there's opportunities for investment that you don't want to be forced into that paradigm. And it became less possible for us to follow along. And now, Wisely, you said when the stock is attracted to us, we would also be repurchasers of that if that were the right thing to do. Is there any formula or way that investors can think about the transparency of capital return the way it was prior to the 2020 year?

Probably not. That was pretty formulaic, and we were, you know, one of the reasons we changed that to go from the gain share was that we were experiencing high growth, and we needed that capital to grow, and so we didn't want to have something that we needed to pay out when the better use of that capital was to grow the firm, which is what we were doing over those years. But that program worked well during that time frame, but no longer served us. I mean, how you can think about it is, you know, we have a lot of capital right now. The board will make a decision, as we do in our 10b-5 ones for stock buybacks. The board will make a decision to make sure that, you know, we think about that and the best use of it and the best use of any capital returns to our shareholders. Can't give you a formula because, again, we do want to have dry powder. We want to make sure that we've thought of a bunch of contingencies. But I think that's sort of what I try to say in my letter is that we feel like we have excess capital at this juncture.

I might add a bit on that, Josh. So you all recognize our regulatory capital needs. So historically we've been in the three to one range for our personal lines businesses, personal auto business, excuse me, and about half that for home. You might have noted in the queue that we now have approval in a couple key markets to move to three and a half to one, predominantly for our personal auto businesses, but a fairly broad approval so we can move operating leverage higher. So you can do the math around what required surplus is necessary. And when we do that math, we look forward, of course, and we expect to grow. And then we have that contingency capital layer that doesn't change based on that regulatory layer. And that is intended to ensure that we, on a model basis, have a very low percentage chance of needing additional surplus. Capital in excess of that, again, we first want to reinvest. But secondly, we look to dividends and buybacks to the extent we feel our stock is undervalued. But you can come to a pretty close estimate of what we consider capital in excess of regulatory and contingency, and that would be the capital from which a variable dividend would come. Now, what portion of that is up to ultimately the board, but that is a good way to frame what a variable dividend or first excess capital would be, but secondly, what a variable dividend would be.

Thank you for all the additional color.

Thanks, Josh.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Paul Newsome with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for the call. I was hoping you could give us a little bit more thought on and information on the severity trend for auto, both the private passenger and commercial auto businesses. It looks like severity is accelerating a little bit in personal auto and a little bit more about why that may or may not be happening. And similarly, in commercial auto, you've got some peers who have had some pretty significant troubles in that line. Any thoughts on where you may or may not be experiencing similar trends for them?

Yeah, Paul, that's a good question. Just as a reminder, when we look at severity trends, we report out incurred. And a lot of our competitors report out in paid. So as an example, when you look at our PD from quarter 324 to 25, it appears to be about 7%. We had a large decrease in reserves in quarter 324, about 2.5 points. So that would be about 4.5 points versus the 7. So that's where it might be a little bit different comparison. BI continues to be, specials are outpacing, attorney rep, meds are up, and actually some states that minimum limits have gone up. So we feel like industry severity, we're pretty close to the industry on the private passenger auto side. On the commercial line side, I feel like we are in a better position than most of our competitors. We got ahead of rates. The severity is up, but again, same sort of thing with you've got high limits, you've got attorney reps, but we feel good about where we're at from a margin perspective and our ability to grow perspective as well.

Maybe a second question and a different one. Could you talk a little bit about the level of telematics and whether or not we're getting to or at least closer to a point where That is a more mature part of what the professor does in terms of usage and the ability to license.

Yeah, I mean, telematics has always been a key part of us understanding. I threw out some specific data that we have on our OBD device. I think I did, at least on – I guess maybe I didn't. It was on frequency. We know from our OBD device that – vehicle miles traveled have been down about 4% in the quarter. So those are kind of things we can point to as we try to dissect and attribute frequency and severity changes. It's, you know, we have our mobile device, which is the majority of what people choose now in 47 states. So we feel like it's a really powerful part of our variables. And more importantly, For customers that drive safely, it is really an ability to lower your insurance rates pretty substantially. And so that's really the main component of it. And we learn a lot. We have many, many, many miles. How many miles do we have now, do you think? Billions? Yes, a lot of miles. A lot of data. And so it will continue to be a big part of it. I'm not sure if that answers your question.

No, I was just trying to get a sense of whether or not we're getting to a point where, the amount of folks that are using the telematics is at where you can sort of a maximum given how, you know, certain percentage will never use it right. So, just whether or not we're getting towards the maturity of the product itself.

I think we have an opportunity to increase that specifically on the agency channel is what I would say.

Yeah, what I would add to that is, you know, telematics is a really predictive rating variable. but it's not one size fits all. So we continue to collect data, we continue to innovate, and we continue to refine how we use that data against what you would expect to see from similar drivers and similar vehicles to rate more accurately. So telematics is a broad brush, and while we're seeing strong consumer adoption, and I think your intuition there is that consumers are getting more comfortable with telematics, monitoring on a continuous basis, which, as Tricia mentioned, is just a great way to modify their own behavior to control their insurance costs. But we are not standing still by any means. We have an entire team that leverages larger and larger data sets on a continuous basis to refine how accurately we can use it to ensure that people are getting the most competitive price that's personalized for them and how they drive.

And one thing I'll mention, which is a little bit further afield but important because it's important for consumer safety, is we have the ability to understand if people have been in accidents and whether they need a tow truck or an ambulance, I think is a really key important part of feeling like you're cared for as a customer with our snapshot devices or mobile devices.

Thank you. Appreciate the help very much.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ryan Tunis with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning. I just had a follow-up on what's going on in Florida and wanted to know if I'm thinking about something right. But clearly, that's been an important market for Progressive. I think you guys have top market share there by a mile. I guess my perception has always been an important reason for that is it's a tricky market to underwrite. But talking about listing some of the tort reforms, it sounds like it's become a more insurable market. So, I guess my concern would be just like any state where you have meaningful amounts of tort reform, it kind of creates a lever for competition to come in. So, I'm wondering if I'm thinking about that right or if it's something maybe that's unique to Florida that we wouldn't necessarily see in some random state like Minnesota. Thanks.

Yeah, I think, you know, every state has a little nuance. When you said Minnesota, I went to their high-tip coverage. You know, so I have, like, all my thoughts of every state. I think, you know, the fact is that it will be more competition because of the tort reform. I think that's good. But, again, we are so well ahead of it because, you know, it's been our biggest state for a long time, and we feel really good about it, and we feel great about serving our the consumers of Florida, and we want to grow there. So we're going to continue to grow, and having the right rates and the right legislative changes is going to make that, I think, better for everybody, but most importantly, consumers.

Got it. I better shore up my knowledge on Minnesota. Sorry about that, Tricia. But the follow-up is, you mentioned in the 10Q, there's this dynamic of customers replacing existing policies with new progressive policies. I was just curious if that had a meaningful impact on the new issued app number.

Yeah, I think it does and meaningful on the PLE numbers because this is a very unusual dynamic that's been happening. I think I've heard in other calls it's happening with some of our competitors. So, yeah, I don't have the specifics for you. But, you know, I think customers are super sensitive right now. We get it. We're doing our best to keep rates stable, lowering rates when it makes sense, when we believe that we can grow in certain demographics. But I think it's meaningful kind of across the board.

Yeah, I think the ultimate metric, Ryan, is PIP growth. So, yes, you're right. To the extent we are rewriting more customers, those we do report as new customers. But at the end of the day, the PIF count and the VIF count to previous conversations I think is what you should look at in terms of our growth and our market share.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of David Oatmaiden with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. Good morning. I was hoping just to touch a little bit on pricing and I was a little surprised the stable pricing that you put through in the third quarter just given how strong the margins are even if we put in sort of like a normal catastrophe loss level for the auto business. Is this something that you guys are considering. Is there something on the horizon that would prevent you from doing this? It didn't sound like you were concerned really about tariffs, but just trying to get you just a sense for how you're thinking about potentially lowering price to accelerate growth and also improve retention.

Yeah, we absolutely have been thinking about that. We were more conservative, I think, when the tariffs came out. And so now that that seems today to be more certain, we are a little bit less concerned, of course, that could change. I think we decreased rates in about 10 states in this quarter, increased rates in about six. So we're very surgical on channel, product, state. But we do want to grow. And so we will look to that for both growth and retention. in terms of reducing rates. We just want to make sure, because of the competitive environment, that if we get something for that. So that, you know, you don't want to reduce your margins and not get growth. So we're trying to be, like I said, really surgical in each state of when we think we can get growth, and that unit growth is important. And so we know we have some margin to play with, and that's really what we're talking about now at every individual state and DMA level.

Got it. Thank you. And then maybe sort of a higher level question, just as we think about the impact of collision avoidance systems and ADAS as it penetrates the fleet more and more. You know, I don't think, you know, I'm sort of looking at ISO data. I think for 10 years up until 2019, industry frequency was pretty flat. And now when I sort of look, you know, since 2019, we obviously had COVID in there, but it's a pretty substantial decrease. So I'm wondering if you can, you know, think of like, just maybe just talk about, you know, unpacking some of that decline and improvement in frequency that looks like it's still continuing and sort of how we can think about that as impacting the longer term growth of the business.

Yeah, I can't predict the future, but take away that kind of couple years during COVID because things were so strange with driving. You know, frequency has been going down for the last 50 years. And as vehicles get safer, as laws around DUIs and other things get more stringent and have gotten more stringent, I think that's a really good thing. Now it's been offset and then some by severity. And that's been where, you know, when you look at, the models, we, you know, we have, when we do our models for our runway, we look at that and severity has increased well more than frequency. And so, you know, we'll continue to see what happens in terms of parts, the ability to repair vehicles, the ability to have talent that can actually repair those vehicles as they get more complex. And those are things that You can't predict, but we look at those all the time, and we're deeply looking at those right now as we think about our next three-year strategy.

Got it.

Thank you. Cars on the road. I'm sorry. I was just going to add that the number of cars on the road has also increased. The average age of those vehicles has increased. So all those factors, in addition to the pure premiums or the frequency and severity, affect the size of the marketplace. And the marketplace actually has grown significantly. faster than we had anticipated when we first started assessing the long-term runway or market size of the personal auto marketplace.

Got it. No, thanks. That's interesting. Yeah, it definitely feels like, I mean, I think it was like 07 until 2019, industry frequency was flat. So, like, if we look at it over a a 50-year timeframe to this point, you know, it's definitely still down. But, like, there is definitely an air pocket in there where the industry was benefiting from, like, flattish frequency. And so, yeah, just something I'm sort of thinking about. But I appreciate the answers there. Thank you.

Thanks, David.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Brian Meredith with UBS. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. Hey, Trish, the first one, and this is, I know, it seems like it comes up every quarter, but on the PLE drop, can you talk maybe a little bit, is it mixed-driven this quarter that's kind of dropping everything, or is it kind of across all the cohorts that you're seeing the drops in PLE?

I think it's probably more pronounced than SAMS. I'm not quite sure, but I think it's mainly across the board. I think everyone's shopping. And, you know, when we look at our mix of businesses in terms of even growth, as you look through our queue and think about just our prospects and conversion, you can see that even though that's relating to consumers coming in, we think that has an impact. Do you want anything, Pat?

Yeah, it's pretty much across the board but driven by difference. aspects in that, you know, SAMs are obviously more price sensitive and, you know, household costs are rising. On the Robinson side, we certainly have taken some action to redistribute our book and to limit access to our property product at some agencies, which has an effect on where they place that business and whether it retains with us. So we are seeing it more broadly, but yeah, more broadly.

Great. Thanks. That's helpful. And just a second question. If I look at where your premium was in the third quarter, and granted, I understand it's a calendar year, so it's not exact here, and versus average written premium for policy, there's a pretty meaningful kind of spread difference, which would imply some, you know, pretty meaningful margin compression here going forward, granted from very attractive, you know, margins you're seeing right now. As you think about kind of going forward and what you're looking at, is that something you're anticipating? Is it, you know, your margins will compress your personal auto insurance, you know, going forward here closer to the target level?

I mean, I think it depends on if we can get the growth for that. So, you know, our operating goal is to grow as fast as we can at a 96 or, you know, or lower. We're obviously well in advance of that. We've had some conservative markets. baked in because of tariffs and some other things. But, you know, yes, we could see it compressed if we believe we can get that growth, and we're always kind of managing that tradeoff. But, you know, I believe, you know, that's an accurate statement going forward because our ultimate measure of growth is units, so PIFs and VIFs, as we talked about today. And we'll do what we can to continue that growth because, you know, Again, if we have a plan around our property, the more auto we can get in there, the more bundled we can get in, sort of a nice circle. So we're going to do what we can to grow as long as it serves us in terms of our target profit margins and our operating goal that has been in place for decades.

Makes sense. Thanks for the answer.

We've exhausted our scheduled time, and so that concludes our event. Those left in the queue can direct their questions directly to me. Alyssa, I will hand the call back over to you for closing scripts.

That concludes the Progressive Corporation's third quarter investor event. Information about a replay of the event will be available on the investor relations section of Progressive's website for the next year. You may now disconnect.