Essent Group Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
February 9, 2024

There are 7 speakers on the call.

Operator

Thank you for standing by. My name is Eric, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Essent Group Limited 4th Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer Thank you.

Operator

I would now like to turn the call over to Phil Stefano, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Eric. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our call. Joining me today are Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO and David Weinstock, Chief Financial Officer. Also on hand for the Q and A portion of the call is Chris Curran, President of Essent Guaranty. Our press release, which contains Essent's financial results for the Q4 and full year 2023, was issued earlier today and is available on our website atessentgroup.com.

Speaker 1

Our press release includes non GAAP financial measures that may be discussed during today's call. A complete description of these measures and the reconciliation to GAAP may be found in Exhibit O of our press release. Prior to getting started, I would like to remind participants that today's discussions are being recorded and will include the use of forward looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, projections and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially. For a discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please review The cautionary language regarding forward looking statements in today's press release, the risk factors included in our Form 10 ks filed with the SEC on February 17, 2023, and any other reports and registration statements filed with the SEC, which are also available on our website.

Speaker 1

Now let me turn the call over to Mark.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Phil, and good morning, everyone. Earlier today, we released our Q4 and full year 2023 financial results. Strong credit quality and resilience in the housing and labor markets continue to drive favorable credit performance, while higher interest rates investment income growth and elevated persistency during the year. Heading into 2024, we remain constructive on a long term outlook for housing As the supply and demand imbalance and favorable demographic trends should provide foundational support to home prices. Even though sentiment has improved for a soft landing on the back of our buy, manage and distribute operating model, we believe Essent is well positioned.

Speaker 2

And now for our results. For the Q4 of 20 23, we reported net income of $175,000,000 compared to $147,000,000 a year ago. On a diluted per share basis, we earned $1.64 for the 4th quarter compared to $1.37 a year ago. For the full year, we earned $696,000,000 or $6.50 per diluted share, while our return on average equity was 15%. As of December 31, our book value per share was $47.87 an increase of 16% from a year ago.

Speaker 2

As of December 31, our U. S. Mortgage insurance in force was $239,000,000,000 a 5% increase versus a year ago. Our 12 month persistency on December 31 was 87% and nearly 75% of our in force portfolio has a note rate of 5.5% or lower. Despite the recent shift lower in rates, we expect persistency will remain elevated in 2024.

Speaker 2

The credit quality of our insurance in force remains strong with a weighted average FICO of 7.46 and a weighted average original LTV of 93%. Regulatory guardrails implemented after the global financial crisis have significantly improved industry credit quality and performance while embedded home equity in our insurance portfolio should mitigate potential claims. During 2023 in light of higher mortgage rates and lower mortgage origination volume, we continue to focus on supporting our customers while expanding our franchise. Despite the challenging environment, we successfully activated 108 new customers and continue to leverage EssentEDGE to optimize our unit economics and deliver our best rates to borrowers. Our Bermuda based reinsurance entity, SNRE had another strong year performance writing high credit high quality GSE risk share business and expanding its fee based MGA services.

Speaker 2

SNRE ended the year with annual third party revenues of approximately $80,000,000 while our 3rd party risk in force was $2,200,000,000 Our title operations incurred a pretax loss of Approximately $4,000,000 in the 4th quarter similar to last quarter, we remain focused on integrating title while implementing risk controls and improving operational efficiency. The Essent Ventures team continues to invest in funds, gaining insights to improve our core business while enhancing financial returns. As of December 31, the carrying value of other invested assets is $277,000,000 and ever to date these investments have created $74,000,000 of value. Cash and investments as of December 31 were $5,700,000,000 and our new money yield in the 4th quarter remained over 5%. For the full year of 2023, our investment yield was 3.5% compared to 2.6% in 2022.

Speaker 2

Net investment income was $186,000,000 in 2023, up approximately 50% from 2022. New money yields in our investment portfolio continue to run ahead of our book yields, which should contribute to future revenue growth. As of December 31, we are in a position of strength with $5,100,000,000 in GAAP equity, access to $1,400,000,000 in excess of loss reinsurance and over $1,000,000,000 of available holding company liquidity. With a full year 2023 operating cash flow of $763,000,000 At a mortgage insurance underwriting margin of 77%, our franchise remains well positioned from an earnings, cash flow and balance sheet perspective. As evidence of this in January S and P upgraded the financial strength ratings of our 2 primary operating entities Essent Guaranty and Essent Re to A-.

Speaker 2

With this upgrade, we reached a milestone of A- or higher financial strength ratings by all rating agencies that cover Essent Guaranty and Essent Re. During the year, we continue to execute our diversified and programmatic reinsurance strategy while retiring the majority of 2 season Radnor Re ILN deals that no longer provided economic or regulatory capital credit. In the Q4, we closed in excess of loss reinsurance transaction Covering our 2023 NIW. At year end 2023 approximately 93% of our portfolio is reinsured. Our strong financial performance and capital position enable us to take a measured approach between capital retention, Investment and distribution.

Speaker 2

In 2023, we repurchased approximately 1,500,000 shares for $66,000,000 Further, I'm pleased to announce that our Board has approved a 12% increase in our quarterly dividend at $0.28 per share. Looking forward, we will continue to review our common dividend annually. We believe paying a dividend is a meaningful demonstration of the confidence we have in the stability of our cash flows and the strength of our operating model. Now let me turn the call over to Dave.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. Let me review our results for the quarter in a little more detail. For the Q4, we earned $1.64 per diluted share compared to $1.66 last quarter and $1.37 in the 4th quarter a year ago. Our U. S.

Speaker 3

Mortgage insurance portfolio ended 2023 with insurance in force of $239,100,000,000 an increase of $417,000,000 from September 30 and an increase of $12,000,000,000 or 5% compared to $227,100,000,000 at December 31, 2022. Persistency at December 31, 2023 increased to 86.9% compared to 86.6% at the end of the 3rd quarter. The net premium yield for Q4 2023 excuse me, net premiums earned for Q4 2023 was $246,000,000 and included $17,200,000 of premiums earned by Essent Re on our 3rd party business and $17,400,000 of premiums earned by the title operations. The average base premium rate for the U. S.

Speaker 3

Mortgage insurance portfolio for the Q4 was 40 basis points and the net average premium rate was 35 basis points in the Q4 of 2023 with both consistent to last quarter. We expect that The average base premium rate for the full year 2024 will be largely unchanged from the 4th quarter rate of 40 basis points. Net income increased $3,500,000 or 7% in the Q4 of 2023 compared to last quarter due primarily to an increase in yields on new investments and higher yields on cash and cash equivalents. Other income in the 4th quarter was $6,400,000 compared to $5,600,000 last quarter. The largest component of the increase was the change in fair value of embedded derivatives in certain of our third party reinsurance agreements.

Speaker 3

In the Q4, we recorded a $412,000 increase in the fair value of these embedded derivatives compared to an $898,000 decrease recorded last quarter. The provision for loss and loss adjustment expenses was $19,600,000 Q4 of 2023 compared to $10,800,000 in the Q3 of 2023 $4,100,000 in the 4th quarter a year ago. At December 31, the default rate on the U. S. Mortgage insurance portfolio was 1.8%, up 18 basis points from 1.62% at September 30, 2023.

Speaker 3

For the full year 2023, we've recorded a net provision of approximately $32,000,000 as the increase in new defaults was materially offset by favorable reserve development from strong cure activity. Other underwriting and operating expenses in the 4th quarter were $55,200,000 and include $11,600,000 of title expenses. Expenses for the Q4 also include title premiums retained by agents of $11,500,000 which are reported separately on our consolidated income statement. Our consolidated expense ratio was 27% this quarter. Our consolidated expense ratio excluding title, which is a non GAAP measure, was 19% this quarter.

Speaker 3

A description of our consolidated expense ratio excluding title and the reconciliation to GAAP may be found in Exhibit O of our press release. We estimate that other underwriting and operating expenses excluding title operations will be approximately $180,000,000 for the full year 2024. The effective tax rate for full year 2023 was 15.4%. Income tax expense for the 4th quarter includes a $2,700,000 net benefit associated with the recognition of a deferred tax asset for unrealized losses On the investment portfolios of Essent Group and Essent Re upon the enactment of the Bermuda corporate income tax. For 2024, we estimate that the annual effective tax rate will be approximately 15.5%, excluding the impact of any discrete items.

Speaker 3

As Mark noted, our holding company liquidity remains strong and includes $400,000,000 of undrawn revolver capacity under our committed credit facility. At December 31, we had $425,000,000 of term loan outstanding with a weighted average interest rate of 7.11%, up from 7.07% at September 30. At December 31, 2023, our debt to capital ratio was 8%. At December 31, Essent guarantees PMIER's efficiency ratio was strong at 170% with $1,400,000,000 in excess available assets. Excluding the 0.3 COVID factor, the PMIER sufficiency ratio remains strong at 165 with $1,300,000,000 in excess available assets.

Speaker 3

At quarter end, U. S. Mortgage insurance business statutory capital was $3,400,000,000 with a risk to capital ratio of 10.2:one. Note that statutory capital includes $2,300,000,000 of contingency reserves at December 31. Over the last 12 months, U.

Speaker 3

S. Mortgage insurance business has grown statutory capital by $198,000,000 During the Q4 and full year 2023, Essent Guaranty paid dividends of $55,000,000 $295,000,000 respectively to its U. S. Holding company. For 2024, the U.

Speaker 3

S. Mortgage insurance companies can pay ordinary dividends of $304,000,000 During the Q4, Essent Re paid a dividend of $60,000,000 to Essent Group. Also in the quarter, Essent Group paid cash dividends totaling $26,400,000 to shareholders, We repurchased 302,000 shares for $15,000,000 under the authorization approved by our Board in May 2022. Now let me turn the call back over to Mark.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Dave. In closing, we are pleased with our Q4 and full year 2023 financial results, which continue to reflect the strength of our operating model. Our high credit quality portfolio combined with resilience in housing and employment continues to translate the strong credit performance, while our franchise benefited from the impact of higher rates on investment income and persistency. Our strong operating performance continues to generate excess capital, which we will approach in a measured manner between retention, investment and distribution to our shareholders. We believe this approach is in the best long term interest of Essent and our stakeholders, while Essent continues to play an integral role in supporting affordable and sustainable homeownership.

Speaker 2

Now let's get to your questions. Operator?

Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Rick Shane with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Hey, Mark. Thanks for taking my questions. And I appreciate your enthusiasm for taking the questions morning. I suspect it's from my peers, not from me

Speaker 3

that you're so excited that you want to hear the question.

Speaker 2

Hi. You were first on the list, got us excited.

Speaker 4

There you go. That's a rough day, Mark. So it's a kind of a High level question. I was on a call yesterday where the theme of the call was rate higher for longer. And we're clearly At a crossroads and I don't think anybody really knows what's going to happen.

Speaker 4

One of the things that I'm really wrestling with is when I think of Essent and when I think of the sector, what are the scenarios that you think are the best And what are the scenarios that you think are the worst? I mean, it can't be a heads eye win, tails eye win scenario. What are you worried about and what's the ideal path forward from here?

Speaker 2

Well, remember, Rick, I mean, taking a step back, right, rates get all of the press, But really credit is what drives our performance longer term. So if you just think through and forecast out our business over the next 3 to 5 years, The real expenses are we manage them well and you can kind of see where the insurance in force is going to grow relative to the industry. Investment income, that will ebb and flow depending on kind of where rates are, it's the provision. It really has the most volatility in it. So when I think of kind of 2024, it's hard to tell what rates in terms of where the market's going.

Speaker 2

I'm not sure it's Everyone said it was higher for longer until the Fed spoke in December, then it became rates are going lower. I think from an Essent perspective, right, I think we're well positioned in that. We're probably levered a bit positively to rates going down. If they don't and the reason why is 45% of our book, Rick, is still in that 2021 vintage, which is It's a little bit over 3%. So it's not really going anywhere.

Speaker 2

So if rates go down NIW increases, I'm not The persistency goes down in tandem the way kind of a normal hedge just because of the unusual kind of lock in effect of that portfolio. If rates stay higher for longer, yields stay high, cash the persistency in the book stays higher. We continue to generate cash And the important thing for investors is we continue to grow book value per share, right. So I've heard a lot of things around growth. We're growing book value share.

Speaker 2

And if you just think about investment income for a second, Rick, we grew that $60,000,000 year over year. If you were to equate that to insurance in force, it's close to like $20,000,000,000 increase in insurance in force, just say $20,000,000,000 at 40 basis points base yield at a 35% combined which again just shows you there's different avenues for us to grow at Essent versus just kind of looking at the insurance in force. So I'm not going to say there's a hedge we win, tails we win scenario. I would just say from a what are we concerned about, it's still credit. It's always credit.

Speaker 2

I'm not too worried about rates because I think again a lot of this is going to balance out. Credit is what we have our eye on and I think there as long employment stays strong, I think we're in relatively good shape going into 2024.

Speaker 4

Got it. Okay, very helpful. Thanks, Mark. Sure.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Bose George with KBW. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Hey, good morning, everyone. This is actually Alex on for Bose. Firstly, just wanted to get a little more color surrounding why the cure rate of 28% was lower this quarter. It looked like had been trending down from 90% in the Q4 last year to 62% in 3Q. Is there anything specific that led that to decline sharply this quarter?

Speaker 2

No, Alex. And again, I would caution investors to dig too far into new default rates, cure rates, Percentage growth, we've seen we've heard a lot of those questions. And just big picture, Alex, We're at 14,000 defaults on 820,000 policies and we've been relatively consistent around defaults. There's a lot of noise in the defaults and the claims, more on the default side because of the effect of forbearance, Right. So take a look at forbearance.

Speaker 2

Really the frictionless forbearance just ended a month ago. So what you're seeing is you're seeing defaults come There's certain strategic defaulters that they're getting a year extra on forbearance and then they're curing. So there's a lot of noise between the cure rates and the It's what it really is, is noise. And now that there is a more of a friction With forbearance in terms of what borrowers have to show, I would expect that to normalize in the coming kind of 12 ish to 18 months, it remains to be seen. But I think the message for investors is defaults are still the absolute level of defaults even the default rate is, it's pretty low.

Speaker 2

I think it's 1.8% at the end of the 4th quarter. It was 1.6% something the quarter before, but still relatively good and I think that the credit performance continues to be strong.

Speaker 5

Got it. That makes sense. And then maybe just one more. Wondering if you could provide any updated color on pricing in the industry. I know you mentioned earlier that you all expect the base premium to be stable over the course of the year.

Speaker 5

But in the event the economy does have a soft landing and remain strong, is there any chance we see some downside pressure on premiums or not really?

Speaker 2

No, I wouldn't expect that. I think again given the flexibility of the pricing engines, it really has given the entire Again, I think I mentioned this last quarter, a lot of the pricing power per se has moved to the industry versus the lenders, right? I mean, in the old rate cards, it was the lender had a lot of control, Whether it was bidding things out or allocating based on other services, now it's really the best rate for each borrower. All the MIs have picked their spots and given where some of the pricing engines and data that we get in industry, we can see a lot of the movements in the percentages. And I think everyone else can too.

Speaker 2

So we all have a pretty good beat on it. And I think we price for unit economics and the industry kind of reached a pretty low point in early 2022. Pricing came up and we generally look at 12 ish to 15% returns on basis, I would say they're probably closer to the upper end now. It's pretty good. But I think it's well priced given kind of the nature of the risk.

Speaker 2

So I wouldn't in a small market, that or relatively smaller market, we see pretty consistent pricing. I'm not sure As the industry starts to if there is a soft landing and the market starts to grow, I wouldn't see a lot of change in pricing. In fact, It's rarely a discussion point anymore, even at the lender level because it's and that used to be all about pricing because they saw it. They don't really see it. They're focusing on other things.

Speaker 2

And like I said, it really allows the Essent and the rest of the industry to price on risk, delivering our best rates to borrowers and it's kind of removed that a little bit from the equation around from our standpoint.

Speaker 5

Great. Thanks for taking the questions, Mark. Appreciate it. Sure.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Doug Harter with UBS. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Thanks, Mark. Kind of hearing what you said about the risk of reading too much into kind of 1 quarter, Can you just talk about how kind of the recent vintages are performing and how delinquencies And those trends are performing versus kind of more historical vintages?

Speaker 2

Again, I think there's a lot of noise, Doug, with kind of the forbearance. We don't see I'll give you I'll tell you one thing that we see, early payment defaults, right. Early payment defaults post COVID are higher than they were pre COVID. We assign most of that to forbearance because a lot of us they're all curing and they're not going to claim. So it's back to what I said earlier about that frictionless cost or ease of forbearance is really Creating some noise in the numbers, but again step back Doug, our insurance in force average FICO is 746.

Speaker 2

I mean, and I know you cover a lot of different businesses, specialty finance. 746 is a pretty strong credit score. And also, I would like to point out just in the context of time, right. If you think about when the GSEs really start the modern day GSEs started in right around the early 90s, right? That's when DU and LP started the process and you had the standardization of the mortgage business.

Speaker 2

So if you go back from say 1990 to 2023, 33 years, Doug, and you look at losses on GSE mortgages Generally outside of the 'five to 'seven advantage, they're less than 100 basis points. So in the context of time and this is what we ensure every day. And then remember post crisis, you had the advent of QM, you had the strengthening of the models, you had stronger QC, you had forbearance, You brought on PMIERs, which is good capital standards for the MI industry. We insure boring GSE mortgages, it's and it's a boring business and it's great and we like it that way. But that's why when people are looking at These type of quarter to quarter trends, it is a little bit more of a specialty finance type approach to the business in terms of the questions.

Speaker 2

And I would argue that we're more like a specialty insurer. Our specialty happens to be mortgage and that's our expertise. But we're really a portfolio business. It's driven by the portfolio. And again, just When you think about the top line that's being driven off the business and just the stability of the credit I forgot to add that we've hedged a lot of the credit out too.

Speaker 2

So there's that added layer of protection. Again, bigger picture of these, I think we've said it in the script, over $700,000,000 of operating cash flow. The issue for the Mi industry the next few years isn't going to be the performance of the portfolio or growth or any of those sort of things. It's really going to be allocation of capital.

Speaker 6

There's

Speaker 2

a lot of capital being generated by Essen and others and certain MIs will allocate it one way and certain MIs will do it the other way, but that's really going to be the differentiator and the business longer term from an investor perspective. So hopefully that gives you some color.

Speaker 6

I appreciate it, Mark. Thank you.

Operator

I'll now turn the call back over to management for Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining and you may now disconnect.

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