Hagerty Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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August 6, 2024

There are 6 speakers on the call.

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Hagerty Second Quarter 20 24 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Jay Kvaal, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss Hagerty's results for the Q2 of 2024. I'm joined this morning by Mikael Hagerty, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman and Patrick McClima, Chief Financial Officer. During this morning's conference call, we will refer to an accompanying presentation that is available on Hagerty's Investor Relations section of the company's corporate website at investor. Hagerty.com. Our earnings release, slides and letter to stockholders covering this period are also posted on the IR website as well as our 8 ks filing.

Speaker 1

Today's discussion contains forward looking statements and non GAAP financial metrics as described further on Slide 2 of the earnings presentation. Forward looking statements include statements about our expected future business and financial performance and are not promises or guarantees of future performance. They are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from our expectations. For a discussion of material risks and important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to those contained in our filings with the SEC, which are also available on our Investor Relations website and sec.gov. The appendix of the presentation also contains reconciliations of our non GAAP metrics to the most directly comparable GAAP measures that are further supplemented by this morning's 8 ks filing.

Speaker 1

And with that, I'll turn the call over to Mikheel.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Jay, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you taking the time to join Hagerty's Q2 2024 Earnings Call. As most car lovers know, summer is our golden time. The breezes are warm and curvy roads beckon. There are car shows and auctions in abundance including our Greenwich Concours in June and Car Week in Monterrey, California starting next week.

Speaker 2

Hagerty is built for these moments with our entire business model carefully curated around a shared passion for cars. This singular focus executed by our amazing team of professionals has allowed us to deliver high rates of compounding growth in revenue and profit. The rate and durability of that growth is powered by a great value proposition with excellent customer service from our team of 1700 Hagerty employees. This team's strong execution allowed us to exceed expectations for the 6th straight time this quarter and to upgrade our full year outlook as our business model begins to hit its stride, delivering written premium growth of 18% in the first half of twenty twenty four. This increase is on top of the prior year's first half gains of 17%, which was on top of 20 22's first half growth of 15%.

Speaker 2

Sustained mid teens growth positions us to double our revenue every 4 to 5 years. Business process improvements, cost discipline and smart technology investments should allow us to efficiently convert incremental revenue into increasing profits, driving margin expansion in the quarters and years to come. 1 Team Hagerty has never been better aligned and is only getting stronger including the recent hiring of Jeff Birlia as our President of Insurance. Jeff has a proven track record of strategic change management across a variety of business areas including insurance product development, claims, distribution, marketing, sales and customer service. His 22 years of experience and leadership will help us to identify additional opportunities to further improve our value proposition for auto enthusiasts by leveraging Hagerty's decades of data.

Speaker 2

We also announced last week that we have hired Sean McMullen from Amazon to become the SVP of our digital marketplace and valuation. Hagerty's online marketplace has enormous potential and Sean will help us to create an industry leading user experience for customers and to scale critical elements of the business. Let me share a few key highlights from our first half results shown on slide 3. This includes commission and fee revenue gains of 18% during the 1st 6 months in line with written premium growth and fueled by 8% growth in vehicle count Earned premium for our risk taking entity, Hagerty Reinsurance, jumped 26% due to written premium growth and last year's increase in quota share. Membership marketplace and other revenue grew 16% powered by 41% growth in marketplace due to higher revenue from live auctions and financing streams and the methodical ramp of Hagerty's online marketplace.

Speaker 2

First half profitability improved significantly over the prior year period with operating margins up 840 basis points. This margin improvement resulted in a $50,000,000 improvement in net income and a $39,000,000 jump in adjusted EBITDA. First half G and A declined 3% and salaries and benefits grew only 5% as we maintain a strong focus on cost discipline and driving operational efficiencies. Slide 4 is a reminder of our 2024 priorities including: 1st, improving loyalty to drive renewals and referrals, a highly profitable way for Hagerty to grow. 2nd, enhancing the member experience in a cost effective and efficient way, leveraging technology to reduce variable costs as we scale up.

Speaker 2

3rd, building Hagerty Marketplace in the most trusted and preferred place to buy, sell and finance collectible vehicles and 4th, increasing our flexibility and control over our underwriting profits, including the CNIC Insurance Company acquisition. We are proud of the great results we are delivering so far this year and would point out that this growth and margin expansion is on top of the gains we delivered in the first half of twenty twenty three. On a 2 year basis since 2022, we have increased first half net income by $41,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA by $70,000,000 Slide 5 shares some examples of how we are positioning Hagerty for a sustained multi year operating leverage and high rates of flow through beyond 2024. 1st, continue to utilize our marketing team to efficiently acquire new customers. 2nd, evolve our member service center to serve our members more effectively reducing handle times and freeing up resources for high rates of member growth.

Speaker 2

And third, identify potential savings within our claims organization to maintain our historically low combined ratio. Given the excellent results during the 1st 6 months and strong business momentum that has carried over into the Q3, we have increased our full year outlook for revenue and profit growth. We now expect revenue to come in between $1,160,000,000 $1,180,000,000 with net income of $76,000,000 to $84,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA of $130,000,000 to 140,000,000 dollars Improved margins and cash flow generation will enable us to continue reinvesting in our members and to create value for shareholders over the coming years. Let me now turn the call over to Patrick to go through the Q2 results and 2024 financial outlook in more detail.

Speaker 3

Thank you and good morning everyone. Let me walk you through our results for the 3 months ended June 30, 2024 shown on slide 67. In the Q2, we delivered 20% growth in total revenue to $313,000,000 Written premium grew 16% due to robust new business count and retention that improved to 89%. Commission and fee revenue jumped 17% to 129,000,000 dollars slightly higher than written premium growth on strong underwriting results. Membership, marketplace and other revenue increased 14% to $27,000,000 Our Broad Arrow team of automotive specialists is delivering strong and growing revenue across our live and private party sales, as well as higher financing revenue from our dedicated collateralized facility.

Speaker 3

Membership revenue grew in the mid teens offset by lower garage and social revenue due to the fewer locations post dissolution of the joint venture last fall. Earned premium grew 24% to $158,000,000 and loss ratio came in at 41%, a point below last year's Q2. We produced stable and highly predictable underwriting results, thanks to decades of experience insuring customers' special vehicles. Turning now to profitability shown on Slides 89, we reported a second quarter operating profit of 38,000,000 an improvement of $21,000,000 versus the prior year period, up 121%. Operating margins expanded by 5.50 basis points to more than 12%.

Speaker 3

We held G and A flat in the quarter. Salaries and benefits grew 8% as merit increases took hold in the 2nd quarter, along with higher accruals for incentive comp given strong year to date results. Adjusted EBITDA increased $19,000,000 year over year to $53,000,000 This is on top of the $18,000,000 improvement in EBITDA delivered in the Q2 of 2023, resulting in a 2 year stacked improvement of $37,000,000 On the bottom line, we delivered 2nd quarter net income of $43,000,000 compared to $16,000,000 a year earlier. Significantly improved operating margins drove the $27,000,000 improvement in net income along with higher interest income and the absence of last year's $3,000,000 restructuring charge. The change in fair value of our private and public warrants in the quarter was minimal and will no longer be an issue going forward following our successful exchange offer.

Speaker 3

Net income attributable to Class A common shareholders was $9,000,000 after attribution of earnings to the non controlling interest and accretion on the preferred stock. GAAP basic and diluted earnings per share was $0.09 based on 86,000,000 weighted average shares of Class A common stock outstanding. Adjusted earnings per share defined as consolidated net income before the change in fair value of warrants divided by fully diluted shares of 360,000,000 came in at $0.12 for the quarter and $0.16 for the first half of twenty twenty four. Operating cash flow in the first half of the year jumped from 71,000,000 dollars to $122,000,000 resulting in an end of June unrestricted cash balance of $121,000,000 versus long term debt of $98,000,000 dollars 41,000,000 of which is back leverage for Broad Arrow Capital's portfolio of loans collateralized by collector cars. We took some additional actions during the last few months to further simplify our business and focus precious resources on our highest and best use.

Speaker 3

First, in July, we successfully exchanged the $19,500,000 outstanding warrants for 3,900,000 shares of Class A common stock. This should help remove the noise in our net income and EPS going forward and eliminate the cost of valuing and accounting for the warrants. Given the warrant exchange, our fully diluted share count including preferred shares and unvested equity awards is now 360,000,000 dollars 2nd, we also expanded the borrowing capacity of our credit facility by $75,000,000 with the addition of a new bank Wells Fargo. Finally, we sold Motorsport REG, our motorsport event calendar and online management platform and created a long term marketing partnership with the strategic buyer, Corella Motorsports, who owns and operates motorsports events such as the SportsCar Vintage Racing Association, the Trans Am Series, Formula Regional Americas and Formula 4 in the U. S.

Speaker 3

Let me wrap up with our 2024 outlook shown on Slide 10. As Mikhail mentioned, we increased our outlook for total revenue growth to a range of 16% to 18% powered by 14% to 15% growth in written premium. High rates of top line growth combined with operational efficiencies and the benefits of scale should continue to drive operating leverage. We now expect net income of $76,000,000 to $84,000,000 up roughly $15,000,000 from the outlook we shared on our Q1 call and equating to year over year growth of 170% to 198%. Adjusted EBITDA is now expected to be $130,000,000 to $140,000,000 representing growth of 47% to 59%.

Speaker 3

In summary, we are executing well on our plan to deliver high rates of compounding revenue growth, margin expansion and cash flow production. And we are on track for 11% to 12% adjusted EBITDA margins in 2024. But we believe the best is yet to come as the investments in our people and technology should result in 30 plus percent incremental margins from 2022 to 2024 and position us to drive margins significantly higher over the ensuing years. With that, let us now open the call to your questions.

Operator

Your first question comes from Mark Hughes with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Yes. Thank you. Good morning. Hey, good morning, Bill. The hiring of Sean McMullen to run the digital marketplace, Anything you can say about kind of his early priorities, what you envision there as he takes over?

Speaker 2

Well, hey, thanks. It's a great question. We're really excited to have Sean join the team. His experience at Amazon, he was responsible for a lot of different areas in Amazon. Most recently, the Amazon Music division has been to knit together a lot of the complexities of a big platform like Amazon.

Speaker 2

And one of the things we're excited about is we know digital marketplace in and of itself is an important thing for us. We have we think it has a lot of promise and we're looking forward to it continuing to expand. But the secret sauce for us is going to be how it knits together with all the other tools in our toolbox, so valuation, our Speed Digital acquisition, those types of things. So he's going to be looking at both of those things, how do we continue the march of the core underlying growth and then how do we knit the pieces together.

Speaker 4

Understood. Thinking about the you've just had this very strong consistent growth in written premium. As you think about it now versus 12 months, 24 months ago, just kind of pricing impact in the market, your strategic relationships with other carriers, kind of what are the is that evolving and changing? What has have you observed over the last 12, 24 months?

Speaker 3

Mark, it's Patrick. I'll handle the price one and then Nikhil can talk about where things stand with our partners. Overall market pricing, we think this year is going to end up something per daily driver is something like up 10% or so as companies continue to take rate. And that compares to us at we think it will end up being something like up 3%. So we are taking rate and that is a benefit for us and that continues in 2024, but we're just doing it at a much lower rate.

Speaker 3

And we think that that's part of why we're able to grow so quickly. The value prop for our customers because we understand the risk and how to price it is really compelling.

Speaker 2

And I guess I would add to that what we're hearing from our partners is we all know they're it's regulated business. They have to get everybody has to get their pricing right. We're really required to make sure that we're delivering profitably. And a lot of that action is working its way through the industry, although early indications are that it's the

Speaker 3

rate

Speaker 2

just the rate increases in general push people out there to shop and we've definitely benefited from that. And so because we're when it comes to well, gee, somebody might have 3, 4, 5 cars and one of those is a special car that maybe is better insured by us, We get a benefit from that when there's a lot of rate taking going on out in the market. So as it levels off, for us, it's sort of backed up business as usual, do what we do well, communicate about the value proposition and keep celebrating the cool cars that people own and the agents who need to bring them to us.

Speaker 4

Patrick, you talked about the 30% incremental margin. You've had tremendous expense leverage. Is that kind of a good target on a go forward basis? You said you think you're positioned to drive significantly higher profitability. Is 30% a good ratio?

Speaker 3

I think what we've communicated so far is we'll be at that kind of level we think for full year 2024 and that's consistent with the guidance. We do expect there to be continued margin expansion on a go forward basis. In terms of where that shakes out for next year, we'll communicate that early next year when we give guidance. But as we've talked about on these calls, we've turned the corner and we've gotten to profitability in the aggregate a little bit last year and more meaningful this year. And but we're not where we need to be, right?

Speaker 3

We think that the overall business should end up being something in the high teens, maybe getting close to 20% overall operating profit margin. And that will take us another couple of years, 2, 3 years to get there. So we do expect there'll be continued expansion.

Speaker 4

Thank you very much.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Mark.

Operator

Next question comes from Pablo Cixin with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Hi, good morning. The tax rate came in good morning. The tax rate came a bit below what we were expecting. The tax rate came a bit below what we were expecting. Was there anything unusual this quarter?

Speaker 5

And how should we think

Speaker 3

about the go forward tax rate? No, nothing unusual this quarter. And I think on a go forward basis, it should be consistent with where we've been. I don't yes, there's nothing quirky that I could point to.

Speaker 5

Okay. And then on interest and other income, right? So I think there is interest expense and then there's actual invested income. Did that line improve pretty strongly on a sequential basis, right from about $7,000,000 to $12,000,000 sequential. What drove that?

Speaker 5

And how should we think about that contribution of the P and L going forward?

Speaker 3

So we have started producing a lot more cash. A lot of that is just the expansion of the margins. A lot of it is the renegotiation of our arrangement with Markel, where we now get paid our CUC and we shifted it from being all paid in sort of in arrears the following year to now it's paid for the most part on a monthly basis. So that's been a big positive cash flow swing. So the amount of cash we have to invest within the MGA and within Hagerty Reit continues to build.

Speaker 3

And so a big driver is we just we're talking about more invested cash. And then the other is just the rate environment. And so relative to where we were in previous years, we've been able to get around 5%, sometimes north of 5% earnings on those cash balances. We did implement a new investment strategy and that kicked off April 1. So the results of that aren't really reflected much in the numbers yet.

Speaker 3

They will be going forward. And to put it simply, previously we were entirely invested in cash and now we've moved to a strategy where we're invested overwhelmingly in investment grade bonds. We have some exposure to other asset classes. But the simple way to think about it is before we were essentially entirely exposed to short term interest rates because we're invested in cash. We've now pushed out our duration a bit, it's kind of 2 to 3 years versus being cash like.

Speaker 3

So we think that we've simply moved on to the efficient frontier, right, where we're actually taking less risk, but should be able to produce better returns going forward.

Speaker 5

That makes sense. And just a quick follow-up on that point, Patrick. So 2Q was $12,000,000,000 of income. Would it be fair to assume that you don't back off that level, right? Are you just thinking about cash balances and where rates are, right?

Speaker 5

There shouldn't be any reason why you should start to go back from the $12,000,000 baseline in 2Q, right?

Speaker 3

No. That's as we sit right now, obviously, the interest rate environment is pretty volatile right now, and so things may move around. But I think it's a reasonable assumption for the balance of the year.

Speaker 5

Got you. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. I would like to turn the floor over to Mikael Hagerty for closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you, operator, and thanks to all of you for your continued support and interest in Hagerty. We've carefully curated the Hagerty brand over the last 4 decades for car lovers, and we have a long runway ahead of us as we help members to protect, buy, sell and enjoy their prized vehicles. We have multiple legs to our profit growth, including high growth distribution business and evolution in our control over underwriting profits, a membership offering that drives engagements and retention with excellent net promoter scores and a growing marketplace that is fast becoming the trusted and preferred platform for people to buy and sell collector cars. Bring them all together and we have the recipe for success that positions us well to further penetrate the $46,000,000 collector car opportunity in the United States, delivering durable profitable growth year after year. Next week, we will be in Monterrey, California, one of the largest automotive events in the world where the stars and the cars all come together.

Speaker 2

For those that haven't yet been, it's an incredible opportunity to enjoy the auctions, including our own broad aero 2 day sale at the Monterey Jet Center, car racing at Laguna Seca, and of course, the signature Pebble Beach Concours D'Elegance on August 18th. We hope to see you there and until then never stop driving.

Operator

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. And thank you for your participation.

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