Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (NYSE:AJG) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Yaron Kinar: I apologize, I had some technical difficulties. So I hope I’m not asking stuff that’s already been asked. With regards to Eastern and Cadence, do they have any different seasonal patterns? I think you touched on growth on the margin profile. But I’m curious if that margin profile kind of holds true to what you see in brokers already throughout the year.

Patrick Gallagher: No, there’s no seasonality.

Douglas Howell: Yes. Remember, we’re seasonally larger primarily because of our benefits and because of our reinsured business, our P&C business is fairly steady throughout the year over the 4 quarters. And maybe it’s 23% on one quarter and 27% another, but we’re not getting the wild swings like you do in reinsurance and employee benefits.

Yaron Kinar: Got it. And do either of those deals fall any vertical space that you were looking to boost stop? Or is it more of a geographic play? What’s the rationale there?

Patrick Gallagher: Mike, go ahead.

Michael Pesch: Yes, this is Mike Pesch. So I would say both of them are — in their geographies are strong where we are maybe strong in other industries. So in Cadence, in their perspective, we do a lot of public entity in the mid-south region, and that’s not one of their strengths. But they do a lot in construction and manufacturing. So it complements us really, really well. It’s one of the reasons we like them so much. Eastern is the same way. If you look in New England, New England is heavily weighted towards life sciences, technology and D&O, and they balance that book considerably with a lot of other industry verticals, including construction. So it is very much a complementary business to each of those areas.

Yaron Kinar: Got it. And then one quick one to end up. Corporate expenses were quite high this quarter. Were there any one-offs there?

Douglas Howell: I think when you look at it, if you look at the adjustment — if you look at it on an adjusted basis, there were some tax and litigation items when we adjusted that out. On an adjusted basis, it’s kind of noisy. Comp might be up $3 million or $4 million. I think we’re a little further ahead on our corporate bonus accruals than we have been in the past. And when you look at operating expense, it looks down considerably on an adjusted basis, but that’s the FX remeasurement gains that you’re seeing. So if you’re looking at it on a pretax basis on an unadjusted basis, that’s what you’ll see in there. But there’s nothing fundamentally underlying our expense structure in the corporate segment.

Patrick Gallagher: Well, thank you again, everyone, for joining us this evening. To our 50,000 colleagues across the globe, thank you for your hard work this quarter and every quarter. Our operational and financial success is a direct reflection of your efforts. And as pleased as I am with our third quarter performance, I’m even more excited about our future, future organic prospects, future M&A opportunities and our ability to become more productive and increase quality. We look forward to speaking with the investment community in person at our IR Day in December. Thank you again, everybody, and have a good evening.

Operator: Thank you. This does conclude today’s conference call. You may now disconnect your lines at this time.

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