BRP Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:BRP) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

BRP Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:BRP) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 7, 2024

BRP Group, Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.3304 EPS, expectations were $0.51. BRP isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, greetings, and welcome to The Baldwin Group First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Bonnie Bishop, Executive Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Bonnie Bishop: Thank you, operator. Welcome to The Baldwin Group first-quarter 2024 earnings call. Today’s call is being recorded. First quarter financial results, supplemental Information, and Form 10-Q were issued earlier this afternoon and are available on the company’s website at ir.baldwin.com. Please note that remarks made today may include forward-looking statements subject to various assumptions, risks, and uncertainties. The company’s actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by such statements. For a more detailed discussion, please refer to the note regarding forward-looking statements in the company’s earnings release on our most recent Form 10-Q, both of which are available on the Baldwin website.

During the call today, the Company may also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. For more detailed discussion of these non-GAAP financial measures and historical reconciliations to the most closely comparable GAAP measures, please refer to the company’s earnings release and supplemental information, both of which have been posted on the company’s website at ir.baldwin.com. I will now turn the call over to Trevor Baldwin, Chief Executive Officer of The Baldwin Group.

Trevor Baldwin: Good afternoon and thank you for joining us to discuss our first quarter results reported earlier this afternoon. I’m joined this afternoon by Brad Hale, Chief Financial Officer; and Bonnie Bishop, Executive Director of Investor Relations. Our first-quarter 2024 results represented one of the most complete performances we’ve seen across the business since going public, showcasing broad-based revenue momentum, in tandem with robust margin expansion and improved free cash flow generation in the wake of the expense rationalization initiatives completed in 2023. All three of our segments achieved double-digit organic revenue growth, resulting in overall organic revenue growth of 16%. Adjusted EBITDA grew 29% year-over-year, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 26.7%, a 280 basis points expansion over the first quarter of 2023, and free cash flow from operations grew 51% in the quarter to $53 million.

As we discussed on our last earnings call, the business is rapidly approaching a real inflection point. We are four quarters away from satisfying substantially all our outstanding earn-out obligations; the result of which, will be a step function increase of our free cash flow profile. We generated organic revenue growth of 11% in the first quarter. This was largely fueled by record new client wins, which were up nearly 90% over the first quarter of 2023, driven by increased collaboration across the firm, made possible by our integrated platform that enabled broad-based accessibility to expertise, pools, and resources. We also saw rate and exposure, which had been a headwind in the fourth quarter, returned to more normalized levels and serve as a slight tailwind for the quarter, albeit down meaningfully from what we saw in the first quarter of 2023.

Our GCTI segment grew organic revenue 21% in the first quarter, driven by continued strength in our multifamily and home products, which has persisted into the second quarter. And growing contribution from the commercial property and high net worth homeowners’ products we launched in late 2023. Our MIS segment had a strong quarter, with organic revenue growth of 24%. The durability of our embedded homebuilder distribution strategy via our Westwood platform, delivered superior new business and retention results, despite continued weakness in housing sales, and our national mortgage and real estate operation continuing to scale rapidly. As we have discussed over the last few quarters, we have implemented strategies and procedures to deepen our focus on efficiency and to simplify and optimize our operating model.

On May 1, we took another meaningful step towards accomplishing that goal, with the announcement of our brand transition to The Baldwin Group. In connection with which, our public entity changed its name from BRP Group, Inc. to The Baldwin Insurance Group, Inc. With our partnership integration work largely complete, a unified go-to-market brand that enables us to more clearly and efficiently convey the capabilities of our firm to all of our stakeholders is a natural evolution. Importantly, we believe the combined brand will yield revenue cost and cultural synergies going forward. As part of our rebranding strategy, we are also changing our Nasdaq ticker symbol to BWIN. The ticker symbol change will take effect on May 20. In summary, we are extremely pleased with our results for the first quarter and for the exciting opportunities that lie ahead for The Baldwin Group.

Our largely completed integration work will now enable us to increasingly leverage the full value of our talent and technology advantages, which have driven our continued industry-leading organic growth and accelerating margin and free cash flow expansion. I want to thank our nearly 4,000 colleagues for their tireless dedication and commitment to all of our stakeholders, as they manage a dynamic insurance marketplace and transformative period for our firm. As the economy remains resilient by many measures, there are still challenges for many of our clients as they navigate economic uncertainties. We are grateful for our clients who placed their trust in us for advice and solutions, which deliver the insurance protection and risk mitigation vital to their businesses and livelihoods.

We continue to work tirelessly on your behalf, simplifying complexity to protect what’s possible. With that, I will turn it over to Brad, who will detail our financial results.

Brad Hale: Thanks, Trevor, and good afternoon, everyone. For the first-quarter, we generated organic revenue growth of 16% and total revenue of $380 million. We generated double-digit organic revenue growth in all three segments, with IS coming in at 11%, UTCS at 21%, and MIS at 24%. We recorded GAAP net income for the first quarter of $39.1 million or GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.33. Adjusted net income for the first quarter, which excludes share-based compensation, amortization, and other one-time expenses, was $65.3 million or $0.56 per fully diluted share. A table reconciling GAAP net income to adjusted net income can be found in our earnings release and our 10-Q filed with the SEC. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter rose 29% to $102 million compared to $79 million in the prior year period.

Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 280 basis points year-over-year to 26.7% for the quarter, compared to 23.9% in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA growth at nearly double the rate of strong organic growth is evidence of the meaningful operating leverage we have in the business across our expense base. Free cash flow from operations for the first quarter was $53.3 million, a 51% increase year over year, a direct reflection of the expense rationalization work we highlighted last quarter, coupled with the continued outsized growth of the business. In the first quarter, we paid $54 million of earnouts in cash, inclusive of amounts reclassified to colleague earn-out incentives. Thus far in the second quarter, we paid an additional $35 million of earn-outs in cash, bringing our remaining estimated undiscounted earn-out obligations to approximately $222 million.

Of note, despite having paid approximately $89 million of cash earn-outs and $21 million of cash bonuses through April 2024, the business has delevered over a quarter turn from where we ended 2023. As discussed on the fourth-quarter earnings call, several of our partnership agreements contain provisions that permit former selling shareholders to allocate portions of the earn-out proceeds to colleagues who meaningfully contributed to the partner firm’s achievement of the earn-out. When this determination is made, we record compensation expense that is an offset to the change in contingent consideration and net neutral to net income. As a result of this practice, we added back $3.6 million of compensation expense in the first quarter associated with colleagues earn out pool.

And based on current estimates, we expect to add back approximately $6 million in the second quarter for earn outs we’ve paid or are coming due. On March 1, we closed on the sale of our Connected Risk Solutions wholesale business to Amlin, generating gross cash proceeds of approximately $59 million. As discussed on our last call, this transaction is expected to be neutral to 2024 adjusted EPS and accretive to both 2024 organic growth and adjusted EBITDA margins. As I mentioned earlier, we ended the first quarter at less than 4.5 times net leverage, down more than a quarter turn from where we ended 2023. By year end, we anticipate having satisfied $130 million of aggregate earn-out obligations, while simultaneously bringing net leverage below four times, the high end of our stated long-term operating range.

Looking ahead, our full year 2024 guidance remains unchanged. We continue to expect revenue of $1.35 billion to $1.4 billion organic growth towards the upper end of our long-term range of 10% to 15%, adjusted EBITDA of $315 million to $330 million, and free cash flow from operations of $165 million to $195 million. For the second quarter of 2024, we expect revenue of $325 million to $335 million in organic revenue growth towards the high end of our 10% to 15% long-term range. We anticipate adjusted EBITDA between $69 million and $74 million and adjusted EPS of $0.3 to $0.34 per share. Of note, based on the expected timing of certain contingent commission revenues and prior year quarterly comparables, we expect the margin accretion implied in our full year guidance to be more heavily weighted towards the first and fourth quarters.

To sum it up, we are thrilled about the strong start to the year and the broad-based momentum we are seeing across all of our operating segments. We are immensely proud of our colleagues, as they continue to persevere through a challenging and uncertain insurance environment. Moreover, thank you to our clients for their trust and confidence in our ability to deliver differentiated advice and solutions. We will now take questions. Operator?

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Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions]. Our first question is from the line of Meyer Shields with KBW.

Meyer Shields: Thanks. First off, Trevor, just to get question a lot. Is there any way of quantifying the impact rate and exposure on first quarter organic?

Trevor Baldwin: Yeah, hey, Meyer, good afternoon. So in the retail businesses, rate and exposure was roughly a 4.5% tailwind to organic and the revenue in the quarter. I think notably, while that’s up from the roughly 2% headwind that we saw in the fourth quarter of last year, it’s down meaningfully from roughly a 10% tailwind in the first quarter of 2023. And that speaks to the underlying quality of the organic growth trends they saw from the business this quarter, with record new business in the IS and Main Street businesses. New business was up roughly 90% in our IS business. Overall, new business, sales velocity was up 700 basis points across our retail businesses.

Meyer Shields: Okay, perfect. That’s very helpful. And also a question for Brad, I may be misunderstanding, but you talked about contingent commissions being particularly margin helpful in 1Q. But when I look personally, especially UCTS, it looks like profit commissions were down significantly by enough, so they were down overall on a year-over-year basis. Am I missing something there?

Brad Hale: Yeah. Hey, Meyer. So I think what Brad was mentioning was specific to just the margin accretion we’re expecting for the year, which is going to be more heavily weighted to the first quarter in the fourth quarter. Specific to UCTS, profit commissions were down in the quarter year over year. That’s driven really by three primary dynamics: one, our umbrella product portfolio, we did not receive the contingent commission this year that we did last year. That’s about a third of the impact you’re seeing on a year-over-year basis. And the contingent commissions in that product line tend to be more episodic in nature. It’s a long-tail product. We have a trading partner there that’s been supporting that product line for us and our partner for over 20 years.

And I don’t need to tell you about what’s been happening with reserve development and certain casualty lines, so we’re certainly not immune to that ourselves. Although we continue to see leading underwriting results overall. The other two dynamics: One, last year, we finished our calculations on profit share commissions in the renter’s portfolio during the first quarter. As that book’s grown, there’s more complexity to that calculation. So that’s more of a timing issue. And then lastly, last year, in particular, with one of our fronting partners related to a certain product line, we received an override for 18 months’ worth of premium as it was a new booking and that this year is going to be 12 months. So again, just a timing dynamic. So two-thirds timing, one-third tied to a specific idiosyncratic dynamic in that umbrella portfolio.

Trevor Baldwin: Yes, I think importantly, Meyer, on the performance in Q1 was even better than the , because of the headwinds we saw in contingents. So you could have seen an over 400 basis points margin expansion, had contingents been a little more in line with the prior year. And in feeling back to guidance a little bit, I was specifically talking about Q2 and Q3. So while we continue to see real momentum in core commission and fees, and in real operating leverage in our expense line items, I’ll point out two comparables to last year for Q2 and Q3 that I think, are worth mentioning. Q2 is largely when we receive cash on our prior year accrued contingents. In the last couple of years, that’s been a favorable tailwind for us.

But it’s just hard to budget, so we did take a conservative approach in Q2 and don’t plan for upside to prior year accruals. In Q3, we actually had about $7 million hit Q3 last year that we largely expect you get moved into Q4 this year. And it was it was related to two items: One, in MIS, we locked in a contingent that eliminated any downside risk for us for the balance of the year. We did that in September 23 last year. In new CTS, we received sufficient information about our home book in September of 23 last year, in order to book an estimate. We would expect a more normal trend to be getting that information in Q4, so that’s the shift you’re seeing year over year. Given those dynamics, if you read between the lines, we’re forecasting about 50 to 150 basis points of margin expansion in Q2 and Q3, and about 450 to 600 basis points in Q4.

And you know, as contingents develop, right, that can shift from throughout the year. But based on a line of sight we have now, we think that’s the best view of the cadence of the margin expansion we get this year.

Operator: Our next question is from the line of Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo.

Elyse Greenspan: Hi, thanks, good morning. I think you guys called out, I think, Brad, you addressed in your prepared remarks, right? But this new colleague earnout incentive line, is that just a geography, meaning a shift on now from your other earn outs? I’m just trying to understand on if that’s like a new a new metric this quarter for it’s just it sounds like maybe it’s just geography.

Brad Hale: It is just geographies. I think we had it in Q4 as well. The nature of it is, look, we fully accrue the earn-outs and certain of our partners establish a colleague incentive pool where they can allocate a portion of the earn out to non-selling shareholders. That is not a Trevor and Brad decision, right, that as our selling former partners make that decision. It does result from a GAAP perspective and a shift from the change in earn-out to comp expense because they are involved in group colleagues. And so, it’s just a geography thing in terms of how we treat that in the add-back schedule because it’s net neutral to the P&L. The change in earn-out directly offsets the comp expense hit we take. But if we don’t add it back it, it missed characterizes what the accrued earn-out payment was that we had accrued over time with respect to performance of that business.

Elyse Greenspan: And that was the $6 million I guess, for the Q2. So would you expect that line, I guess, to we did call out something in that line item until you get through the majority of their announced later this year?

Brad Hale: Yes, we would. And again, these aren’t necessarily massive pools and we don’t have line of sight because it’s not our decision to make. So yes, we will be explicit about calling out what we’re seeing so that you all can model it appropriately.

Elyse Greenspan: Okay. And then, on to the last question, I think, you said and change, right of margin improvement in the fourth quarter. What’s driving that? I think there were some contingent discussion, but what’s the drive the big driver that 600 because that’s a no pretty big level of margin improvement in the fourth quarter.