Hippo Holdings Inc. (NYSE:HIPO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Rick McCathron: Yes, Alex, and it’s right and I do want to double-down what Stewart said and answering Tommy’s question and sort of my comments on Yaron’s question. So we do not look at our pause as a long-term pause. We look it as a way to ensure the fact that any business that we write on HHIP is profitable business. Therefore, the contribution by premium dollars in our agency when you’re sort of doubling the fact that you get the underwriting profit in the agency premium, we want to make sure that that outweighs any volatility that we might have that would deteriorate those longer-term economics. So I think your question, if we were looking to intentionally shrink or to have a prolonged period of a slowdown that might be correct. But this is merely a resetting and establishing the right portfolio we want to reduce volatility yet writes premium business, both direct and through other partners.

Alex Scott: Got it. Understood. If I could sneak one more in. Are you seeing any impact to the home care aspect of the business? I know you guys were sort of rolling out an app and trying to get users go in there on some of those products that are sort of separate from the insurance business altogether. Is this going to sort of pause that? I mean, how do I think to the impact of that business?

Rick McCathron: Yes, Alex, it’s a really good question. I think actually, interestingly enough, if anything, our ability to offer home care services over customers, whether they are HHIP customers or agency customers, increases the universe of potential revenue from that particular customer base. And so now our app is available to any homeowner throughout the United States, whether they’re a Hippo homeowner customer or not. And over time, the ability to monetize insurance in that home care situation actually increases and it increases as an agency disproportionately to it, how much it would increase in the HHIP segment. So it’s actually the opposite. Frankly, we’re getting more traction when we bundle it as a value to an agency customer than if we only created an opportunity for HHIP-only customers.

Alex Scott: Do you need KPIs in that business that we should think about? And I’m just trying to gauge, like when you talk about success around some of that or not, how do we measure that?

Rick McCathron: Yes. We — I think in our 2024 guidance, we’ll do a better job of explaining to you what we expect to see on there. We have said previously that we have — that we’re close to 100,000 app installed users and our monthly active user number has been increasing. But let us get back with you when we’re prepared to share more guidance around that in Q4.

Operator: Our next question comes from Karol Chmiel with Citizens JMP. Please proceed.

Karol Chmiel: Yes, hi. I was just trying to get more color on the growth prospects, particularly the insurance services. I mean, is there anything new that you can think of in terms of growing that business? Is there some kind of leverage you can use to grow more?

Rick McCathron: Yes. It’s a really good question. And I think there are no shortage of opportunities in the fronting, in Insurance-as-a-Service segment. And we have a very full funnel of opportunities with MGAs and other partners in that area. One thing that positively benefits us is there are others that are in this space that did have fairly significant exposure to the West two situation. And we had no exposure to the West two situation. So we are actually picking up programs that are needing capacity, given the write-offs that some others have had to face in that particular area. So from a growth perspective there, there is no shortage of opportunities for that to continue to grow.