Horace Mann Educators Corporation (NYSE:HMN) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript November 3, 2023
Operator: Good morning and welcome to the Horace Mann Educators Third Quarter 2023 Investor Call. All participants will be in listen only mode. [Operator Instructions]. Please note, this event is being recorded. I’d now like to turn the conference over to Heather Wetzel, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Heather Wietzel: Thank you and good morning everyone. Welcome to Horace Mann’s discussion of our third quarter results. Yesterday, we issued our earnings release, investor supplement and investor presentation. Copies are available on the Investor page of our website. Marita Zuraitis, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Bret Conklin, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will give formal remarks on today’s call. With us for Q&A, we have Matt Sharpe, Mark Desrochers, Mike Weckenbrock, Ryan Greenier and Steve McAnena. Before turning it over to Marita, I want to note that our presentation today includes forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements include risks and uncertainties and are not guarantees of future performance.
These forward-looking statements are based on management’s current expectations, and we assume no obligation to update them. Actual results may differ materially due to a variety of factors, which are described in our news release and SEC filings. In our prepared remarks, we use some non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations of these measures to the most comparable GAAP measures are available in our investor supplement. I’ll now turn the call over to Marita.
Marita Zuraitis: Thanks, Heather and hello everyone. Last night, we reported third quarter core earnings of $0.44 per diluted share, again highlighting the strength of Horace Mann’s diversified business model. Net written premiums rose 9%, with strong product sales across all three segments. Our supplemental and group benefits and life and retirement segments delivered strong earnings. In property and casualty, we are making progress on our plan to return the segment to profitability, despite the continued impact of severe convective storm activity across the country. All segments benefited from the 22% increase in net investment income to a record $119 million. Bret will talk about the details of our outlook later in the call.
But at a high level, we continue to expect a full year core EPS of $1.20 to a $1.45. We are successfully executing on our plans to drive profitable growth and capture a larger share of the education market. This progress was clear in both divisions during the third quarters back to school season. We remain confident in our ability to achieve a return on equity near 10% in 2024. In the supplemental and group benefits division, we are seeing outsize growth as we invest strategically in new capabilities and strengthen distribution partnerships. The benefit of these activities will be seen even more over the coming years. In our employer sponsored line where we sell to employers instead of individuals, we expect strong first and third quarter sales in this business line because of benefit year timing.
This third quarter was in line with that expectation, with sales doubling over last year. School districts in particular use these offerings to provide a more robust benefits package to retain and attract staff. This fall, we were able to fully take advantage of new enrollment technology to make our group enrollment process more efficient and easier to navigate for educators. In addition, the Worksite Direct Business where we are selling directly to individuals has returned to its pre pandemic run rate, with trailing 12 month sales at their highest level since we acquired NTA Life in 2019. In addition to our core educator niche we have built on NTAs long history with others who serve the community to further grow this business. In the two years since we began our partnership with the International Association of Firefighters, business from their local affiliates has grown to nearly 25% of new sales.
In the retail division, we are realizing the benefits of being fully back in terms of school access, in combination with the efficiencies of video interactions. For example, our agents can again offer in person financial wellness workshops in the lead up to the new school year and reestablish relationships with individual educators. This was key to the 16% increase in retirement sales quarter-over-quarter. I was able to see this for myself when I spoke to more than 1,000 educators at a back to school event in Rapid City, South Dakota in August. Besides helping those educators understand retirement options in their state, Horace Mann showed its support with contributions to classroom projects through donors choose. We’re excited to be leveraging improved school access, including placing agents in open territories.
We are also gaining traction with a program to embed new agents in established offices, so they can better learn the business while supporting sales growth. Now turning to property and casualty, and our strategy to return this business to profitability. In auto we have reached the inflection point on the path to our targeted combined ratio, as earned premium growth moved ahead of last cost growth late in the third quarter, and the combined ratio improved sequentially. Since the beginning of 2022, we have implemented an average of 19% increases in rate nationwide to address inflation and the return towards pre pandemic frequency levels. In 2024, we are currently planning for an average of 12% to 13%, and additional rate increases nationwide.
But that plan will be continuously re-evaluated to ensure we continue to address emerging lost cost trends. Our rate actions along with non-rate underwriting actions are keeping us on track to targeted profitability. As I’ve noted before, the property environment is challenging. Our plan to address the increased loss costs associated with the more severe and frequent weather events is multifaceted. As we said last quarter, our strategy includes additional files rate, product changes, and enhanced modeling. In addition to rate we also use inflation guard to make adjustments to coverage values to more accurately reflect current replacement costs. These actions have brought the impact on renewal premium, to a range of 17% to 20%. As we noted last quarter, we expect to have a similar impact on renewal premiums in 2024.
We continuously reevaluate the environment to ensure we are reacting quickly to changes in lost cost trends. In addition, we are implementing product changes, particularly in areas with higher frequency of adverse weather. This includes higher deductibles as well as terms and conditions changes, like an updated age of roof settlement process. We are also integrating new sophisticated modeling tools to provide more localized insight into the impact of severe convective storms. This will assist us in making portfolio optimization decisions through rate and underwriting actions. We continue to expect to deliver our long term property combined ratio target of 92% to 93% by 2025. Let me take a step back to revisit how a healthy P&C business fits into our long term strategy.
As a multi-line provider for a niche market, our goal is to have Horace Mann customers for life, offering the solutions to meet their needs throughout their life stages. We believe this creates enduring value for Horace Mann and for our customers. While we return the auto book to read adequacy across the country, we are maintaining sales momentum to attract and cross sell more educated households. Even with the rate impact on our property and casualty policyholders over the past year, we are seeing remarkably stable retention. One reason for this is that all carriers are addressing the current loss cost trends. But another is the value we provide to our educated customers in terms of both relevant benefits, ease of doing business, and the partnership of a local trusted agents.
In fact, in the new-year, we are enhancing our Educator Advantage program for auto and home customers, adding features and increasing the limits on coverages that are unique to teacher’s needs, such as theft of property at school sponsored events. We are making solid progress towards our long term objectives. Our diversified business delivers operational consistency, a solid balance sheet and a compelling dividend. We are executing on our strategy to address the performance of the property and casualty segment, our retirement and life businesses solid. A steady contributor that helps us distinguish Horace Mann with educators and our supplemental and group benefits segment is exceeding our expectations in terms of both top and bottom line.
Taken together, our business offers complete solutions to help school districts attract and retain quality staff, and to help educators protect what they have today and prepare for a successful tomorrow. At the same time, we remain committed to keeping the education community at the center of everything we do. Just this week, we announced the five national winners of the Horace Mann awards for teaching excellence, in conjunction with the NEA foundation. These educators are dedicating their lives to helping our nation’s children succeed. And they serve as a reminder as to why we do what we do, taking care of those who serve our communities every day. In a year like 2023, the value of our multi line approach is clear. We are meeting the needs of all of our stakeholders, helping our customers recover from loss, supporting our employees and agents and creating value for our shareholders.
The strength of our value proposition, combined with the earnings potential of our business gives us the confidence that we can approach a 10% return on equity in 2024. Thank you. And with that, I’ll turn the call over to Bret.
Bret Conklin: Thanks, everyone for joining our call today. Marita highlighted the value of our diversified business model and the momentum that we are seeing across our businesses evidenced by strong third quarter sales in the contributions of life in retirement, and supplemental and group benefits to earnings. Now I’d like to walk you through the details of the business segment performance starting with P&C. This segments core loss for the third quarter was largely due to elevated cat and non-cat weather activity across the country, which I’ll discuss in a moment. Overall, total written premiums rose by 13% is the rate actions we are implementing take effect. New business growth is coming largely in states where we’re most confident in the pricing outlook.
And we’re pleased to see retention remained very stable in both our auto and property lines. Turning to auto. The year-over-year increase in average written premiums improved again in the third quarter to 16%, up from 11% in the second quarter, and 8% in the first quarter. As Marita mentioned, in auto, we believe we have reached the inflection point in the return to profitability. On premium growth moved ahead of loss cost growth late in the third quarter. The combined ratio for the quarter was 108.7%, the lowest auto combined ratio we’ve reported since the first quarter of last year. In addition, vehicle repair and replacement cost inflation has moderated which is a positive as we look to achieve our targets. We will continue to take rate actions that are designed to get us to our long term target of a 97% to 98% combined ratio.
Turning to property, third quarter average written premiums were up 11% year-over-year. Our rate plan remains very aggressive and rate increases countrywide continued to be bolstered by inflation adjustments to coverage values, as well as non-rate actions that also address profitability. We are implementing roof settlement schedules for new and renewal business in several of our most prevalent wind and hail states in the first quarter of 2024. Third quarter also was a challenging weather quarter. Total cat losses were 29 million pretax, adding 17.5 points to the segment combined ratio. In total, there were 25 cat events, including 19 severe convective storms, impacting 30 states across the Midwest and South. Further, the property underlying loss ratio of 61.8% reflected the increase in non-cat weather activity compared to the prior year.
About a third of the non-cat weather losses came from states with no declared cats, including Utah, Montana, North Dakota and Louisiana. In addition, Minnesota had 2.5 million of non-cat weather, as well is 4.6 million of cat losses. In addition to rate, the product changes and refinements to our modeling process that are underway, bolster our confidence that we are on track to address these trends and achieve our long-term combined ratio target of 92% to 93% in this business. Although overall earnings expectations remain unchanged, due to the significant level of weather losses this quarter. We modestly lowered our P&C segment core loss expectation to between $32 million and $37 million. We’re still assuming the full year cat loss contribution would be $95 million to $100 million, or about 15.5 points on the combined ratio.
The longer term combined ratio target for the segment remains at 95% to 96%. Turning to Life and Retirement, the segment continues to perform strongly with adjusted core earnings at $21 million. Net investment income increased by 19% compared to the prior year, reflecting the higher overall interest rate environment and improved returns in our commercial mortgage loan funds. In addition, our limited partnership portfolio generated a 12% annualized return meaningfully above our target run rate. As a result, the quarterly annualized net interest spread on our fixed annuity business rose to 251 bps for the third quarter compared to 193 bps last year. Year-over-year, the net contribution from our FHLB funding agreements remained stable, although net investment income reflected higher earnings from the floating rate investments backing the program.
Interest credited similarly reflected offsetting higher interest expense. For the segment, total benefit expenses, the total of mortality costs and change in reserves relative to change in reserves more than offset lower mortality costs. For the Retirement business, net annuity contract deposits were up 16% to $126 million for the third quarter. Persistency in our core 403(b) account portfolio remains very strong with total cash value persistency at 91.7%, which was lower than last year due to surrender activity in our non-qualified account portfolio, which is a non-core business for us. We also had another good quarter for Retirement advantage, the fee based mutual fund platform that we believe creates long-term opportunity for this business segment.
Life annualized sales were flat for the quarter, but up 6.5% year-to-date, and persistency remained consistent with prior year. We continue to look for life sales as a way to initiate and solidify educator relationships and we are very pleased with the progress. The Life and Retirement segment continues to be a pillar of stable earnings with opportunity for growth. As a result, we continue to expect 2023 core earnings for the segment to be $63 million to $65 million with fourth quarter LP returns returning to more typical levels. The longer term targeted range for the spread remains at 220 to 230 bps. Now let me turn to the supplemental and group benefits segment where we are continuing to see the earnings diversification value of this higher growth, higher ROE and less capital intensive business.
Third quarter premiums in contract charges earned were $64 million, with total segment sales of $8.1 million up 84% over last year. Sales in our Worksite Direct business to supplemental products were up 59% and have moved ahead of the pre pandemic run rate. We expect growth to continue to accelerate in 2024 and beyond. For the employer-sponsored business line, first and third quarter sales are typically stronger aligning with the start of annual benefits years. This third quarter, sales with employer-sponsored products were up 109% to $4.6 million, reflecting the progress made in gaining more access to districts in schools through our distribution partners. For the segment, third quarter core earnings were $15.8 million with the blended benefit ratio a 32.3%, remaining ahead of our long term target of 43%.
The benefit ratio for the worksite direct product line continues to reflect utilization below historical levels. The quarterly benefit ratio for the employer sponsored product line is expected to fluctuate, but it increased from last year’s unusually favorable results for this period remaining in line with expectations. As we noted in previous quarters, seasonal fluctuations in sales patterns and the benefit ratio are anticipated in our full year outlook for worksite. Due to the strong performance again this quarter, we’ve increased our expectation for full year segment earnings to the range of $52 million to $55 million. Before I turn to investments, just a reminder, that we completed an index eligible senior debt issuance of $300 million in mid-September.
The net proceeds from the sale were used to fully repay the $249 million balance on a revolving credit facility, with the remaining proceeds added to invested assets. Total net investment income was a record for the quarter in total net investment income on the managed portfolio rose nearly 30% to $92 million as we benefit from the higher overall interest rate environments and strong returns in our commercial mortgage loan funds and limited partnership portfolios. Both the P&C and L&R segments benefited from the strong LP contributions compared with last year’s third quarter. Pretax investment yield on the portfolio excluding limited partnership interest was 4.78%, with new money yields continuing to exceed portfolio yields in the core fixed maturity securities portfolio.
The A plus rated core portfolio remains concentrated in investment grade corporate, municipal and highly liquid agency and agency MBS securities position us well, for a potential recessionary environment, we believe is likely to materialize over the next six to 12 months. Our net investment income guidance is unchanged. With full year total net investment income expected to be between $429 and $439 million with fourth quarter LP returns expected to be closer to target after the strong Q3. At September 30, adjusted book value was $35.57. Adjusted book value adjusts for both unrealized investment losses, and net reserve remeasurements attributable to discount rates and shows the intrinsic value of our business. We use adjusted book value when we talk about core ROE.
The ratio of debt to capital on a similarly adjusted basis was 27.3% at quarter end remaining at a level appropriate for our current financial strength ratings. In summary, this quarter was a solid quarter on our path to our long term P&C profitability targets with core earnings of $18 million or $0.44 per share. Adjusted book value a $35.57. Record net premiums written in contract deposits, sales growth in all operating segments, strong core earnings contributions from supplemental and group benefits in L&R segments, managed net investment income rose 29%. And finally, we continue to expect full year 2023 EPS in the range of $1.20 to $1.45. More significantly, we continue to expect our progress towards our objectives will accelerate over the coming quarters as we remain focused on providing strong returns to shareholders.
Thank you. And with that, I’ll turn it back to Heather.
Heather Wietzel: Thank you, operator. We’re ready for questions.
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Q&A Session
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Follow Horace Mann Educators Corp (NYSE:HMN)
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from John Barnidge from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
John Barnidge : Good morning. And thank you for the opportunity. Can you talk about the diversification benefit of meeting your insured’s with kind of all the insurance products in the suite and how that presents a growth opportunity now that the educator has kind of truly returned to normal and worksite and supplemental group was really strong distribution in the quarter? Thank you.
Marita Zuraitis: Yes, thanks, John. And we spent a fair amount of time on this in the script because I think it’s absolutely the right question the way we think about the world. We’ve said it before, we want educators to start their journey with us any way they choose. We also know at some point they’re either going to want or need the advice of a trusted advisor at the point of sale. So when we looked at this a while back, we talked about products that were relevant to those educators, strengthening our distribution modernizing our infrastructure. And we’ve been on a quest to do exactly that. So today, we have more ways for educators to start their journey with us. We’ve broadened our product portfolio and we broadened the solutions and the reason to have conversations with these educators.
The diversification benefit that you’ve mentioned, I think is clear in this quarter from an earnings perspective, the whole industry is dealing with the current P&C environment. The rate that is coming into the auto line is certainly helping there, you saw the inflection point this quarter. For us, it’s just one quarter. But that is a very good sign for us in the industry. And we’re all dealing with outsized cats in the third quarter. But you saw the diversification benefit of the other lines of business clearly come through for us in the quarter, while we’re addressing with the rest of the industry, the P&C issues that are facing us. So I feel really good about how we thought about growth, how we thought about finding additional educators to start their journey with Horace Mann.
And you see that with the increased household count in our core segment, Steve, I am going to turn it over to Steve and have him talk a little bit about how we’re thinking about the next phases of growth, as we think about our growth agenda going forward. Steve?
Steve McAnena: Great. Thanks, Marita. And, John, thanks for the question. I think I want to give a little context before kind of talking about the future. And I’ll just sort of spend a second talking about today. And I think Marita said in her opening comments, our approach today for growth is really around keeping the engines warm as we restore P&C profitability. So to me, that means, we’re emphasizing cross sell, we’re equipping agents with resources to navigate the rate environment, helping them focus on life retirement. For me, as I looked at things having been here a few months, our agency force is very healthy. And that’s evidenced by the strong new business results that Bret spoke to, which are solid, but disciplines meaning we’re kind of adhering to the underwriting.
So I think we’ve adopted approach today of positioning our agency force, well, keeping them healthy. So we can accelerate growth when the time is right i.e., when profit is where we want it to be. If I pivot and go from today to tomorrow, just a little bit of context, to sort of give you a sense for how we’re thinking about things. We know that consumers are using multiple channels during their shopping journey. And so generally speaking, what that means is, most consumers want to use digital for shopping and quoting. But when they actually want to buy the policy, they want to do that with a person. And so that’s good context for what we’re doing and what our agenda is for growth as we go forward. And what we’re doing is trying to build out three things.
