Root, Inc. (NASDAQ:ROOT) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Alex Timm: Yes, that’s a good question. Thanks, Charlie. So, yes, I’d say that in general, when you look at our direct business, we tend to obviously attract very good drivers. And so, our number one target is safe drivers and good drivers. We have – the vast majority of our direct business is telematics – has telematics incorporated in the pricing and underwriting. And so, we know that that really serves that target customer well. That tends to be younger, they tend to be more male. I think the average age is in the mid-30s. When we look at our embedded channels, those customer segments are really whatever the partner’s customer segment may be. The beauty of our technology is that a lot of the benefits that it provides, seamless and instant quote to buying, really great pricing via pricing and automation, flexibility for the customer, transparency for the customer, all of those things really extend quite nicely to lots of customer segments.

And so, we really have a diverse set of customers across lots of different demographics, and really fit with most all of our partners, regardless of what their customer demographic may be.

Unidentified Analyst: Okay, thank you.

Operator: The next question is from Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Elyse Greenspan: Hi. Thanks. Good morning. My first question, I was hoping to get a sense in your thinking about going forward and your views surrounding growth. How much price are you looking to take across your book of business? I know in response to an earlier question, you said you expected that loss trend could remain in the high single to low double digits. So, what does that mean for your pricing needs from here?

Alex Timm: Yes, thanks, Elise. The vast majority of our footprint right now we believe is rate adequate. However, as we did comment earlier, we are seeing some of the macro trends and signals in inflation abate somewhat, but we are still planning for that high single-digit, low double-digit trend, which means you should anticipate that we’ll continue to take that rate on a go forward basis. If we see trend come through lower, that means we will back off rate. But right now, that’s – we certainly are conservative in our trend selections and are still assuming that we’re not in a normal trend, low single-digit environment. We’re still assuming a healthy trend.

Elyse Greenspan: Okay, thanks. And then within the shareholder letter, when you guys talk about severity trends, right, you called out that accident period severity was 10% in Q3. I think that had been about 8% in Q2. And so – and I think you also said frequency was flat, whereas it had went down around 6% in the Q2. So, what did you notice sequentially from a loss trend perspective, if both severity and frequency went up Q3 versus Q2?

Alex Timm: Yes, I think, one, I’d say, it’s still very early on an accident period severity trend for Q3. We are – so a lot of that is still forecasted. I think we saw paid severities quarter-over-quarter roughly flat. However, what we are still projecting is that we’re going to be seeing healthy severity trends in bodily injury and in collision PD. And so, we still have – we’re still forecasting, again, that severity trend to be pretty healthy. I would say that the quarter-over-quarter differences in that severity trend are well within the bounds of normal variation. And so, I don’t think there’s anything that we particularly saw in Q3 versus Q2 that was really statistically significant in terms of believing that we saw something out of the realm of normal for the severity trend, given our current levels.

And I would say the same thing about frequency. Frequency was roughly flat on a year-over-year basis. Again, that’s tenure adjusted. So, we look at the age of the business that we’re bringing on. And again, I would say that that’s probably within the band of normal variation.