Skyward Specialty Insurance Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SKWD) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And then, of course, since we buy an attachment point that’s a relatively conservative attachment point, I think our net results would be very good as well. So I feel good about all that. You had asked some questions about market. So let me before I say anything more, did that address your question on frequency and severity and growth and exposure.

Greg Peters: Yes, you did.

Andrew Robinson: Do you want me to just comment on the property market?

Greg Peters: Please do.

Andrew Robinson: Okay. So it’s an interesting market, right? I don’t think everything falls into the line of this narrative, well, property pricing is attractive across the board and casualty may be the new opportunity. Again, I think it’s much more nuanced. I’ll take our global property as an example. We lost a very large account in Q1. Actually, we chose not to write it. This is a large global company, and we had the largest line on the primary insurance above their retention. So think about the primary $100 million that sits above a retention that is measured in tens of millions of dollars. Great example, the broker did a great job, which is split out the international exposure from the U.S. exposure. International exposure made up about 40% of the insured values.

Yet that international exposure was primarily inside of their retentions. Well, a bunch of competitors came in and provided pricing at a 40% lower rate because theoretically, exposure went down. Well, that was just silly. That’s just like a ridiculous approach. And so there’s an example of hungry, hungry companies out there writing things in ways that I just don’t think are sensible and we just let that account go. And by the way, we had to account for a very long time. And that’s an example where you’re like, okay, people are basically putting out lines on big accounts to try to basically grow quickly. And that’s okay. That’s fine. And we expect a little bit of that. We’ve won a few in global property over the quarter as well to offset that for sure.

And then I look at places like marine. We steer clear of things like the stock throughput stuff because it’s just — it’s a commodity area and there’s way too many MGAs in there. And so what we found in Marine is that we’re competing with the same competitors who seem to be very sensible. Maybe a little bit of change in terms and conditions, which we’re incredibly tight on. But by and large, the market feels pretty darn good. When I look at our property E&S transactional E&S property, submissions were just absolutely booming still. And so we’re still seeing plenty of opportunity. For us, on the hard technical stuff, if you’re, let’s say, writing a risk related to something in the wood sector, which is a very low frequency but very high severity, like we’re not backing up a bit.

And so we have our line. We haven’t really seen a lot of companies who are sort of pushing into that line. So a lot of the stuff is sticking. And then in the general property part of our book, I’d say pricing is pretty darn rich, and so if you get a little bit of competition there, to be able to give up some price, you can do that and still feel great that you’re able to drive a very attractive return from that portfolio. And so those four examples are things that should give you a sense that not everything is behaving in kind of one uniform way. And again, we set up our business, Greg, as you know, to have an incredibly well-diversified portfolio so that we’re not stuck in single market cycles and that we can push down where we see the opportunities.

And I think that their results talk to sort of the benefit of that strategy.

Greg Peters: That’s great color. Just to clean up my follow-up question on your answers there. You mentioned limits, what your company is writing out in the marketplace. Maybe you could just close the loop for us on limits and just sort of remind us what your net limits are, broadly speaking, and then maybe by a couple of more important segments.

Andrew Robinson: Yes. So in property, generally speaking, our max net limit is about $3.5 million. So yes, so that applies across the entire piece.

Greg Peters: And the other segments too?

Andrew Robinson: Yes, that would apply everywhere. So that would apply when we write property in Industry Solutions, in inland marine, certainly in E&S. And then we’re in Global Property. I think I’ve explained in the past that what we’ve had is long-term quota share support that allows us to be one of the largest lines in the marketplace in writing the primary of those programs. And those — the long-term support is obviously where we’re keeping a very considerable portion of that aligns to sort of the $3.5 million net.

Greg Peters: That’s great information. Thanks for the detail.

Andrew Robinson: Sure. Thanks, Greg.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Matt Carletti with Citizens JMP.

Matt Carletti: Thanks. Good morning.

Andrew Robinson: Good morning, Matt.

Matt Carletti: Good morning. There’s been a lot of focus, I’d say, industry-wide right on reserves in the past several quarters. You guys are in kind of a shrinking group of companies, a rare company that’s showing a lot of stability there. And I think in your opening comments, I picked up a comment about even kind of increasing the conservatism. Could you just kind of go behind the scenes a little bit and update us on what you’re seeing there, kind of what some of the indications are and how you might be reacting to those?

Andrew Robinson: Well, I’ll start and Mark can jump in, but look just to be very specific in this quarter, to Mark’s commented in the prepared remarks. Our emergence in the quarter was favorable, yet we didn’t recognize any of that and I think probably the simplest way to describe how we think about things is, of course, we are looking at the level of reserve redundancy in our book. And we’re also looking at the maturity of that redundancy, right? So you can have redundancy, but the question is, is that redundancy showing up in greener years or more mature years and so we’re constantly watching those two things. And we’ve been asked probably since we started engaging with you and the other analysts and our investors, from pre IPO to today, when will you release reserves and our answers are the same, which is we’re not going to tell you.

And quite honestly, we don’t know, right, because we have a bias, as we have said all along to build a conservative position and then to demonstrate to ourselves that that conservative position is consistent and predictable along the lines of what we’re expecting. And I think we’ve done a really good job. But we also think that we’re able to deliver attractive results for our shareholders while not sort of stretching ourselves on the liability side of the balance sheet in any way. And so I would just say to you, I feel like it’s a good news story in that our hope, as I’ve always said and our belief based on everything that we’re seeing is that our actual results are better than our reported results and at some point, that should inert to the benefit of our investors.

Matt Carletti: That makes a lot of sense, maybe a follow-up just a few years. I want to go back to the net investment income discussion of Paul’s question. Maybe if I just take a different look at it. I mean, I look at this quarter kind of the new disclosures, right, and the alternatives didn’t really have an impact. I think it was 100,000. So I look at that $18 million you reported, it looks pretty clear to me and I’m also thinking about like that’s a very sustainable number going forward and that, obviously, the changes from there would be more cash flow coming in at higher yields and that works over time. But at least as a leaping off point, there’s no reason to think that that’s not a good leaping off point.

Mark Haushill: Matt, thank you, I agree. I think that’s a good way to look at it. I would highlight the fact that short-term rates could change quickly, right, over a short term. So yes, I look at that $17 million in the quarter as pretty consistent. But again, it depends on what happens with short-term rates. And look, we’ve been focused on deploying the cash in short term. We’ve got a pretty good situation where we’re generating more cash that we’re putting to work. Our plan is to be fully deployed by the end of ’24.

Andrew Robinson: Matt, I would just add one thing, you know, that our invested assets grew by $400 million year-over-year. So this point last year, $400 million to Mark’s point. Like I don’t know how many times you said our plan is to fully deploy our cash, and we generate so much cash we’ve not been able to put it to work and in this case, Mark made the point, which is we’ve been blessed with short-term rates that are really great. If that changes, that’s one variable here that’s uncertain. But the fact is, is that the invested assets are growing at a pretty attractive clip. And that, of course, is something that we’re trying to respond to, but it’s — you can only deploy so quickly within sort of the bounds of how it is that we set our near-term investment strategy.

Matt Carletti: Yes, very high-class problem. So, yes, thank you for the color. Appreciate it.

Andrew Robinson: Thank you.

Mark Haushill: Thanks, Matt.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Meyer Shields with KBW.

Meyer Shields: Thanks. Good morning. One quick question.

Andrew Robinson: Good morning, Meyer. I’m surprised you’re awake because you’re cranking them out early into the morning, I saw. So well done to be here.

Meyer Shields: Well, thank you. My bloodstream is 95% coffee right now. Are you seeing any change in the inflation rate for claims on short tail lines like property or inland marine?

Andrew Robinson: No.

Meyer Shields: Okay. The second question, just on comments you made earlier, Andrew, with regard to non-res and commercial auto. So we’re definitely hearing a lot of talk of sustained or accelerating commercial auto rate increases. And I was hoping you could talk to at least conceptually why nonrenewal made more sense than just backing up rate?