Verisk Analytics, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSK) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Our next question comes from Manav Patnaik with Barclays.

Manav Patnaik : And first, thank you so much for the guidance details and providing that. I just had a question around the pricing environment. If you could just talk about what pricing — how pricing fared, I guess, this year and then looking out into ’23, if you should expect any incremental improvement versus that?

Lee Shavel : Yes. Thanks, Manav. So as you can appreciate, we have hundreds of products. And so each has a different pricing dynamic reflecting what we view as the demand elements for that, the value that we provide. And first and foremost, our primary pricing philosophy is driven by the value of the product and what it’s delivering. And so we are often trying to calibrate pricing to be a fraction of the value that the client received. And when we think about our growth from pricing, it is primarily a reflection of our ability to deliver value to clients. Now we also recognize that there is an element in our pricing that is tied to net premium growth. We are — that is a factor. It has been a decreasing factor over time as other products not tied to that have grown faster.

But that is an element where we are expecting some lift, given generally stronger premium growth as we’ve seen in different part of the businesses. And then finally, I would say going into 2023, reflecting somewhat of the higher inflationary environment and the imposed costs on us from a compensation standpoint, we have included a somewhat in certain instances, a higher inflationary component to reflect that reality as we think most of our clients have done in similar situations. So all of those factor into the guidance from a revenue standpoint as it relates to pricing. I would say, however, that while pricing and particularly the value-added element is the most important component, we do also expect contributions from new customers, from upsell with existing products, from growth from our new initiatives and our higher growth to contribute a like amount to our overall growth rate.

Operator: Our next question comes from Andrew Nicholas with William Blair.

Andrew Nicholas : I wanted to ask just in terms of kind of the top and bottom end of revenue guidance. Is it fair to say that the recovery of some of the headwinds you’ve called out the past couple of quarters on auto underwriting, marketing solutions and the sort are the primary drivers to the top and bottom end? Or are there other kind of puts and takes to call out that underlie the ’23 guidance range?

Elizabeth Mann : Yes. Good question. Yes, as you flagged kind of one of the swing factors between the top and bottom end would be the recovery of some of the more sensitive — macro sensitive parts of our business like auto. In general, with the 80% subscription revenue, there’s a lot of stability in the overall. One or two other environment-related factors that I would point out that could contribute to the difference in that, the top and bottom end of that range as you say, the amount of storm-related revenue is inherently unpredictable, obviously. We have included some assumptions for that in the budget but a sort of moderate assumption in there. And then there’s one or two other sort of macro-related factors like the level of cat loss activity and other things that could contribute to that range.

Operator: Our next question comes from Alex Kramm with UBS.

Alexander Kramm : Quick clean-up question, and sorry if I missed it, I dropped earlier. But I don’t think you guided on interest expense, and you gave us a couple of pieces here in terms of paying off some of the debt already in February. So can you just be a little bit more specific on what we should be expecting there? Because I think some people are struggling getting from your EBITDA guide to EPS.