TWFG - NASDAQ

Good morning. My name is Didi, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the TWFG Fourth Quarter 2024 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded and will be available for replay on the company's website. Before we begin, let me remind you that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those discussed. For more information regarding forward-looking statements, please refer to the company's press releases and SEC filings. Also on today's call, our speakers will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe will provide useful information for investors. The company has posted reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures discussed during this call in the tables accompanying the company's earnings press release located on the Investors section of the company's website at www.twfg.com. It is now my pleasure to introduce Mr. Gordy Bunch, Founder, Chairman and CEO of TWFG. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. I appreciate you taking time to join us today to discuss TWFG's fourth quarter and full year 2024 results. Joining me on the call is Janice

Thank you, Gordy, and good morning, everyone. We will start with the top line written premium, which increased by $60 million or 20% over the prior year period to $361.4 million. Within our primary offerings, Insurance Services grew $51.3 million or 20% and the MGA grew $8.6 million or 19.2% over the prior year period. This growth was driven by a combination of new business acceleration and normalized retention levels. During the fourth quarter of 2024, we saw a healthy uptick in written premium, new business growth of 45% or $27 million over the prior year period as well as renewal business growth of 14% or $33 million over the prior year period within both of our product offerings. We have also maintained steady retention levels of 91% quarter-over-quarter. Drivers of the growth was primarily due to higher premium rates, written premiums from our 2023 acquisitions rolling into the current year and new business growth as carriers opened up for new business in regions where they had previously restricted growth. Going to revenues. Our total revenues increased $12.2 million or 30.8% over the prior year period to $51.7 million. The increase of 30.8% was mainly due to commission income representing 18.9% of the total growth, contingent income representing 10% of the growth and fee income representing 1.9% of the remaining total growth. Commission income increased $7.5 million or 20.7% over the prior year period to $43.7 million, driven by higher premium rates, accelerating new business activity, solid economic growth in our core states and the rollout of our 2023 book of business acquisitions into the current period. The insurance services offering increased 19% over the prior year period and represented 16.1% of the total increase. The MGA offering saw growth of 29.5% over the prior year period and represented 4.6% of the total growth. Contingent income increased $3.9 million or 371% over the prior year period to $5 million, benefiting from loss ratio improvements late in the year and continued growth in total written premium. Fee income was up $0.8 million or 39.8% to $2.8 million, primarily due to higher policy counts and increased new business through our marketing activities with $0.6 million coming from the Twico program and our MGA offering. Organic revenues increased $8.8 million, reaching $43.6 million for an organic growth rate of 20.5%, driven by rate increases and strong new business growth. Turning to expenses. There are some key considerations here due to the acquisition of 9 of our independent branches. These branches were previously part of our agency-in-a-box model but have now been converted into corporate branches, which shifted costs from commission expense to salary and benefits. Commission expense increased $2.9 million or 11.2% over the prior year period to $28.9 million. The increase represents, one, a $5.1 million increase related to the growth of the business, offset by a $2.2 million decrease related to the branch conversions, of which $2.1 million shifted to salary and benefits. Total salary and employee benefits increased by $3.8 million or 97.8% over the prior year period to $7.7 million. This was driven by a $2.1 million increase from the branch conversion shift from commission expense, a $0.5 million increase related to the 2023 corporate store asset acquisitions and a $1.2 million increase from the RSUs issued in conjunction with the IPO. Other administrative expenses increased $2 million or 69.9% over the prior year period to $5 million. This increase was mainly due to public company costs, including professional fees and consulting services, representing $1.2 million or 40% of the total increase and the remaining increase of $0.9 million or 29.9% was driven by the continued growth of our business and branch conversions. Amortization and depreciation increased $1.5 million or 101% to $3.1 million, driven by amortization of intangibles from branch conversions and the 2023 corporate store asset acquisition. Net income for the quarter was $8.2 million, a $2.9 million or 56.3% increase over the prior year period. On an adjusted basis, net income increased $3.8 million or 57.2% over the prior year period to $10.5 million, including an increase in income of $2.9 million, increase in stock-based compensation of $1.2 million, increase in amortization expense related to acquisitions and branch conversions of $2.9 million, offset by a $3.1 million increase in tax expense on an adjusted net income. EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA were strong at $10.2 million and $13.8 million, respectively, representing growth of 91.7% for adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 26.8% compared to 18.3% in the prior year period. This expansion was driven by overall growth, but also benefited from outsized contingent commission and investment income, somewhat offset by the ongoing ramp-up of public company costs, which we expect to normalize over the next few quarters. With that, I will turn it back to Gordy.

Thank you, Janice. Before we open the call for questions, I want to reiterate how proud we are of the progress TWFG has made over the past year. Our strong fourth quarter performance capped off a transformational year in which we executed on our IPO, expanded into new states and strengthened our platform through both organic growth and strategic acquisitions. As we move into 2025, we remain focused on executing our strategy, expanding our national footprint, enhancing agent support and maintaining financial discipline while pursuing both organic and acquisition-driven growth. The investments we are making today are building a strong foundation for long-term success. We began in 2025 acquiring 2 new corporate locations in Ohio and Texas. The new locations are in line with our acquisition expectations for revenue and EBITDA. Our robust pipeline provides us many quality acquisition targets to achieve the remainder of our 2025 M&A goals. Our M&A models included beginning 2025 with acquiring $3 million of revenue and $700,000 of EBITDA with an additional $20 million of revenue and $5 million of EBITDA being acquired with a midyear convention. For the full year 2025, we expect total revenue to be between $235 million and $250 million, with organic revenue growth in the range of 11% to 16%. This growth will be driven by our expanding distribution network, deepening carrier relationships and favorable industry trends. We also anticipate an adjusted EBITDA margin in the range of 19% to 21%, reflecting our commitment to operational efficiency while continuing to invest in future growth. We are confident in our ability to drive a strong performance in 2025 and beyond, leveraging our scale and deep industry expertise to create long-term value. With that, we'd be happy to take your questions. Operator, please open the line.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Tommy McJoynt of KBW.

This is Dean on for Tommy. What kind of EBITDA multiples are you guys seeing in the acquisitions that you have in your pipeline? And how is that competition for those acquisitions trended compared to the prior quarter?

So in the prior quarter, we did not have any acquisitions. 2024 was a pencils down year for us. So not going to have a trend over prior quarter. But we're seeing in the smaller revenue size transactions, you're looking at 9 to 10x EBITDA on larger revenue tractions, and you're going to see 10 to 12x EBITDA range. When you get into the micro-sized producer portfolios, you're now dealing in multiples of revenue rather than EBITDA, and those range between 1.5 to 3x revenue, which can be a 5 to 7 to 9x EBITDA conversion. I hope that's helpful.

Yes, very helpful. And then my follow-up, you obviously did a lot of like onboarding of new branches in the second half of last year. I was just hoping for an update about how the new business has sort of trended versus your expectations? And then if there's been any churn in that business as well?

Yes. So I think we've mentioned on previous calls, it takes several years for newly onboarded [ scratch ] agencies to really hit any meaningful production. So they're not really driving any of the results in 2024. They'll have a modest contribution in '25 and more so in '26. There hasn't been a lot of churn of the onboarded agents. It takes a while for them to get their footing. There may be some consolidation of agents that are in proximity to each other for efficiencies. They may merge locations and end up being one location instead of 3, we see that occurring. But as far as it goes right now, it's too early to tell a real trend off of those newly onboarded agents.

And our next question comes from Mike

This is Charlie on for Mike. My first question is on the organic growth guidance of 11% to 16%. Healthy levels for sure. I guess just a little bit of a wide range, especially since we're almost through the first quarter. Can you kind of talk us through the 1 or 2 biggest variables that could cause organic growth to swing in either direction?

Sure. I'll point out a couple of variables. First, on private passenger auto, we're seeing a moderation on rate in 2025. There's also the potential that may shift upward given the concerns about the impacts of tariffs on materials and parts for the private passenger auto repair. So there could be if there's any realization of increased loss costs that could put pressure on carriers to go back to a little more aggressive rate increase, which would swing the organic up. If things stay where they're at right now, we're kind of in that midpoint of the range that we've provided. Conversely, if there's a continuation of historically profitable business and carriers choose to lean into growth, that could end up with a rate decrease, which we're not predicting that to occur, but we have to put that out there as it is a possibility that if carriers sustain their fourth quarter results and lean into growth, then that could create that circumstance. So that's where you get that range. On the property side of the equation, you still have capacity constraints in some geographies. It is starting to soften across a broader part of the United States. But out West, as we're all acutely aware, California still doesn't have stabilization in the property market. That tends to drive more business into the California FAIR Plan, which has less favorable economics. We have secured numerous secondary and tertiary property providers to give our agents access to stable capacity. But then that rating or pricing that California FAIR Plan has could undermine the natural market. So looking for California FAIR Plan to hopefully get some rate discipline and have some rate increases of their own, and that could have another secondary impact. As we get into reinsurance renewal cycles, the 61s, the 71s, we're hearing that the moderation and not a great impact expected. But as we all know, things happen. And so we're always cautiously optimistic, and that's why we give you the high and the low range of what could impact ultimately rates that then flow into our commission revenues.

Got it. And then on the EBITDA margin guidance, you mentioned the public company costs being pushed out or I guess, delayed. So was that a push out? Did you guys push out the cost? Or is it just they didn't -- I guess, is there extra cost that in the '25 guidance?

So there's -- if we think through the margin comparisons of 2024 versus 2025, first of all, we were only public for half of the year of 2024. So we did not have the full public D&O expense, the increased audit expenses that come post IPO and additional legal expenses that are public company related. So there's a little bit of a blend. So if you look at the full year 2024 and if you were to add some of those expenses on an annualized basis, that would have brought the 2024 margin down from where it's at today. We may be aggressively estimating forward cost in '25 just to be conservative. We want to make sure that we put out a very thoughtful guidance that's achievable. And so there could be some margin upside if we overestimated those impacts. But that's why there's a variance. And that's similar, you didn't ask but I'll volunteer, our EBITDA margin for '24 was benefited by an outsized '24 contingent revenue that came in largely due to the fourth quarter performance, which most of the public companies reported as their best fourth quarter in -- as far as anybody can remember. So we did benefit by that. We're not using the full repeated EBITDA for 2025. If loss ratios from our large trading partners stay where they ended the year and where they're currently at, there could be EBITDA upside on the contingent revenue again in '25. We felt it was a little bit too early in the year to try to bake that into guidance. As we get through the year, if we start seeing that the trend line continues, then we may update the guidance as it becomes clear to us, and that could provide us EBITDA margin upside. The other piece of our equation, and I know it's not a question yet, but I'll preempt it. On the M&A guidance or the M&A we put out in the earnings release. When we talk about the early years, so we did close the 2 transactions at the beginning of January 1, we have LOIs that are signed and are looking for some second quarter closings that would get us ahead of the actual model. But the base model of $20 million of additional revenue acquired and $5 million of additional EBITDA acquired, the midyear convention meant that we were closing those transactions on June 30. So in 2025's guidance, that's only showing $10 million of revenue and $2.5 million of acquired EBITDA addition to the current forward forecast. I know we're going to get a lot of questions about M&A, but I just wanted to put it out there that the forward guidance did not include the full annualized $20 million of acquired revenue and $5 million of EBITDA, it was half of that in the '25 guidance. We do have a robust pipeline that gives us confidence in what we put out in guidance being achieved. There are several potential transactions in our pipeline that would put us into significantly exceeding that guidance. Our culture is to provide guidance in what we believe is achievable and in line of sight. We didn't want to give you the bird in the bush [ versus ] the bird in the hand view we will update as things materialize, but there is additional margin upside on the M&A coming in at a faster pace or in larger sizes than what we currently put into the model.

That was super helpful. If I could just sneak in one more on the contingent outlook or contingent commission outlook. Are those all based on all-in loss ratios or underlying loss ratios, I guess, as we think about that for '25?

So with the number of markets we deal with, there's no one answer on how contingencies are calculated. Many of them are on a portfolio-wide basis. Some of those are actually isolated to, I'll just say, one particular national market is the entire country with the exclusion of California. It has its own separate calculation from the rest of the country. Some carriers have down to the actual location level incentives and bonuses, which would then isolate their portfolio and then the result comes from how that individual portfolio achieved for the full calendar year. We do have some fixed base bonus opportunities where it's more driven by revenue growth or PIF count growth, retention metrics that can give you kickers and being in certain bands within their organization of size. I know that's not the clearest answer, but when it comes to variable comp contingencies, they really run the gamut of metrics, which makes it very hard to estimate with any accuracy. We do get a much clearer line of sight to what we expect when you get through the third quarter. Usually, the larger markets in October provide us with lock-in options if we are with what we consider to be in the money. That means that our loss ratio and growth metrics are achieving a bonus through the first 9 months. We then have the optionality of locking in that bonus metric for a discounted contingency. So we do take a haircut on the ultimate payout for that guaranteeing the outcome. But that doesn't become clear until we get into October and sometimes early November before the carriers provide us that information. To give you a little bit more flavor, 2024 came in at 0.59% of premium as far as the contingent received. And right now, in our forecast, we're using 0.45%. So if we were just to use the same metric from '24, that would drop down to our bottom line and our EBITDA margin projections would be higher. Again, we prefer to be conservative until we have more definitive information that shows that as the future outcome.

And our next question comes from Brian Meredith of UBS.

A couple of ones here for you, Gordy. First one, is it possible to give us what agency-in-a-box kind of written premium growth would have looked like maybe fourth quarter 2024, if we adjust for the ones that became corporate branches, just to kind of get a kind of decent organic written premium growth run rate there?

I believe Janice might be able to parse that out for you.

I can wait on this. That's fine.

Yes. So for the quarter, agency-in-a-box was 18.4% growth without branch, that's excluding branch conversions.

Perfect. That's what I was looking for. And then the second one, Gordy, you talked a little bit about California. What about Florida. We're hearing that business is being transferred out of Citizens. Is that going to be a potential tailwind for you all in 2025 as this stuff goes from Citizens into the regular market?

So Florida is an opportunity for expansion for us. We have been intentionally small in Florida. Pre-AOB litigation legislation reform, Florida was a very volatile state. We were dealing with repetitive and numerous insolvencies. The stability there just didn't exist. Post AOB legislation, the frequency of claims and litigated filing on homeowners' losses substantially shrunk. So we are starting to see, to your point, citizen takeout start-up markets, and we are looking out east for opportunities in Florida now where in the past, we had been avoiding the state. So I do think that's an opportunity. On the downside, I saw legislation filed in Florida, I think, earlier this week, where they're trying to put back in some litigation rights for consumers, which I'm not sure if that will go through given that they've only been living underneath the new rules that is softening the market, benefiting consumers for the last really, 1.5 years, 2 years. But we are looking out at Florida. There's a number of different opportunities for us in that space. Our MGA side could look at programs, could look at partnering with some of these new reciprocal takeouts or even stock company takeouts for distribution and underwriting. And so I do think Florida does have potential upside for TWFG in '25. Nothing that's materialized yet, but we are certainly open now to Florida where in the past, we had been avoiding them.

Got you. That's great. And I think you briefly mentioned your comments, maybe you can talk a little bit about the MGA opportunity in California post the fires, kind of how you're thinking about that?

That's an evolution. I think it really is coming down to the wildfire exposures, confidence in wildfire models, reinsurance support around the new modeling that's being created. We've been fortunate to partner with others that have already created surplus lines homeowners capacity. So I don't know that we're going to be looking at rolling out a program in California, given that we've had a number of strategic partners initiate their own. They've already gotten the paper. They've already gotten the reinsurance, and they're already underway writing. If we feel like capacity is going to get constrained, then we might look at creating a product that wraps around the California FAIR Plan. I mentioned earlier, California FAIR Plan is becoming like Florida Citizens and Louisiana Citizens in their hardest markets where they're writing a disproportionate amount of the business. I don't know if California plans to initiate rate changes within the California FAIR Plan, but that undermines the natural marketplace, which makes it harder to create a viable program if your competition is the State. So we do have good viable national markets that are still taking in new business. And then we do have secondary and tertiary markets that are supporting the peripheral of those risks in high-hazard places, low hazard places and across a broad spectrum of coverage [ A ] sizes. So at this point, we're okay. But we do have that muscle to flex if necessary, to come in with a market, but we do need to have more competent wildfire modeling tools to entice in the reinsurers and the paper to enter that marketplace.

And our next question comes from Pablo Singzon of JPMorgan.

This is Judson on for Pablo. I thought maybe just you could first drill back down on the agency growth. I know you guys mentioned that the new agencies weren't exactly driving any results in 2024. So I guess, first, maybe could you clarify if you mean from a premium perspective or profitability? And if it's the latter, what the contribution may be from first year agencies is in 2024 to premiums?

Good question. I don't have contributions of premium from the newly onboarded agents on hand. I can provide that to you and Pablo on our subsequent one-on-one. I would put it back to not significant. When you onboard a new agency that has no existing premium, they're starting from scratch, they're going through an onboarding process. In 2024, if you recall, a disproportionate number of these agencies came from a singular carrier that had been prior captive that allowed them to contract with us. They had a foot in 2 camps. So part of their portfolio was being nonrenewed. And the other part of their portfolio was being retained by their incumbent market. The timing of those nonrenewals was not equal across all the geography we expanded into. So some of those states that we onboarded have not yet started their nonrenewal process. So for the most part, those we onboarded agencies have not contributed much yet. Those earlier states that had already started a nonrenewal process have made more progress in being productive if that's beneficial.

Yes. And then I guess just second, CapEx was a little bit elevated. So I guess maybe can you just talk about what exactly you all were investing into in the fourth quarter and how 2024's results in that line item might compare to what you think of as like run rate capital investment into the business going forward?

Sure. The largest part of the CapEx for '24 was relocation into our new facilities. We had been located in the same office for 20 years. And if you go back and look at our prior CapEx, we didn't have a lot because we had been in the same aged facility for so long. So we moved our home office in the fourth quarter. That CapEx was tied to that, the new facilities, new technology, new infrastructure to support us as a public company going forward. We have some CapEx in '25, that's the expansion of our facilities in the Philippines, allowing us to onboard additional virtual assistants to help our retail agencies control labor costs within their environment and provide overflow support, also back office support in the Philippines. Our current facility in the Philippines is at capacity, which is great. That means we have strong demand for those services. So we will have a little bit of CapEx for the Philippines expansion. We will have some CapEx in 2025 going into technology. We do know there are several initiatives we have around automation. And so there will be some CapEx looking at developing in those tools, the integration with several different workflow optimizations that we can achieve through some technology investment. But I would put it at probably less than what you saw in the fourth quarter for the full year 2025.

We have a follow-up from Mike

This is Charlie on for Mike again. I just have one quick question. As far as the new agents kind of consolidating a little bit, how long do you see that taking to get resolved over time?

I think we'll have that pretty well ironed out through '25. What occurs is with the mass onboarding we had last year, these producers and agents from that one carrier all endeavored to try to own their own separate location or operate their own separate locations. The ones that were smaller in scale are now realizing that it's more efficient for them to partner with one of their peers and consolidate. So we saw a little bit of that in '24. I would anticipate seeing more of that in '25. But beyond that calendar year, I don't think that, that would be a continuation. Most of the folks that are starting to hit the stride and getting their foundation or their feet on solid foundation, they'll stay their own individual locations. And just as a reminder, the number of locations is not something that we look at as a metric. If you go back multiple calendar years, our double-digit organic growth was achieved with the same store count we had for almost 3 years straight. So we're going to continually have out of our existing agency-in-a-box stores agents retire those portfolios consolidate into other existing agency-in-a-box stores. So you may see some fluctuation in total store count, but the portfolios are all remaining with the company, and it doesn't change our outlook on the organic growth going forward.

I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn it back to Gordy Bunch for closing remarks.

Thank you, Didi, and thank you all for participating in today's call. I just want to recap. We had an inflection point in our business last year. Really can't say enough about the team that helped us not just get through the IPO, which is a task into itself, but also to sustain our trajectory of growth in a historic period of time for this organization. So I appreciate all of my executive team, all of our managers, all of our agents, all of our producers that work within our agencies, all of our CSRs, all the admins that are answering the phones and all of our carriers that have come alongside us to partner to allow us to have this opportunity to help insurance distribution in a way that didn't exist a quarter century ago when we created the company and extremely proud of the results. Look forward to following up with those that had follow-up questions and invite you to our -- we have our annual meeting. Remind me the date for the annual meeting, we haven't put that out yet. May 20 -- 28, I apologize. May 28 is our annual meeting. It's going to be virtual this year. We'll provide details in the future. But for anybody who wanted to mark their calendars, that's -- we intend to have our annual meeting. So I appreciate everybody's interest and look forward to a great 2025. That's all I have.