Good day and welcome to the AMERISAFE 2022 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Kathryn Shirley, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead, ma’am..

Good morning. Welcome to the AMERISAFE 2022 first quarter investor call. If you have not received the earnings release, it is available on our website at amerisafe.com. This call is being recorded. A replay of today’s call will be available. Details on how to access the replay are in the earnings release.

During this call, we will be making forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to various risks and uncertainties.

Actual results may differ materially from the results expressed or implied in these statements if the underlying assumptions prove to be incorrect or as a result of risks, uncertainties and other factors, including factors discussed in today’s earnings release and the comments made during this call and in the Risk Factors section of our Form 10-K, Form 10-Qs and other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements. I will now turn the call over to Janelle Frost, AMERISAFE’s President and CEO..

Thank you, Kathryn and good morning everyone. Our combined ratio of 80.1% this quarter was supported by strong policy retention, favorable prior year case development, better-than-expected insured payrolls and a reduction in assessments.

I will address premiums, losses and payrolls and Neal will speak to the reduction in assessments and other financial metrics. Premium written in the quarter were down – premiums written in the quarter were down 4.6% from the first quarter of 2021.

We continue to face competitive marketplace as carriers seek market share and premium in a declining rate environment. Our average loss cost decline in the quarter was 8.2%. Our ELCM, which is an index of the approved loss costs, was a 154 same as first quarter of 2021.

In holding our discipline and responding to competition, we were successful in retaining 93% of the accounts for which we offered renewal. But overall policy count was down 1.1%. Additive to the top line was higher-than-expected policyholder payrolls.

Audit premium and related adjustments increased premium $2.8 million in the quarter, which was a marked improvement over $300,000 reported in the same quarter of 2021. Wage inflation was the primary driver of payroll increases.

Moving on to losses; we experienced $10.2 million of favorable prior year development in the quarter, primarily from accident years 2017, 2018 and 2019. Importantly, we did not adjust our reserve estimate for the catastrophic claims reported in the fourth quarter. As for the current accident year, our loss ratio was 71%.

I believe it is at this time each year that I use the words 3 months does not a trend make. That being said, frequency for the quarter was down from accident year 2021 at 3 months and severity was within expectations. We view fewer reported claims as an opportunity to focus on open claims and finding avenues to resolve and close them.

Before turning the call over to Neal, I want to speak about this quarter’s share repurchases. In the quarter, we repurchased shares for a total of $2.1 million with $22.9 million remaining within our authorization. The repurchasing of shares, along with our dividend reinforced our confidence and the earnings power of our niche business.

I’ll now turn the call over to Neal..

Thank you, Janelle and good morning everyone. For the first quarter of 2022, AMERISAFE reported net income of $17.3 million or $0.89 per diluted share compared with $19.3 million or $0.99 per diluted share in last year’s first quarter.

Operating net income for the first quarter was $15.9 million or $0.82 per share, an increase of $0.06 or 8% from the first quarter of 2021. Revenues in the quarter were lower, impacted by last year’s $5.5 million increase in unrealized gains on equity securities. Revenues came in at $75.6 million compared with $83.4 million last year.

Net premiums earned decreased 4.5% to $67.6 million compared with $70.7 million in last year’s first quarter and an improvement from the trend in recent quarters. Turning to our investment portfolio; net investment income decreased 7.1% in the first quarter to $6.1 million compared with $6.6 million in the first quarter of 2021.

The decrease was driven by the continued impact of lower interest rate on fixed income securities as they work through the year-over-year comparisons. On a positive note, net investment income for the first quarter was slightly higher than last quarter and third quarter of 2021. And the yield on our portfolio continues to increase.

As a result, after one more tough comparison next quarter, we expect positive net investment income growth in the third and fourth quarter this year. The tax equivalent yield on our investment portfolio was 2.75% at the end of the first quarter. The pre-tax yield on the portfolio was 2.45% at the end of the quarter, flat from 2.46% one year ago.

Realized gains for the portfolio on securities sold were $700,000 compared with $300,000 during the first quarter of 2021. The investment portfolio continues to be high quality, carrying an average AA minus credit rating with a duration of 3.84 and with 62% of municipal bonds that includes 15% in taxable munis, 24% in corporate funds, 4% in U.S.

treasuries and agencies, 7% in equity securities and 3% in cash and other investments. We have increased our allocation to corporate bonds over the past several quarters, finding some attractive opportunities and slightly decreased our allocation to municipal bonds. Approximately 60% of our bond portfolio is comprised of held-to-maturity securities.

And with the substantial rise in rates during the quarter, these bonds are now in a slight net realized gain position at quarter end. As a reminder, these held-to-maturity securities are carried at amortized costs, and therefore, unrealized gains or losses on these securities are not reflected in book value.

Moving now to operating expenses, our total underwriting and other expenses were $15.1 million in the quarter compared with $19 million in the first quarter of 2021. The decrease was largely due to lower insurance-related assessments, driven by a $3.8 million return of assessments from Minnesota.

By category, the 2022 first quarter expenses included $5.9 million of salaries and benefits, $5.2 million in commissions and $4 million of underwriting and other costs. As a result of the favorable decline in expenses, our expense ratio for the quarter was 22.4% compared with 26.8% in the first quarter of 2021.

Our tax rate for the quarter was 19.1% compared to 18.3% for last year’s first quarter, largely due to higher underwriting profits. Return on equity for the first quarter of 2022 was 17.4%, identical to the 17.4% ROE we earned in the first quarter of 2021. Operating ROE for the quarter was 16.3%, an increase from 13.9% in last year’s first quarter.

In capital management, the company repurchased shares during the quarter for a total of $2.1 million, leaving $22.9 million remaining on its share repurchase authorization.

And also in capital management, our company paid its regular quarterly cash dividend of $0.31 per share in the first quarter, which represented a 6.9% increase over last year’s amount. This quarter, the Board declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.31 per share, payable on June 4, 2022, to shareholders of record as of June 17, 2022.

And finally, just a couple of other topics. Book value per share at March 31, 2022 was $20.46 down slightly from $20.62 at year-end. Our statutory surplus was $295 million at quarter end, up from $278 million at December 31, 2021. And lastly, we will be filing our Form 10-Q with the SEC on Friday, tomorrow after the market close.

That concludes my remarks. And now we would like to open up the call for the question-and-answer session.

Operator?.

[Operator Instructions] And we will take our first question from Matt Carletti with JMP..

Hey, good morning..

Good morning, Matt..

Good morning. Janelle, I was hoping I could dig in a little deeper on your comment about better-than-expected payrolls. Were there any particular geographies or sectors, coverage areas that you saw that more so than in others? And then also, I heard your comment about it being wage inflation.

Can you just talk a little bit about kind of how you view kind of that aspect of it? And am I right in thinking that all else equal, that’s positive for the outlook on future margins?.

Good morning. Yes, I will start with the payroll – better-than-expected payroll growth. If you recall, each quarter, we’ve kind of been giving you some indication of what we’ve seen in the prior quarters, payrolls reported to us.

So as an example, in the fourth quarter, we talked about the payroll growth that we saw reported to us via monthly payroll was up about 4% and 3% of that was wage inflation. So we continue to see that each quarter last year seemed to improve over the prior quarter.

I think maybe third quarter was 3.5% in terms of wage inflation and the fourth quarter was 3%. When I look at the first quarter of 2022, however, that number is 7.3%, so from 3.5% in the third quarter, 3% in the fourth quarter, 7.3% in the fourth quarter and it really was across our industry groups for the most part.

I think Marine was the only one that didn’t show a lot of wage growth itself, but particularly in our services, construction, particularly roofing, trucking, we follow wage growth across the board in those categories. What I don’t have visibility into, Matt, is, yes, it’s wage growth.

Is that simply higher wages or could it be same workers more hours? That’s something I don’t really have visibility into at this point. Now I do – we do also look at employee count and in the first quarter of 2022, that was 1.9%. I think in the first quarter, it was 1.2% and maybe 1% the quarter before that.

So not a lot of fluctuation in terms of employee counts are adding on new employees, which always gives us a little bit of pause because we think that drives frequency.

So to your point about that resulting in a tailwind for future premium growth, I think the answer is yes in terms of what we’re seeing in the economic activity of our insurers currently. That certainly is how we view that..

Got you. And then the kind of the – whether that ultimately results in kind of the tailwind for margins a little bit on your – I guess, on your comment of trying to figure out as time goes on, how much of that is maybe same employee, additional exposure hours worked versus them just getting paid more for the same exposure..

Yes, we much prefer to see the wage growth, like the 7.3% number because we do think that means same workers, so we think that’s safer than new employees, if that helps you in terms of thinking about future margins. I do want to clarify because sometimes it gets a little confusing when we talk about topline and when it shows up.

So keep in mind that the payroll numbers I’m talking about are first quarter 2021 work activity..

2022..

2022. Thank you, Neal. 2020 work activity. So that translates to audit premium when those policies are audited. So that’s not – that $7.3 million is not impacting our topline currently..

Yes, it will come in future quarters. Yes, got it..

Exactly. We wanted to clarify..

Great. No, that’s helpful. And then kind of a little bit of a follow-on to that, but obviously, audit and adjustment premiums were kind of very favorable in the quarter.

Can you – Neal, could you remind us just what’s the dollar number that impacted last year’s second quarter? So kind of what’s the comparison number that we’re going to be basing it off of for the upcoming quarter?.

Yes. So last year’s second quarter was just audit and other premiums were just $0.5 million, so $0.5 million versus $0.3 million in the first quarter of 2021..

Okay. Wonderful. And then one more question, if I could, just shifting to the investment portfolio. Can you – Neal, can you remind us or update us, I guess, on kind of what you’re looking at in terms of new money yield versus kind of book yield? And I’m sorry if I missed it in your comments I was trying to keep up.

And then how much of the portfolio you expect to roll over in the next 12 months?.

Yes. The new money rate rose during the quarter and particularly got into very attractive new money rates, we think, in the last 2 weeks of March. And so we think we’re at a point now where we’re ready to put money out a little bit longer, maybe increase our duration a little bit because these yields look attractive relative to the last several years.

I don’t have a specific new money rate to give you versus what’s rolling off, but there is a pretty big gap whereas before, that was pretty much one-for-one. I would say that it is on the lines of maybe perhaps 100 basis points. Our cash is relatively low right now because we’ve been taking advantage of those opportunities.

So as cash flow comes into the company and then is reinvested and the cash flow comes off of the portfolio and is reinvested, we would expect that, that would continue to drive net investment income growth. But in terms of turnover, I don’t have a specific percentage of the portfolio to give you..

Okay, great. Well, thank you for the answers and congrats on a nice start to the year..

Thank you, Matt..

Thanks, Matt..

[Operator Instructions] We will take our next question from Mark Hughes with Truist..

Yes. Thanks you. Good morning..

Good morning, Mark..

Good morning, Mark..

Maybe more detail you can give us on the new business environment. I think you mentioned it was a competitive market.

I’m just sort of curious if you’re seeing anything change in terms of your ability to go out and sign up new customers?.

Yes. Great question. And I wish the answer was, oh, I’ve seen lots of change. Competitors are pulling away, but that’s not the case. But at the same time, we’re not seeing a new rush of competitors either. It’s just been steady state.

I think every carrier is sort of battling the same issues in terms of approved loss costs are still declining to high single digits, everyone is looking for premium and trying to grab market share. But at the same time, appear to be relatively disciplined in terms of their pricing.

It would be interesting to see NCCI’s annual numbers come out in a couple of weeks.

So it will be interesting to see how much fluctuation there is been in discretionary pricing over the last 2 years comparatively because I saw a report recently from CIAB, I think it was CIAB that they pull agents, and agents have seen the last couple of quarters has been really benign in terms of what they are reporting as rate increases or rate decreases.

So I do think carriers are being responsive to that in terms of its – the agents aren’t seeing these large decreases come through like we were seeing before.

So that’s sort of maybe an indication of what’s happening with pricing, but it’s really on the discretionary side because the approved loss costs that we’ve been seeing come through are still declines..

Yes. On that topic, you gave a good precise number in the release. I appreciate that. That 8% or 8.2%..

8.2%. Yes..

Yes. If I’m thinking about it, your commentary last quarter was that it was kind of a mid-single-digit decline. But if I’m thinking about it properly, you were just speaking generally. I was just going to ask whether you could – was it really 8% versus mid-single, which would be 5% or 6% or something.

Did it step down or is that over reading it?.

That’s a great question. I did it 8.2% for the quarter. And I have to go back and look, but I remember it being high single digit last quarter as well..

It was – I think our expectations for 2022, when we talked last quarter, we’re more in the mid-single digits. I would say that based upon the most recent rate filings, we’re expecting that to be more in the upper part of the range, more in line with maybe what’s in the press release for the rest of the year.

Obviously, we will get an update on that from NCCI at the conference in May in a few days’ time..

Yes, yes. Okay. Thanks for the clarification. When you think about the frequency being down, could you frame it up versus 2 years ago or pre-COVID, it seems pretty striking, frequency is down again. I wonder if you can give us some longer-term perspective on that..

Yes. We will be filing the Q on Friday. And you’ll see on there, we always have that chart that says kind of roll forward the open inventory. So it has open claims, claims reported, claims closed and then ending open. And if you look at – if you’ll see that chart, you’ll see claims reported in the first quarter of 2021 were less than 1,000 claims.

I think it was like 993, I don’t remember exactly, versus first quarter last year, which again coming out of COVID with over 1,000 claims. So, just the number of reported claims putting aside premium for a second, just actual reported claim counts are down.

And as I said in my prepared remarks, we appreciate that and are trying to use those opportunities to find ways to resolve older claims..

And Mark, just to clarify, too, last year, we saw frequency bounce back from accident year 2020, right, in comparison because that frequency was so low. But that accident year 2021 frequency was still lower than pre-COVID levels..

But I will throw in my cautionary tale of 3 months is not a trend make..

Yes, could you give the number of large claims in the quarter?.

I’m sorry, we did not. It was four. Thank you for asking..

Okay. And that’s about been the norm.

Is that right?.

It has been. I think we ended last year with 18, 19. So yes, again, it depends on the quarter. But no, there is nothing about that, that would cause us to think there is an alarming trend there, no..

Yes.

And refresh me, did you say how many people were involved in the catastrophic claim?.

I did not..

Can you give us some sense on that?.

I would prefer not to at this point just because of the….

Yes, and I don’t mean to push, but I will, but is it kind of a handful? Is it double digit? It would be helpful….

I appreciate the – I really truly appreciate the question, but we try not to give too much information around the claim, obviously, because we wouldn’t want to identify anyone. There are certainly circumstances surrounding the claims. Just – it has not been our practice to discuss individual claims. And I would just prefer not to at this point..

Yes, I guess I’m just sort of wondering how much variability there can be in the losses depending on how individual cases develop..

We are comfortable with the reserve estimates that we have at this time, given how these – the claimants have progressed medically..

Yes, yes, I guess if it’s a larger number of people than maybe you see less variability, if it’s a smaller number of people, then you could see more variability depending on their progress. That was the nature of the question. I don’t know, I don’t think that will prompt more detail for me..

Understood..

Okay. Alright. Well, thank you very much for the answers..

You are welcome..

Thank you, Mark..

And it appears there are no further telephone questions. I’d like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Janelle Frost for any additional or closing remarks..

Next week, we will celebrate the 36th anniversary of writing our first policy. A lot of things have changed since underwriting that first logging policy. Experience and technology have enhanced our ability to turn risk into opportunity.

What has not changed is our commitment to serving agents, policyholders, injured workers and since going public in 2005, providing return to shareholders. Thank you for joining us today..

And once again, that does conclude today’s conference. We thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect..