Brown & Brown, Inc. (NYSE:BRO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Andrew Watts: Yes. I mean, Mark, if your question is about rates on the EB space, no, we’re not seeing any fundamental changes in the rate increases in the EB business. They continue to be pretty robust as we’ve been talking about for a number of quarters. It is different if you’re on a fully funded versus self-funded plan. The pharmacy is probably the biggest topic that everybody is talking about today because of all the specialty drugs that are out there.

Mark Hughes: Thank you.

Andrew Watts: Hey, Norma, can we do — we had a couple of people that didn’t get in earlier. Can we get them back in the queue, please?

Operator: Yes, thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of C. Gregory Peters with Raymond James. Your line is now open. Mr. Peters, your line is now open. Are you muted?

Andrew Watts: Norma, can you check and see if he’s muted by chance on your end?

Operator: Not on my end, I’m checking. He’s open. Mr. Peters, are you muted?

Andrew Watts: He’s not there.

Operator: Okay. I’ll go to the next person.

Andrew Watts: We’ll get him back around.

Operator: One moment for our next question comes from the line of Scott Heleniak with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Scott Heleniak: Yes, good morning. First question I had was just on the services segment. You had better growth there than you had in a while, the 3%. And you mentioned in there, there’s a benefit from some claims processing revenue. Was that sort of onetime? Just kind of trying to figure out, is this something where you think you can get sustainable organic growth in this unit? Or was there anything kind of onetime in that — that you called out, the claims processing revenue for that unit?

Andrew Watts: Hi, good morning, it’s Andy. That was really driven off of, we’ve expanded some customer relationships there as well as we’ve won some new relationships in that business, and that’s what’s driving the new claims. The way that we really think about the Services business is the actual transaction is onetime in nature, but the relationships are recurring in nature for us. And that’s really what we try to focus on, and it’s that business in general, that segment, you can’t forecast by individual quarters, where you quite often have to look at averages just because of the way items kind of flow back and forth. But no, we were real pleased with the performance for the third quarter.

Scott Heleniak: Got it. That makes sense. The other question I had was just on — you mentioned in the script, you were at your 0x to 3x debt leverage target now. So does that — should I take that to mean that we shouldn’t expect additional debt reduction over the next few quarters? Is that largely over? Or is there more left? Or is that still…

Powell Brown: You shouldn’t assume that now.

Andrew Watts: No, Mike if you were to back historically, we will increase our leverage modestly times when we have incrementally higher — I’m sorry, Scott, sorry about that — is you’ll end up — we’ll have — we’ll take our leverage up a little bit when we have higher levels of larger acquisitions. And if you look at it, we de-lever on the back end at a pretty rapid pace. The organization itself will normally de-lever anywhere from 0.25x to 0.5x sometimes 0.75x during the year, and that’s really driven off of just normal maturities that we have and then growth in the business. But if you go back over time, we’ll run somewhere in kind of 2.2x to 2.4x on a gross-to-EBITDA ratio. And we’re in our range and probably continue to moderate down. That doesn’t mean though that we won’t take it back up at some point if we find a really good acquisition for the organization. But generally, we’re going to have a pretty conservative balance sheet.

Scott Heleniak: Okay, thanks.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question please. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Michael Ward. One moment for your line to be open. Michael Ward, your line is now open. Michael, your line is open.

Andrew Watts: All right. We seem to have two new — two folks are having some technical difficulties today. Norma, do we have anybody else in queue?

Operator: I see no other callers. [Operator Instructions].

Andrew Watts: Okay. We’ll give Mike and Greg if they’re in queue just a second. And if not, we’ll go ahead and we’ll call the call. We can always do a follow-up with them.

Operator: Okay. [Operator Instructions] And I’m showing no further questions at this time. I’ll go ahead and turn the call back over to you, Mr. Brown for closing remarks.

Powell Brown: Thank you all very much. We’re very pleased with the quarter and equally excited about going into Q4. Look forward to talking to everybody in January. Have a great day. Thank you.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.

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