Enact Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Rohit Gupta: That’s right. These are high LTV loans at origination, and we found attractive return and the portfolio itself basically was within our credit policy. So everything aligned for us.

Mihir Bhatia: Okay. And if I can just ask one follow-up, you’re at a 14% ROE, right? Is that around where we should expect? Like, what are you underwriting to? Are you underwriting generally to higher lower? What I’m trying to, I guess, get at is was this like a typical quarter understanding that you’re going to have quarter-to-quarter variability going forward, and a lot of it depends on the economic environment, et cetera? But like, as we think about just the returns from the business is this quarter more or less typical? Like you had some reserve release, you had some results strengthening, some parts moving around, but more or less run of the mill this is what Enact should be doing consistently, or are there some additional puts and takes we should consider?

Rohit Gupta: Yes, Mihir. Very good question. So let me start with the kind of a macro perspective and then have Dean chime-in. I would say, there are a lot of things going on in this quarter, including our reserve release, obviously impact of interest rates on our investment portfolio that flows through when it comes to that ROE. But I would say, the way we think about running the business in this environment is much more aligned with what we see in market conditions. So we have seen market conditions being more uncertain. And as a result of that, we have been talking about increasing our price for the last three quarters. So you have seen us increase and stabilize our price from second quarter, third quarter and this quarter.

And I mentioned in my remarks that, we saw a higher frequency and a higher magnitude of those price increases. So I think when it comes to the new insurance written that we are adding, we are making sure that we are building a resilient portfolio for different economic scenarios and that drove our action. So when you think about our pricing returns, we are not providing any specific guidance but we do believe that we are writing business to create returns that are accretive to shareholder value. Now, from a balance sheet ROE perspective, I’ll have Dean chime-in terms of whether this was normal or has some sense up abnormality in it.

Dean Mitchell: Yeah. The only thing, I’d say Mihir is, you pointed out the loss reserves. I think any time we’re booking loss reserves at the end of a period it represents our best estimate of ultimate claims on those existing delinquencies. So I would say, that’s €“ our expectation isn’t that we’re releasing reserves through time. Now, if cure activity continues to perform at elevated levels relative to those embedded in our — in the establishment of our expectations that certainly could happen prospectively. But I think just our mindset when we set reserves in a very prudent and measured way is thinking about how we expect those to develop over an ultimate time period on a best estimate basis.

Mihir Bhatia: Got it. Thank you for taking my questions. I will get back in queue.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question, will come from the line of Bose George with KBW. Your line is open.

Bose George: Hi, everyone. Good morning. Can you discuss the, sort of, the cadence of dividends this year? Will it be, kind of, similar to last year with normal dividends and kind of a special at the end?