Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited (PNK:FRFHF) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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We don’t know that, but we’ve got $2 billion pretty well locked up, there’s lots of possibilities for us, and then you add the interest–then you add the underwriting profit and the associate income. By the way, our associate income, Atlas has provided the disclosure because of the new build program before they were taken private. They gave you a forecast – $300 million going to $600 million by 2025, and as of today, we still think that forecast is appropriate. When you put all of that together, we look at that operating income of $4 billion as a pretty conservative number. Perhaps we could take one last question. Cedric, is there one more question?

Operator: Jaeme, your line is still open. If not, we’ll move on. Our next question comes from Scott Heleniak with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Scott Heleniak: Yes, good morning. Just a quick question on the reserve releases – they were pretty meaningful in the quarter. You kind of compared that to some of the peers that were reporting weaker reserving. I’m just wondering if you could give details on that. I’m sure you did a year-end reserve review, but just wondering if you can give some detail on either segment or line or accident year, or anything that kind of drove that in the quarter, if it was widespread or there were specific areas where you got the benefit from.

Prem Watsa: Yes Scott, that’s a good question. Before Peter answers, let me just say that we’ve had a long history of reserve redundancies, and we’re very conservative in our reserving, as we should be. We think over time that our reserve releases could well be significant. But with that, Peter, you want to address that question?

Peter Clarke: Sure. As we’ve mentioned before, during the fourth quarter, all our insurance and reinsurance operations go through thorough actuarial reviews. Some do it more often, but in the fourth quarter is when we do our full reviews. Yes, we continue to see in aggregate favorable development like we’ve seen in the past. Similar to the industry, there has been some development in Allied and Crum & Forster on the 2016 and 2018 years, but more than offset or offset by favorable development on other lines of business and the more recent years. I think our companies are still being very prudent on the hard market years – 2020, 2021, 2022, holding back from a lot of the favorable development that they’re seeing in those lines and just waiting that through to see how it ultimately plays out.

We’re very focused on the effects of inflation and claims inflation in particular, so–but generally speaking, we think our reserves are in a very good position and we’re hoping going forward will benefit us.

Prem Watsa: Thank you Peter. It’s just past 9:30 now, so we thank you all for joining us on this call. We particularly thank our loyal long-term shareholders who have supported us for so many years. We are looking forward to our annual report coming out and then to see you all at our annual general meeting in Toronto on April 11. Thank you very much, Cedric, and this will end the call. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. That concludes today’s conference. You may all disconnect at this time.

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