HCI Group, Inc. (NYSE:HCI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Paresh Patel: Actually, we have all the usual avenues open to us. There could be a depopulation from Citizens for that business and that business also generally works slightly differently to our personal lines residential which sort of tends to auto renew every year here because it’s condo associations and condo boards are involved. It’s a slightly more complicated sale cycle that involves brokers and we will use brokers and it just reapplied for and re-underwritten every year. It’s just it’s a larger premium for policy kind of business and it just has a slightly different rhythm to it and that’s why we’re doing it the way we are, yes?

Casey Alexander: Okay, and then my last question is sort of more high level question about the depopulation. Which is, HCI was built on depopulations in the late early 2000s and then didn’t do very many for quite an extended period of time and now is moving back into the market. What’s different about this depopulation compared to the depopulations that you did in the past when you were originally building the company and sort of why the acceleration back into that market at this time? I just think high level that’s a helpful thing to hear.

Paresh Patel: Absolutely. So, you’re right. We did depopulations back before they were popular back in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 kind of time frame. Then we did some again in ‘11, ‘12, ‘13, ‘14. We kind of did our last big depopulation in 2014. We did do some other minor top up ones in ‘17, ‘18 and ‘19. I think ‘19 was the last time we did a depopulation before this year. But the item in all of that stuff is that we were doing this as Citizens had peaked out to 1.2 million policies, I think in 2012 and then we stopped when the policy count dropped around 400,000 and because the moment had passed. What has occurred is that we should be aware of is in the last two years or so Citizens ballooned to around what is it 1.7 million policies, 1.4 million policies at this point and again, there’s opportunity for us to depopulate from that pool.

Along the way is what I would say. It’s just like what it used to be before. It isn’t in the sense of some of the rules have changed from Citizens. But more importantly our technology and our capabilities have advanced tremendously in the last decade. So for us to do a depopulation at this point. It’s a lot more easier and automated and easier for us to do risk selection than it was a decade ago. So from all of those things it has improved so to put it this way homeowners choice is doing what it was built to do only new or better and much more improved.

Operator: We have Mark Hughes with Truist.

Mark Hughes: Yes, thank you. The expense ratio looked pretty good this quarter. Any one-timers or is this something that’s sustainable?

Mark Harmsworth: It was, if you compare a quarter-over-quarter there was one thing that creates just a little bit of a bump we, stock-based compensation in the third quarter last year was about a million or two higher than the third quarter of this year. So that’s one of the reasons that it’s down. But if you go back and look for the last quite a while, you put labor and OpEx together, it’s been pretty flat for a number of quarters. And so, yes, I would say that it’s sustainable. The ratio is going down a little bit because those premiums are going up a bit, but the dollar value of labor and OpEx combined has been flat for a while. And I think it’s reasonable to assume that it will for in the future for a while.

Mark Hughes: Okay. So opportunity for continuing improvement in the ratio.

Mark Harmsworth: Yes.

Mark Hughes: Yes. Okay. And then the, I think I can back into the math, but your hit rate, 125,000 policies. You talk about premium 150 to 250. I didn’t get to my calculator fast enough. But what do you think could be hit rates on that? How does that kind of compare to your historic experience?