Porch Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRCH) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Matt Ehrlichman: Yes. With respect to capital allocation, I think the good news is I think we have a lot of great places to deploy capital and earn a very attractive risk adjusted return. First and foremost, the growth of the business in and of itself , I think is driving very strong returns. And then we also have the unsecured debt which is due in a couple of years. I think we have a number of options for that one in particular and plenty of time to take care of it, but – and then other opportunities as well. I won’t go into further today, but from the capital allocation perspective, I think we do have a number of very attractive investments that we are looking through.

Josh Siegler: Got it. I appreciate the color there. And then I also wanted to talk a little bit deeper into the cross-sell opportunity between the software side and the insuring side and kind of how you are thinking about that evolving, especially if the macro starts to ease a bit?

Matt Ehrlichman: Sure, I can take that. We are excited about the access that our software businesses give to us to help home buyers. We are also excited about the focus of our insurance strategy around helping home buyers. We are also excited about the app and the way the app can bring together a really nice experience. And so that’s all core to what we are doing. We continue to see year-over-year improvements and kind of the things that we measure around that strategy. And then as was mentioned here, the market has declined and that does impact our ability to cross-sell because there is fewer people who are buying homes. As of now, we are not anticipating growth this next year, but we do expect growth to come and that’s going to be the telling for our business.

Josh Siegler: Okay. Thanks guys and congrats here on the results.

Matt Ehrlichman: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Jason Helfstein from Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst: Hey, this is Steve on for Jason. So, we just have two questions. One, can you give us anything on January in terms of improving house trends and kind of how much that would help software business? Maybe there is a data point you can give. And then secondly on rate increases, I know you talked about them with taxes for example. Is there any metric you can give on how many users for written premium or geographies you have increased on prices this year or thus far? Thank you.

Shawn Tabak: Sure. The first – can we repeat the first question?

Matt Ehrlichman: Yes, I will take it. I got it.

Unidentified Analyst: So, we were just wondering…

Matt Ehrlichman: I got it. It’s good. So, on January specifically, obviously, in attend there is more housing sales that’s going to help our business. But again, just to reiterate, what we are expecting and what our guidance represents is we expect flat year-over-year. We think that it will bounce around a little bit from month-to-month. The market is still kind of settling in. We are not obviously seeing deterioration at a market level year-over-year at this point. But certainly, it helps. Whenever we have months that where home sales picks up. I would note just one other generally macro question, I am sure people are curious about just here more recently, just around the Texas-related wildfires and tied to your Texas question.

Texas, obviously, our hearts go out to the people in Texas and Oklahoma by the recent wildfires, I would want to note that we have not seen any claims, actually zero claims to-date, and we would not expect that will be a meaningful event for us. I think it continues to demonstrate our ability to select risks effectively. As we think about Texas broadly, Texas is our largest state. So, when we have an 18% rate increase, we have mentioned before that it’s actually meaningfully our largest state, that does show up in the overall results.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Danny Pfeiffer from JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Danny Pfeiffer: Hi guys. Thanks for the questions. For the first, the sale of EIG, do you maybe see any further opportunity with pruning other non-core assets within the Porch portfolio? And or maybe was this more of a one-off transaction? And then I have a follow-up. Thank you.

Matt Ehrlichman: We think about it as more of a one-off transaction. We will always be pragmatic and thoughtful in our strategy, both on acquisitions or divestitures, I suppose. I don’t expect to see many divestitures because we really like our businesses and are excited about where they are at. EIG was a special case where we could sell a business and being very aligned with our strategy. So, in terms of divestitures, that’s how I would see that. In terms of the…

Danny Pfeiffer: And then on the second, can you may be – sorry about that.

Matt Ehrlichman: Please go ahead.

Danny Pfeiffer: Yes. So, for the second, can you maybe unpack the seasonal first half ‘24 adjusted EBITDA loss guidance? And maybe how much is the Aon reinsurance agreement and the severe storm coverage you purchase is kind of helping there?

Shawn Tabak: Yes. I can cover that. So, in the presentation today in the prepared remarks, I think I showed a slide which shows the typical seasonality of our adjusted EBITDA, and that’s mainly driven by historically higher claims in the second quarter. We talked about some of the things we did this year to further protect that with different types of reinsurance cover that would have protected the – in particular, the hail storms we saw in 2023. And then I think I also mentioned in the prepared remarks, on a year-over-year basis, if you would just compare, for example, Q1 last year to what we are expecting for Q1 this year, same thing for Q2 in each of the quarters, we are expecting between $10 million to $15 million improvement year-over-year.