Root, Inc. (NASDAQ:ROOT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Alex Timm: Yes, thanks, Charlie. This is Alex. I think really what we are seeing right now is in 2022 we really invested to lower the loss ratio substantially and reduced our fixed expenses. And what that has allowed us to do is really reset the foundation of the company and deliver profitable underwriting results, because of those loss ratio levels. Now, we still have some work to do on loss ratios and we think those are going to continue to trend down. But when you look at the market, there are very few competitors that can actually profitably deploy marketing dollars right now, because of the elevated loss ratio environment. And so what we are seeing is a unique opportunity in the near-term to strategically deploy direct marketing dollars in areas that we are seeing hit our return thresholds.

I will pass it to Matt, our CTO, who can talk a bit about where those are. We do believe that because of the hard work we did in 2022 to get ourselves to really what right now is close to an industry leading loss ratio that has now allowed us a very unique opportunity in the short to medium term to return to that direct channel.

Matt Bonakdarpour: Yes. And our focus is on channels where we have a right to win. So we are focused on the channels where we believe data and technology gives us an outsized advantage. Today, those are our performance marketing channels. So quote aggregators, search engine optimization and direct mail, they allow us to leverage granular models to ensure we are deploying our capital in disciplined manner in a way that it’s the part, just as Alex said. And what we have been able to show is that over time as these models become better we are able to scale those channels with no degradation to efficiency. So we are taking a disciplined approach in the way we invest our capital and we expand to scale it through the years.

Charlie Lederer: Got it. Thanks. So I guess as we think about like capital consumption coming down further in €˜23 is more of that this year going to be on like loss ratio improvement relative to last year or would it be just because it sounds like marketing, then maybe it ticks up a little bit or is it I guess other areas?

Rob Bateman: Hi, Charlie, it’s Rob. It’s a couple of things. Number one, it’s €“ on the cash burn, if you think about what we did, we burned about $400 million in cash in 2021, another $200 million in roughly in 2022. And we expect to have that again, for 2023. Roughly, the primary drivers the loss ratio, we expect the loss ratio to come down substantially again in 2023 as well as work we continue to do around our cost structure.

Charlie Lederer: Got it. Thanks, everyone.

Alex Timm: Thanks, Charlie.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Tommy McJoynt from KBW. Please proceed.