Ryan Specialty Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:RYAN) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Zaremski: Hey, good afternoon. First question on M&A because you guys have stressed a lot especially in your prepared remarks about kind of expanding your TAM and addressable market alternative risk and benefits. Just curious, like is there a way you can express how much larger your TAM is to give us a better flavor of whether this net cash or keeping on the balance sheet really can be maybe fully deployed? Is that the goal that maybe all your free cash flow, some of your net cash over the next year could be deployed into both your – the markets you’re in, plus this expanded TAM? Or is this just a small expanded TAM?

Patrick Ryan: Well, we’re always looking to expand TAM in as large a way as practical and possible. But to say directly, to answer directly your question about all of our dry powder, we’d be delighted to invest all of that and more. We keep working on these kinds of deals. We’ve had, I think, a quite good 2023 in terms of adding to our total addressable market. We believe that it’s been an active year for us. It’s been a very successful M&A year. There’s time left in the year. And so we’re looking forward to continue to deploy that dry powder, and we have a balance sheet that can accept within our guidelines of debt ratios, a considerable more debt. So yes, we’re ambitious in what we’re looking for.

Michael Zaremski: Okay. Maybe switching gears to some of the excellent revenue growth and binding authorities and Underwriting Management really saw an acceleration of revenue growth there. Could you offer any more color or flavor of what’s driving that M&A versus organic? And just whether you’re operating kind of at a – if there’s some tailwinds there we should be thinking about?

Timothy Turner: Yes. We continue to grow and expand as we have, but it’s accelerated, and it’s driven mostly in our binding authorities and our MGU strategy in areas like cat property. As you know, the wind, the wildfire, the convective storm and the flood affecting so many different businesses across the country in different geographies. So we’ve capitalized on that. The flow of business into the channel coming into binding and into the MGA side of the business is really part of the strategy. If you note our – the way we’ve arranged our MGUs, our binding authorities behind our brokerage horsepower in the practice group verticals led by Cap property, but also long tail, high-hazard casualty business, that’s working out very well for us. So that’s part of it. I’ll let Miles respond even more specifically on the MGU side.

Miles Wuller: Certainly. I appreciate the question. So look, just to add, again, rate definitely opportunity is certainly up, launching incremental products. We’ve successfully launched our international renewable facility, excess casualty has expanded, trucking has expanded, incremental capital and extremely key products right now, property, treaty reinsurance. The inorganic element that we are quite proud of has grown, and that’s our profit commissions. So again, this is reflective of our profit generated to the carriers. Some of these measurements are actually might be in from three or four years ago. So keeping in mind we’re earning these from the soft market years, and the – we’re starting to collect them today. So we’re quite proud of that inorganic contribution to our growth.

Michael Zaremski: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Rob Cox with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Robert Cox: Hey. Thanks. So I think expectations in the second quarter were for double-digit organic growth in both property and casualty lines of business in the second half of 2023. So I’m curious if that materialized in the quarter and how you see growth developing between these two classes of business as we head into 2024?

Timothy Turner: Well, clearly, cat property has been the leading driver into the channel. But right behind it is long-tail casualty business, as I mentioned, and the real high hazard casualty business, led by transportation, consumer product liability, habitational real estate. Again, that’s a property and a casualty loss leader in the reinsurance world. That’s expanding. Those classes of business and some others, led by public entity, some of the sports and entertainment classes, higher education, large venue risks, really continuing to grow and expand in the non-admitted property and casualty channel. Miles?