Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Universal's fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Arash Soleimani, Chief Strategy Officer.
Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. Welcome to our quarterly earnings call. On the call with me today are Steve Donaghy, Chief Executive Officer, and Frank Wilcox, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, please note today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures. Forward-looking statements involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those statements. For more information, please see the press release and Universal's SEC filings, all of which are available on the investor section of our website at universalinsuranceholdings.com and on the SEC's website. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to comparable GAAP measures is included in the quarterly press release and can also be found on Universal's website at universalinsuranceholdings.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Steve.
Thanks, Arash. Good morning, everyone. It was a tough year. I'm proud of what our team accomplished despite the circumstances. The Florida homeowners insurance market has faced significant challenges. We remain committed to our home state and continue to write new and renewal business. We are grateful to state officials for passing meaningful reforms at the recent special legislative session, including elimination of one-way attorney fees and assignment of benefits, shortening the claims filing deadline to one year and taking steps to reduce the competitiveness of Citizens, among other measures. It will take time for the reforms to benefit results. We believe the legislature's actions will restore the health of the market over the long term. Given our differentiated business model, solid balance sheet, and strong reinsurer relationships, we're uniquely positioned to succeed in the dynamic Florida landscape.
I'll turn it over to Frank to walk through our financial results. Frank.
Thank you, Steve. Adjusted diluted earnings per common share was $0.72, up from diluted adjusted loss per common share of $1.53 in the prior year quarter, with the increase mostly attributable to lower net loss and expense ratios and higher net investment income and commission revenue. Core revenue of $326.4 million was up 11.3% year-over-year, with growth primarily stemming from higher net premiums earned, net investment income, and commission revenue. Direct premiums written of $416.1 million were up 4.2% from the prior year quarter, including 3.6% growth in Florida and 6.8% growth in other states. Overall growth reflects rate increases, partially offset by lower policies in force.
Direct premiums earned of $463.8 million were up 11% year-over-year, reflecting rate-driven direct premiums written growth over the last 12 months. Net premiums earned were $291.9 million, up 7.6% from the prior year quarter. The increase is primarily attributable to higher direct premiums earned, partially offset by higher ceded premiums earned. The net combined ratio was 101.4%, down 30 points compared to the prior year quarter. The decrease reflects lower net loss and expense ratios. The 76.3% net loss ratio was down 27 points year-over-year, with the decrease primarily attributable to a lower current accident year net loss ratio and lower adverse prior year reserve development.
The 25.1% net expense ratio improved by three points year-over-year, primarily reflecting lower renewal commission rates paid to distribution partners. During the fourth quarter, the company repurchased approximately 186,000 shares at an aggregate cost of $1.8 million. The company's current share repurchase authorization program has $6.2 million remaining as of December 31st, 2022, and runs through December 15th, 2024. On February 9th, 2023, the board of directors declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $0.16 per common share of stock, payable March 16th, 2023 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on March 9th, 2023. With that, I'd like to ask the operator to open the line for questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. One moment for our first question. Our first question comes from Paul Newsome of Piper Sandler. Please proceed.
Good morning. Thanks for the call. Congratulations on the quarter.
Good morning.
Maybe you could start just with a little bit more detail on the sort of year-over-year improvement in the loss ratio. Is there any way to sort of think about how much of it was weather, and cat losses versus, other components, like pricing?
Yeah. Paul, good morning. This is Frank. you know, as we have disclosed throughout the year, we've been proactive during 2022, increasing the current accident year loss pick each quarter, including Q4, ahead of the third party actuarial analysis. This was intended to capture emerging weather in 2022 rather than reporting weather above plan, which is what we've done in the past. By being proactive, it's resulted in very minor adjustments coming out of that year-end analysis versus what we booked going into it. In Q4, as you know, included in the call, it also included the effect of winter storms representing the majority of the reserve entries in that period, you know, that was somewhere around the $30 million range.
You know, if you wanted to look apples to apples, that would equate to the $28 million that we had last year. Absent Q4 weather and excluding a margin that was generated by handling claims, we're very close to the current accident year loss pick that we had booked up through the third quarter, which was in the 47% range. Certain aspects of our business model, including our in-house claims and legal teams, had a significant favorable impact in the fourth quarter. We've invested in these teams, which comprise the majority of our workforce, carrying the cost year-round so that we're fully prepared to handle claims as efficiently as possible when we're impacted with storms such as Ian and in dealing with those claims in the fourth quarter.
We're really pleased with the work that was performed by these teams to mitigate costs associated with handling these claims on behalf of both our insurance entities and our reinsurance partners. We handled about 90% of these claims. We've always believed that we can service our business with more care than any other third party. That said, we do maintain important relationships with third party adjusters when needed. We also benefit from the synergies that exist between these two groups, which translates into savings that would not exist outside of our consolidated group. There'll be a little bit more color on the economic benefit generated from those activities in the 10-K.
Great. Any, obviously, you're optimistic about the tort reform. Have we seen anything in the results yet, or it's just far too early to see an impact?
Hey, Paul, this is Steve. Yeah, I think it's again, optimistic. I'll remove the term cautiously optimistic. We are now optimistic in the future of the legislative reforms, thanks to Governor DeSantis and the new legislatures. I would say that it is a little bit early, but we are seeing signs of a positive impact early on, so we feel good about it.
Great. Then I'll ask one more and then maybe see if let somebody else ask. The reinsurance costs have gone up broadly for everybody. How are you thinking about that for yourself? I guess, is it sort of the... I assume it's the critical June or July renewal, I think is the issue here. Maybe you could talk about what you think may or may happen for your reinsurance costs in 2023 and 2024.
Yeah , it's definitely a big question, Paul, this time of year. You know, just like our reserve analyses, reinsurance now is something we're doing 12 months a year, every day, working with our partners and with our team on how do we best place and acquire reinsurance. As you know, we place certain portions of our cat reinsurance on a multi-year basis as we enter. As we enter the 2023 buying season, in combination with the estimated Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund coverage, the RAP program, which we deferred participation in both insurance companies from 2022 to 2023. You know, we sit here with approximately 83% of our desired first event catastrophe tower already secured.
We feel as though the market will reflect many of the things reinsurers have been forced to deal with in the past. We are hoping that as reinsurers look for safety in partners, we will stand above majority of the crowd due to our financial strength and reputation. We feel good at you know, we feel like there's gonna be some impact from the past, and we're gonna do our best to leverage our anticipated results and really their anticipated results from the legislature reforms going forward. There's gonna be a lot of work to do, Paul. We feel good about it. I feel really good that we only have a small percentage needed to acquire in the first event.
You know, and that work's already started, so we're well on our way to securing the balance.
Great. I'll let somebody else ask questions, but always appreciate the help, and I'll get back in queue.
Yeah. Thanks, Paul. Have a great afternoon.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Nicolas Iacoviello of Dowling. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Just first, what was the gross prior year development in the quarter? Then also, what is your current estimated gross loss estimate for Ian?
The Ian ultimate remains at $1 billion. We feel confident that that's adequate. As far as gross development, I don't have those numbers in front of me, but I can tell you that we're very pleased with our year-over-year reduction in net reserve development. We know we're not perfect, obviously, but, you know, we continue to drive that down and we expect it to be driven down.
Got it. Thank you. I think I just touched on it, but I guess how do we think about weather above plan going forward? Like, what should we actually be assuming is incorporated in that plan figure now?
Yeah, we're sort of reevaluating our view of that. You know, obviously the total numbers won't change, but how we present that going forward remains a discussion among us. You know, we see some other insurers do some different type of categorization, and we wanna benchmark against that and just be in line. I'm not so sure that I have a figure for weather above plan, but I think what we've done this year is we've been more proactive to adjust our loss picks for emerging weather. More to come on that.
Yeah, Nick, I would add too, this is Steve. I think between our actuarial staff and, you know, various teams around the company, as we've become more proactive in our entire reserve analysis, you know, weather and the impacts to weather are something we're contemplating disclosing on potentially a dollar basis if it exceeds a certain amount. We'll probably have more information, you know, as we get through Q1 regarding that point.
Got it. Can you guys quantify what the net benefit from the internal claims adjusting operations was this quarter?
Yeah. We don't disclose the exact figures. There'll be some details in our 10-K for sure, Nick. I think the real message there is that as we have adjusted claims and protected our reinsurers and ourselves from frivolous lawsuits, we've seen more and more benefit between the internal processing of claims, not just from a dollar impact to Universal, but from a savings impact to Universal as well as our reinsurance partners.
You know, we don't discuss it too much, Nick, but I'll take the opportunity for a small commercial that, you know, the impact of having your own adjusters and your own legal staff on the payroll enables for tremendous communication and prepping of files so that when an adjuster hands something over to a desk examiner and eventually to a paralegal or an assistant of an attorney, they're all looking at the same information. The more consistent we can be in the preparation of those files, it eliminates a lot of conversation, which again, just enables folks to do their job better than they would be if they had to pick up the phone and ask people constantly, what do you mean by a gable roof in this section of the home?
What do you mean by this number of cabinets in the bathroom, et cetera. I think as we continue to execute against our goal of being the best adjusting and legal enterprise, it's one of the things we've continued to leverage and see tremendous benefit, and that helps everybody in our circle, so to say.
Got it. Last one from me. Just on your captives, can you talk about the capital levels in there? Was this fully exhausted from Ian? Will this need to be funded again if it participates in the 2023 program?
Yeah. The captive was used to fill in the layer of $66 million above our retention. The answer to your question is yes, it was fully exhausted with Ian, and we intend to use that vehicle going forward. In what capacity, it remains to be seen in terms of structuring our program going forward.
Nick, I would submit too that your prior question about the adjusting revenue and our legal expertise, you know, also gets to serve that we have the ability to replenish that capital after a storm by doing the same work we would pay third parties in the field. It's kind of an offset to that capital position, and I think makes our model kind of stand out across the country for that matter, especially in Florida.
Okay. I guess the $66 million was fully utilized, but was there capital already in the captive prior to, I guess-
Yeah.
-the 2022 program?
It had been fully collateralized. That's correct, yes.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference back to Steve Donaghy, CEO, for closing remarks.
Thank you very much. I'd like to thank all of our associates, consumers, our agency force, and our stakeholders for their continued support of Universal, and wish you all a great day. Cheers.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.