Baldwin Insurance Group Inc (BWIN) 2021 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Greetings. Welcome to the BRP Group Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Bonnie Bishop. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Welcome to the BRP Group's Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. Today's call is being recorded. Fourth quarter 2021 financial, results supplemental information and Form 10-K were issued earlier this afternoon and are available on the company's website at ir.baldwinriskpartners.com.

Please note that remarks made today may include forward-looking statements, which are based on the expectations, estimates and projections of management as of today, including certain expectations related to COVID-19 and other matters. Forward-looking statements are subject to various assumptions, risks and uncertainties and a variety of factors that are difficult to predict and which may cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by such statements.

For a more detailed discussion of those factors, please refer to the company's earnings release for this quarter and to our most recent SEC filings, including our most recent Form 10-K, all of which are available on the BRP website.

During the call today, the company may also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. For a reconciliation of these measures to the most closely comparable GAAP measures, please refer to the company's earnings announcement and supplemental information, both of which have been posted on the company's website at ir.baldwinriskpartners.com, and can be found in the company's SEC filings.

And lastly, we are pleased to have published our inaugural ESG report today, which is also available on our IR website. I will now hand the call over to Trevor Baldwin, Chief Executive Officer of BRP Group.

Thank you, Bonnie, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our fourth quarter earnings call. I will share brief remarks, followed by Brad, who will cover select financial and business highlights from the quarter and fiscal year. And then Bra, Kris and I will take questions. I want to start by thanking the amazing colleagues and partners at BRP, in another tumultuous year, you continue to deliver for our clients at the highest level which couldn't be more evident in our results.

Q4 was another excellent quarter to finish a record 2021, highlighted by organic growth of 18% and total revenue growth of 129%. For the year, we achieved organic revenue growth of 22% and total revenue growth of 135%. We increased our margin for the year by 200 basis points, while investing significantly in the business to drive continued outsized future growth in 2022 and beyond.

Our partnership strategy, again, exceeded our expectations as we announced 16 new partnerships during the year, contributing more than $206 million of acquired revenue. The MGA of the Future demonstrated strong growth of 36% during the quarter despite a 2020 comparable quarter in which we recorded effectively 5 months of revenue related to our master tenant legal liability product.

We continue to execute in multifamily now with over 700,000 HO4 policies in force, while also making continued progress in both flood and homeowners. We launched our Florida admitted homeowners product last week, with launches in additional states of both admitted and E&S products to follow over the course of 2022. We expect flood and homeowners will be important contributors to our growth in 2022 and beyond.

On the partnership front, we had another active quarter to wrap a third consecutive year of outperformance. In November, we announced the addition of 2 more top 100 brokers in Wood Gutman & Bogart, which added important property and casualty capabilities and relationships in Southern California, and Construction Risk Partners, which newly establishes our national construction risk management practice. These 2 partnerships marked the completion of 7 top 100 partnerships since the beginning of Q4 2020, which makes BRP the partner of choice for roughly 1/3 of the top 100 firms that have transacted over the last 2 years.

We're also excited about the additions of Brush Creek Partners, which strengthens our expertise in several verticals, including cyber and technology; and Arcana Insurance Services, which enhances the MGA's single-family real estate offerings. We remain extremely proud of the reputation we have achieved as the partner of choice for some of the most well-respected and highest quality firms in the industry. We welcome our new partners to the BRP family and are confident they will contribute meaningfully to our continued success.

Looking to 2022, our pipeline remains robust, including active discussions with firms across a range of sizes, geographies and specializations. Importantly, our reputation as a destination employer is also being validated on the organic hiring front. During the year, we added more than 800 colleagues through organic hiring, representing over a 50% increase to our 2020 year-end colleague base. Combined with the new colleagues added from 2021 partnerships, our total head count at year-end was approximately 2,800 colleagues.

At the leadership level, we were pleased to name Raj Kalahasthi as our Chief Digital Information Officer to oversee our enterprise technology organization, build out our strategic IT capabilities and help drive tech-enabled innovation. Raj has over 2 decades of IT leadership experience, with a history of helping companies navigate through intense periods of transformational growth and change.

We also promoted Seth Cohen to General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Seth is an accomplished legal strategist, and his broad expertise will be valuable as our firm continues to grow and execute on its long-term objectives. Finally, we are particularly excited about the appointment of 4 new professionals to our Board of Directors. They exemplify our ability to attract exceptional talent to our business with a diverse range of experiences perspectives and skill sets.

Finally, I want to again extend a huge thank you to all of our amazing colleagues and partners who have been the driving force behind another fantastic year of performance. You are the reason our business is in the strongest position in the firm's history.

With that, I will turn the call over to Brad to go into more detail on our fourth quarter and full year results.

Thanks, Trevor. Good afternoon to everyone joining us today. For the fourth quarter, we generated revenue growth of 129% to $159 million, and for the year, we delivered revenue growth of 135% to $567 million. We generated organic growth in the fourth quarter of 18%, with all 4 segments hitting double-digit organic growth for the quarter.

Organic growth was 22% for the full year, with 3 out of 4 segments: Middle Market, Mainstreet and Specialty in double digits. We recorded a GAAP net loss for the fourth quarter of $44 million or a loss of $0.41 per fully diluted share. GAAP net loss for the full year was $58 million or $0.64 per fully diluted share.

Adjusted net income for the fourth quarter of 2021, which excludes share-based compensation, amortization and other onetime expenses, was $12 million or $0.10 per fully diluted share. For the full year, adjusted net income was $81 million or $0.80 per fully diluted share. A table reconciling GAAP net loss to adjusted net income can be found in our earnings release and our 10-K filed with the SEC.

Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2021 rose 91% to $20 million compared to $11 million in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 13% for the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to 15% in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA for the full year grew 157% over the prior year to $113 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 20% for the full year, at the upper end of our March 2021 expectation of a 100 to 200 basis point improvement over the 18% margin in 2020.

Additionally, as we do every quarter, in the earnings supplement available on our IR website, we have updated the quarterly pro forma financial statements to reflect the partnerships we closed in the fourth quarter as if we had owned those businesses since the beginning of the year, which increases the revenues in quarters 1 through 3 versus what we presented in previous quarters.

In addition, we want to point out 2021 pro forma revenue and EBITDA of $719 million and $175 million, respectively, a significant partnership activity at the end of the year makes our business going into 2022 very different from just rolling actual 2021 results forward.

On the capital front, we took advantage of a receptive market backdrop to complete an upsized term loan B add-on of $350 million in December. We are well positioned to execute on M&A and to achieve our expected completion of $100 million to $150 million in acquired revenue in 2022.

A few items regarding expectations for Q1 and the full year 2022. First, for the first quarter of 2022, given the strong performance across our business in January and February to start the year, we expect to generate organic growth between the midpoint and top end of our long-term 10% to 15% double-digit organic growth goal.

Additionally, we anticipate adjusted EBITDA margins for the first quarter approximately 200 to 300 basis points lower than first quarter '21. Because of the run rate on investments made in the back half of the year, and changes to the seasonality of our business as a result of 2021 partnership activity. As a reminder, our adjusted EBITDA margins are seasonal in nature, with Q1 being the strongest quarter.

For the full year of 2022, on the back of significant investments made in the business last year and thus far in 2022, it is our current expectation that organic growth for the year will be modestly above our 10% to 15% target. Like last year, we continue to identify high-return opportunities that will boost organic growth over a long period of time.

On adjusted EBITDA margin, we currently anticipate investing nearly $50 million back into the business, with a concentration in our MGA of the Future and Mainstreet businesses, primarily in headcount and technology. These investments will create new products and teams that should be contributors to 2022 organic growth, an important catalyst for 2023 organic growth.

Recall, we executed a similar strategy last year that has worked out exceptionally well, as you saw in the last 3 quarters of 2021. And so we expect we will earn an attractive return on the capital we are deploying and that it will have a long-lasting compounding effect on growth. Despite this large investment in new teams and solutions, we still expect an additional 50- to 100-basis-point increase and the adjusted EBITDA margin for the full year above last year's 20%.

In summary, we are excited about our results during the quarter and for the full year. With the momentum we have carried into 2022 and due to the prospect of another very strong year in partnerships and organic growth, I echo Trevor's thank you to our colleagues who have been the driving force in propelling us to new heights and positioning us for continued strong performance.

With that, I thank you for your time, and we'll now open up the call for Q&A. Operator?

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Greg Peters with Raymond James.

Well, good afternoon, everyone. I guess I'd like to start off with the growth results in your guidance for fiscal year '22. With organic doing really strong in all segments, I'm curious as if we think about this upcoming year, is there any particular segment that you expect to do better than the others? Or I guess, put it another way, can you give us some ideas on where you think organic is going to break out by segment?

Greg, this is Trevor. Great question. So as you articulated, we do -- we have seen strong performance across all of our segments as we exited '21 and have entered '22. We expect that we'll see meaningful organic growth contributions from all 4 segments in the fiscal year 2022. Similar to prior years, the MGA of the Future and our Specialty segment will continue to be at the top end of organic growth for our business, and we would expect meaningful double-digit organic growth in the balance of the operating segments.

Just as a point of clarification on the MGA of the Future. I think LeaseTrack becomes a part of organic calculation in '22. Can you just clarify how the rollout of that is going with your customers?

Yes. I mean, LeaseTrack has been just a fantastic success story, Greg, not only has kind of the core of that software platform revenue base grown meaningfully under our ownership, it has also unlocked the significant growth that you've seen over the course of the year in our Master Tenant legal liability solution that was launched in the fourth quarter of 2020.

And we would not have seen the growth in that new product line without the incremental software capabilities that we were able to add into the business from LeaseTrack. So by all accounts a success. Standing on its own, the software on its own has been a great success. But then when you think about the combined contributions that is enabled from the broader business, it could be -- I would characterize it as a home run.

Excellent. My other question was just on margins. And there's been a lot of rhetoric in the marketplace around wage inflation and specifically the ability to retain and attract talent. You've added a lot of people, and I did note your compensation ratio was a little bit higher than maybe what we were looking for in the fourth quarter. Maybe you can speak to your expectations around the commission component and -- or compensation component of the margin assumption for '22 in the context of the comments I just made.

Yes. Greg, another great question. And the headline is, we feel fantastic about our ability to continue to add talent, retain talent, and do so in an effective and efficient manner that supports profitable growth in our business. When you -- specific to the fourth quarter, in the compensation ratio you saw there, that's not necessarily reflective of the overall comp ratio for the business on a full year basis because of the seasonality of our revenue streams, as you know.

And so when you look at full year compensation ratio for the business in 2021, it was actually down year-over-year compared to 2020 as we continued to scale up the business, gain efficiencies and improve productivity in our business operations.

As I think about the impact, or potential impact of wage inflation, I think we're best positioned among our peers to be able to grow through that without feeling real pressure for a number of reasons. One, if you'll recall, in the depths of uncertainty of COVID back in March of 2020 when many organizations were freezing pay, halting bonuses and putting a stop to hiring activity, we paid raises, we paid bonuses and we kept hiring.

And so we didn't fall behind relative to keeping our colleagues pay pacing with the increases in CPI during that year. Additionally, when you look at our overall headcount, it's up nearly 100% over the course of the past 12 months. And so as we've added in many of those people through organic hiring, they're coming in at market wage rates already.

And then, lastly, when you look at our overall compensation mix, approximately half of it is variable in nature, where it's tied directly to the fortunes of our revenue streams that those individuals are being compensated off of.

Your next question comes from Michael Phillips with Morgan Stanley.

Can you talk about -- in the MGA, you talked a little bit about before I kind of want to get an update on kind of the priorities where you see the biggest priorities for the MGA outside of renters?

Absolutely. Yes. So I mean, the MGA of the Future business is performing exceptionally well. We have terrific momentum, not only in our legacy renters business, but also with the recent launch last week of our inaugural homeowners product with the admitted Florida solution going live. In addition to that, we expect to roll out both admitted and E&S product across the U.S. over the course of the remaining months and quarters in the year with a plan to have a 50-state solution live on an E&S basis and a multistate solution live on an admitted basis by the end of the year.

We think that, that homeowners initiative is going to be a meaningful driver to organic growth at the MGA in addition to the continued momentum we see in the renter space. In addition to that, we've stood up a new product team who is in the process of developing and launching incremental products, and we expect those will be significant contributors to continued organic growth in 2023 and beyond.

We could not be more excited about the position of MGA of the Future, the significant investments we've made in that platform, and the ultimate growth that they're going yield and the value creation that, that will generate for our shareholders.

I'm sorry if you said this, just quickly, is the Florida home product, is it admitted or E&S?

The product we launched last week is admitted AM Best A rated paper.

Okay.

And a clarification, Mike, we do not take any balance sheet risk on that product, sorry, any of the MVA products.

Okay. What impact do you think there could be on -- maybe not just for you guys in particular, but just maybe the industry or whichever one you want to comment on. On the impact of rates as they rise on kind of the acquisition multiples? I mean is there a certain point where -- I don't know if there's a certain threshold do you think where rates rise enough that there could be a stalling or too much -- too high of a multiple for maybe the industry to look at?

Yes. Mike, great question. I'd say our perspective is that multiples likely peaked last year. As we anticipate a raising rate environment over the balance of 2022 and potentially into 2023, I suspect that will have an impact on valuation multiples where you will see them pull down ever so slightly. I do not believe you're going to see a wholesale shift in valuation in the space, but we've certainly seen some signs of modest softening in overall valuation.

Next question, Yaron Kinar with Jefferies.

My first question goes to the -- some of the underlying assumptions behind the organic growth estimates you have for '22. Can you maybe talk about how you foresee the U.S. economy developing over the course of the year and the rate environment as well?

Yes, Yaron, great question and good to talk with you. So as we think about the impact of GDP growth and the overall rate environment on our overall organic growth, they're not meaningful contributors to the overall results. So as we sit here today, what I would say is there's likely going to be some economic choppiness as there is geopolitical instability, supply chain challenges, wage inflation that are impacting businesses broadly.

We expect that we'll continue to see a hardening rate environment, albeit one that has ebbed slightly from the rate action that we saw in 2021. And when you kind of blend the impact of rate and economic growth together, it's a modest tailwind to the overall organic growth profile of the business.

Just as a frame of reference, as you think about the building blocks of organic growth for our organization, there's really 4 drivers to that. You've got the retention of prior year client revenues. Our client retention is likely modestly better than our peers, but not driving a meaningful difference. You then plug in the impact of rate and exposure unit expansion or contraction, which, as I mentioned, we expect that to be a modest tailwind in 2022.

The impact of that on our business for fourth quarter was 2.3% tailwind. And the impact for the full fiscal year of '21 was a 3.5% tailwind. Again, the combined impact of rate and exposure. But the largest driver of the overall organic growth is our ability to go out and win new client relationships at a rate that meaningfully exceeds what our industry peers do on average.

Got it. And then how long, by your estimate, does it take a new producer because somebody that you've hired to hit full capacity?

Yes. So that is -- that answer varies somewhat depending on the segment that they're in, Yaron, I'd say, kind of broad brush, as we think about the impact of adding new people to our business, and the time line for them to become fully productive, it's about 3 years on average.

And that -- so as you think about the 803 people that were organically added into the business last year, and you think about our business generating roughly $257,000 of revenue per colleague, you can think about those 800 colleagues roughly yielding $200 million of incremental revenue growth into the business over the course of the next 3 years.

There's other parts of our business, however, although on our Mainstreet operations where we're making significant investments this year, where we can have a risk adviser up to speed and meaningfully contributing to new business growth within 3 to 6 months.

Got it. That's very helpful. And then maybe one final question on my end. I realized today is a little bit of a different day with the 10-year moving down. But I think overall expectations are that the interest rate environment will creep upwards in coming months. Does that impact your [starter] approach to kind of the debt load to funding acquisitions through that or no?

Yaron, as we sit here today, we feel like we're well hedged through interest rate caps that are laddered out effectively across multiple years to protect our existing debt position. Additionally, as I sit here today and look at our share price, I believe that we are seeing the largest gap between the share price and the intrinsic value of our business since we've been public. And so even with increasing interest rates, we believe that debt capital will be the most efficient funding source for continued M&A growth in our business.

Next question, Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo.

My first question, you guys reaffirmed that $100 million to $150 million M&A guide on the revenue side for 2022. Do you have a sense of the seasonality there? Would you expect deals to be, I think, typically sometimes back-end weighted? How do you see 2022 shaping up relative to transactions when they might be announced?

Elyse, it's Kris. It's a great question. As you saw, we did a lot in Q4, we thought Q1 would be quiet, has been quiet. We would expect that as you're building models, you would start to see revenue flowing in from new 2022 partnerships starting in Q2 and then hit Q2, Q3, Q4.

Okay. And then in terms of the organic guide, right, you guys said midpoint to top end of that 10% to 15% for the in Q1. But then it sounds like you'll be modestly above that target for the full year. So organic growth should pick up as we move through the year. Is that a statement? Like would you expect that to be the organic growth to pick up in all of your segments as we move through the year?

Or is it maybe in response to one of your prior questions that Mainstreet can see the impact of some of the high risk [clickers]. So that segment might be better? How should we just think about the segments, and how we could see incremental growth as we move through the year?

Yes. So, Elyse, broadly speaking, Q1 represents historically the seasonally lowest organic growth quarter for our business as a result of the seasonality and timing of when new business tends to come online and into the organization. In addition to that, we've made meaningful investments in to a number of growth initiatives that are coming online now, and that we expect to have a growing impact and contribution to organic growth as the year goes on, in particular, in both our MGA and Mainstreet businesses.

And then lastly, you guys called out, right, obviously, this incremental investment. You said the $50 million that you guys are going to invest back in the business this year. So how should we think about future years? Or is each year kind of dependent when you set investments at the start of the year, just thinking about is this kind of an investment that gets you where you need to be when we think about 2023 and beyond? Or is that something that you'll consider right at the start of next year?

Yes. What I would say is this is not an expectation of an every year type event. We're making significant investments in our proprietary technology platform, in MGA platform in order to position it to scale up broadly in support of multiple product launches this year and next year and beyond.

I suspect -- my sense is the investments we're making will be fully absorbed and into kind of a mature productivity state over about a 3-year timetable. And we expect those investments to yield at least about a 5x return on invested capital from a value creation standpoint over that time period.

Next question, Josh Shanker with Bank of America.

If we think about the capital raise you guys have done over the past 18 months and view it as kind of a treasury that you're putting money in to do acquisitions, obviously, you did some larger ones, and they spurred on your desire to do a capital raise. Is there anything left over in the treasury per se? Or is all the capital that we've put forward for acquisitions going forward internally generated and/or being done with future capital raises?

Josh, it's Brad. So we are very pleased in hindsight to have taken advantage of an upsize to our term loan B in December, which freed up our revolver capacity and gives us flexibility as we look at 2022. As Trevor mentioned earlier on the call, we will both focus on our internally generated operating cash flow and the debt capital markets to execute on our 2022 strategy.

And so given the comments that you think the stock price relative to intrinsic value is lower than it's ever been, that you would be very -- very hard for us to raise capital in the equity markets under these conditions, would be -- is that reasonable the same?

Yes. That is accurate.

Next question, Pablo Singzon with JPMorgan.

So I had a question about your organic growth outlook for '22. And I'll ask it this way. And Trevor, you had sort of touched on it already, but -- how much of that growth, right? So it's basically above trend will come from the new products. So if you -- and I believe you had to sort of frame it, right? But to what extent is beating your long-term range dependent on a very successful role to the new products, specifically in the MGA in the Mainstreet business?

Yes. This year, we expect the investments we made last year to yield 200 to 400 basis points of incremental organic growth that otherwise would not have occurred.

All right. That's pretty clear. And then a numbers question, I guess. So the $50 million of investments you're making this year, that will be excluded from the adjusted EBITDA margin? Or will that flow through?

That will -- it's real expense in our P&L that suppresses our actual EBITDA margin. So what you heard Brad say on the prepared remarks is that we will expand margin in our business modestly while investing an incremental $50 million above kind of regular run rate trend reinvestment in the business, which speaks to the margin accretion that exists in our business and the mature margin profile that we can ultimately operate at.

Got it. And then last one for me. It's not the largest business for you, but as you're aware, there's been a fair amount of disruption in the Medicare market, especially among the online platforms. I guess just surf your general thoughts there, and how your particular Medicare business positioned? And if you see an opportunity just given sort of the overall disruption in the market?

Yes. Great question, Pablo. As you know, and as we've talked about in the past, we recognize revenue in our Medicare business differently than the other pure-play, publicly-traded Medicare brokers that exist. What that means specifically is we have fully constrained under 606 revenue recognition principles. The revenue we recognized in the Medicare business to 1 year of the expected cash revenue received on a Medicare policy.

As you've seen in the results, COVID certainly had an impact on our Medicare business as a result of our community-based go-to-market strategy. What I will say is, as we've been coming out of the COVID environment and the most recent annual enrollment period in the fall of 2021, we saw a meaningful uptick in activity and are very encouraged about the business model and go-to-market strategy that we have and expect to see a meaningful rebound in the organic growth results of that business in 2022 as a result.

Next question, Meyer Shields with KBW.

Two, I think, pretty simple questions. First, when we talk about the $50 million, that's not incremental to the 2021 investments, right? That's the same way that of, let's say, $30 million was above normal rate. This is $50 million, so it's like a $20 million shift?

No, it's incremental above the $30 million, Meyer. The way you should think about the $30 million from last year is that was kind of in-year investment above normal trend as we grow into that investment, which, again, as I had articulated earlier, it's about 3 years before that investment becomes fully productive and operating at a more mature margin profile.

So that $30 million ends up being probably a $10 million to $12 million drag in year of 2022 and then becomes effectively neutral in '23. The $50 million is an incremental new reinvestment program above that. But that will have a similar 3-year trajectory to becoming fully kind of productive in our operating model and mature margin profile.

Okay. Great. So I had it wrong, thank you for clarifying. Second question, I was just hoping for an update on, I guess, the Florida homeowners market, we keep on seeing companies that are getting downgraded or just giving up on growth. And I assume that you're much closer to it, and I just wanted to get a sense as to how much, I guess, capital is out there [riding] homeowners now that the MGA can access?

So there's a bifurcated answer to that question, Meyer. The Florida homeowners marketplace is in the worst shape it's ever been in my 15-year career in this industry. There is a real need for regulatory reform that has not yet occurred. And in the current state, it's not a sustainable functioning going concern market.

With that being said, we believe there is an opportunity with the appropriate risk selection strategy to have a very profitable homeowners book of business in the state as a result of our unique and sheltered distribution strategy and how we're able to have superior risk selection. And as a result of that strategy, we've being able to source significant risk-based capital in support of our homeowners product. We launched our first admitted product in Florida last week.

We will actually be launching a second admitted product in Florida in the coming months as well as E&S products. Our opportunity in the state is significant. And there is a meaningful tranche of good, profitable business here, but you've got to really understand the nuances of operating in Florida and what can get in trouble fast.

I will now turn the call over to Trevor for closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us for our fourth quarter and year-end 2021 earnings call, and we look forward to interacting and speaking with you all in the coming weeks and months. Take care.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.