管理層發言
Welcome to Assurant's Second Quarter 2026 Conference Call and Webcast. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Sean Moshier, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. We look forward to discussing our second quarter results with you today. Joining me for Assurant's conference call are Keith Demmings, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Keith Meier, our Chief Financial Officer. Yesterday, after the market closed, we issued an earnings release announcing our results for the second quarter 2026. The release and corresponding financial supplement are available on assurant.com. Also on our website is a slide presentation for our webcast participants. Some of the statements made today are forward-looking. Forward-looking statements are based upon our historical and current expectations and subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by these statements. Additional information regarding these factors can be found in the earnings release, presentation and financial supplement on our website as well as in our SEC reports. During today's call, we will refer to non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are important to analyzing the company's performance. For more details on these measures, the most comparable GAAP measures and a reconciliation of the two, please refer to the earnings release, presentation and financial supplement on our website. We'll start today's call with remarks before moving into Q&A. I will now turn the call over to Keith Demmings.
Good morning, and thank you for joining us. Following a strong start to the year, we delivered our second consecutive quarter of record earnings. This was supported by profitable growth across Assurant, reinforcing the durability of our business model, the value of our embedded partnerships and our disciplined approach to investing for the long term. Our second quarter results extended the momentum that we carried into the year with adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS growth rates in the high teens, both excluding reportable catastrophes. Through the first six months of 2026, we generated 12% adjusted EBITDA growth and 14% adjusted EPS growth, both excluding reportable cats. What's most important is what these results say about Assurant. In a dynamic operating environment, Assurant continues to deliver as we balance near-term execution with long-term investments, including within data, automation and AI. These capabilities are helping us operate with greater speed and precision, improve decision-making and strengthen the support we deliver for clients and consumers. At the same time, we're maintaining our disciplined approach to capital allocation, returning excess capital to shareholders while preserving flexibility to invest in attractive growth opportunities across the businesses. Most importantly, our performance continues to be powered by our people. Their commitment to execution, innovation and service is what enables Assurant to consistently deliver. As we look ahead, we're very well positioned to deliver our tenth consecutive year of profitable growth while continuing to create value for our clients, customers and shareholders. Our success is rooted in a clear strategy and business model built for durable growth. We're a trusted B2B2C partner to many of the world's leading brands with long-standing partnerships built by helping our clients solve complex challenges while serving hundreds of millions of consumers. Our relationships are grounded in transparency and a relentless focus on shared outcomes driven by operational excellence. We're strategic partners helping clients grow while strengthening customer loyalty. Our value extends well beyond protection products across Global Lifestyle and Global Housing. We've built integrated ecosystems of services, technology, data and operational capabilities supported by AI that create value throughout the client and customer journey. These capabilities are difficult to replicate and increasingly important as our clients seek partners who can solve broad business challenges at scale. In Connected Living, for example, we've evolved from a protection provider to a business partner that enables end-to-end mobile and technology solutions. Through continuous innovation powered by technology and a willingness to disrupt ourselves, we've expanded the value we deliver far beyond the original protection product. We remain laser-focused on markets where we have a clear right to win. Disciplined execution through global scale and specialized capabilities create meaningful competitive advantages and generate multiple paths for continued growth. The results speak for themselves. In addition to our exceptional year-to-date performance, Assurant has a multiyear track record of proven results. Since 2020, Assurant delivered an 11% compound annual growth rate in adjusted EBITDA and a 17% CAGR in adjusted EPS, both excluding catastrophes, while continuing to generate attractive returns for shareholders. Let's move to our segment highlights. Global Lifestyle delivered another outstanding quarter. Adjusted EBITDA increased 21%, both in the second quarter and year-to-date, reflecting continued momentum in Connected Living and ongoing earnings expansion in Global Automotive. In Connected Living, earnings increased 24% year-to-date, benefiting from growth with existing clients and continued optimization of recently added programs. Targeted investments in technology, capabilities, innovation and customer experience have supported significant momentum across the business and have created multiple growth vectors to support ongoing earnings growth. Our momentum is undeniable, and we're incredibly proud of how we've strengthened our market position. We've expanded and reinforced our relationship with T-Mobile, migrating UScellular's large in-force business and launching a new reverse logistics program through a co-located facility. We've made tremendous progress as we continue to expand and deepen partnerships with all other large U.S. mobile carriers and cable operators. We're driving growth through the optimization of programs across mobile, extended service contracts and financial services, including key wins with Telstra, Best Buy and Chase Card Services. We're extending our presence into adjacent markets including home warranty, where our partnership with the largest U.S. brokerage continues to progress. And internationally, we're expanding capabilities, deepening client relationships and increasing our presence in key markets around the world, particularly within mobile and extended service contracts. Our competitive position has enabled us to create differentiated value across the connected living value chain. Turning to Global Automotive. Earnings increased in the quarter, supported by growth in global partnerships. We also continue to see loss improvement. Year-to-date, adjusted EBITDA has grown 15%. We remain focused on deepening relationships with existing partners while expanding our global footprint. A key example is the long-term renewal with one of our largest automotive clients, which reflects the strength of our partnership and positions us to create additional value together over time. Internationally, we continue to gain traction with OEMs and vehicle retailers, further expanding our opportunities for auto growth. Moving to Global Housing. Our products continue to play an important role across the U.S. housing ecosystem while delivering strong earnings performance. Our Homeowners products and services support homeowners, mortgage servicers and lenders by protecting properties and maintaining continuity of coverage, contributing to stability across the housing ecosystem. Beyond protecting properties, our solutions facilitate the repair and recovery process following covered losses, supporting homeowners and helping preserve long-term property values. As we scale the business and continue to invest in AI and other technology, data and operational capabilities, we're enhancing the customer experience, improving efficiency and delivering value for clients, homeowners and policyholders. We're very pleased to announce a new partnership in our lender-placed business. During the second quarter, we began providing lender-placed insurance services to Freedom Mortgage, a top 10 U.S. mortgage servicing partner with approximately 2.6 million loans, further enhancing our market position and validating the competitive strength of our offerings. This partnership is the result of our operational excellence and commitment to delivering an exceptional customer experience. We continue to see additional opportunities to add new partnerships across the servicing market. Within renters, our Cover360 platform remains a key growth driver. After the second quarter launch of a new partner, we now serve seven of the top ten property management companies. Through deeper integration with PMC partners, Cover360 continues to improve penetration rates and coverage. Overall, our success across Global Housing has supported continued earnings expansion with 7% year-to-date adjusted EBITDA growth, excluding cats. Excluding prior year reserve development, underlying year-to-date EBITDA growth in housing was double digits. As we position Assurant to deliver our tenth consecutive year of profitable growth, our differentiation is clear. We have market-leading businesses, trusted client partnerships and a disciplined operating model with multiple avenues for growth. A growing portion of our earnings comes from embedded services and protection partnerships that generate recurring revenue streams and are less dependent on traditional insurance market cycles. Combining fee-based revenue, specialized protection products, strategic risk management and disciplined capital allocation creates a more stable and less cyclical earnings profile than many traditional property and casualty insurers. Within our countercyclical lender-placed business in housing, our risk profile remains broadly diversified across the United States, while our inflation guard mechanisms and pricing framework help mitigate claims inflation pressures over time. Taken together, these advantages give us confidence in the durability of our results across various market environments over the long term. We look forward to updating you on our continued progress in the quarters ahead. Now over to Keith Meier.
Thanks, Keith, and good morning, everyone. We were very pleased with the record performance in the quarter, driven by strength of both Global Lifestyle and Global Housing. Second quarter growth was exceptional with adjusted EBITDA increasing 18% and adjusted earnings per share growing 19%, both excluding cats. We're proud of the underlying strength of Assurant as we continue to drive growth and strong financial performance through our intense focus on innovation and product differentiation. Our outstanding second quarter performance supports another increase to our full year 2026 outlook. Before reviewing our increased outlook, let me start by highlighting our second quarter results, beginning with Global Lifestyle. Second quarter adjusted EBITDA increased 21% or $43 million compared to last year. Within Connected Living, EBITDA growth was 29% or $39 million. Results included non-run rate benefits of approximately $10 million from a client adjustment within extended service contracts and an international tax benefit within mobile. When normalized for these non-run rate items, Connected Living adjusted EBITDA increased by 22%. Strong growth was driven primarily by our mobile business. Our growing global supply chain business, which includes reverse logistics, trade-in and upgrade, claims fulfillment and other capabilities, serviced over 7 million devices, an increase of approximately 1.8 million compared to last year, driven by our new reverse logistics programs. Underlying margin improvement as we scaled and matured programs also contributed to growth. Within device protection programs, we continue to see strong subscriber growth over the last year, adding over 4 million devices protected across our U.S. and international partnerships. In addition, growth within Financial Services was led by the optimization of programs within our growing card benefits business. In Global Automotive, adjusted EBITDA increased 6% or $4 million. Growth was driven by the expansion of global partnerships, particularly in Latin America and Europe, where our value proposition and market credibility has led to higher earnings from scaling programs and new opportunities. Auto results continue to reflect improving loss experience. Moving to Global Housing. Second quarter adjusted EBITDA was $275 million, including $12 million of reportable catastrophes. Excluding cats, adjusted EBITDA was $287 million, an increase of $43 million or 18%. Results benefited from a lower-than-typical second quarter non-cat loss ratio of approximately 35%, excluding prior period reserve development. Favorable loss ratio trends are the result of reduced claims frequencies in the quarter, given the lower number of weather events. On a year-to-date basis, the non-cat loss ratio is relatively consistent with 2025. Lower cat reinsurance costs also contributed to growth, driven by favorable pricing following the April 1 placement of our 2026 program. Additionally, top line growth within specialty products and higher average premiums in lender-placed also contributed to growth. Second quarter results were partially offset by $12 million of lower favorable prior period reserve development. Within lender-placed, our total tracked loans grew 9% to over 34 million loans, driven by our new partnership with Freedom Mortgage. As previously communicated, we did experience some fluctuation within our quarterly placement rate of 2.02%. Although relatively flat year-over-year, our placement rate was down sequentially. During the quarter, a client transferred a portion of their loan portfolio to another loan servicer, which was not an Assurant client. The decline to our placement rate was entirely driven by these loan movements, which were related to a small block of loans with a higher-than-average placement rate. Supported by the new client win, which will have policies ramp up over the next 12 months and our expectations for continued growth in 2026, we remain excited about the performance of our housing business as we continue to grow our leadership position in the market. Turning to capital. Our liquidity position at quarter end was $911 million, providing flexibility to continue to invest in growth, return capital to shareholders and drive innovation. This quarter, we returned $123 million to our shareholders, including $75 million of share repurchases and $48 million in dividends. Our strong capital position supported by record earnings enabled us to accelerate our repurchase plans during the first half of the year. Through July 31, we've repurchased an additional $30 million, bringing our year-to-date total to $230 million. Let's move on to our increased outlook for 2026. We now expect full year adjusted EBITDA and adjusted earnings per share to grow mid-single digits, both excluding cats, overcoming $71 million of lower favorable prior year reserve development. The reserve development includes $113 million in 2025 and $42 million in the first half of 2026. Excluding the impact of prior year reserve development, we expect approximately 10% underlying growth in both adjusted EBITDA and adjusted earnings per share, excluding cats. Global Lifestyle is expected to lead the growth for Assurant. We're increasing our outlook for Lifestyle and now expect growth of low double digits, reflecting our strong first half results. Connected Living results for the year will benefit from continued optimization of new programs, expansion with existing clients and contributions from new programs and capabilities, demonstrating the returns we've achieved through previous investments. Global Auto is expected to grow from higher investment income, continued loss improvement and growth of global partnerships. Turning to Global Housing. Our outlook has also increased as we now expect earnings to grow modestly, excluding cats. Absent impacts from lower prior year reserve development, we expect solid underlying growth for the full year. Consistent with our past approach, our 2026 outlook does not contemplate incremental prior year reserve development for the remainder of the year. From a capital perspective, our strong cash generation creates flexibility, enabling us to reinvest for growth, including M&A and return excess capital to shareholders. Over the remainder of the year, we'll continue to evaluate capital deployment opportunities anchored to our disciplined and balanced approach. For 2026, we are increasing our expectations for share repurchases to be towards the upper end of our $300 million to $350 million repurchase range. Our second quarter and year-to-date results demonstrate that Assurant continues to operate from a position of strength with momentum across each of our differentiated businesses. We are well positioned to deliver our tenth consecutive year of profitable growth, extending our proven track record of strong performance. As we execute against our increased financial objectives, we remain focused on investing in future growth opportunities while leveraging our strong capital position to create long-term value. With that, operator, please open the call for questions.
分析師問答
Our first question comes from Mark Hughes with Truist.
Just a very broad question. You had spoken earlier this year and last year about the investments you're making in the new customer agreements. Those things were expected to ramp up. You've certainly seen that here in 2026 in the first half. How would you describe the pipeline and investments, your visibility as it pertains to 2027? Just trying to understand, are we harvesting the fruits of that earlier momentum? Or is there a continued momentum under the surface?
Yes. That's a great question. First of all, I'm incredibly proud of what we've put up in the first half of the year. This is coming off the back of three years of double-digit growth in earnings and EPS and now having our second straight quarter of record earnings. I'm super proud of that result. It's really broad-based when you look across all the businesses: Lifestyle, both Connected Living and Auto, Housing, and international is performing well. From that perspective, we feel really good. We're in great shape this year to deliver our tenth consecutive year of earnings growth. We like to highlight the resiliency of the business. Clearly, our leadership position is showing through the momentum with clients and we're excited to raise the guidance for the full year. Regarding momentum broadly, we are certainly benefiting from the investments we made in 2024 and 2025. Those are now scaling and we're optimizing performance against many of those programs. That's a big contributor to why things are performing so well in the first half year-over-year. We do have great momentum across the board. We had a great Nashville event, showcasing some of the capabilities that we're building in mobile, helping demonstrate why we see great long-term opportunity for growth. We saw strong growth in extended service contracts and Financial Services. We're seeing auto inflect and housing with Freedom Mortgage now giving us more power and scale over time. We will continue to make investments. We have lots of opportunities to do more with clients and certainly feel really good about our momentum heading into 2027. Maybe, Keith, would you like to add anything?
Yes. I would add that we announced four additional programs last quarter for Connected Living. That gives us good momentum as we continue through this year. As Keith mentioned, we also have nice momentum with a large client win in housing. The positive feeling that we had reaping the benefits of those investments indicates there's still good momentum to come.
Excellent. And then on Global Automotive, I think you might have just used the inflection word around growth. You've talked about kind of international partnerships. Could you give a little more detail on what's changed there? Why the greater optimism?
We've talked a lot about the work we've done over the last several years. Since 2022, we've implemented multiple rate increases on a handful of client programs where we had some risk. That is benefiting our financial performance. We also see momentum internationally and a great long-term opportunity with large dealers in the U.S. Our team is hyper-focused on execution, very much in growth mode, trying to innovate and drive change in the market.
We have been pleased with how auto is continuing to progress. We saw the growth in international where we focus more on OEMs, and we also have dealership relationships there. We also see opportunities to gain additional share with national dealers in the U.S. We're pleased with the progress since the inflection point last year and continue to want to grow that business.
Our next question comes from Charles Lederer with BMO.
Okay. So on housing, congrats on the new client win. In the past, you've alluded to the growth in this segment being helped by the hard market in insurance, which is moderating or reversing to an extent now. Should we expect that to lead some of your lender-placed policyholders to return to traditional home insurance policies? Are you seeing any of that? And was the change in the gross written premium trend this quarter in that segment affected by that? Or was that related to the dynamic you called out in your prepared remarks?
Regarding the placement rate, if you set aside the loan movement we described, which was at a higher-than-normal placement rate, the underlying placement rate is very stable sequentially and actually still up year-over-year. We're seeing moderation but not an escalation of growth in placement rate due to voluntary market challenges. It deviates across states: year-to-date we're down in policies in Florida about 2%, while Texas and California were up 1% or 2%. On balance, it's very steady and stable. We feel really good about our outlook. Additionally, the 2.6 million loans that will build over the next 12 months creates a nice opportunity to continue to drive growth.
Charles, on the gross written premium, the change was due to the client that transferred a portion of their loan portfolio to another servicer. That did affect the current quarter. We feel that the new client we're onboarding will more than compensate for that over the next 12 months, so we feel good about continued momentum.
And then maybe switching over to Lifestyle or Connected Living. The EBITDA growth year-over-year comparisons do get tougher here in the back half. I appreciate you had all the four new announcements last quarter. How should we think about that growth trend evolving as we head into the back half?
You've seen really good performance in Connected Living, particularly with mobile. Our device protection subscribers are up 4 million year-over-year. There's been a step change in devices serviced and we've launched many new reverse logistics programs, which are benefiting results. We're also scaling across our client base. For 2026, we expect Global Lifestyle to deliver low double-digit EBITDA growth, with Connected Living being the larger driver and auto performing well. On balance, we feel really good about our position for the rest of the year and how that builds momentum into 2027.
Our next question comes from Jeffrey Schmitt with William Blair.
Another question on the lender-placed business. Good to see the win and tracked loans increasing. Are there other deals in the works? Can you talk about your pipeline there, what that looks like? And generally, are there a lot of opportunities in that market given your high market share?
We have a great market position and that allows us to leverage our scale to invest deeply in capabilities. We have a strong pipeline of long-term opportunities because we are intensely focused on scaling and investing in this area. Announcements like Bank of America and now Freedom Mortgage raise the bar on what we deliver, the capabilities we invest in, and how we leverage technology. As our offerings become richer and more robust, our opportunity for growth is better today than it was three years ago.
Okay. And you continue to make good progress on the reverse logistics partnership that's driving high fee growth in Global Lifestyle. How much more capacity do you have in the Nashville device care center? And can you talk about the margins on that business versus your core device protection business?
We have device care centers in Nashville and multiple centers in Texas. We have plenty of room to expand and take on more business in those centers, so capacity is not a gating item. In terms of contributions, we were pleased with the contributions as we matured these programs in the second quarter. Device protection programs are the primary drivers for our economics, but the reverse logistics and supply chain capabilities are a nice complementary element and allow us to deliver unique value across the device life cycle ecosystem.
As a global company, particularly across Lifestyle, we're building infrastructure in our key markets for device care centers—Canada, Japan, Europe, Australia, and others. We're developing our ecosystem of services consistently around the world to create better long-term growth opportunities.
Our next question comes from Thomas McJoynt with KBW. Diverse logistics and supply chain capabilities are a complementary element and allow us to deliver unique value across the device life-cycle ecosystem. Keith Demmings, President and Chief Executive Officer, said that as a global company, particularly across Lifestyle, we're building infrastructure in our key markets for device care centers in Canada, Japan, Europe, Australia, and other locations. We're consistently developing our ecosystem of services around the world to create better long-term growth opportunities.
Starting off on the Connected Living side, adjusted EBITDA in the first half was up almost 20% even after excluding the one-timers. Is there any correlation to the global chip and memory shortage and your servicing and protecting devices being able to generate outsized margins because of that? Or is this strength separate from that cycle and a more structural and sustainable improvement?
For the quarter, the biggest drivers were contributions across our supply chain business, growth in our protection programs, and the maturing of our Financial Services business. We received contributions across the board in the U.S. and internationally. Regarding memory costs and new device prices, those factors are likely neutral to positive for us over the longer term. When devices are more expensive, people tend to want to protect them more, which is usually positive. Also, as new phones increase in price, our certified pre-owned device capabilities can fill demand for less expensive devices. Those dynamics should be beneficial as memory costs evolve.
Got it. And switching to the capital side and priorities: given the amount of dividends from your subsidiaries to the holding company and the allocation to interest and the quarterly dividend, there's still a lot of excess capital available for buybacks and M&A. Any interest in increasing buybacks beyond the $350 million target this year? And what are you looking at on the M&A front—any pockets you're looking to fill or strategic areas of focus?
We appreciate the recognition of our strong cash flow generation. We have $911 million of liquidity at the holding company. We raised our repurchase outlook to the upper end of the $300 million to $350 million range. We like being in a position with flexibility to make organic and M&A investments. We always have a pipeline of opportunities and want to ensure we can play offense and invest for the long-term future. We'll remain disciplined in capital allocation over the long term.
Our next question comes from Paul Newsome with Piper Sandler.
I was hoping you could touch on your most recent thoughts and what you're seeing from a claims inflation perspective in both the auto and the home business, excluding catastrophes. Not a ton of movement, but we've seen some inflation in CPI in key areas that would affect your businesses. What is your book seeing?
In auto, it's been pretty stable quarter-over-quarter in terms of CPI and what we're seeing specifically for our business. In housing, we feel well positioned for inflation; we did not see an adverse impact and you saw that in our strong loss ratios this quarter. On both fronts, inflation has been manageable to this point. We also have many levers to keep our businesses resilient in different macroeconomic environments.
We've done a good job on the auto side working with partners to manage claims costs efficiently and implementing rate adjustments as necessary, which mitigates inflation. In housing, we have our automatic inflation guard feature. Average insured values are up 5% year-over-year, which helps offset inflationary pressure. Q2 was favorable from a loss ratio perspective for housing, though year-to-date the difference versus last year is around 100 basis points in the first half, so it's not a huge driver of our overall outperformance.
Quick follow-up on the auto piece. There's differing views in the industry on frequency. You're more indirect; have you seen even small changes in frequency recently?
I wouldn't say anything significant. In general, we're making progress on our claims experience for both vehicle service contracts and our GAP program, but nothing to call out as a material change.
Our last question comes from Mark Hughes with Truist.
In the lender-placed business, you talked about not as much ramp in the current environment as you might have seen in earlier periods, still up in certain markets and down in Florida. How are you seeing that play out in terms of the duration of the policies as they come on board? One of the benefits you've seen is the lengthening of that duration. Is that reversing itself? Or are you just seeing a deceleration in the pace of new loans coming into the placement rate?
I wouldn't say we've seen a meaningful change in duration. Duration has extended over the last couple of years and it's holding relatively steady.
Okay. And then on the home warranty side, how productive has that brokerage relationship been? Is it meeting your expectations?
Yes. If you want to launch a new program with a partner, they've been a fantastic client to work with. They are aligned to our vision around serving consumers, leveraging technology and building the agent experience. There's a lot of work going on to continue to integrate and refine our go-to-market approach and optimization. We're excited and remain convinced about the long-term growth opportunity and will continue to drive momentum forward. All right. I think that was the last question. Just a couple of sign-off comments. I'm super proud of where we sit year-to-date and we look forward to executing on the revised and increased outlook for 2026 to deliver our tenth year of growth. Thanks, everybody, for your time and we look forward to speaking to you again next quarter. Have a great day.
Thank you. This concludes today's teleconference. Please disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.