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Text: We look forward to discussing our third quarter 2021 results with you today.
Joining me for Assurant's conference call are Alan Colberg, our Chief Executive Officer; Keith Demmings, our President; and Richard Dziadzio, our Chief Financial Officer.
Yesterday, after the market closed, we issued a news release announcing our results for the third quarter 2021.
The release and corresponding financial supplement are available on assurant.com.
We'll start today's call with remarks from Alan, Keith and Richard before moving into a Q&A session.
During today's call, we will refer to non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are important in evaluating the company's performance.
Our third quarter results were strong, driven by double-digit operating earnings growth in Global Lifestyle.
The strength of our Global Automotive and Connected Living offerings continue to validate our long-term strategy of focusing on our higher growth fee-based and capital-light businesses.
We continue to make progress in building a more sustainable company for all stakeholders.
During the quarter, a few key highlights included.
For the first time, Assurant was awarded a Bronze accreditation by EcoVadis, one of the largest sustainability ratings companies, ranking Assurant among the top 50% of all 75,000 participating companies.
In addition, this quarter we provided additional transparency to track our progress on our journey to build a more diverse and inclusive Assurant, with the recent disclosure of our EEO-1,which provides gender, race and ethnicity data by job category for our U.S.-based employees.
We believe a diverse and inclusive workforce will best foster innovation, a key ingredient to sustaining our outperformance longer-term.
Looking at our financial performance year-to-date, net operating income per share excluding reportable catastrophes was $8.75, up 12% compared to the first nine months of last year.
Net operating income and adjusted EBITDA also excluding cats, both increased by 10% to $528 million and $862 million, respectively.
These results support our full year outlook of 10% to 14% growth in net operating income per share excluding reportable catastrophes, marking our fifth consecutive year of strong profitable growth.
Given year-to-date results and our expectations for the fourth quarter, we would expect to end the year closer to the top half of this range.
We've also now completed our three-year $1.35 billion capital return objective from our 2019 Investor Day, a quarter ahead of schedule.
Following the close on the sale of Global Preneed in August, we've also made meaningful progress in returning an additional $900 million to shareholders.
Our 2021 earnings per share outlook is driven by at least high single-digit net operating income growth, excluding cats, as well as share repurchases.
Turning to our business performance.
In Global Lifestyle, we are on track to grow adjusted EBITDA by double digits in 2021 from $637 million in 2020, driven by Global Automotive and Connected Living.
We have benefited from the stable recurring revenue stream of our installed base of mobile subscribers and our success in launching additional offerings and capabilities for mobile carrier, cable operator, OEM and retail clients globally.
Additionally, our mobile trade-in upgrade business and expanded service delivery options are increasingly important to our profitability and also on providing a differentiated and superior customer experience.
Within Global Automotive, we benefited from increased scale, growing the number of vehicles we protect by 20%, over 52 million since The Warranty Group acquisition in 2018.
We believe Auto will continue to be one of our key growth businesses in the future.
In Global Housing, we continue to be on track for another year of better than market returns, with an annualized operating ROE of nearly 15% for the first nine months of this year.
This includes $113 million of catastrophe losses, which further demonstrates the superior returns of this differentiated business.
Our counter-cyclical lender placed insurance business remains an integral part of the mortgage industry framework in the U.S. Within lender placed, as we renew existing clients and add new partners, we will continue to enhance the experience through the ongoing rollout of our single source processing platform.
Our Multifamily Housing business now supports over 2.5 million renters across the U.S. and has more than doubled earnings since 2015 through our strong partnerships with our affinity and property management company clients.
Our investments in digital capabilities, such as our cover 360 property management solution continues to drive more value for our partners and an enhanced customer experience.
Overall, we believe our portfolio of high growth, fee based capital-light offerings and high return Specialty P&C businesses sets us apart as a long-term outperformer and sustained value creator for our shareholders.
Most of all, I'm humbled by our 15,000 employees, who through their dedication to serve our clients and our 300 million customers worldwide have successfully transformed Assurant.
Together, we have significantly strengthened our Fortune 300 company that should continue to deliver above-market growth and superior cash flow.
With our President, Keith Demmings, succeeding me as CEO in January, I'm confident Assurant will accelerate our strategy and continue to differentiate our superior customer experience will further deepen in client relationships.
I've been fortunate to have had a front-row seat and a role in supporting Alan's vision and the transformation of Assurant.
Importantly, he has continued to evolve the purpose of our company to drive value for all stakeholders, customers, employees, communities and shareholders.
The impact he has had on our people and the overall culture of our company has been exemplary.
And I appreciate Alan personal mentorship and partnership and wish him the very best in his retirement.
As we build on Assurant's momentum over the long-term, I believe our talent and innovation will be critical factors to achieving success and growth, especially as we focus more on the convergence around the connected consumer.
From a talent perspective, Assurant has developed a deep and diverse bench of internal leaders.
A few weeks ago, I announced our refreshed Management Committee effective in January, including two new leadership appointments illustrating our strong bench.
First, Keith Meier, our current President of International will succeed Gene Mergelmeyer as Chief Operating Officer, as Jim will be retiring at year-end.
Gene's significant contributions to Assurant over the last 30 plus years, including as COO over his last five years have been instrumental in creating market-leading positions, producing profitable growth and transforming the organization.
In succeeding Gene, Keith Meier brings nearly 25 years of experience at Assurant to the COO role.
Since 2016 as President of Assurant International, he has driven growth across our global markets, most recently with strong success in Asia Pacific.
In this new role, Keith will be focused on advancing Assurant's business strategy and market leadership positions as well as identifying additional opportunities to deliver a superior customer experience.
Second, Martin Jenns, will become President of Global Automotive.
With over 30 years of experience, he currently leads the transformation and growth strategy for Auto and has been instrumental in our introduction of innovative new products like EB-1, our electric vehicle warranty protection.
In addition to emerging opportunities and innovation, Martin will be focused on driving growth and improving the customer experience, including working with our partners to deliver best-in-class dealer training.
These two new appointments along with recent appointments of Biju Nair as President of Connected Living and Manny Becerra as our Chief Innovation Officer, as well as the other management committee members represent a strong team to help lead us into the future.
In addition to talent, innovation is an important strength of the organization.
, not only the development of new digital products and offerings for our clients, but also through new path to grow and scale Assurant's businesses.
Within Connected Living, innovation was a significant theme this quarter through ongoing enhancements of our mobile service delivery options.
As part of the recently finalized multi-year contract extension with T-Mobile, we're expanding the services Assurant provides to continuously improve the customer experience for millions of T-Mobile customers.
As of November 1st, Assurant is partnering with T-Mobile to begin the nationwide rollout of in-store device repair services to approximately 500 stores, provided by Assurant's industry certified repair experts.
In addition, we have also transitioned all of the legacy Sprint protection subscribers to the new T-Mobile Device protection offering.
As a result, this significantly adds to our mobile device count, now at roughly 63 million as of November 1st.
Overall, the expansion of our service delivery options is critical to sustaining our competitive advantage.
We also recently signed a multi-year renewal with Spectrum Mobile, continuing to provide a comprehensive and Pocket Geek mobile [Technical Issues] on-device diagnostic tool.
With the renewal, we will also be expanding the offering to include Pocket Geek privacy, which enables consumers to better protect and manage their personal information online through various features.
This is another example of how we're able to grow by adding services and capabilities to existing clients.
In addition, the mobile business continues to see strong attachment rates given the increased reliance on mobile devices as well as rising device prices.
Our fee-driven trade-in and upgrade business, including the previous acquisitions of Hyla and Alegre have performed extraordinarily well already this year as we enter the early innings of the 5G upgrade cycle.
In fact, almost a year after the transaction of Hyla closed, I'm happy to report the acquisition has performed better than expected, ahead of the low-teens forward EBITDA the acquisition was valued on.
With the growing availability and popularity of 5G-enabled smartphones, we expect to see our 30 plus trade-in and upgrade programs continue to grow.
Our progress is demonstrated through our ability to manage large scale programs with superior technology.
This is further supported by increasing our attach rates for trade-in programs as our clients promotional efforts encourage consumers to upgrade.
Overall, we have processed nearly 18 million devices so far this year, reducing e-waste and increasing digital access with high quality, affordable phones.
Through the scale and capabilities of our trade-in and upgrade programs, we benefit from an additional source of profits and improved client economics and customer retention.
This quarter, we are pleased to announce that we have signed a multi-year contract extension with AT&T to manage their device trade-in program.
This includes providing analytics as well as device collection and processing for all of their sales channels, including retail, B2B, dealer and direct to consumer.
AT&T was the key client added with the Hyla acquisition and we look forward to continuing to do business with them, specifically as we help support the growing adoption of 5-G-enabled devices.
In Global Automotive, policies increased by $4 million or 8% year-over-year and production is well above pre-pandemic levels as we continue to take advantage of our scale and talent.
So far this year, the business has also the benefited from strong used car growth which tends to earn faster than new car sales.
This along with the fact that earnings from the business are recognized over a multi-year period provides good visibility into future performance of the business.
As we drive innovation within Auto, we continued the global rollout of EV-1, an electric vehicle and hybrid protection product to North America.
EV-1 has now been rolled out in seven countries.
While the electric vehicle market is still in its infancy, our EV-1 product will allow Assurant an opportunity to better evaluate customer demand and leverage our learnings to position us well for the expected increase in electric vehicle adoption in the future.
Our Multifamily Housing business grew policies by 7% year-over-year from growth in our affinity partners as well as our PMC relationships, where we continue the rollout of our innovative cover 360 product.
In addition, we have seen other digital investments create opportunities for future growth.
Our newly designed digital sales portal, which makes it faster and easier for residents to sign up for a policy is driving significantly higher product attachment rates.
Our new portal has seen an increase in conversion rates versus our legacy website since it was first introduced last year.
In summary, our ability to strengthen insurance talent and innovation, supported by critical investments has and should continue to drive momentum for the future.
As Alan noted, we are pleased with our third quarter performance as our results reflect strong growth across Global Lifestyle and solid earnings in Global Housing.
For the quarter, we reported net operating income per share excluding reportable catastrophes of $2.73, up 5% from the prior year period.
Excluding cats, net operating income and adjusted EBITDA for the quarter, each increased 4% to $162 million and $262 million, respectively.
Now let's move to segment results, starting with Global Lifestyle.
This segment reported net operating income of $124 million in the third quarter, continued earnings expansion within Connected Livings mobile business.
In Global Automotive, earnings increased $8 million or 21% from continued global growth in our U.S. national dealer and third-party administrator channels, including contributions from our AFAS and international OEM channels.
Better loss experience in select ancillary products and higher investment income also supported earnings growth in the quarter.
Connected Living earnings increased by $6 million or 9% year-over-year.
The increase was primarily driven by continued mobile subscriber growth in North America and better performance in Asia Pacific, as well as higher trading volumes, led by contributions from our Hyla acquisition and carrier promotions.
This quarter, Global Automotive and Connected Living results also included a modest one-time tax benefit that improved earnings.
For the quarter, Lifestyle's adjusted EBITDA increased 17% to $177 million.
This reflects the segments increased amortization resulting from higher deal related intangibles from more recent transactions in mobile in Global Automotive.
IT depreciation expense also increased, stemming from higher investments.
As we look at revenues, Lifestyle revenues increased by $158 million or 9%.
This was driven mainly by continued growth in Connected Living and Global Automotive.
Within Connected Living, revenue increased 10% boosted by mobile fee income that was driven by strong trade-in volumes, including contributions from Hyla.
Trade-in volumes were supported by new phone introductions and carrier promotions from the introduction of new 5G devices.
Higher revenue from growth in domestic mobile subscribers was offset by declines in run-off mobile programs.
Mobile subscribers were up slightly year-over-year and flat year-to-date as mid-single digit subscriber growth in North America was offset by declines in other geographies mostly due to three factors.
First, the 750,000 subscribers related to a run-off of European banking program previously mentioned, which is not expected to be a significant impact in our profitability.
Second, subscriber growth for existing programs moderating in Asia Pacific.
And third, a slower than expected recovery from the pandemic in Latin America.
In Global Automotive, revenue increased 8%, reflecting strong prior period sales of vehicle service contracts.
Industry auto sales remained elevated in the third quarter and we benefited from this trend as reflected in the year-over-year growth of our net written premium by 12%.
We have though seen this trend begin to normalize beginning into the fourth quarter.
For the full year, Lifestyle revenues are expected to increase modestly compared to last years $7.3 billion, mainly driven by Global Auto and Connected Living growth.
For all of 2021, we still expect Global Lifestyle's net operating income to grow in the high single digits compared to 2020.
Adjusted EBITDA for the segment is expected to grow double digits year-over-year, which continues to grow at a faster pace in segment net operating income.
As previously reported, we began our investment in the [Technical Issues] capability this quarter.
However, due to the timing of the rollout, most of our associated start-up costs will occur in the third quarter.
These costs primarily relate to technician hiring and parts sourcing.
We do expect these costs to meaningfully impact Connected Livings profitability as we end the year.
In addition, we expect our effective tax rate to return to a more normal level, approximately 23%.
Looking ahead to 2022, we expect earnings expansion to continue, but more likely at more moderated levels as we continue to invest for growth including additional implementation start-up costs for in-store service and repair.
Moving to Global Housing, net operating income excluding catastrophe losses was $81 million for the third quarter, including the $78 million of pre-announced catastrophe losses mainly from Hurricane Ida, net operating income totaled $3 million.
Excluding catastrophe losses, earnings decreased $19 million due to anticipated higher non-cat losses, which returned to levels more in line with historical averages.
As a reminder, favorable non-CAT losses in 2020 were not representative of historical trends and third quarter 2020 marked the lowest point of last year, mainly driven by loss experience within lender placed and specialty products.
The year-over-year earnings decline was nearly all driven by unfavorable non-cat loss experience from several factors.
The largest driver which contributed close to half of the increase was from the expected normalization of the non-cat loss ratio.
The balance of the decline was split relatively evenly between increased reserves related to our Specialty P&C offerings, primarily in our on-demand sharing economy business as well as higher claims severity.
Claims severity included moderate impacts from inflationary factors such as higher labor and material costs.
While there is always a lag.
If this trend continues, we would expect higher loss cost to be offset by increased rates over time.
In Multifamily Housing, underlying growth was offset by increased investments to further strengthen our customer experience, including our digital first capability.
Global Housing revenue decreased slightly year-over-year from lower Specialty P&C revenues as well as a cat reinstatement premium resulting from Hurricane Ida and lower REO volumes in lender placed.
This was partially offset by higher average insured values and premium rates in lender placed and growth in Multifamily Housing.
We continue to expect Global Housing's net operating income excluding cats to be flat for the full year compared to 2020.
For the fourth quarter and into 2022, we would expect non-cat losses to continue to be above 2020, but in line with year-to-date 2021 experience, which is consistent with long-term trends.
We also continue to monitor the REO foreclosure moratoriums and any additional extensions that may be announced.
At Corporate, the net operating loss was $21 million, an improvement of $4 million compared to the third quarter of 2020.
This was driven by two items.
First, lower employee-related expenses and third-party fee.
And second, expense savings associated with reducing our real estate footprint.
In the fourth quarter, we do anticipate a higher loss due to the timing of spend.
For the full year 2021, we now expect the Corporate net operating loss to be approximately $80 million, driven by favorable year-to-date results mainly from the one-time tax and real estate joint venture benefits in the second quarter.
This compares to our previous estimate of $85 million.
As we look forward to 2022, we would expect our net operating loss in Corporate to be closer to $90 million, more in line with historical trends.
Turning to the holding company liquidity, including the net proceeds from the sale of Preneed in August, we ended the third quarter with over $1.3 billion, well above our current minimum target level.
In the third quarter, dividends from operating segments totaled $127 million.
In addition to our quarterly corporate and interest expenses, we also had outflows from three main items, $323 million of share repurchases, $39 million in common stock dividends and $11 million mainly related to Assurant ventures investment.
In addition to completing our 2019 Investor Day objective of returning $1.35 billion to shareholders from 2019 through 2021, we have also completed roughly one-quarter of our objective to return $900 million in Global Preneed sale proceeds through share repurchases.
For the year overall, we continue to expect dividends to approximate segment earnings subject to the growth of the businesses, rating agency and regulatory capital requirements and investment portfolio performance.
I also want to provide a quick update on the Assurant Ventures, our venture capital arm.
In the third quarter, three investments in our portfolio went public via SPACs.
We are pleased with the results as the three investment exceeded a 7 times multiple on investment capital under their respective SPAC transaction terms.
These transactions combined with strong performance in the broader ventures portfolio led to a $75 million after-tax gain flowing through net income in the quarter.
In addition to strong returns, these investments also provide key insights into emerging technologies and capabilities within our Connected Consumer businesses.
In addition to positioning Assurant for long-term success and growth, he has created an environment of inclusion in community, truly representative of our core values, common sense and common decency.
Alan, I wish you all the very best in retirement, well deserved.

user
qtrly net operating income, ex.
reportable catastrophes, per diluted share $2.73.
qtrly total revenues $2,637.8 million versus $2,376.7 million.
assurant - sees for 2021, assurant net operating income, ex.
reportable catastrophes, per diluted share, to increase about 10% to 14% from 2020.

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