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Text: We look forward to discussing our second quarter 2021 results with you today.
Joining me for Assurant's conference call are: Alan Colberg, our Chief Executive Officer; Keith Jennings, our President; and Richard Dziadzio, our Chief Financial Officer.
Yesterday after the market closed, we issued a news release announcing our results for the second quarter 2021.
The release and corresponding financial supplement are available on assurant.com.
We will 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.
We are very pleased with our second quarter results.
Our performance so far this year across our Global Lifestyle and Global Housing businesses demonstrates the power of our strategy to support consumers' connected lifestyle and continues to give us strong confidence in the future growth prospects for Assurant.
Prior to reviewing our progress against our 2021 financial objectives, I wanted to take a moment to express my deep gratitude to our employees around the world, specifically for their continued dedication and support for all of Assurant stakeholders during my tenure as CEO and especially over the last 18 months of the pandemic.
Our talent is a great enabler of our company's growth and progress and Keith Jennings' appointment as my successor is evidence of that.
With a 25-year-long career at the company, he has a clear track record of success and personifies the values and integrity that are emblematic of Assurant's culture and is a natural choice as our next CEO.
His deep operational experience and strong engagement with clients has been instrumental in guiding Assurant's growth across the enterprise.
As CEO, Keith will drive innovation through our Connected World and Specialty P&C businesses.
The completion of the sale of Global Preneed to CUNA Mutual Group marks another important milestone for Assurant, as it enables our organization to further deepen our focus on our market-leading Lifestyle and Housing businesses.
As we look to the convergence of the connected mobile device, car and home, we believe our Connected Living, Global Automotive and Multifamily Housing businesses will continue their compelling history of strong growth into the future.
Not only do our Connected World businesses have a history of profitable growth, more than tripling earnings over the last five years, were also characterized by partnerships with leading global brands; broad multi-channel distribution that provides consumers a choice, value and exceptional service and the track record of innovative offerings that have become industry standards.
ESG is core to our strategy, ensuring we'll build a more sustainable Assurant for all of our stakeholders, focusing on talent, products and climate.
During the quarter, we continue to advance our ESG efforts as we work to create an even more diverse, equitable and inclusive culture that promotes innovation, and enhances sustainability and minimizes our carbon footprint.
We recently completed our 2021 CDP Climate Survey, our sixth annual scoring submission expanding this year to include Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions across several categories.
The CDP survey is an important climate change assessment, which many of our key stakeholders rely on each year.
Our efforts have led to a recognition that we're proud of.
During the quarter, Assurant was recognized as a 2021 honoree of The Civic 50 by Points of Light, thus claiming [Phonetic] Assurant as one of 50 most community-minded companies in the U.S.
We are proud of our progress and believe the future of Assurant is bright.
Together, Lifestyle and housing should continue to drive above-market growth and superior cash flow generation, with the ability to outperform in a wide spectrum of economic scenarios and ultimately continue to create greater shareholder value over time.
Year-to-date, excluding reportable catastrophes, net operating income per share was $6.02, up 14% from the first half of last year and net operating income was $366 million, an increase of 30%.
Adjusted EBITDA increased 12% to $600 million.
These results support our full-year outlook of 10% to 14% growth in net operating income per share excluding affordable catastrophes.
While we expect earnings growth in the second half on a year-over-year basis, our outlook for the full year assumes a decline in earnings from the first half, reflecting increased investments to support long-term growth in our Connected World businesses, lower investment income and increased corporate and other expenses due to timing of spending.
From 2019 through June of this year, we've returned to shareholders over 88% or almost $1.2 billion of our three-year $1.35 billion objective.
In July, we repurchased an additional 737,000 shares for $150 million and declared our quarterly common stock dividend for the third quarter, essentially completing our objective when paid.
In addition to completing this objective, we expect to return $900 million in net proceeds from the sale of Global Preneed within the next 12 months and therefore expect buybacks to continue at a higher-than-usual level throughout the remainder of the year and into 2022.
Through his strategic vision and intense focus on the evolving needs of our clients and end consumers, Alan and our team have solidified market-leading positions in our Connected World and Specialty P&C businesses, help Assurant establish a strong growth capital-light service-oriented business model where our Connected World offering is now comprised approximately two-thirds of our segment earnings and ultimately work together to unlock the power of our Fortune 300 organization -- prioritizing resources against initiatives with the highest growth potential and standing of key enterprise capabilities and functions, which we can now leverage across our growing client and customer base.
As a result, Assurant is on track to deliver our fifth consecutive year of strong profitable growth.
As I continue to work closely with Alan over the coming months.
I'm also engaging with many of our key stakeholders, including shareholders and analysts who shared valuable perspectives as we define our multi-year plan.
As I identify key focus areas, I will prioritize developing and recruiting top talent, investing strategically to sustain and accelerate growth through product innovation and new distribution models, differentiating us further from our competition through continuous improvement in our customer service delivery, and supporting the investment community in better-understanding our portfolio as we look to drive further value creation.
Our long-term goal will continue to be to deliver sustained growth and value to all of our stakeholders.
Our ability to deliver on these ambitions will require additional innovation and investments to ultimately provide a superior customer experience and deepen our client relationships.
Innovation will continue to be a key differentiator for Assurant, especially as we evolve with the convergence of the connected consumer.
As part of our ongoing commitment to delivering a superior customer experience with a range of service delivery options, we will be further building out our same-day service and repair capabilities for which there is growing demand.
This requires upfront investments, which we expect to accelerate in the second half of this year as we look to provide additional choice and convenience for the end consumer.
As we look to continue our culture of innovation.
You may have seen, we recently announced two key leadership changes to support those efforts.
Manny Becerra, a 31-year veteran of Assurant who was instrumental in driving the growth of our mobile business was appointed to the newly created role of Chief Innovation Officer.
Given his many contributions to our success including the development of our mobile protection and training and upgrade business, he will bring dedicated resources to accelerate innovation across the enterprise to capitalize on the rapid convergence across our home, automotive and mobile products.
Biju Nair will now lead our Connected Living business as its President.
His strong track record of delivering profitable growth and client service excellence, combined with his depth of experience, particularly of the former CEO of Hyla Mobile makes him the perfect choice.
A prime example of how innovation has allowed us to deepen and expand client relationships, as well as create new revenue streams is our long-standing partnership with T-Mobile.
Over the past eight years, we have worked together to offer their customers innovative device protection, trade-in and upgrade programs, while further developing our supply chain services to support their mobile ecosystem.
We are happy to announce that T-Mobile has extended our partnership as their device protection provider.
While we are currently finalizing contract terms, we are excited about the multi-year extension of our relationship and our ability to continue to expand our services to deliver a superior customer experience.
In addition to our innovation efforts, or investments over the past several years has supported our growth through the success of new and strengthened client relationships.
After an initial investment in 2017, this quarter, we purchased the remainder of Olivar, a provider of mobile device lifecycle management and asset disposition services in South Korea.
While small in size, this acquisition enhances our global asset disposition capabilities and deepened our footprint in the Asia-Pacific region while complementing the recent acquisitions of Alegre in Australia and Hyla Mobile.
These investments have enhanced our technology, operational capabilities and partnerships in the trade-in and upgrade market, positioning us to capitalize on the 5G upgrade cycle over the next several years.
Although this year the growing availability of 5G smartphones combined with trade-in promotions demonstrate increasing momentum for the upgrade cycle.
For carriers, retailers, OEMs and cable operators, 5G offers an opportunity to drive additional revenue and gain market share.
Strong trading and upgrade promotions have also led to higher trading volumes for Assurant as well as higher net promoter scores and net subscriber growth within our client base.
Our focus on our client relationships, combined with our willingness to innovate to enhance the end consumer experience continue to create momentum for our businesses.
Over the last few months, we have delivered several new partnerships and renewals throughout the enterprise including the renewal of two key European mobile clients representing 7,000 subscribers; renewal of eight global automotive partnerships representing over 10 million policies across our distribution channels; renewal of three Multifamily housing property management companies including two of the largest in the U.S. as we continue to grow the rollout of our Cover360 product; renewal of three clients and two new partnerships in lender-place as we provide critical support for the U.S. mortgage market.
In summary, I'm very excited to lead our 14,000 employees into the future and build on the tremendous momentum created under Alan's leadership.
We're pleased with our second quarter performance, especially when compared to our strong results last year.
For the quarter, we reported net operating income per share excluding reportable catastrophes of $2.99, up 12% from the prior year period.
Excluding cats, net operating income for the quarter totaled $184 million and adjusted EBITDA amounted to $298 million, a year-over-year increase of 12% and 10% respectively.
Our performance across Lifestyle and Housing remains strong and we also benefited from a lower corporate loss and higher investment income, primarily related to the sale of a real estate joint venture partnership.
Now let's move to segment results, starting the Global Lifestyle.
The segment reported net operating income of $124 million in the second quarter, a year-over-year increase of 2%.
This was driven by growth in Global Automotive and more favorable claims experience in Global Financial Services.
Diving deeper into earnings.
In Global Automotive, earnings increased $7 million or 16% from continued strong year-over-year growth related to our U.S. clients across various distribution channels.
Results within auto also included a $4 million increase from the sale of the real estate joint venture partnership.
Absent this gain, investment income in auto was down.
Connected Living earnings decreased by $9 million compared to a strong prior-year period.
The decline was primarily driven by less favorable loss experience in our extended service contract business.
Mobile earnings were modestly lower.
The less favorable loss experience and service contracts in mobile was primarily related to our European and Latin American businesses.
These regions benefited from lower claims activity in the prior year period due to the pandemic.
Our underlying mobile business continue to grow in North America and Asia Pacific from enrollment increases that mobile carriers and cable operators, with an increase of over one million covered devices in the last year.
In addition, contributions from acquisitions such as Hyla Mobile benefited results.
For the quarter, Lifestyle's adjusted EBITDA increased 6% to $186 million.
This reflects the segments increased amortization related to higher deal-related intangibles for more recent transactions in mobile in Global Automotive.
IT depreciation expense also increase stemming from higher investments.
As we look at revenues, Lifestyle increased by $169 million or 10%.
This was driven mainly by continued growth in Global Automotive and Connected Living.
Within Global Automotive, revenue increased 13% reflecting strong prior period sales of vehicle service contracts.
Industry auto sales continue to increase during the quarter with April seeing record levels in the U.S.
This was reflected in our net written premiums of roughly $1.3 billion in the quarter, the highest quarter ever recorded.
Connected Living revenues were up 7% for the quarter.
In addition to growth in service contracts, mobile fee income was driven by strong trading volumes, including contributions from Hyla.
For the full year, Lifestyle revenues are expected to increase modestly, compared to last year's $7.3 billion, mainly driven by year-to-date Global Auto and Connected Living growth.
We continue to expect to cover mobile devices to grow mid-single digits in 2021 as we increased subscribers in key geographies like the U.S. and Japan.
This also reflects the reduction of 750,000 mobile subscribers related to a European banking program that moved to another provider in the second quarter.
As we previously outlined.
This is not expected to significantly impact our profitability.
For 2021, we still expect Global Lifestyle's net operating income to grow in the high-single digits compared to the $437 million reported in 2020.
While we expect earnings growth year-over-year for the second half, earnings in the second half of the year are expected to be lower compared to the strong first half performance primarily due to two items: first, investments will increase across Connected Living in the second half of the year, including our same-day service and repair capabilities.
While these investments will mute earnings growth in the short term, they are expected to generate growth over the long term; and second, the investment income will be lower as we are not expecting gains from real estate joint venture partnerships that benefited the second quarter in auto.
Adjusted EBITDA for the segment is still expected to grow double-digits year-over-year at a faster based in segment net operating income.
Moving now to Global Housing.
Net operating income for the quarter totaled $94 million, compared to $85 million in the second quarter of 2020 due to $10 million of lower reportable catastrophes.
Excluding catastrophe losses, earnings were relatively flat as growth within lender-placed and higher investment income was offset by the expected increase in non-cat loss experience across all lines of business.
Investment income included a $4 million increase from the sale of a real estate joint venture referenced earlier.
Regarding the non-cat loss ratio, the second quarter 2020 benefited from unusually low non-cat losses, including impacts from the pandemic.
As anticipated, we saw an increase in the frequency and severity of claims in the second quarter.
We also increased reserves related to the cost of settling run-off claims within our small commercial book.
In Multifamily housing, underlying growth was offset by increased investments to further strengthen our customer experience including our digital-first capabilities.
Within lender-placed, higher revenues and investment income were partially offset by unfavorable non-cat loss experience and declining REO volumes from ongoing foreclosure moratoriums.
Looking at loans track, the $1.5 million sequential loan decline was mainly attributable to a client portfolio that rolled off in the second quarter.
However, the decline in loans track should be partially offset by two new client partnerships in the quarter, which should enable us to onboard approximately 700,000 loans by year-end.
We also continue to reduce risk within housing.
At the end of June, we completed our 2021 Catastrophe Reinsurance program.
To mitigate multi-event risk, we added a flexible limit that can be used to reduce our retention from $80 million to $55 million in certain second and third events, or increase the top-of-the-tower $50 million in excess of $950 million in the rare case of a 1 in 174-year event.
We also increased our multi-year coverage to over 50% of our U.S. tower.
In terms of revenue, Global Housing's revenue increased 5%, primarily due to double-digit growth in Multifamily housing, as well as higher revenue in lender-placed including higher premium rates and average-insured values.
As a result of the strong first half, we now expect Global Housing's net operating income excluding cats to be flat compared to the $371 million in 2020.
This is above our initial expectations that earnings would be down this year.
Earnings in the second half are expected to be lower than the first half of the year, primarily related to three items: first, lower net investment income, particularly considering the real estate joint venture gain in the second quarter; second, lower results in our Specialty P&C offerings after our strong first half; and third, continued investments in the business, particularly in Multifamily housing to sustain and enhance our competitive position.
We also continue to monitor the REO foreclosure moratoriums and any additional extensions that may be announced.
At corporate, the net operating loss was $12 million, compared to $29 million in the second quarter of 2020.
This were driven by two items: first, lower employee-related expenses and third party fees, which we expect to increase in the second half of the year; and second, we had $6 million of favorable one-time items including a tax benefit and income from the sale of the real estate joint venture partnership.
We also anticipate higher spending in the second half of the year compared to the first half due to an increase in recruiting and moderate travel and related expenses as we expect to begin a phased reentry of our workforce.
In addition, third-party expenses are expected to increase due to acceleration and timing of investments.
For the full year of 2021, we now expect the Corporate net operating loss to be approximately $85 million.
This compares to our previous estimate of $90 million.
Turning to holding company liquidity.
We ended the second quarter with $353 million, which is $128 million above our current minimum target level.
This excludes both the $1.2 billion in net proceeds from the sale of Preneed and the net proceeds from the second quarter debt offering, which were used for the July redemption of senior notes due in 2023.
In the second quarter, dividends from our operating segments totaled $243 million.
In addition to our quarterly corporate and interest expenses, we also had outflows from three main items: $191 million of share repurchases, $42 million in common stock dividends and $17 million mainly related to mobile acquisitions including Olivar and Assurant venture investments.
For the overall year, we continue to expect dividends to approximate segment earnings, subject to the growth of the businesses, rating agency and regulatory capital requirements, investment portfolio performance and any impact on a potential change in corporate U.S. tax rates.
In summary, our strong performance for the first half of the year positions us nicely to meet our full year financial commitments, while continuing to invest in our long-term growth.

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q2 operating earnings per share $2.99 excluding items.
continue to expect to grow eps, ex.
catastrophes, by 10 to 14 percent for 2021.

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