2025-02-05 The Allstate Corporation (ALL) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
The Allstate Corporation (NYSE:ALL) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript February 6, 2025 9:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Allister Gobin - Head of Investor Relations
Tom Wilson - Chair, President and Chief Executive Officer
Jess Merten - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Mario Rizzo - President, Property Liability
Conference Call Participants
Rob Cox - Goldman Sachs
Gregory Peters - Raymond James
Mike Zaremski - BMO
Christian Kemph - Wells Fargo
Jimmy Bhullar - JPMorgan
Bob Huang - Morgan Stanley
Operator
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Allstate's Fourth Quarter Investor Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today’s program is being recorded.
大家好，感谢您保持在线。欢迎参加Allstate第四季度投资者电话会议。现阶段，所有参与者仅处于聆听模式。预备发言结束后，将进行问答环节。[操作员指示] 提醒一下，今天的会议正在录音。
And now, I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Allister Gobin, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
现在，我来介绍今天会议的主持人，投资者关系部主管Allister Gobin。请开始，先生。
Allister Gobin
Thank you, Jonathan. Good morning. Welcome to Allstate's fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Yesterday, following the close of the market, we issued our news release and investor supplement, and posted related material on our website at allstateinvestors.com. Our management team will provide perspective on our strategy and an update on our results. After prepared remarks, we will have a question-and-answer session.
Allister Gobin
谢谢你，Jonathan。大家早上好。欢迎参加Allstate第四季度2024财报电话会议。昨天，市场收盘后，我们发布了新闻稿和投资者补充材料，并在我们的网站allstateinvestors.com上发布了相关资料。我们的管理团队将对公司的战略提供见解，并更新我们的业绩情况。预备发言结束后，将进行问答环节。
As noted on the first slide of the presentation, our discussion will contain non-GAAP measures, for which there are reconciliations in the news release and investor supplement and forward-looking statements about Allstate's operations. Allstate's results may differ materially from these statements, so please refer to our 10-K for 2023 and other public documents for information on potential risks, as 10-K for 2024 will be published later this month.
正如演示文稿第一页所指出的，我们的讨论将包含非GAAP指标，其对账信息见于新闻稿和投资者补充材料，同时也包含有关Allstate运营的前瞻性声明。Allstate的实际业绩可能与这些声明存在重大差异，因此请参阅我们的2023年10-K报告及其他公开文件，以了解潜在风险信息，2024年的10-K报告将在本月晚些时候发布。
And now, I'll turn it over to Tom.
现在，我将把话筒交给Tom。
Tom Wilson
Good morning. We appreciate you investing time in Allstate. I'll start with an overview, and then Mario and Jess will go through the operating results. Let's begin on slide 2.
Tom Wilson
大家早上好。感谢您抽出宝贵时间关注Allstate。我将首先为大家概述整体情况，然后由Mario和Jess介绍运营结果。我们从第2页开始。
So as you know, Allstate's strategy has two components, increased Property-Liability market share, and then expand protection provided to customers, which is shown in the two ovals on the left-hand side. On the right hand, you can see Allstate's strong performance in 2024 and the topics we're going to cover this morning.
正如您所知，Allstate的战略包含两个组成部分：一是提升财产-责任市场份额，二是扩大对客户提供的保障，这在左侧两个椭圆中有所展示。在右侧，您可以看到Allstate在2024年的强劲表现以及我们今天上午将讨论的主题。
Total revenues were $16.5 billion in the fourth quarter, up 11.3% compared to the prior year quarter. Allstate generated net income of $1.9 billion in the fourth quarter and $4.6 billion for the full year. Adjusted net income return on equity was 26.8%. Let me just repeat that, 26.8% over the last 12 months. Successful risk and return management resulted in excellent underwriting and investment results. Transformative growth has strengthened our competitive position. We'll spend a few minutes on that today. The sale of our Group Health and Employee Voluntary Benefits to companies with greater strategic alignment will generate $3.25 billion of expected proceeds representing attractive valuation multiples.
第四季度的总收入达到165亿美元，同比上涨11.3%。Allstate在第四季度实现了19亿美元的净收入，全年度净收入为46亿美元。调整后的净收入股本回报率为26.8%。让我再重复一遍，过去12个月这一数字为26.8%。成功的风险与回报管理带来了卓越的承保和投资业绩。转型性增长已强化了我们的竞争地位。我们今天将花几分钟讨论这一点。我们将集团健康及员工自愿福利业务出售给具有更高战略契合度的公司，预计将产生32.5亿美元的收益，体现了颇具吸引力的估值倍数。
Let's move on to slide 3 that shows the operational execution produced excellent financial results in the quarter and for the full year. Revenues increased to $64.1 billion in 2024. Property-Liability earned premiums were 10.6% in the quarter and 11.2% for the full year. Net investment income was up 37.9% above the prior year and up almost 25% for the full year. Net income was $1.9 billion in the quarter and $4.6 billion for the full year. Adjusted net income, which you know we make a few changes on amortization and tangible things, which just come walking through. It went out with $7.67 per share for the fourth quarter. On the lower right, you can see the adjusted net income return net equity was 26.8%. So 2024 was an excellent year for Allstate both financially and strategically.
接下来请看第3页，该页展示了运营执行所带来的卓越财务业绩，无论是本季度还是全年度。2024年的收入增长至641亿美元。财产-责任业务的已赚保费本季度增长10.6%，全年增长11.2%。净投资收入同比上涨37.9%，全年增长近25%。本季度净收入为19亿美元，全年度净收入为46亿美元。调整后的净收入——正如您所知，我们对摊销和有形项目进行了部分调整——第四季度每股为7.67美元。右下角显示，调整后的净收入股本回报率为26.8%。因此，2024年对Allstate来说，无论在财务上还是战略上，都是卓越的一年。
Let's move on to talk strategically about transformative growth on slide 4. We launched this project in December of 2019. So five years have gone by, so it thought it'd be a good time to give you a five-year look as to where we are. And as you know, there's five components of the plan to increase market share on Property-Liability, two of which we'll cover today. Improving customer value requires us to lower our cost and provide differentiated profits. As you can see on the right-hand side, the adjusted expense ratio, which excludes advertising cost, has improved almost five points since 2019 by eliminating work outsourcing and digitizing activity, using less real estate and lowering distribution expenses. Lower costs enable us to offer more competitive prices without impacting margins.
接下来请看第4页，我们将从战略角度讨论转型性增长。我们于2019年12月启动了这一项目。五年过去了，现在正是向您展示我们所处位置的五年回顾的好时机。如您所知，为提升财产-责任市场份额，我们的计划包含五个组成部分，其中有两个将在今天讨论。提升客户价值要求我们降低成本并实现差异化利润。正如您在右侧所见，排除广告费用后，调整后的费用比率自2019年以来已改善近5个百分点，这得益于取消外包、实现业务数字化、减少房产使用以及降低分销费用。降低成本使我们能够在不影响利润率的前提下，提供更具竞争力的价格。
Substantial progress has also been made in introducing products, new products. So affordable, simple, connected auto insurance is now in 31 states, and the new homeowners product is in four states. Differentiated custom 360 middle market standard and preferred auto and homeowners price have also been introduced to the independent agent channel in 30 states. One of the most significant changes is the expansion of customer access to improved growth. So this effort has three components, improve Allstate agent productivity, expand direct sales, and increase independent agent distribution, all of which have been successful. Allstate agency productivity has increased. Enhancement to direct capabilities, lower pricing, and increased advertising is tracking more self-directed customers. The National General acquisition significantly expanded our presence and capabilities in the independent agent channel.
在新产品推出方面也取得了重大进展。现在，经济实惠、简单且互联的汽车保险已覆盖31个州，新的房主险产品已在4个州推出。针对中端市场的定制化360标准及优选汽车和房主险定价，也已在30个州的独立代理渠道中推出。最显著的变化之一是扩大了客户获取改进增长的渠道。这项努力包含三个组成部分：提高Allstate代理人的生产力、扩展直销业务以及增加独立代理分销，这些举措均已取得成功。Allstate代理业务生产力有所提升。直销能力的增强、价格下降以及广告投入增加，吸引了更多自助型客户。National General的收购显著扩展了我们在独立代理渠道中的市场地位和能力。
As you can see on the right, in 2019, more than three out of four new business policies came from the off-stage agents. Last year, new business was 9.7 million items, 76% higher than 2019, with significant contributions from each channel. Policies and force have increased from $237.3 million, despite the negative impact of post-pandemic price increases. Transformative growth has positioned us for personal Property-Liability market share growth, which you'll hear more about from Mario.
正如您在右侧所见，2019年，新业务保单中超过四分之三来自离线代理。去年，新业务达到了970万份，比2019年增长了76%，各渠道均作出了显著贡献。尽管疫情后价格上涨带来了一定负面影响，但保费及保单数已从2.373亿美元增长。转型性增长使我们在个人财产-责任市场份额增长方面处于有利地位，您将从Mario那里听到更多信息。
So now let me move on to Mario on Property-Liability.
现在，让我把话筒交给Mario，讨论财产-责任业务。
Mario Rizzo
马里奥·里佐
Thanks, Tom. Let's turn to slide 5. At the top of the table, you can see fourth quarter Property-Liability underrating income of $1.8 million improved by $507 million compared to the prior year quarter. Auto insurance generated $603 million of underwriting income, an improvement of $510 million compared to the prior year quarter, and reflecting the successful execution of the profit improvement plan. Homeowners insurance underwriting income was also strong at $1.1 billion. This was $99 million lower than the prior year quarter due to increased catastrophe losses.
谢谢，汤姆。让我们翻到幻灯片5。在表格的顶部，您可以看到第四季度财产-意外责任保险承保收入为180万美元，比去年同期提高了5.07亿美元。汽车保险产生了6.03亿美元的承保收入，比去年同期提高了5.1亿美元，反映了利润改善计划的成功执行。房主保险承保收入也很强劲，达到11亿美元。由于灾难损失增加，比去年同期减少了9900万美元。
On the bottom half of the table, you see the strong margins delivered during the quarter with the total Property-Liability recorded combined ratio of 86.9, reflecting a 2.6-point improvement compared to the prior year. Auto and homeowner combined ratios in the quarter were both better than the targets for those businesses of mid-90s for auto and low-90s for homeowners.
在表格的下半部分，您可以看到本季度实现的强劲利润率，财产-意外责任险综合比率为86.9，比去年同期提高了2.6个百分点。本季度汽车和房主综合比率均优于这些业务的目标，汽车保险为90%以上，房主保险为90%以下。
Now we'll expand on the auto insurance margins on slide 6, where you can see how successful execution of the auto profit improvement plan has restored profitability back to target levels. The fourth quarter auto insurance recorded combined ratio of 93.5 was 5.4 points below prior year quarter as average earned premium outpaced loss costs.
现在，我们将在幻灯片6中详细介绍汽车保险的利润率，您可以在其中看到汽车利润改善计划的成功执行如何将盈利能力恢复到目标水平。由于平均已赚保费超过损失成本，第四季度汽车保险记录的综合比率为93.5，比去年同期低5.4个百分点。
As a reminder, we regularly review claims severity expectations throughout the year. If the expected severity for the current year changes, we record the year-to-date impact in the current quarter, even though a portion of that impact is attributable to previous quarters. For 2022 through 2024, the bars in the graph reflect the updated average severity estimates as of the end of each of those years to remove the volatility related to entry year severity adjustments. The table at the bottom of the graph shows actual reported combined ratios. In the fourth quarter of 2024, the full year claims severity estimate went down, so there was a benefit from prior quarters included in the fourth quarter's reported results. This benefit was worth 1.5 points in the fourth quarter with the adjusted quarterly combined ratio of 95, shown in the furthest bar to the right.
提醒一下，我们会定期审查全年的理赔严重程度预期。如果当前年份的预期严重程度发生变化，我们会在当前季度记录年初至今的影响，即使部分影响归因于之前的季度。对于2022年至2024年，图表中的柱状图反映了截至这些年份年底更新的平均严重程度估计，以消除与初始年份严重程度调整相关的波动性。图表底部的表格显示了实际报告的综合比率。在2024年第四季度，全年理赔严重程度估计有所下降，因此第四季度报告的业绩中包含了之前季度的收益。这项收益在第四季度价值1.5个百分点，调整后的季度综合比率为95，显示在最右侧的柱状图中。
Let's turn to slide 7, where you can see that homeowners insurance produced attractive returns and group policies enforced in 2024. With an industry-leading product, advanced pricing, underwriting, and analytics, broad distribution capabilities, and a comprehensive reinsurance program, we will continue to win in the homeowners' business. On the left, you can see some of the key factors that contributed to strong results, including increased written premium of 15.3% in the fourth quarter compared to prior year, reflecting higher average gross written premium per policy and policy enforced growth of 2.4%. For the full year 2024, the homeowners insurance business recorded a combined ratio of 90.1 in line with our low 90s target, while generating total underwriting profit of $1.3 billion. The combined ratio for 2024 improved by 16.7 points, primarily driven by lower catastrophe losses and strong underlying loss performance. The chart on the right shows Allstate's strong track record of profitability in homeowners insurance. Allstate produced a recorded combined ratio of 92 over the past 10 years, which compares favorably to the industry, which experienced an underwriting loss and a combined ratio of 103 over that same time period.
让我们翻到幻灯片7，您可以在其中看到房主保险在2024年产生了可观的回报和集团保单。凭借行业领先的产品、先进的定价、承保和分析、广泛的分销能力以及全面的再保险计划，我们将继续在房主业务中取得成功。在左侧，您可以看到为强劲业绩做出贡献的一些关键因素，包括第四季度已承保保费比去年同期增长15.3%，反映出每份保单的平均总承保保费增加以及保单执行增长2.4%。2024年全年，房主保险业务记录的综合比率为90.1，符合我们90%以下的低目标，同时产生了13亿美元的总承保利润。2024年的综合比率提高了16.7个百分点，这主要得益于灾难损失的减少和强劲的潜在损失表现。右侧的图表显示了好事达在房主保险方面的良好盈利记录。在过去10年中，好事达的记录综合比率为92，与同期的行业相比，行业经历了承保亏损，综合比率为103，这一成绩非常出色。
Now let's go to a homeowner pertinent topic on slide 8 and discuss the California wildfires. So Allstate responded quickly and empathetically to help customers and communities after the tragic wildfires in Southern California. We deployed mobile claim centers and over 900 team members to assist customers. Helping our customers recover from the fires is our principal priority. The financial impact of the wildfires reflects the comprehensive risk and return approach we've taken to managing the homeowners insurance business.
现在，让我们转到幻灯片8上与房主相关的主题，讨论加州野火。在南加州发生悲惨的野火后，好事达迅速而富有同情心地做出反应，以帮助客户和社区。我们部署了移动理赔中心和900多名团队成员来协助客户。帮助我们的客户从火灾中恢复过来是我们的首要任务。野火的财务影响反映了我们在管理房主保险业务时采取的综合风险和回报方法。
Allstate made the decision to reduce California exposure beginning in 2007. Our homeowners market share has been reduced by over 50% since that time. As you can see on the chart on the left, while it is early and we have not been able to adjust many claims, current gross losses are estimated at $2 billion, which includes loss adjustment expenses and an estimated California fair plan assessment. Reinsurance recoveries of $900 million net of reinstatement premiums would reduce the net loss to $1.1 billion, which will be reflected in first quarter 2025 earnings. Each additional $100 million in gross losses above our current estimate would result in $10 million of net losses since we are above the reinsurance attachment point of $1 billion. We will continue to monitor the development of this event and provide any updates with our January catastrophe release, which we'll make on February 20.
好事达从2007年开始决定减少在加州的风险敞口。自那时以来，我们的房主市场份额已减少了50%以上。正如您在左侧图表中所看到的，虽然现在还处于早期阶段，我们尚未能够调整许多索赔，但目前的总损失估计为20亿美元，其中包括损失调整费用和估计的加州公平计划评估。扣除恢复原状保费后的9亿美元再保险追偿将使净损失减少至11亿美元，这将反映在2025年第一季度的收益中。由于我们已超过10亿美元的再保险附加点，因此超出我们当前估计的每增加1亿美元的总损失将导致1000万美元的净损失。我们将继续监测这一事件的发展，并在我们2月20日发布的1月份灾难报告中提供任何更新。
Looking forward, let's discuss policy and force trends in the Property-Liability business on slide 9. The chart to the left shows the composition of Property-Liability, 37.5 million policies in force. Auto is the largest at 24.9 million and homeowners represent approximately 20% of policies in force. As you can see on the right side of the page, auto insurance policies in force declined by 1.4%. A decline in customer retention, particularly in states with large recent rate increases, more than offset a nearly 30% increase in new business applications in the quarter. Auto policies in force did increase in 31 states, representing approximately 60% of countrywide rate premium on a year-over-year basis.
展望未来，让我们在幻灯片9中讨论财产-意外责任险业务的保单和有效保单趋势。左侧图表显示了财产-意外责任险的构成，共有3750万份有效保单。汽车保险是最大的，为2490万份，房主保险约占有效保单的20%。正如您在页面右侧看到的那样，汽车保险有效保单下降了1.4%。客户保留率的下降，尤其是在最近大幅提高费率的州，超过了本季度新业务申请近30%的增长。汽车保险有效保单在31个州确实有所增加，按年计算，这些州的保费约占全国保费的60%。
In the middle column on the right, you can see that homeowners insurance policies in force increased by 173,000 or 2.4% driven by strong retention and a 20.5% increase in new business. We do homeowners as a growth opportunity across all distribution channels. Our objective in 2025 is to grow Property-Liability policies in force by both improving customer retention and continuing strong new business sales. We are proactively contacting customers to lower the cost of protection to increase retention. Completing the rollout of affordable, simple and connected auto and homeowners products will also enable growth. In addition to improving the customer experience, these products contain our most sophisticated rating plans and telematics offerings, which will deliver profitable growth and position us to compete effectively in a market where more carriers are looking to grow. We will also continue to invest in marketing and leverage broad distribution to grow Property-Liability market share.
在右侧的中间一栏中，您可以看到，由于强劲的保留率和新业务增长20.5%，房主保险有效保单增加了17.3万份，即2.4%。我们将房主保险视为所有分销渠道的增长机会。我们在2025年的目标是通过提高客户保留率和继续强劲的新业务销售来增加财产-意外责任险有效保单。我们正在积极联系客户，以降低保护成本，从而提高保留率。完成经济实惠、简单且互联的汽车和房主产品的推广也将促进增长。除了改善客户体验外，这些产品还包含我们最先进的评级计划和远程信息处理服务，这将带来盈利增长，并使我们能够在更多运营商寻求增长的市场中有效竞争。我们还将继续投资营销并利用广泛的分销来增加财产-意外责任险的市场份额。
To provide transparency to investors on our progress on growth, monthly disclosure of policies in force will be provided beginning with our next monthly release in a couple of weeks. Now I'll turn it over to Jess.
为了向投资者透明地展示我们在增长方面的进展，有效保单的月度披露将从我们几周后的下一次月度发布开始提供。现在我将把它交给杰斯。
Jess Merten
All right. Thank you, Mario. Slide 10 provides insights on investment performance and asset allocation. By taking a proactive approach to portfolio management, Allstate optimizes return per unit of risk across the enterprise. This disciplined approach includes comprehensive monitoring of economic conditions, market opportunities, interest rates, and credit spreads. The chart on the left shows a quarterly trend of net investment income in our fixed income earned yield. Market-based income of $727 million, which is shown in blue, was $123 million above the prior year quarter, reflecting a higher fixed income yield and increased assets under management. Fixed income yield shown below the chart has steadily increased as we repositioned into higher yielding, longer duration assets, increasing 40 basis points from 4.0% to 4.4% over the past year.
好吧。谢谢你，Mario。第10页展示了有关投资业绩和资产配置的见解。通过采取主动的投资组合管理方法，Allstate在整个企业中优化了单位风险收益率。这种纪律严明的方法包括对经济状况、市场机会、利率和信用利差的全面监控。左侧图表显示了我们固定收益实际收益率中净投资收入的季度趋势。蓝色显示的基于市场的收入为7.27亿美元，比去年同期高出1.23亿美元，反映了更高的固定收益率和管理资产的增加。图表下方显示的固定收益率随着我们重新配置到更高收益、长期限资产中而稳步上升，从过去一年的4.0%增加了40个基点至4.4%。
Performance-based income of $167 million, shown in black, was $107 million above the prior year quarter, reflecting higher private equity and real estate investment results. As we've mentioned previously, our performance-based portfolio is intended to provide long-term value creation and volatility on these assets from quarter to quarter is expected. The pie chart on the right shows our asset allocation as of yearend 2024. As you can see, our portfolio is largely comprised of high-quality liquid interest-bearing assets. Public equity holdings were increased by $2.4 billion in the fourth quarter and now comprise $3.3 billion or approximately 5% of the total portfolio. Fixed income duration was 5.3 years, which is in line with the prior year quarter and up from 4.8 years at the end of last year.
黑色显示的基于业绩的收入为1.67亿美元，比去年同期高出1.07亿美元，反映了更高的私募股权和房地产投资成果。如前所述，我们的业绩驱动型投资组合旨在创造长期价值，预计这些资产每季度会出现波动。右侧的饼图显示了截至2024年底的资产配置。如您所见，我们的投资组合主要由高质量的流动性计息资产组成。第四季度公共股票持仓增加了24亿美元，现在占总投资组合的33亿美元或大约5%。固定收益期限为5.3年，与去年同期持平，并且比去年年底的4.8年有所上升。
660亿的总规模，债券类资产的期限太长。
Let's turn to slide 11 and discuss protection plans business, which is a key component of protection services and advances our strategy to expand protection while generating profitable growth. Protection plans offer protection that repairs or replaces a wide range of consumer products, including electronics, computers and tablets, TVs, mobile phones, major appliances, and furniture that are damaged or broken. The products are distributed through strong retail relationships. Revenues of $528 million in the fourth quarter grew 20.3% prior year, driven by both domestic and international expansion. Total growth resulted in adjusted net income for the quarter of $37 million, which is consistent with the prior year quarter and an increase for the full year of $40 million to $157 million, reflecting the benefit of higher revenues and claims cost improvements. The business has profitably grown to approximately 160 million policies, adding 60 million since 2019 through broadened distribution and protection offerings as well as geographic expansion.
现在让我们转到第11页，讨论保护计划业务，这是保护服务的关键组成部分，并推动我们在扩大保护范围的同时实现盈利性增长的战略。保护计划提供修复或更换受损或损坏的各种消费产品的保障，包括电子产品、电脑和平板、电视、手机、大型家电和家具。这些产品通过牢固的零售关系进行分销。第四季度收入为5.28亿美元，同比增长20.3%，主要得益于国内外的扩张。总增长使本季度调整后净收入达到3700万美元，与去年同期持平，全年度则从4000万美元增长至1.57亿美元，反映了更高收入和理赔成本改善带来的好处。该业务已盈利性地增长到约1.6亿份保单，自2019年以来，通过扩大分销和保护产品以及地理扩展，增加了6000万份保单。
Additionally, revenue has increased to nearly $2 billion in 2024, reflecting 23.9% in annual compounded growth since 2019, while generating more than $0.75 billion in adjustment in income from 2019 to 2024 as growth offsets expansion investments. To continue to invest in this thriving business is evidenced by the recent acquisition of Kingfisher, which enhances our mobile phone protection capabilities.
此外，2024年的收入已增加到近20亿美元，反映出自2019年以来年复合增长率为23.9%，同时从2019年至2024年产生了超过7.5亿美元的调整后收入，增长抵消了扩张投资。最近收购Kingfisher进一步证明了我们继续投资这一蓬勃发展的业务，此举增强了我们在手机保护方面的能力。
I would like to transition slide 12 and discuss how the sale of the Employer Voluntary Benefits and Group Health businesses creates shareholder value. As a reminder, the decision to pursue the sale of Health and Benefits was based on the assumption that these businesses would have greater strategic value to other companies, and selling them would maximize shareholder value. The transactions we've announced support this assumption. In August, we agreed to sell the Employer Voluntary Benefits business to StanCorp Financial for $2 billion. We expect to close that in the first half of 2025. Last week, we marked another major milestone with our agreement to sell the Group Health business to Nationwide for $1.25 billion, which we expect to close sometime in 2025. Both of these transactions are economically and financially attractive for our shareholders. The combined proceeds of these sales are $3.25 billion with an expected book gain of approximately $1 billion. Using trailing 12 months adjustment in income, the combined estimated impact of the transactions on adjusted net income return on equity would have been a decrease of about 180 basis points due to lower income and higher equity resulting from the gains on sale.
接下来，我想过渡到第12页，讨论出售雇主自愿福利和团体健康业务如何为股东创造价值。请记住，决定出售健康与福利业务是基于这样一个假设：这些业务对其他公司具有更高的战略价值，出售它们将最大化股东价值。我们宣布的交易支持了这一假设。今年八月，我们同意以20亿美元将雇主自愿福利业务出售给StanCorp Financial。我们预计将在2025年上半年完成该交易。上周，我们又取得了一个重要里程碑，即与Nationwide达成协议，以12.5亿美元出售团体健康业务，我们预计将在2025年某个时候完成。这两笔交易在经济和财务上对我们的股东都具有吸引力。这两笔交易的合计收益为32.5亿美元，预期账面收益约为10亿美元。按照过去12个月的调整后收入计算，这些交易对调整后净收入股本回报率的综合估计影响将因收入降低和由于出售收益导致股权上升而下降约180个基点。
As a reminder, the Group Health business is part of National General, which we acquired in January of 2021 for $4 billion. The proceeds from this divestiture combined with about a $1 billion in dividends that we received from National General statutory legal entities represents a return of more than half of the original purchase price, while the size of the National General Property-Liability business has approximately doubled.
请记住，团体健康业务是National General的一部分，我们于2021年1月以40亿美元收购。此次剥离所获得的收益，加上我们从National General法定实体收到的约10亿美元的股息，相当于原始购买价格的一半以上，而National General财产-责任业务的规模则大约翻了一番。
脑残的收购，涉足另一个行业。
Touching briefly on the results of Health and Benefits for the quarter, premium and contract charges for the segment increased 3.2% or $15 million compared to the prior year quarter. Individual and Group Health business saw strong growth with premiums and contract charges of 8.4% and 9.8% respectively. This growth was partially offset by a modest decrease in Employer Voluntary Benefits. Adjusting net income for the segment of $35 million in the third quarter was $25 million lower than the prior year quarter as increased benefit utilization across all three businesses impacted profitability. Underwriting and rate actions are being taken to quickly address benefit ratio trends and restore margins to historical levels.
简要回顾本季度健康与福利业务的业绩，该业务的保费及合同费用比去年同期增长了3.2%，或增加1500万美元。个人和团体健康业务的保费及合同费用分别增长了8.4%和9.8%，呈现强劲增长。这一增长部分被雇主自愿福利业务的适度下降所抵消。第三季度该业务调整后净收入为3500万美元，比去年同期低2500万美元，因为所有三项业务的福利利用率上升影响了盈利能力。目前正采取承保和费率措施，迅速应对福利比率趋势，并将利润率恢复到历史水平。
Options for the individual health business which has adjusted net income of $39 for 2024 are being evaluated in the business will either be retained or combined with another company.
对于2024年调整后净收入为3900万美元的个人健康业务，目前正在评估是否保留该业务或与另一家公司合并的选项。
Let's close on slide 13 by reviewing Allstate strategies to create shareholder value. As you can see on this page, we create value by delivering attractive financial returns, executing transformative growth to increase Property-Liability market share, expanding protection offerings, completing the sales of Employee Voluntary Benefits and Group Health businesses. So with that context, I'd like to open up the line for your questions.
现在让我们以第13页作为结尾，回顾Allstate创造股东价值的策略。如您所见，我们通过提供具有吸引力的财务回报、执行转型性增长以提升财产-责任市场份额、扩展保护产品，以及完成雇员自愿福利和团体健康业务的出售来创造价值。有了这一背景，我现在愿意开放问答环节。
Question-and-Answer Session
问答环节
Operator
会议主持人
[Operator Instructions]
[会议主持人指示]
And our first question for today comes from the line of Rob Cox from Goldman Sachs.
今天的第一个问题来自高盛的Rob Cox。
Rob Cox
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. The first question for you I had on advertising. I think you all had previously said that you were pretty comfortable with the 3Q '24 level of advertising spends. I was hoping you could talk about the decision to ramp it up here in the fourth quarter. And I'm curious what your measures of ad spend efficiency are telling you in the current environment, and how does that compare to history?
你好，早上好。感谢回答我的问题。我的第一个问题是关于广告的。我记得你们之前说对2024年第三季度的广告支出水平感到满意。我希望你们能谈谈在第四季度增加广告支出的决定。我也很想知道，在当前环境下，你们的广告支出效率指标显示了什么，以及与历史相比如何？
Tom Wilson
So, Rob, we're comfortable with our advertised spending. We adjust it, obviously, by quarter to point out, and it also depends which markets we're after. Sometimes we do some heavy-up tests in particular months to see what the sensitivity is for increased advertising, increased growth. I can assure you we have state-of-the-art analytics on that. It's everything, every kind of lead. We bid on leads automatically. Just to make sure we were a good last year, we had a number of outside people come in and look at our analytics, and we appear to be at least contemporary, if not industry-leading.
Rob，我们对我们的广告支出感到满意。显然，我们会根据季度进行调整，这也取决于我们所针对的市场。有时我们会在特定月份进行加大测试，以了解增加广告投放对增长的敏感度。我可以向你保证，我们在这方面有最先进的分析技术。它涉及所有方面，包括各种线索。我们对线索进行自动竞价。为了确保我们去年做得好，我们请了一些外部人员来审查我们的分析系统，结果表明我们至少处于行业同等水平，如果不是领先的话。
Now some of these are people you're buying ads from, so they're not going to come tell you you're stupid. But when we look at it in total, we think we're really good at it, and we have all kinds of allowable acquisition cost measures that look at everything from quote-to-close ratios to life time value.
现在其中一些是我们购买广告的供应商，所以他们不会来告诉你你做得不好。但总的来看，我们认为我们做得很好，我们有各种可接受的获客成本衡量标准，从报价到成交比率，再到终身价值都有考虑。
缺少生活自理的能力。
Rob Cox
Got it. Thank you. Secondly, I wanted to ask a question on the comment in the press release about expecting growth in total Property-Liability PIF in 2025. We've been thinking that you could certainly grow PIF in both home and auto in 2025. Is there any reason why you would be hesitant to commit to growing in both of the segments or am I looking too deeply into that statement?
明白了。谢谢。第二，我想问一下新闻稿中关于预期2025年财产责任保单有效件数（PIF）总量增长的评论。我们一直认为你们在2025年房屋和汽车保险的保单有效件数都能实现增长。你们是否有什么原因不愿承诺这两个领域都会增长，还是说我对这个说法解读过度了？
Tom Wilson
Let me make a comment and then turn it over to Mario. So first, as you know, we don't give forward-looking projections on PIF growth. So what we've said to help bring some clarity to it is we're just going to give the numbers every month, like we do with cats, and you can decide what you want to do with that. We're obviously already growing at home, and we have plans, and we talked a little bit in the press release on where we're growing in auto, but in total we're not growing in auto. So, Mario's working on that. Mario, you want to talk about what you've got going?
让我先发表一下评论，然后再交给Mario。首先，如你所知，我们不会对保单有效件数增长做出前瞻性预测。为了帮助clarify这一点，我们决定像报告巨灾损失一样每月公布数据，你可以自行判断。显然，我们的房屋保险业务正在增长，我们也有相关计划，新闻稿中也提到了我们在汽车保险领域的一些增长点，但总体上汽车保险还没有增长。Mario正在处理这个问题。Mario，你要不要谈谈你的工作进展？
Mario Rizzo
Yes. Thanks for the question, Rob. Look, I'd say, look, the objective of transformative growth is to grow policies in force and gain market share in the Property-Liability business. That's our goal. That's our objective. Having said that, as Tom mentioned, we're currently growing the homeowners business. We think there's a real opportunity in the market, and we're going to continue to lean in on that one, A, because we've got really strong capabilities, B, there's disruption in the market that we can take advantage of, and we like the prospects of continuing to grow homeowners.
好的。谢谢你的问题，Rob。你看，我要说的是，转型性增长的目标是增加有效保单数量并在财产责任保险业务中获得更多市场份额。这是我们的目标。这是我们的宗旨。说到这里，正如Tom提到的，我们目前正在发展房主保险业务。我们认为市场上存在真正的机会，我们将继续专注于这一领域，原因是：第一，我们有很强的能力；第二，市场存在我们可以利用的变动，我们看好继续发展房主保险的前景。
On the auto side, we think despite the fact that policies are declining, we're really well positioned to lean into growth going forward for a variety of reasons. I think the first is you've seen the new business momentum build over the course of 2024 in part due to your first question, our advertising investment that we've increased throughout the year. But we've also been doing things like unwinding, underwriting restrictions, and looking to accelerate growth across all distribution channels. We're going to continue to fully leverage our broad distribution capabilities alongside that marketing investment, continue to roll out the new affordable, simple, and connected product. We are currently in 31 states, we'll continue to expand that over the course of this year. That has our most sophisticated pricing, our most contemporary telematics offerings included in that.
在汽车保险方面，尽管保单数量在下降，但我们认为由于多种原因，我们处于有利位置可以推动未来增长。首先，你已经看到2024年全年新业务势头在增长，部分原因就是你第一个问题提到的，我们全年增加的广告投资。但我们也在做一些其他工作，比如放宽承保限制，寻求通过所有分销渠道加速增长。我们将继续充分利用我们广泛的分销能力，配合营销投资，继续推出价格实惠、简单且互联的新产品。我们目前已进入31个州，今年将继续扩展。这包括了我们最复杂的定价机制和最新的车载信息系统产品。
We're going to continue to leverage capabilities on the Allstate side international, Jess just talked about the growth that we've seen in National General. We're going to leverage middle market capabilities in Allstate to grow National General in a part of the market that they have less penetration, and we're also going to use National General's capabilities in the non-standard auto space and leverage the Allstate brand to begin to accelerate growth in that space. So we've got a lot of things that we've both been doing and expect to do in 2025 to accelerate growth, and really that was the genesis of the statement.
我们将继续利用好Allstate的国际业务能力，Jess刚刚谈到了我们在National General看到的增长。我们将利用Allstate在中端市场的能力来发展National General在其渗透率较低的市场领域，我们也将利用National General在非标准汽车保险领域的能力，结合Allstate品牌来加速该领域的增长。因此，我们已经在做很多事情，并期望在2025年加快增长，这就是那个声明的由来。
这些想法几乎都不在正确的方向上。
Oh, yes, one last point I should have brought up is retention. Yes, everything I talked about was on the new business side. We've seen the adverse impact of retention as we've been having to raise prices over the last couple of years to improve margins. The good news is auto margins are back where we would want them to be in the mid-90s range. The downside of that is retention has taken a hit. Some of that will come back as we are less active in taking prices going forward because of where margins sit, but additionally and more importantly, we're going to proactively lean into reaching out to customers, helping them save money by making sure they're getting all the appropriate discounts, they've got the right coverage levels that meet their specific needs, and the objective there is to improve affordability, improve customer satisfaction and retention, and that will be additive to our growth trends.
哦，是的，我还应该提到最后一点，就是续保率。是的，我刚才说的都是关于新业务方面的。在过去几年，为了提高利润率我们不得不提高价格，这对续保率产生了负面影响。好消息是汽车保险的利润率已经回到了我们期望的90%中段水平。坏处是续保率受到了影响。由于利润率已经到位，未来我们在提价方面会不那么积极，这将使部分续保率回升，但更重要的是，我们将主动接触客户，通过确保他们获得所有适当的折扣，确保他们有满足其特定需求的适当保障水平来帮助他们节省资金，目标是提高可负担性，提高客户满意度和续保率，这将有助于我们的增长趋势。
Operator
会议主持人
Our next question comes to the line of Gregory Peters from Raymond James.
下一个问题来自雷蒙德詹姆斯的Gregory Peters。
Gregory Peters
Good morning, everyone. So for my first question, piggyback on the last answer there, Mario. And you said on slide 9 here for the auto policies, you said that you're proactively contacting the existing customers, so you mentioned that in your answer. Can you give us an updated perspective on how you think your pricing is on a competitive positioning basis versus your peer group? And as you shift gears and proactively contact existing customers, does that mean that there's going to be some sort of corresponding adjustment in agent compensation that's going to get more weighting to retention versus just flat out new sales?
大家早上好。对于我的第一个问题，我想接着Mario刚才的回答继续。你在第9页幻灯片中谈到汽车保险政策时说，你们正在主动联系现有客户，你在回答中也提到了这一点。你能给我们更新一下你对你们的定价相对于同行群体的竞争定位的看法吗？当你们转向主动联系现有客户时，这是否意味着将对代理人的薪酬进行相应调整，在留存率而不是单纯的新销售方面给予更多权重？
Tom Wilson
Greg, let me, the pricing was complicated, so I'm going to let Mario do that one. But I would make one point on the retention part. I think having branded agents who work exclusively with you is the best channel to be able to do what we're talking about. So we've raised some people's prices 30%, 40%. We had to do it quickly because we were losing money. Now we can go back in and help them get the absolute right coverage, right. That could be deductibles, it could be coverage limits, it could be using telematics, it could be paying differently, so there's lots of different ways we can help them do that. And that would be very difficult to do through an independent agent channel. It would be harder to do with a direct channel because you don't have the skills and capabilities built in your call centers to necessarily do that. Our agents, the Allstate agents, are used to doing this all the time. They certainly did it when we were raising rates. But now Mario has a new program going on, which is a safe program, which has specific goals and numbers. We are not planning on changing agent count. Mario, do you want to talk about competitive positioning?
Greg，让我来说，定价问题很复杂，所以我让Mario来回答这个问题。但关于续保率部分我想说一点。我认为拥有专属品牌代理人是实现我们所讨论目标的最佳渠道。我们之前把一些人的价格提高了30%、40%，因为我们在亏损，所以不得不快速行动。现在我们可以回过头来帮助他们获得最合适的保障，对吧。这可能涉及免赔额、保障限额、使用车载信息系统，或者不同的支付方式，所以我们有很多不同的方式可以帮助他们。通过独立代理人渠道很难做到这一点。通过直销渠道也会更难，因为呼叫中心不一定具备必要的技能和能力。我们的代理人，Allstate的代理人，一直都在做这样的工作。当我们提高费率时，他们当然也是这样做的。但现在Mario有一个新的项目在进行，这是一个安全项目，有具体的目标和数字。我们不打算改变代理人数量。Mario，你要谈谈竞争定位吗？
Mario Rizzo
Yes, thanks Greg. On competitive position, I'd say a couple things. First, when you look at the ramp up in new business over the course of the year, and we made a comment that we're growing in 31 states currently, I think that's indicative of having competitive prices and being able to fully leverage the marketing investment that we're making. It is a complicated question. It's hard to answer it on a national basis because obviously we compete market by market, state by state, and we're constantly looking at our competitive position and making tweaks to the tiers within our pricing plan to adjust prices when we think it's appropriate to adjust prices. The good news is we've achieved target margins, so we're comfortable with where our rate level is currently, and we would expect that we would need to take less price going forward.
是的，谢谢Greg。关于竞争定位，我想说几点。首先，当你看到全年新业务的增长，我们提到目前在31个州都在增长，我认为这表明我们的价格具有竞争力，并且能够充分利用我们的营销投资。这是一个复杂的问题。很难在全国层面回答，因为显然我们是在不同市场、不同州进行竞争，我们一直在关注我们的竞争地位，并在认为适当的时候调整定价计划中的各个层级的价格。好消息是我们已经达到了目标利润率，所以我们对目前的费率水平感到满意，预计未来需要的价格调整会更少。
But when you look at our new business trends, we feel good about competitive prices. We've taken a lot of cost out of the system over the past several years, as Tom mentioned earlier, which is helpful. We're going to continue to pull that lever going forward, but we think we're priced competitively and we have the broad distribution capabilities to continue to grow in the auto space. The only other point I'd make on your second question about the proactively contacting customers and agency compensation, a meaningful portion of agent compensation currently relates to renewal. So they've got a strong economic vested interest in retaining as many customers as they possibly can. As Tom mentioned, they've been doing that. This is a way through the save program where we're going to really scale it and do it much more broadly to help drive retention proactively versus just relying on less instability in the market from rate increases.
但当你看我们的新业务趋势时，我们对竞争价格感觉良好。正如Tom早些时候提到的，过去几年我们从系统中削减了很多成本，这很有帮助。我们将继续在这方面发力，但我们认为我们的定价具有竞争力，而且我们有广泛的分销能力来继续在汽车保险领域增长。关于你第二个问题，即主动联系客户和代理人薪酬，我想补充的唯一一点是，目前代理人薪酬的很大一部分与续保有关。所以他们在尽可能保留更多客户方面有很强的经济利益。正如Tom提到的，他们一直在这样做。通过这个保留计划，我们将真正扩大规模，更广泛地开展工作，主动推动续保，而不是仅仅依赖市场因费率上涨带来的不稳定性的减少。
Gregory Peters
Thanks for that information, Tom and as my follow-up question, Tom, in your opening comments, when you were going through the information on slide 2, you emphasize the ROE of 26.8%, which I believe is one of the best results I've seen from your company in recent history. Can you provide some view of how you are thinking about the ROE going forward and maybe what the board, how the board's viewing it? I guess the reason why I'm asking is you've disposed of some underperforming assets over the last decade and it feels like there's just a natural migration that the ROE objectives for the organization can be moving up. Certainly this results for last year sort of puts an explanation point on that.
谢谢你提供的信息，Tom。作为我的后续问题，Tom，在你的开场评论中，当你讲解第2页的信息时，你强调了26.8%的ROE，我认为这是我近期看到你们公司最好的结果之一。你能分享一下你对未来ROE的看法，以及董事会是如何看待这个问题的吗？我问这个问题的原因是，在过去十年里，你们处置了一些表现不佳的资产，感觉公司的ROE目标自然而然地可以提高。去年的这个结果似乎很好地说明了这一点。
Tom Wilson
Good question, Greg, and with longitudinal perspective on it. So as you'll remember, I don't remember how many years ago it was, at one time we put out a target of 14% to 17%, but I would say that was a different company and a different time. It was a different company in that we had a life business, it was a different time in that interest rates were a lot lower; people were thinking it was low at the bond. Since then, of course, as you point out, we've made a bunch of changes. We've sold the life business, we've bought back a substantial amount of stock, which takes some of our investment earnings down, our premiums are up substantially, not just because we've grown total policies, but also because there's just higher costs per policy, which I think the market hasn't really factored in that, that includes requires more capital. So when you look all through it, we feel really good about where we're at.
这是个好问题，Greg，而且具有纵向的视角。你可能还记得，我记不清是多少年前了，我们曾经设定了14%到17%的目标，但我要说那是一个不同的公司在不同的时期。那时是一个不同的公司是因为我们有人寿保险业务，那是一个不同的时期是因为利率要低得多；人们认为债券收益率很低。从那时起，正如你指出的，我们做出了一系列变化。我们出售了人寿保险业务，回购了大量股票，这降低了我们的一些投资收益，我们的保费大幅增长，这不仅是因为我们增加了总保单数量，还因为每份保单的成本更高，我认为市场还没有真正考虑到这一点，这需要更多的资本。所以当你全面审视时，我们对目前的状况感觉很好。
尝试过很多失败的项目，还会接着尝试。
When we put that 14% to 17% out there, it was really because investors were not sure, given the time and given the nature of the company, what our returns would be and would they be acceptable. We never said it was a cap, and so obviously now we're doing much better than that. I would say the most important thing for us to do now is to increase growth. So increasing returns won't drive that much more shareholder value, what will drive more shareholder value is growth. And we've obviously grown, in our growing, a bunch of our other businesses. So whether that's our homeowners business, whether that's we're growing premiums, which people kind of get all focused in on auto-PIF. And auto-PIF is important, and we're going to grow auto-PIF. But when you look at just growth and premiums, we're up double-digit, single low teen percent depending which measure you want to look at last year. So we feel good about overall growth, we think, and the key to unlocking the value we've already created through growth is to get auto-unit growth up.
当我们提出14%到17%的目标时，实际上是因为投资者在当时的环境下和公司的性质下，不确定我们的回报会是多少，以及这些回报是否可以接受。我们从未说过这是上限，所以显然现在我们的表现比那要好得多。我认为现在对我们来说最重要的是增加增长。因此，提高回报率不会带来更多的股东价值，带来更多股东价值的是增长。我们显然已经在增长，在发展我们的其他业务。无论是我们的房主保险业务，还是我们正在增长的保费，人们都很关注汽车保险有效保单数量（auto-PIF）。auto-PIF很重要，我们也会增加auto-PIF。但当你只看增长和保费时，根据你想看的指标，我们去年增长了两位数或低十几个百分点。所以我们对整体增长感觉良好，我们认为，通过增长已经创造的价值的关键是提高汽车保单单位的增长。
Operator
会议主持人
Our next question comes from the line of Mike Zaremski from BMO.
下一个问题来自BMO的Mike Zaremski。
Mike Zaremski
Hey, thanks. Good morning. And my first question is on the expense ratio and kudos to the kind of lowering it over time and meeting your goal. Curious, I think in the past, Tom, recent past, you said that you have plans to improve it even further. Maybe that's the expense ratio x at expense. If that's the case, are you able to kind of elaborate on what the building blocks are going forward to continue the improvement?
嗨，谢谢。早上好。我的第一个问题是关于费用率，祝贺你们随着时间推移降低费用率并实现目标。我很好奇，Tom，我记得在最近，你说过有计划进一步改善它。也许是指除了营销费用之外的费用率。如果是这样的话，你能详细说明一下未来继续改善的基本要素是什么吗？
Tom Wilson
So yes, so the answer is yes, we always expect to keep reducing expenses and we think we have an opportunity to even lower them farther from where they are now. We're not done, I would say maybe we're 60% of the way done. And but I wouldn't like take that and multiply that by some percentage change because part of that percentage change just to be completely transparent is because premiums have gone up faster than general inflation. So you kind of can't count that as much. So we are constantly working on it. I think the worries we're after will be digitization, leveraging the new technology platform we built, the affordable, simple connected is all designed around doing that, increasing our marketing effectiveness. So even though we carve marketing out from that number, that doesn't mean like we're just going to spend a wild on marketing. It needs to have the same level of precision and to it that everything else does. And we also still need to lower distribution costs. The distribution costs are still higher than we would like them to be, so we have work to do there as well.
是的，答案是肯定的，我们一直期望继续降低费用，我们认为还有机会把费用进一步降低。我们还没有完成，我可以说我们可能完成了60%。但我不会把这个数字直接用某个百分比变化来计算，因为要完全透明地说，部分百分比变化是因为保费增长快于整体通货膨胀。所以你不能把这个因素算得太多。我们一直在努力。我认为我们接下来要关注的是数字化、利用我们建立的新技术平台，价格合理、简单连接的设计都是围绕这个目标，提高我们的营销效率。所以即使我们把营销从那个数字中剔除，也不意味着我们就要在营销上肆意开支。它需要和其他方面一样保持同样的精确度。我们还需要降低分销成本。分销成本仍然高于我们期望的水平，所以我们在这方面还有工作要做。
Mike Zaremski
Great, and my final follow-up is just more high-level on the devastating tragedy in California. I know it's kind of still a fluid situation, but I think a few of your competitors have expressed that they might need to retrench even more in California, given the potential of payback on the losses are going to be many, many years. I'm curious, do you think this could cause Allstate to also rethink its ambitions of growing or just overall growth in California might turn a different direction? Thanks.
很好，我最后的追问是关于加利福尼亚州毁灭性灾难的更高层面问题。我知道这种情况仍然在发展，但我认为你们的一些竞争对手已经表示，考虑到损失的潜在回报可能需要很多年，他们可能需要在加利福尼亚进一步收缩。我很好奇，你认为这是否会导致Allstate也重新考虑其增长抱负，或者说在加利福尼亚的整体增长可能会转向不同方向？谢谢。
Tom Wilson
Well, every state is different. We don't have any growth aspirations in homeowners in California at this point. And we haven't since 2007, really. We had a small window in there where we thought we had some arrangements where it would make sense for us to grow. That didn't turn out to be the case. So we had turned off this spigot for new customers. We didn't go now for new people, but we just said we're not going to take out of new customers. Starting in 2007, then in about 2017, '18, I think I'm going to get Mario here. We said we think we can take on a few new customers if we can get this stuff. That didn't turn out to be true. So we stopped at that in 2022. But we've been at this for a long time. And so we don't have any growth aspirations in California right now.
嗯，每个州都不一样。目前我们在加利福尼亚的房主保险业务没有任何增长抱负。实际上自2007年以来就是如此。在这期间有一个小窗口，我们认为有一些安排可以让我们实现增长。但事实并非如此。所以我们关闭了新客户的业务。我们不是说现在就不接受新客户，而是说我们不会接受新客户。从2007年开始，然后在2017年、18年左右，我想我要找Mario来确认一下。我们说如果能得到这些东西，我们认为可以接受一些新客户。但事实证明并非如此。所以我们在2022年停止了这个尝试。但我们已经这样做了很长时间。所以我们现在在加利福尼亚没有任何增长抱负。
如果是不能做的业务，18年了还没有弄明白该做不该做。
That said, we're really good at homeowners. We make more than half of the industry's profits. We've got a good business model. We think it's a great growth opportunity. And it doesn't have to be the way it is in California. So Texas has just as many types and dollar amounts of losses as California does. Yet the homeowners market works there. And so we believe that there's a way to make that work. We'd like to work with a state to make it work because people want to ensure their homes. They need to ensure their homes. And we just need to make sure it's done on a basis that is fair to consumers but also gives our shareholders an appropriate return for the risk.
话虽如此，我们在房主保险方面确实很擅长。我们获得了行业利润的一半以上。我们有一个好的商业模式。我们认为这是一个很好的增长机会。而且不一定要像加利福尼亚那样。德克萨斯州的损失类型和金额与加利福尼亚一样多。但那里的房主保险市场运作良好。所以我们相信有办法让它运作起来。我们希望与州政府合作使其运作起来，因为人们想要保险他们的房屋。他们需要保险他们的房屋。我们只需要确保这是在对消费者公平的基础上进行的，同时也为我们的股东提供与风险相称的适当回报。
So, for example, we don't want to have to do things like in California. Mario talked about the numbers. We have a substantial amount of reinsurance recoveries at work. Cost plus business, we did not recoup the cost for that reinsurance that we just now got back to the lower losses. Which means that we need to have a structure. The department's talked about that. They're open to that. So I would say that these things, they happen over a long time and it takes a while for them to get fixed. So I don't think anything's going to change in the next, it's not like in 12 months. Everybody's going to be rushing into California, right, homeowners. It just doesn't happen that fast.
例如，我们不想必须像在加利福尼亚那样做事。Mario谈到了这些数字。我们有大量的再保险赔付在进行中。成本加成业务，我们没有收回那些再保险的成本，我们现在才刚刚回到较低的损失水平。这意味着我们需要有一个结构。部门已经讨论过这个问题。他们对此持开放态度。所以我要说，这些事情发生需要很长时间，而且需要一段时间才能解决。所以我不认为在接下来会有什么变化，不会在12个月内。不会出现所有人都涌入加利福尼亚房主保险市场的情况。这种事情不会发生得那么快。
Operator
会议主持人
Our next question comes from the line of Christian Kemph from Wells Fargo.
下一个问题来自富国银行的Christian Kemph。
Christian Kemph
Hi, good morning. My first question is on retention. I didn't see any retention numbers in the press release or supplements. I was wondering if you could provide that and then would you say the majority of the headwinds on retention just from like I know you guys called out insurance migration and then the New York, California, New Jersey rate hikes. Are those -- is the majority of that headwind dissipated by now or do you expect some further headwinds kind of in the first half?
你好，早上好。我的第一个问题是关于续保率。我在新闻稿或补充材料中没有看到任何续保率数据。我想知道你们能否提供这些数据，以及你们是否认为续保率面临的主要阻力来自于你们提到的保险迁移以及纽约、加利福尼亚、新泽西的费率上调。这些阻力是否已经大部分消散，还是你们预计在上半年还会面临一些进一步的阻力？
Tom Wilson
I'll make a couple comments and Jess may want to comment. So first, we pay a lot of attention to retention in more granularity than you just even mentioned, whether it's this book of business, this state, this risk cover, this whatever, this price changes, we're all over retention. Jess made the decision that rather than give you the components, which are complicated and we spend a bunch of time helping and you spend a bunch of time trying to figure out, well, retention on this much and how much policy is it? Jess just said, why don't I just give you the numbers? I'll just give you the PIF every month. You'll know what the numbers are. You don't have to get caught up into what your projection is on new business, what your projection on retention for your insurance policy. So our goal was to increase transparency and give you more information you can use to make your investment and recommendation decisions rather than less in doing this. So that's what we've set out to do. Maybe Jess or Mario, you guys want to talk about the retention and how you're feeling about it and other ways to measure it.
我先说几点，然后Jess可能也想发表评论。首先，我们对续保率的关注程度比你提到的还要细致，无论是业务账簿、州、风险覆盖、价格变化等各个方面，我们都在关注续保率。Jess做出决定，与其给你们提供复杂的组成部分，我们花大量时间解释而你们也花大量时间试图弄清楚这部分的续保率是多少、有多少保单，不如直接给你们数字。我每个月就给你们保单有效件数（PIF）。你们就知道具体数字了。你们不用纠结于对新业务的预测，对保险保单续保率的预测。所以我们的目标是增加透明度，给你们更多可以用来做投资和推荐决策的信息，而不是减少信息。这就是我们要做的。也许Jess或Mario，你们想谈谈对续保率的感受和其他衡量方式？
Jess Merten
Maybe I'll just touch on round outs and disclosure and then Mario, you can talk about your thoughts. I think the other thing to keep in mind is, as Tom mentioned, we gave you a component. We didn't even give you all of the components. We believe by giving you PIF on a monthly basis, you'll have more transparency. Recall, what we gave you was Allstate Brand PIF, or Allstate Brand Retention, rather. So it was a piece of the puzzle, and we spent a lot of time explaining movements between brands, which we wanted to move away from. So I really believe that what we're giving you now on a monthly basis will be much clearer and actually reduce a lot of the complication that came from our disclosure. And as Tom said, put you in a better position to understand new business and retention trends, and frankly, what the total policy in force trend is. So it was definitely a move to increase transparency by taking away and really completing that move away from brand to line of business and distribution channel.
让我先谈谈综合情况和信息披露，然后Mario可以谈谈你的想法。我认为需要记住的另一点是，正如Tom提到的，我们给了你们一个组成部分。我们甚至没有给你们所有的组成部分。我们相信通过每月提供PIF，你们会获得更多的透明度。回想一下，我们给你们的是Allstate品牌的PIF，或者说是Allstate品牌的续保率。所以这只是拼图的一部分，我们花了很多时间解释品牌之间的变动，这是我们想要避免的。所以我真的相信，我们现在每月提供的信息会更清晰，实际上会减少很多来自我们披露的复杂性。正如Tom所说，让你们能更好地理解新业务和续保趋势，坦白说，就是总体有效保单的趋势。所以这绝对是通过改变并真正完成从品牌到业务线和分销渠道的转变来增加透明度的举措。
Mario Rizzo
Yes, the only thing I'd add on retention, I think it's important to take a step back and look at what we've really been saying over the last several years, which our principal focus, I would say, heading into 2024, was to improve auto margins. I think we were pretty clear on that. That was our principal priority. We had to take prices up a lot to do that, over 40% when you look over the past several years. The good news is margins are back to where we want them to be and where they need to be. And from a new business perspective, as that's kind of played out, you've seen us kind of lean back into the market and really accelerate new business growth over the course of last year. The downside to that approach and that strategy is with retention, as you mentioned, which has stabilized in a number of states as we've cycled through what we needed to do to improve profitability.
是的，关于续保率我想补充的唯一一点是，我认为重要的是要退一步看看我们在过去几年真正在说什么，我要说，进入2024年，我们的主要关注点是改善汽车保险利润率。我认为我们在这一点上非常明确。这是我们的主要优先事项。为了实现这一目标，我们不得不大幅提高价格，如果看过去几年，涨幅超过40%。好消息是利润率已经回到我们想要的和需要的水平。从新业务的角度来看，随着这种情况的发展，你已经看到我们开始重新进入市场，并在去年真正加快新业务增长。这种方法和策略的缺点就是你提到的续保率问题，虽然在我们完成提高盈利能力所需的措施后，许多州的续保率已经稳定下来。
But as we talked about before, there were a handful of states that were a little later to the game in terms of getting margins back to where they needed to be. We talked extensively about California, New York, New Jersey. The good news is we've been making good progress in those three states. We've been making it by implementing some pretty meaningful rate increases. That is having a drag on retention as we cycle our way through that. We should see that stabilized. I will say, though, New York and New Jersey, we've still got some work to do. Our margins are better, but they're not where we'd like them to be. We're going to continue to pursue rate in those states. But we believe we can overcome that because we've got a lot of growth opportunity in the rest of the country.
但正如我们之前讨论的，有少数几个州在将利润率恢复到所需水平方面稍晚一些。我们详细讨论了加利福尼亚、纽约、新泽西。好消息是我们在这三个州都取得了良好进展。我们通过实施一些相当显著的费率上调来实现这一目标。在我们经历这个过程时，这确实对续保率产生了拖累。我们应该会看到它稳定下来。不过我要说，在纽约和新泽西，我们还有一些工作要做。我们的利润率有所改善，但还没有达到我们期望的水平。我们将继续在这些州推进费率调整。但我们相信我们能够克服这个问题，因为我们在全国其他地区有很多增长机会。
Christian Kemph
Got it, thank you. And going back to the California losses, I know you provided a $2 billion gross estimate and you provided some sensitivity. But what are you assuming in terms of the industry losses so we could like flex that sensitivity up or down depending on how the losses develop?
明白了，谢谢。回到加利福尼亚的损失问题，我知道你们提供了20亿美元的总估计和一些敏感性分析。但你们对行业损失的假设是什么，这样我们就可以根据损失的发展情况上下调整这个敏感性？
Mario Rizzo
Yes, look, this is Mario, the way I'd answer that question is obviously there's a lot of moving parts. And in our estimate, we know our data with a lot of specificity because we have that. We've made assumptions around a fair plan assessment just given the magnitude of the losses we've seen and also when you look at the fair plan surplus level as at the end of the third quarter, their reinsurance and their co-participation and that, we think it's pretty likely that they're going to kind of exceed their surplus levels and there will likely be an assessment. We've got that in there and our number includes a view of what the industry loss is. I really don't want to kind of disclose what our view on that is, but there's, I will say we've made certain assumptions to come up with our number both in terms of ourselves and the fair plan. We'll keep looking at those because it's a pretty fluid process and we'll update it as we get more information if we need to update it.
是的，我是Mario，我这样回答这个问题，显然有很多变动的部分。在我们的估计中，我们对自己的数据非常了解，因为我们掌握这些数据。考虑到我们看到的损失规模，以及当你看到第三季度末的公平计划盈余水平，他们的再保险和共同参与情况，我们认为他们很可能会超过盈余水平，很可能会进行评估。我们已经把这个因素考虑进去了，我们的数字包括了对行业损失的预测。我真的不想透露我们对此的看法，但我要说，我们在得出我们的数字时，对我们自己和公平计划都做出了一些假设。我们会继续关注这些，因为这是一个非常流动的过程，如果需要更新，我们会随着获得更多信息而更新它。
Tom Wilson
So here's if you want a sensitivity. For every $100, it's $10 million. So for every 5% we're off in total, it costs us $10 million. So if we're off by 50%, so it's another $1 billion, it costs us $100 million, right? So I don't think you need to worry about sensitivity and the gross loss.
如果你想要敏感性分析，这里有一个。每100美元就是1000万美元。所以总体上每偏离5%，就会让我们花费1000万美元。如果我们偏离50%，也就是另外10亿美元，就会让我们花费1亿美元，对吧？所以我认为你不需要担心敏感性和总损失。
Operator
主持人
Our next question comes from the line of Jimmy Bhullar from JPMorgan.
我们的下一个问题来自摩根大通的 Jimmy Bhullar。
Jimmy Bhullar
Hey, good morning. I had a question first on just the auto business. You mentioned PIF turning positive in 31 states, I think. And I'm assuming what's unique about those states is just the fact that you're not raising prices as much and advertising more. So if that is true, then could you talk about of the remaining states that you're not growing in, should that begin to happen throughout the year gradually, or is there more of a cliff event at some point later in the year when you will lap those comps and you're not going to be raising prices just to sort of be able to assess when those stock states will begin to show better growth.
嘿，早上好。我有个问题，主要关于汽车业务。我记得你提到过，在31个州中，在保单数量（PIF）已经转为正增长。我猜这些州的独特之处在于你们没有大幅提高价格，而是加大了广告投入。如果情况确实如此，那么请问对于那些尚未实现增长的州来说，是会在全年逐步开始增长，还是会在年后某个时点出现一个突增现象，从而让你们超越对比基数，而不需要为了判断这些州何时开始呈现更好增长而不得不提高价格？
Tom Wilson
Jimmy, I'll let Mario talk about the pace, but I don't think you're going to give me an answer by [inaudible]
Jimmy，我会让 Mario 来谈谈这个节奏问题，但我觉得你不会给我一个答案[听不清]。
Mario Rizzo
I will try.
我会尽力的。
Tom Wilson
I got it. It's more complicated, though, than just those two factors, all right? So it's not just, are we not taking price and how much are we advertising? It's what's everybody else doing? What kind of coverage are we offering? Where are we with our ASC rollout? Where are we with our custom 3C? So it's a really complicated machine that Mario's running. But the goal is sometimes attribution helps explain why you are where you're at. Sometimes attribution leads to excuses. And we're not interested in excuses. We're interested in results, which is gross. So Mario can talk about it how he's thinking about that maybe you want to talk about both the impact of retention and the impact of new business over the course of the year, but we can't give you obviously a per quarter PIF number. Just watch for Jess's monthly number.
我明白了。但这不仅仅是那两个因素这么简单，对吧？所以问题不只是我们是否不提价以及我们广告投入有多少，而是大家都在做什么？我们提供什么样的保障？我们的 ASC 推广进展如何？我们的定制 3C 进展如何？所以这真的是一个非常复杂的体系，由 Mario 在运作。但目标在于，有时归因分析可以解释你们当前所处的位置；有时归因会成为借口，而我们对借口不感兴趣。我们关注的是结果，也就是总额。因此，Mario 可以谈谈他对此的看法，也许你想讨论一下全年中客户留存和新业务的影响，但我们显然无法提供每季度的在保单数量数字。请关注 Jess 每月公布的数字。
Mario Rizzo
That's right. Yes, Jimmy, thanks for the question. Look at where we're at today is like we want to grow in every state where it makes economic sense for us to grow and where we believe we can grow profitably. That happens to be 31 states now. We think the opportunity is beyond that level. And as Tom mentioned, there's a lot of components that factor into our ability to grow, price as part of it, competitive position, and where our price hits relative to the competition, the growth investments we're making, our risk appetite, there's a lot of factors that play into that. Retention is a key component of our ability to grow, right. So what you saw in total this year was we had really good new business trends. And in the quarter, they kind of peaked in 2024 at almost 30%.
没错，Jimmy，谢谢你的提问。看看我们目前的情况，我们希望在每个在经济上有意义且我们相信能够盈利增长的州份实现扩张。现在这正好是 31 个州。我们认为机会不止于此。正如 Tom 所提到的，影响我们增长能力的因素有很多，其中包括定价策略、竞争地位以及我们的价格相对于竞争对手的位置、我们所进行的增长投资、我们的风险承受能力等。客户留存是我们增长能力的关键组成部分，对吧？所以你看到的是，今年整体上我们的新业务趋势非常好，并且在 2024 年的某个季度，这一增速一度接近 30%。
Yet despite that, our units declined year-over-year because of the drag of retention. So we're focused through the SAVE program on not just waiting for retention to bounce back because of less rate disruption in the system. We're going to proactively do things to work with customers, help them save money, improve affordability, and drive retention up. We think doing that well alongside all the other things I mentioned earlier, new product rollout, new technology distribution, and continued investments in marketing and all the things that helped us drive new business volume, that's the key that will drive growth broadly. And that's the plan we're executing.
然而，尽管如此，由于客户留存率下滑，我们的单位数同比下降。因此，我们通过 SAVE 计划不仅仅是等待留存率因系统中费率波动减少而反弹，而是会主动采取措施与客户合作，帮助他们省钱、提高可负担性，并提升留存率。我们认为，与我之前提到的其他措施——新产品推出、新技术分销以及持续的市场投资和所有有助于推动新业务量增长的因素——相结合，将是广泛推动增长的关键。这就是我们正在执行的计划。
Jimmy Bhullar
And then maybe just following up on capital, like the business is obviously profitable now. I think you'll make money even with the California fires in 1Q and then you've got the money coming in through the sales of the benefits and the health business. So how should we think, and I'm assuming capital is not a constraint for growth given how much money you're going to get from the sales, but how should we think about capital deployment between growth, M&A, and share buybacks, and is it unreasonable to assume that you wouldn't be in the market buying back stock at some point, assuming results come in as expected over the course of this year?
接下来再谈谈资本问题，毕竟现在业务显然已经盈利。我认为即便在第一季度加州火灾期间你们也能赚钱，而且还会有来自福利和健康业务销售的资金流入。那么，我们应该如何看待这一点？我假设资本不会成为增长的限制，因为你们从销售中获得的资金相当可观，但我们应如何在增长、并购和股票回购之间分配资本？假如今年的业绩如预期所示，认为你们不会在市场上回购股票，这种假设是否不合理？
Tom Wilson
Well, Jimmy, if we consider proactive capital management to be a significant strength of Allstate, and it's added tremendous amounts of shareholder value. So and you’re right, share repurchases are obviously one of those, and we use that extensively. But I would encourage you to hold this accountable, as you started to mention, on really a broader basis, right. So there's organic growth, there's risk and return on economic capital, there's inorganic growth, and then there's capital structure, which includes the share repurchases. And so let me just go through each of those first. Organic growth is a twofer. And based on the returns we're getting in our business today; it generates absolute dollar growth in earnings. Secondly, with their higher growth rate, and we should have a higher P.E., because if you look at our price earnings ratio versus any other insurer, and you look at our top line growth, the average premium growth is getting discounted, and it's basically all hung on auto unit growth. You can decide whether that's right or wrong, but we think that the unlock in deploying capital to grow the profit liability business, both in units and premiums, is ultra-high growth. So we think that's really important.
嗯，Jimmy，如果我们认为积极的资本管理是 Allstate 的一大优势，并且它已经为股东创造了巨大的价值，那么你说得对，股票回购显然是其中一项策略，我们也在广泛使用这一策略。但我建议你从更广泛的角度来审视这一点。也就是说，有有机增长、经济资本的风险与回报、无机增长，以及包括股票回购在内的资本结构。现在让我先逐一说明。首先，有机增长具有双重效益。基于我们当前业务的回报，它能带来绝对的收益增长。其次，由于其更高的增长率，我们的市盈率应该更高；因为如果你比较我们与其他保险公司的市盈率，再看我们的营业收入增长，平均保费增长都在打折扣，基本上完全依赖于汽车业务单位的增长。你可以判断这是否正确，但我们认为，用资本推动财产责任业务在单位和保费上的增长，其潜力是超高的。所以我们认为这非常重要。
And we talked a lot about that this morning, so I don't want to -- we don't need to go back through that. If you look at risk and return on economic capital, we have a really sophisticated way, and Jess has talked about this a lot in the last couple of years, of how we manage capital and associate a risk and return on that. That helps us do things like leverage our investment expertise and be proactive in managing our investments. And that capability generates good returns. And I think it needs to be valued in its own right, but, for example, the duration calls we made used additional economic capital. We knew that. We decided on it. It was part of the enterprise decision, and it's clearly generated good returns.
我们今天早上已经详细讨论过这一点，所以不必再重复。如果你关注经济资本的风险与回报，我们有一套非常先进的方法，Jess 在过去几年中也多次谈到我们如何管理资本以及与之相关的风险回报。这帮助我们利用投资专长，积极管理我们的投资，而这一能力也带来了良好的回报。我认为这一点本身就值得被重视，例如，我们所进行的期限调仓调用了额外的经济资本。我们对此心知肚明，并做出了相应决策，这也是整体决策的一部分，显然取得了良好的回报。
Same thing is true with the reinsurance in California. We look at all those things economically. I think acquisitions also need to be assessed on the actual return on capital. So National General as core strength, we don’t know why [inaudible]. When you look at National General, it's more than double its size on apples-to-apples basis from when we bought it three years ago. Square trade is substantially bigger, maybe 10 times bigger, and making $150 million a year when we paid $1, 449 million. Jess, when you look at, what was the net cost of National General in square trade?
加州再保险的情况也是如此，我们都是从经济角度来考量。我认为收购也需要基于实际资本回报来评估。至于 National General 作为核心资产，我们不清楚为什么 [听不清]。当你看 National General 时，与三年前购买时相比，其规模已经翻了一番以上。而 Square Trade 则大得多，可能大了10倍左右，而且在我们支付约14.49亿美元时，每年能够产生1.5亿美元的收益。Jess，当你查看 National General 在 Square Trade 中的净成本是多少？
Jess Merten
Probably take a look at both of them, the net cost is about half of what we paid. So as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we paid $4 billion for National General. When you add up the recently announced Group Health transaction and the dividends, we've been able to take out of the statutory entities, which are about $1 billion, we've reduced that purchase price by about $2.25 billion, so to $1.75 billion or less than half. The same would be true if you look at square trade and the $1.4 billion acquisition. Since owning it, we've taken about half that back in dividends based on earnings, while also, and this is important, investing in growth, doing acquisitions. We've gotten about half of it back and still invested in growth on square trade.
可能看看这两者，净成本大约是我们支付金额的一半。正如我在准备发言中提到的，我们为 National General 支付了40亿美元。加上最近宣布的集团健康交易和分红，我们从法定实体中回收了约10亿美元，从而将购买价格降低了大约22.5亿美元，降至17.5亿美元，或不到一半。如果你看 Square Trade 和其14亿美元的收购情况，也同样适用。自从持有以来，我们已经根据收益回收了大约一半的资金作为分红，同时（这点很重要）还投资于增长和收购，在 Square Trade 上既回收了大约一半的资金，又持续投入于增长。
这种算法即使有些勉强的道理，但肯定不是什么成绩。
Tom Wilson
Then of course, share repurchases is an awesome thing, but you've got to really look at how you manage your capital stack better. For example, we issued perpetual preferred stock, I don't remember how many years ago. We issued $2 billion of stock, we brought back $2 billion in common, swapped fixed equity cost and left all the remaining upside with our common equity that preferred, just has a cost, what's current cost on it preferred.
当然，股票回购是一件非常棒的事情，但你必须真正关注如何更好地管理你的资本结构。例如，我们曾发行过永续优先股，我记不清那是几年前的事了。我们发行了20亿美元的优先股，同时回购了20亿美元的普通股，通过交换固定股权成本，把所有剩余的上行空间留给我们的普通股，而那部分优先股仅有一个成本，即当前的优先股成本。
Jess Merten
We have three different issues with this, Tom. Our lowest is about 4.75% and then we have a crunch that was more recently issued at 7.375%. We've got a range, but most of it, the largest issuance actually is a 5.1% fixed for life preferred stock.
Tom，我们在这方面有三个不同的品种。我们最低的利率大约是4.75%，然后最近发行的一种紧缩型优先股利率为7.375%。我们的产品范围不一，但其中最大的一笔发行实际上是一只固定终生利率为5.1%的优先股。
如果保险业务做的足够好何必要这个成本的钱？
Tom Wilson
Obviously, and the math is not exactly right because you've got GAAP capital, Jess, but if you look at our returns on equity, just actual market equity, it's substantially above that, so that's a good trade. Obviously, we also look at dividends, share repurchases, we've done a lot of, and so, Jess, you want to just go through the numbers of what we've done on share repurchases in the past.
显然，虽然由于存在 GAAP 资本因素，计算上可能不完全精确，Jess，但如果你看我们的股本回报率，即实际市场股权的回报率，明显高于那个水平，所以这是一笔不错的交易。当然，我们也关注股息和股票回购，我们在这方面做了很多工作，所以，Jess，你能介绍一下我们过去的股票回购数据吗？
Jess Merten
We have done a lot of time. So I took a look back and went all the way back to when Allstate went public. Since going public, we've repurchased about $41.5 billion of our stock and that represents about 83% of the outstanding shares. If you bring that timeframe in a little bit, over the last 10 years, the number's closer to $17.5 billion and about half of the outstanding shares over the last 10 years. Bring it in again, five year period, $7.8 billion of repurchases, about 25% of our outstanding shares and in all cases, in an average cost, it's very attractive. We even go through and look at the returns. In all cases, over any period, whether it's 30 years or five years, the return is significantly above our cost to capital, so we've had really good returns and to your point, Tom, buying back 83% since going public just shows our commitment to repurchases.
我们确实进行了很多回购。所以我回顾了历史，从 Allstate 上市时开始算起。自上市以来，我们回购了大约415亿美元的股票，这大约占到了流通股的83%。如果将时间范围缩短到过去10年，回购金额大约为175亿美元，占过去10年流通股的一半；再缩短到过去五年，回购额为78亿美元，占流通股的25%。在所有情况下，平均成本都非常有吸引力。我们甚至分析了回报率，无论是30年还是5年的任何时期，回报率都明显高于我们的资本成本，所以我们的回报非常可观。正如你所说，Tom，自上市以来回购83%的股票充分展示了我们对股票回购的承诺。
即使是白痴也可以做的不错，2015年2月10日股价56块，当前189，10年3.37倍，跟同时期的S&P500差不多。
Tom Wilson
Yes, so I mean we've got plenty of things we do and I would just like, yes, share repurchases are important. I know it's a number of analysts wrote that up over the evening of when you're going to be back. I'm like, you should hold this accountable for managing our capital to drive shareholder value and if that means growing faster and using our capital to grow faster, that holds accountable for that. If we have extra capital, we don't hold on to it and we buy back stock because when you look at our value relative to our growth potential, the size of our business, our PE, we still think it's cheap.
是的，我的意思是我们有很多措施要做，我只是想说，股票回购确实很重要。我知道有不少分析师在你回来之前就撰写了相关的分析。我想说，你们应该对资本管理负责，以推动股东价值；如果这意味着更快地增长、利用我们的资本实现更快增长，那就应该为此负责。如果我们有多余的资本，我们不会把它闲置，而是会回购股票，因为从我们的价值、增长潜力、业务规模以及市盈率来看，我们仍然认为股票被低估。
Jess Merten
It's still better to get those questions and questions about adequacy of capital, I guess, so we'll see.
关于资本充足性的问题还是最好提出来，我想，我们拭目以待吧。
Tom Wilson
And those were thoughts, for sure.
这些确实是我们的看法。
Operator
主持人
Our next question comes from the line of Bob Huang from Morgan Stanley.
我们的下一个问题来自摩根士丹利的 Bob Huang。
Bob Huang
Yes, good morning. I'm going to stay away from capital. So the first question is on auto. And an investor astutely pointed out that on your first quarter 2024 slide, you talked about 64% of your total premiums were profitable. So fast forward to today, then we are talking about 60% of that premium is now growing. Is it fair to kind of make some type of causal correlation between the time you achieve profitability and the time that you start to grow the business? In other words, is it fair to say that six to nine months from now, essentially California, New York, and New Jersey, they're only state you're unable to grow and everything else should be growing and that rather than the 60% of total premiums growing, probably call it 80% or 90% of should be. Is that a fair way to think about this?
是的，早上好。我先不谈资本问题。所以第一个问题关于汽车业务。一位投资者敏锐地指出，在你们2024年第一季度的展示中，你们提到总保费中有64%是盈利的。而快进到今天，我们看到大约60%的保费正在增长。是否可以合理地将实现盈利的时点与开始业务增长的时点之间建立某种因果关系？换句话说，是否可以认为，从现在起六到九个月内，基本上只有加州、纽约和新泽西这几个州无法实现增长，而其他地区都应在增长，也就是说，不再是60%的总保费在增长，而应达到80%或90%的比例。这样理解是否合理？
Tom Wilson
I think the construct is right. I don't know if I would automatically extrapolate that into the future. I mean, it is true. When we were losing money, we shut down advertising, shut down growth intentionally, because we said there's really no sense going to get a bunch of new customers if we're going to have to raise their price by 15% relatively quickly, and it may be then lost them. So what's the point is to spend the money. And it doesn't make any sense getting a new customer to lose a bunch of money on, and you know you're going to lose money on. So that was true, and that's what we did.
我认为这个思路是对的。不过，我不确定是否可以自动将其外推到未来。确实如此，当我们亏损时，我们会故意停止广告投放和业务增长，因为我们认为如果必须在短期内将价格提高15%去吸引一大批新客户，那样做毫无意义，反而可能会失去他们。所以花钱没有意义，让新客户因此亏损也毫无道理。这确实是我们当时的做法。
We also know that by driving that and going aggressively, that it was going to hurt retention. And so now we're about, so there are pieces you roll in. I don't think you could automatically go to say, like do an analysis of two lines on a graph going up, and they would follow each. Each state's different. Each position's different. If Mario was to get adequate prices in New York tomorrow, we have a great agency plan there. We got pretty, we got huge share down in the New York area. And we could really leverage it to grow fast. When that will happen, who knows? So I think you should just hold this accountable for growing auto units. And I keep coming back to auto units as the unlocks. Everything else is growing. And so it is an important part of our business, but we've got higher premiums. The reserve balances are up. The investment balances are up. That's all driving increased income. So protection plan is knocking it out of the park. So we've got lots of growth opportunities. We are focused on the unlock of auto unit growth.
我们也知道，采取这种积极激进的策略会对客户留存产生负面影响。所以现在情况变得复杂，有很多因素需要综合考虑。我认为你不能简单地画两条上升的线，然后假设它们会完全同步。每个州的情况不同，每个市场的位置也各异。如果明天 Mario 能在纽约拿到合适的价格，我们在那边就有一个出色的代理计划。我们在纽约地区占有非常大的市场份额，并且可以真正利用这一优势实现快速增长。至于何时会发生这种情况，谁也说不准。所以我认为你应该把注意力放在推动汽车业务单位的增长上。我一直强调，汽车业务单位的增长才是打开局面的关键。其他方面虽然也在增长，但我们的保费更高，准备金余额增加，投资余额也上升，这些都推动了收入的增长。所以我们的保护计划表现非常出色，增长机会众多，我们正专注于释放汽车业务单位的增长潜力。
Bob Huang
Got it. No, that's helpful. If I can just have a follow-up on that, I don't know if you addressed this, so apologies if you did, but the question is really around adverse selection, right? As we go into 2025, more and more auto carriers are profitable, and more and more auto carriers are talking about growth. Should we expect your current level of combined ratio to hold for auto as you head into an environment where everyone is looking for growth? Like, how do you feel about the broader competitive environment as a whole?
明白了，这回答很有帮助。如果我可以再追问一下，不知道你是否已经提到这个问题，抱歉重复，但问题主要在于逆向选择。随着我们进入2025年，越来越多的汽车保险公司实现盈利，也越来越多的公司谈论增长。在这样一个所有人都追求增长的环境下，我们是否可以预期你们目前的综合赔付率水平在汽车业务上能够保持稳定？你对整体竞争环境的看法如何？
相互较劲的时期，能力强的才能胜出。
Tom Wilson
Well, you're talking with the auto market has obviously been competitive and both Progressive, Geico, State Farm, the big carriers that we compete with all the time have been out in the market and competitive this year. So people are advertising, it's last year in 2024. So it's not like it wasn't competitive and it's suddenly turning into competition. We think we have the capabilities to compete and grow. I would say that's a different market in homeowners where most people are backing out. There is a secular trend there where we have an opportunity to grow. And as we look at capital, one of the things we like to do is get a higher valuation on our homeowners growth. So when you look at our homeowner business and I said, geez, if you have a business that's growing revenues in the mid-teens, it's picking up not huge market share, but it's got real unit growth. It's an industry leading model. It's earned money, good money, 11 out of 12 years.
嗯，你说的汽车市场显然一直都非常竞争激烈，不论是 Progressive、Geico、State Farm，还是我们经常竞争的那些大型保险公司，今年他们都活跃在市场上，竞争依旧激烈。大家都在做广告，就像2024年那样，并不是之前不竞争，而是一直在竞争。我们相信自己有能力在竞争中成长。我想在房屋保险市场情况则不同，那里大多数公司正在撤退，存在一个长期趋势，我们反而有机会增长。至于资本方面，我们的一项策略是使我们的房屋保险增长获得更高的估值。所以，当你观察我们的房屋保险业务时，我会说，如果你有一个业务，收入增长率达到中两位数，虽然市场份额并不是非常巨大，但实际的单位增长是真实存在的。这是一个行业领先的模式，12年中有11年都能赚到不错的钱。
And it has high returns on capital. You probably wouldn't put it at the kind of PE that we have for our overall enterprise. And I suspect that if you actually looked at analysts, they might even give it a lower PE than our total. So we need to figure out how to have that fully recognized in our valuation. And it might mean doing something differently in reinsurance and lowering the volatility of that line. But just know that our goal is to increase shareholder value. Let me move it closer. I think we're at time. Our goal is to increase shareholder value, whether that's buy shares back, grow, manage our capital structure differently, figure out how to compete differently, do more advertising. We're all about driving growth for shareholders. We think we have the tools and capabilities to do that. And we have a track record that shows we know how to get it done. So thank you all. We'll see you next quarter.
而且它的资本回报率也很高。你可能不会给它分配我们整个企业那样的市盈率，我怀疑如果你看分析师的评估，他们甚至可能会给它一个比整体更低的市盈率。因此，我们需要想办法让这一点在我们的估值中得到充分体现，这可能意味着在再保险方面采取不同的策略，降低这一业务线的波动性。但请记住，我们的目标是提升股东价值。让我把话题拉近一点，我认为时间到了。我们的目标是提升股东价值，无论是通过回购股票、实现增长、以不同方式管理资本结构、寻找不同的竞争策略，还是加大广告投入，我们的一切都是为了推动股东价值的增长。我们相信自己拥有实现这一目标的工具和能力，并且有着成功的业绩记录证明我们知道如何做到这一点。所以谢谢大家，我们下个季度再见。
Operator
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation at today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.
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