アメリカン・コースタル・インシュアランス（ACIC）2026年第3四半期決算説明会：コンバインド・レシオ64.7%、E&S拡大

主要ポイント

• American Coastal Insurance Corporationは、2026年第3四半期の純利益が1,940万ドル、コア純利益が2,040万ドルとなり、コア自己資本利益率（ROE）は24%を超えたと発表しました。
• コンバインド・レシオは64.7%でした。当年の自然災害損失および前年度損害調査費の変動を除くアンダーライング・コンバインド・レシオは、前年同期の57.8%から68.4%に上昇しました。
• 平均保険料率の低下にもかかわらず、元受受取保険料は前年同期比で3.2%増加しました。有効保険契約数は年初来で約7%増加し、顧客継続率は90%近くを維持しました。
• 株主資本は2025年末から12%増加して3億5,570万ドルとなりました。1株当たり純資産（BPS）は15.5%増加して7.52ドルとなりました。
• 新たにライセンスを取得したACES Specialtyは、同社の長期的なエクセス＆サープラス（E&S）ライン戦略を支援します。Skyway Underwritersは、2026年12月にサードパーティの保険会社を通じて引受業務を開始する予定です。
• 経営陣は、第4四半期に重大な自然災害損失が発生しなければ、余剰資本により特別配当を実施する可能性があると述べました。第3四半期中の自社株買いは実施されませんでした。

主要財務データ

事業および業績の動向

American Coastalは、フロリダ州の商業用住宅物件向け財産保険に引き続き注力しました。経営陣は、契約更新ビジネスは新規ビジネスよりも一般に収益性が高いことを強調し、90%近くの顧客継続率を主要な経営優先課題として掲げています。

保険料率の軟化がコアポートフォリオを圧迫しました。経営陣は、当四半期の元受受取保険料の実質的な傾向を評価するには、860万ドルのE&S保険料を除外することが妥当であると説明しました。全国規模のAmRiscポートフォリオへの参加による成長が、この軟調さの一部を相殺しました。

ACES Specialtyは、同社の長期的なE&S拡大の礎石として正式にライセンスを取得しました。短期的には、Skyway Underwritersは必要な財務格付と州のライセンスを有するサードパーティ保険会社を通じて引受を行う計画です。このMGAにはパイプライン案件があり、すでに複数の案件で審査および見積提示を完了しています。

将来的には、ACESが引き受けたリスクの大部分を保有することが期待されています。また、Skywayは外部の引受能力提供者に代わって引受を行い、American Coastal自身はリスクを保有しないか僅かな共同引き受けにとどめつつ、手数料収入（フィー収入）を獲得することもあります。経営陣は、このパートナーシップに基づくモデルにより、ACES単独の引受能力を超えた規模拡大とリスク分散が可能になると述べました。

経営見通し

経営陣は2027年の正式な売上高および利益の見通しを示しませんでした。予測の策定を完了した後、1月に投資家向けプレゼンテーションを公開し、電話会議を開催する予定です。

American Coastalは、2027年に元受受取保険料、既経過保険料、総売上高の前年比成長が可能であると述べました。ただし、新規ビジネスの規模や保険引受利益と手数料収入の比率構成は検討段階にあります。経営陣は、予備的なモデリングによれば、保険料率が2桁低下した場合でも売上成長の可能性が残されていると付け加えました。

保険契約獲得費比率は比較的安定して推移する見込みです。サードパーティ保険会社を通じて引き受ける際に発生するフロント手数料のため、E&Sの獲得費用はやや高くなりますが、経営陣は2027年の全体的な比率が劇的に変化するとは予想していません。

同社は、長期的な利益成長という主目的を追求するにあたり、追加資本を必要としないと見込んでいます。経営陣は、第4四半期に重大な自然災害損失が発生しなければ特別配当を検討できると述べました。ハリケーン「イサイアス」の第4四半期への影響は軽微にとどまる見通しであり、取締役会による配当検討に影響を与える可能性は低いとみられます。

リスクと注目点

• 商業用財産保険の価格設定（料率）は引き続き軟調で、非常に競争が激しい状態です。経営陣は一部の市場参加者による積極的な展開を挙げ、競争環境は2027年まで続くと予想しています。
• 今後の料率低下のペースには不確実性があります。経営陣は低下が緩やかになると予想していますが、市場環境は依然として流動的であると警告しています。
• ACESはAM Bestによる格付プロセスおよび各州のホワイトリスト要件を完了する必要があります。一部の州では3年間の実績（シーズニング）ルールが課されているため、それまでの間、同社は実績のあるパートナー保険会社を利用する必要があります。
• E&Sの成長は、現在交渉中であるサードパーティからの引受能力調達協定の締結に一部依存しています。
• 第4四半期の自然災害損失は、資本還元に関する決定に影響を与える可能性があります。

アナリストQ&Aの要点

経営陣は、Skywayのサードパーティ引き受け提携が2027年に手数料収入への寄与を開始すると見込んでいますが、具体的な売上高および収益性の目標は1月まで保留しました。

価格設定について、経営陣は前年比20%の低下は持続不可能であり、料率悪化のペースは鈍化し始めていると指摘しました。同社は、再保険コストの変動が保険料率の変化と同等以上に相殺効果をもたらし、保険引受マージンの維持に寄与すると予想しています。

ACESに関して、経営陣は格付や州の資格要件の取得には時間がかかるものの、サードパーティ保険会社から自社バランスシートへの移行は実務上スムーズであると述べました。外部保険会社とのパートナーシップは、ACESが本格稼働した後も戦略的に重要であり続ける見通しです。

経営陣は、ACESの資本引受能力が短期的な制約になるとは見ていません。再保険によって純保有リスクをコントロールし、追加資本の必要性を減らすことができると述べました。市場が硬化し、条件の改善によってより迅速に拡大する機会が生じた場合には、追加資本の調達が検討される可能性があります。

決算説明会 トランスクリプト全文

決算説明会の完全なトランスクリプト

経営陣による説明

Operator

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the American Coastal Insurance Corporation Q3 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]. I will now hand the conference over to Bennett Bradford Martz, President and CEO.

Brad, please go ahead.

B. Martz

Thank you. Before beginning our commentary, I must first ask everyone to please see Page 2 of our earnings presentation for more information regarding forward-looking statements. During the third quarter of 2026, American Coastal continued to maintain its market leadership position in Florida commercial residential property insurance, evidenced by: one, strong account retention near 90%; two, policy in force growth of roughly 7% year-to-date; three, a 3.2% increase in gross premiums written during the current quarter compared to the same period a year ago despite downward pressure on average account rates. And finally, but most importantly, delivering a combined ratio of 64.7%, which fueled a core return on equity of over 24%. While our core business continues to produce great results, I'm very excited about how American Coastal's business profile is evolving. During the quarter, we announced our new E&S carrier, ACES Specialty, was formally licensed, and it will be the cornerstone of controlling our E&S growth strategy over the long term. In the near term, we remain on track to formally produce and underwrite our first new E&S property insurance policies on or about the end of the 2026 hurricane season, utilizing one or more third-party carriers who already have the financial rating and licenses needed to commence this important strategic initiative. Our MGA, Skyway, Underwriters, already has several submissions in the pipeline. We have cleared and quoted many of these. So it's reasonable to expect we will bind some new business in December. Given the challenges with soft market conditions in commercial property insurance, our strategy is to remain very selective and disciplined in both the admitted and the non-admitted commercial property markets. Thus, I'm compelled to reiterate that while top line growth is nice when new business makes sense, our focus remains locked in on underwriting profitability and risk-adjusted returns on capital. It's currently premature to provide any revenue or earnings guidance for 2027. Our historical process for sharing that annual forward-looking information has been to publish an investor presentation and host a call in January once we have finalized those estimates. The commercial property market remains very dynamic and competitive with some players doing very reckless and irresponsible things to win new business. This is likely to persist into 2027, but I do expect things to moderate compared to the changes in pricing, terms and conditions American Coastal experienced this year. ACIC will not require any additional capital to achieve our primary goal of earnings growth over time. We have made the investments required to expand our business and still have excess capital that could be returned to shareholders through a special dividend, assuming no significant catastrophe losses occur in the fourth quarter. Hurricane Isaias will have a minor impact on our fourth quarter, but it is unlikely to influence our Board's consideration of declaring a special dividend later this year. I'll now turn it over to our Chief Financial Officer, Lana Castle, for more specifics on our financial results. Lana?

Svetlana Castle

Thank you, Brad, and hello. I'll provide the financial update, but encourage everyone to review the company's press release, earnings and investor presentations and Form 10-Q for more information regarding our performance. As reflected on Page 7 of the earnings presentation, American Coastal demonstrated another strong quarter with net income of $19.4 million. Core income was $20.4 million, a decrease of $10.1 million, driven by softening market conditions, but the company still produced a strong core return on equity over 24%. Our non-GAAP underlying combined ratio, which excludes current year catastrophe losses and prior year development, was 68.4% compared to 57.8% in the prior year. We continue to demonstrate underwriting discipline through the market cycle. As shown on Page 15 of our presentation, revenues decreased $19.7 million. Expenses decreased $4 million in the current year, driven by favorable prior year development and lower operating expenses quarter-over-quarter. Page 16 shows balance sheet highlights. Cash and investments have increased 9.3% from year-end. The company's liquidity position remains strong. Stockholders' equity increased $38.1 million or 12% to $355.7 million, driven by our underwriting results. Book value per share is $7.52, a 15.5% increase from year-end 2025. The company is well positioned to navigate the shifting market and capitalize on growth opportunities. This concludes our prepared remarks. We'll now open the floor for questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Your first question comes from the line of Michael Phillips with Oppenheimer.

質疑応答

Michael Phillips

Brad, it might be too early to talk about this. I'm not sure. As we think about the ACES and Skyway -- and the platform there for [ AMS ], is it possible to think about the difference between fee income in '27 versus how much you retain on an underwriting risk basis?

B. Martz

Thanks for the question, Mike. Yes, it is probably a little early to talk about that. We are working on sourcing various forms of capacity for Skyway, one of which would be a fee income earning opportunity for our MGA. So some of the premium we expect to generate and business we expect to underwrite next year will lead to growth in fee income beginning in 2027. But I'd like to defer getting into the specifics of that until our -- we preview our revenue and profitability metrics early next year. My guess is we will be able to demonstrate some nice top line growth year-over-year when comparing '27 to '26, both in terms of gross premiums written, gross premiums earned, net premiums earned and total revenues. I do think we have some very positive momentum in our business right now regarding our growth initiatives. That just has to be tempered, obviously, by good cycle management. So while we're optimistic and still feel very comfortable underwriting in the current pricing environment, how much business we actually produce next year is still -- our plans are still being developed and finalized. And how much of that will result in fee income growth to the company is also still being determined.

Michael Phillips

Okay. That's fair. Look forward to that in January. I know it would be a good conversation. This might be the same answer then. Obviously, lots of moving parts as we try to figure out, I guess, a net acquisition ratio given all the different growth commission rates, rates are changing, the AmRisc participation, obviously, if I can add. So all those moving parts. Is there anything we can take away tonight to think about how to remodel that for 2027 given obviously, the drop in our net earned premium, a lot of moving parts there.

B. Martz

Well, I think the ratio should be relatively consistent going forward. Obviously, we haven't -- there is some amortization of deferred post acquisition costs that is understating the current run rate on a fully earned basis. But there'll be a slight increase there, but certainly, the net impact on our ability to grow earnings will not be a significant headwind for us. So policy acquisition costs on the E&S side are obviously slightly higher because of fronting fees that we expect to incur as we produce business through other third-party carriers and transform that risk to ourselves and others. But overall, I think the PAC ratio is not going to move all that dramatically next year.

Michael Phillips

Okay. On the gross written premium, is it fair to just back out that $8.6 million from E&S to get a sense of what the underlying book did this quarter?

B. Martz

Yes. I think that's fair.

Michael Phillips

Okay. Okay. Good. And then, I mean, you've got, as you said, a continuation of a pretty soft environment. So if you do that, you're down 9% or so, which is not bad at all given the rate environment. Anything you can talk about which is retentions and renewal pricing and exposure change, anything else that might be an offset to those pretty sharp declines in pricing?

B. Martz

The renewal business account retention is one key factor we're paying close attention to. Renewal business tends to be a lot more profitable than writing new business. So keeping that account retention as high as possible is priority one. So we're doing a great job on that front. Both AmRisc and Skyway are working hard to retain our best business. So that's going great. But the market is the market. We don't control the rate environment. We just -- we will be able to overcome some of that loss of premium through rate change via writing some new business as well as growth in the E&S side of the house. That is obviously, step one of that with the co-participation in the nationwide portfolio underwritten by AmRisc is great. That's really helping offset some of the premium weakness this year. But that will really be more than fully offset next year and why I expect it's possible, it's feasible to see revenue growth year-over-year, if rates continue to be in decline, yes, because that's the thing. I mean how much rates continues to decline next year is anyone's guess. We have -- we have targeted an estimate, at least preliminary for financial modeling purposes. But even inclusive of a double-digit rate decrease next year, we still feel like revenue growth is possible because of this evolving and expanding business profile.

Michael Phillips

Okay. Just last one real quick, I guess, because you mentioned whatever may happen in the fourth quarter and what that might do to a possibility of a special dividend. Just to confirm, I didn't see any share repurchase this quarter, just confirm that was the case.

B. Martz

I can confirm there were no share repurchases during the third quarter.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Bill Dezellem with Tieton Capital Management.

William Dezellem

So, Brad, you mentioned in your opening remarks that you believe that the price decline next year will moderate. Would you talk through the background of what's prompting you to think that?

B. Martz

Several factors. Obviously, there's an expectation of only writing business that can produce a solid return on capital. So there's only so much rate decrease. I think we're expecting and our reinsurers are expecting based on changes that have already occurred. So as we look forward, we just feel that, that will be the case. The current velocity of rate change is slowing down a little bit. That was not necessarily true for the first half of the year and some of that bled into the third quarter for sure. But 20% year-over-year decline is not sustainable. Prices aren't going to continue to freefall like that. So an adjustment was warranted. The operating environment is very competitive, and there's lots of excess capital out there. Obviously, no storms will continue to exacerbate that a little bit as capital remains hungry. But from our perspective, regardless of what happens with -- in the industry, we're going to be looking to moderate what we underwrite going forward. So we'll see if that prediction holds true, but I do think that it's reasonable that whatever rate change we experience, we're going to see a very, very similar, if not greater offset on the change of our cost of reinsurance. So those are the 2 things we like to keep in focus. And our pricing has always followed our cost of capital on the reinsurance side. We've kept those 2 things very much aligned since our inception, and that's how we continue to maintain margin in the business.

William Dezellem

That's very helpful. And then you made reference to the E&S market and the way that you're approaching that now using others' balance sheets and then that will ultimately shift to ACES once that is up and running. Would you walk us through how you envision that transition taking place and whether it's just truly as simple as you're doing the exact same thing, just given to ACES as opposed to an external party or if there's something more -- for lack of a better word, something more complicated to it.

B. Martz

No, it really is that simple. I think part of it is having good strong partners that can provide additional capacity will just allow us to underwrite more business. That's the bottom line. So the more capacity the MGA has, the better. Most of that will be retained by the company, but we do envision a partnership with one capacity provider who has a Lloyd's syndicate that we are hopeful to write on behalf of that will generate fee income where we will not be the primary risk taker. We could take a small co-participation in the business we underwrite on their behalf. But for the most part, that relationship, which is obviously very -- still in negotiations and in development and nowhere near complete. But we're being thoughtful and we're excited about the prospect of being able to start underwriting on behalf of other third parties next year. So initially, the business will be transformed to our balance sheet because we want to utilize our capital and continue to earn strong returns on our capital. The build-out of ACES is really a function of getting the rating process with AM Best will take time. The whitelisting process in the various states will take time. For example, there are states that have 3-year seasoning requirements out there that will prohibit ACES from being a direct writer of new business. So that's -- we're not going to let that stop us. We will partner with carriers that have already meet those requirements and write the business. And the quicker we can transform business to ACES, I guess, theoretically, the better given the potential profitability enhancement. But we see strategic value long term in continuing to partner with other carriers that can allow Skyway to build a meaningful E&S risk portfolio. Size, scale, diversification will be important to our long-term success. And if I look out 5 years, I can definitely see a dramatically different mix of business at our company as a result of having various partners and not just being solely dependent on ACES's balance sheet for growth.

William Dezellem

And so Brad, to carry that one step further, just to be sure that we are clear here, long term, not in the short term, but long term, the amount of business that you see potentially out there is greater than what ACES's capital would allow and maybe even in some in some areas that ACES may not be interested in taking risk on. But that is not going to stop you all from having Skyway be able to do that essentially or write that business as for a fee on behalf of others. Is that the right way to think about that?

B. Martz

Yes, I do believe so. We are, first and foremost, a balance sheet underwriter. We're an underwriting shop. And to the extent it makes sense to deploy our capital, we will. But certainly, having partners who can help us build this risk portfolio and earn service fees is part of our short- and long-term strategy.

William Dezellem

And it is probably premature for me to ask this question, but that won't stop me from seeing what you might want to add here. But at what point do you think that the amount of business that Skyway will be in a position to write will exceed the amount of capital that ACES has and is able to take on even if they wanted to.

B. Martz

I don't think that's a real risk in the near term. I mean, longer term, it's certainly possible, but I think that's something that's beyond 5 years. We -- remember, we can always control the amount of net risk we retain via reinsurance. So if ACES is capitalized with $100 million and is properly rated, we believe utilizing reinsurance is going to be the easiest way to manage the net premium risk to the company to avoid having to raise additional capital. But to the extent that let's just assume for a second, maybe the market shifts or it hardens and terms and conditions improve dramatically, then maybe it would -- it could make sense to add capital and move faster to capitalize on that opportunity. We'll just have to see.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.