On Thursday, AMERISAFE (NASDAQ:AMSF) discussed first-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.
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The full earnings call is available at https://event.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1758905&tp_key=c274698bc4
Summary
AMERISAFE reported a 9% increase in net premiums earned and a combined ratio of 93.2% for Q1 2026, highlighting strong underwriting performance.
The company's strategic initiatives have led to an 8.2% growth in new and renewal voluntary premiums, with an increased in-force policy count and positive payroll growth.
Despite industry challenges, the company maintains a strong balance sheet with $774 million in cash and invested assets, and it completed a $4 million share repurchase under its buyback program.
Net income was $8.1 million or $0.43 per share, while operating net income was $9.5 million or $0.50 per share, reflecting disciplined expense management and favorable prior year loss developments.
Management expressed confidence in the sustainability of its growth strategy, which has been effective across various industry sectors and states.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Good day and welcome to the Amerisafe first quarter 2026 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time I would like to turn the conference over to Kathryn Shirley, Chief Administrative Officer. Please go ahead.
Kathryn Shirley (Chief Administrative Officer)
Thank you Operator and good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the Amerisafe 2026 first quarter investor call. If you have not received the earnings release, it is available on our [email protected] today this call is being recorded. A replay of today's call will be available. Details on how to access the replay are in the earnings release. During this call we will be making forward looking statements intended to fall within the safe harbor provided under the securities law. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the results expressed or implied in these statements if the underlying assumptions prove to be incorrect or as a result of risks, uncertainties and other factors, including factors discussed in the earnings release, in the comments made during today's call and in the risk factors section of our Form 10K, Form 10QS and other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward looking statements. I will now turn the call over to Janelle Frost, AMERISAFE's President and CEO.
Janelle Frost (President and CEO)
Thank you Kathryn and good afternoon. We are pleased with our solid start to 2026 marked by continued growth, disciplined execution and attractive underwriting performance. During the quarter we grew net premiums earned by 9%. We also delivered a combined ratio of 93.2% and produced operating earnings of $0.50 per share. These results reflect steady operating momentum amongst the competitive backdrop facing the workers compensation industry. The workers compensation market remains competitive and continues to operate in a prolonged soft pricing environment amid persistent industry headwinds such as claim severity and economic uncertainty. At the same time, workers compensation remains the most consistently profitable line within the PNC industry supported by long term claim development and stable capital structures. In this environment, sustained success depends on appropriately priced risk selection and deep industry experience. At AmeriSafe, our differentiated approach to servicing high hazard industries continues to support consistent returns across cycle. Our eighth consecutive quarter of premium growth, continued improvement in our expense ratio and favorable prior year loss development underscore the strength of our operating model and the dedication of our team. We believe these fundamentals position us well to navigate current market conditions while continuing to create long term value for our shareholders. Now turn the call over to Vincent to walk through the details of our growth and underwriting performance for the quarter
Vincent
thanks Janelle in the first quarter of 2026, gross premiums written were 88.5 million compared to 83.8 million in the first quarter of 2025, increasing 5.6%. Retention for policies we offered for renewal was 92.4% in the quarter and pricing remains strong, helping offset continued downward pressure in filed loss costs. New business opportunities continue to grow despite steady competition together new and renewal voluntary premium increased 8.2% in the quarter, reflecting ongoing investments in distribution effectiveness and recognition of our commitment to delivering outstanding safety and claim services to our policyholders in force. Policy count increased 1.7% in the quarter and 9.5% since the first quarter of 2025. Audit premium and related adjustments remained positive, adding 3.7 million in the quarter compared to 5 million in the first quarter of 2025, and net earned premiums were 75.1 million in the quarter, growing 9% year over year. While we don't usually comment on policyholder dividends, I do want to give some color since it was seemingly an outlier for this quarter. If you look at recent quarter history, you'll see that there is some variability in this ratio quarter to quarter, albeit in a relatively small range. In last year's first quarter the dividend ratio was 0.9%, while in the subsequent quarter Q2 2025 it was 1.8%. We have not changed our policyholder dividend strategy or plans, and this first quarter result was within our expectations. In the few states where we do offer policyholder dividends as a competitive tool, the ultimate outcome depends upon individual policyholder experience for policies in the quarter being evaluated. With recent policy count growth, it is not unexpected that more policyholders could qualify for dividends. And finally, back to the routine and update on payroll growth. We continue to see positive wage growth in our targeted classes of business coming in at 4.5% for the quarter while headcount change was essentially flat. We believe continued payroll growth across our targeted industries indicates relatively healthy business activity despite ongoing economic uncertainty. Further payroll growth and in particular wage growth can help offset ongoing pressure on rates both from competition and filed loss costs. That concludes the overview of premium results. I will hand the call back to Janelle for more information on claims, investments and other financial metrics.
Janelle Frost (President and CEO)
Thank you, Vince. Next quarter I'll have the pleasure of passing the financial remarks off to Guillermo Ramos, our new cfo. Until then, bear with me one more time as I blend the financial results with other operational commentary. The current accident year loss ratio was 72% for the quarter compared to 72% for the accident year 2025 at 12 months, but 71% at the first quarter of 2025. As we've discussed over the last two quarters, continued rate pressure and general high claim severity is creating modest upward pressure on the current accident year. That said, large claim losses incurred can be lumpy. We ended the first quarter of the current accident year with no claims with incurred value over a million dollars compared to 2 in the first quarter of accident year 2025. As for prior accident years, we had 7.6 million or 10.1 points of favorable development in the quarter compared to 8.7 million or 12.7 points in the prior year quarter, resulting in a net loss ratio of 61.9% for the quarter. The impact of favorable prior year development to the net loss ratio quarter over prior year quarter is influenced by the growth in net premiums earned to round out the combined ratio. Total underwriting and Other expenses were 22.3 million for the quarter, resulting in an expense ratio of 29.7% compared to 29.9% a year ago. This marks the third consecutive quarter over quarter or year over year improvement, reflecting disciplined expense management and continued operating leverage as our strategic growth initiatives drive growth in net premiums earned during the first quarter of 2026, net income was 8.1 million or $0.43 per diluted share, while operating net income was 9.5 million or $0.50 per diluted share. This compares to net income of 8.9 million or $0.47 per diluted share and operating net income of 11.4 million or $0.60 per diluted share in the first quarter of 2025. The effective tax rate for the quarter was 19.8% compared to 20.2% in the prior year quarter. Turning to our investment portfolio, net Investment income decreased 0.8% to 6.6 million due to lower average investable assets. However, new money yields were favorable during the quarter, with the yield on new investments increasing 174 basis points in comparison to the portfolio roll off, driving our tax equivalent yield to 3.9% or 7 basis points higher than the first quarter of 2025. The portfolio remains high quality, carrying an average AA minus credit rating and a duration of 4.4 years. Asset allocation was largely unchanged with the portfolio composition being 61% municipals, 24% combined corporate bonds, 3% US treasuries and agencies, 7% equities and 5% in cash. Approximately 43% of our portfolio is designated as held to maturity carrying a net unrealized loss position of 7.9 million at quarter end. As a reminder, these held to maturity securities are carried at amortized cost and therefore unrealized gains and losses on these securities are not reflected in our book value. Also, during the quarter we repurchased nearly 120,000 shares of common stocks under the company's share repurchase program at an average cost of $33.60 per share, for a total of $4 million. The remaining outstanding share repurchase authorization under the program as of March 31st is 12.9 million DOL. Overall, our capital position is strong, supported by high quality balance sheet, solid reserve position and prudent investment strategy. At quarter end we held approximately 774 million in cash and invested assets. Finally, a couple other topics. Book value per share at quarter end was $13.18 and we will file our 10Q on Thursday, April 23rd after market close. With that, we'll open the call up for questions.
OPERATOR
Thank you. If you are dialed in via the telephone and would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing STAR1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, please press Star one to ask a question and we'll take our first question from Mark Hughes with Truist.
Mark Hughes
Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mark. Janelle, how did you see inflation in the quarter? It sounds like the medical inflation claims. Inflation sounds like the large claims were negligible. But any observations? Yeah, any observations about any marginal changes?
Janelle Frost (President and CEO)
No, no marginal changes from what we talked about at year end, Mark, Medical inflation is real. We are living it. We are reserving properly for it. I still feel I'll stick by what I said at year end. I still feel fee schedules are doing their job and helping us contain costs. But I also think NCCI recognizing last year at this time last year that medical inflation was medical severity was up 6% was eye opening to the industry. I think CEOs have been talking about it for a while and we're just a few weeks away from seeing what that number was for 2025 according to NCCI as well. So I would expect that there's continued pressure on medical inflation industry wide, not just with our severe claims.
Mark Hughes
Yeah. What do you think they'll say? I guess our observation was it seemed like 2024 and 2025 were not starting off in as good a shape as some of the older accident years. Do you have you seen in the industry data.
Janelle Frost (President and CEO)
Yeah, you know that's a great point Mark. I think when you look at even NCCI last year and their data had, you know, each accident year combined ratio seem to be worsening, getting closer and closer to that hundred percent combined ratio for the industry. So I mean I think they're industry wide. We're seeing a deterioration in those results. And you're right, accident year 2024 and 2025 for the industry as a whole. I think there are, there is definitely pressure there. But when you're talking 12 years of declining rates, I think that's a natural progression. Right. That there's going to be pressure there. Even though frequency for the industry has continued to go down. Medical, medical inflation and the severity on claims has ticked up and the declining rate environment. So I think there's going to be continued pressure for the industry on those accident year combined ratios. So it'd be very interesting to see on an accident year basis what those projections are reported versus I guess projected. But also how much that affects the calendar year. Like how much favorable development the industry has experienced from older accident years. To your point that you know those accident years 22 and prior versus what's developing or what emergence we've seen out of 24 and 25.
Mark Hughes
Yeah. How about NCCI loss costs? I think you've shared kind of the recent experience and some of the updates you've been getting. What does that trend look like?
Vincent
Hey Mark, this is Vince. We're still looking at mid single digit decreases for the year. Most states have already put in their filings for 2026. Just to give you some sense of the range. In our five biggest states they range from down almost 9% to down 1.2% and everything in between with a few outliers.
Mark Hughes
Understood. And then Janelle, I don't know if you gave any specifics on payroll. I think you might have done that in the past kind of payroll growth or headcount growth. Any statistics there you can share.
Vincent
Hey, Vince, I'm going to jump in for Janelle. I've got it right in front of me, if you don't mind. We're seeing payroll growth across all of our major classes to varying degrees. But it's predominantly wage growth. As we mentioned in the prepared remarks, headcount growth's been flat to slightly down different quarters. It varies quite a bit. But across all industries payroll growth continues to be positive.
Mark Hughes
Understood? Okay, thank you very much.
Janelle Frost (President and CEO)
Thank you Mark.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Once again. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing Star one. And we will take our next question from David Samar with citizens jmp.
David Samar
Hi, this is David on for Matt just had one question. Hey, for the voluntary premium growth, are there any certain industries or areas of the market that are driving growth more than others right now?
Janelle Frost (President and CEO)
No, I would say it's been pretty, it's been pretty steady across our book of business, which is one of the things that we've actually been happy to see as we've, you know, we've had these strategic initiatives to grow policy count and to grow premium that the changes that we've made have been serving us across industries, across states. In other words, we don't see pockets of what's working here. It's not working there. It's been pretty consistent throughout the book of business. So even if you look at the 10k last year, which, you know, last year was when our growth initiatives really started taking root, in terms of the numbers we reported, if you look at the 10k and the shift between industry groups or even the shifts among the states, there's really not a lot of change. 24, 25 over 24. And that. That held true in the first quarter. Quarter as well.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Thank you. And we will take our next question from Bob Farnham with Brian Capital.
Bob Farnham
Hey there. Good afternoon. Hi, Bob. One question on. I have one broad question and one specific question. So the specific question is you talked about the duration of your assets. Four years. I'm just for a little over four years. So I just wanted to know kind of how does that compare to the duration of your liabilities?
Janelle Frost (President and CEO)
Oh, great question. Yeah. So our average duration on our portfolio on our liabilities is between three and four years. So.
Bob Farnham
Okay. Which is surprising. I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah, no, I said that's kind of surprising. You know, people think of. All right. You know, workers comp writer would have a longer duration of claims. So is it.
Janelle Frost (President and CEO)
Yeah, I appreciate, I appreciate you asking. Is one of my favorite subjects. So, you know, the way we handle claims is. Thank you. Thank you, Bob. The way we handle claims is different than the industry. You know, we really focus on, you know, when I've talked about this numerous times. But our high touch model involves our claims adjusters getting in quickly, establishing relationships, getting those reserves put up quickly and then working with our injured workers, working with medical providers, finding ways to close and settle these claims as quickly as we can to the benefit of the injured worker, to the benefit of the policyholder, and ultimately to the benefit of Amerisafe. And that helps shorten Our duration on our claims, on these severe claims. So we know that we're lower than the average bear as they say in the industry. But that's part of our operating model and that's how we have, we manage claims.
Bob Farnham
Cool. All right. And the broader one, you know, I've been covering workers comp for quite a while. You obviously have as well. And I would have said maybe five or six years ago, I thought that frequency would have bottomed and here we go and here we keep going. We'd be like, all right, frequency is down again, Frequency is down again. When is this going to end and what do you think is driving the. You can only do so much safety and, you know, risk services, things like that, that I just don't know where there's a bottom.
Janelle Frost (President and CEO)
I would agree with you, Bob. I guess partly in degree it matters on how you're measuring frequency. Right. So if you're measuring it for per million dollars of payroll or a million dollars of premium, but either way you look at it right now, it is still on the decline. A couple things I think factor into that. I agree with you. Is the workplace safer? Absolutely. I think the mix of jobs that we have, also the fact that our economy is shifting is more towards services, I think that impact the overall frequency. Because again, you're talking broadly, not just what Amerisafe writes, but broadly. Right. I think the type of jobs, the types of workforce that we have, that somewhat influencing that number. If you're looking at really long term trends, I think our economy has shifted more from manufacturing and those types of jobs to more service related jobs. So that kind of. I think that's contributing somewhat to the frequency. But I happen to agree with you. If you had asked me three or four years ago, even for the industry, not even talking about AMERISAFE specific for the industry, I would have said, well, it's got to reach at some point. I mean, people are going to have accidents. We're all human. But yet whether you measure it on payroll or premium, as of now it's down.
Bob Farnham
Yeah, I just remember you talking about it a long time ago saying, yeah, frequency can't drop down to zero, so it's got to end at some point. But man, you guys keep surprising.
Janelle Frost (President and CEO)
I always appreciate when people remember when I'm wrong. Yes, you're right. All right, that's it for me. Thanks for your code. Thanks, Bob.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And we will take our next question from Mark Hughes with Truist.
Mark Hughes
Yeah, Janelle, you all have been doing very well on the top Line growth. And if you touched on this earlier in the call, forgive me, but the. I think I've asked before about how sustainable this is, whether, you know, some initiatives you put in place and kind of have potentially run their course, or whether there's always something new and you continue to bear fruit with your distribution strategies. I'm just sort of curious if there's any remarks you have about kind of what's keeping the momentum going forward.
Janelle Frost (President and CEO)
Yeah, let me start with the team here at Amerisafe is executing. You know, we, and I've talked about this before, you know, three years ago, probably at this point dating back maybe longer now. You. We started putting together this growth strategy and how we wanted to be very thoughtful and very measured about that growth strategy. And the team here is just executing. And the fact that to the question earlier, the fact that it's been prolific across our industry classes, across our states, I totally believe it is sustainable. Is it linear? No. But we're shooting for that mid single digit range and we've been hitting that. And like I said, kudos to the Amerisafe employees for really executing and taking this idea of adding small incremental growth and not changing our risk profile and sticking to our knitting and being who we want to be and executing on that. Kudos to them for executing on that. So I truly believe that is sustainable. The momentum, the attitude is there, the strategies there.
Mark Hughes
Yeah. And this is a trivial question, but why did you move the call to the afternoon?
Janelle Frost (President and CEO)
Great question, actually. Scheduling conflict. So thank you for. Thank you for asking. I apologize if it is inconvenient. Yeah. Okay, so next time it'll be 10:30 again. Yes, we will go back to our normal schedule. Yeah. Okay. All right. Very good. Thank you.
OPERATOR
You're welcome. Thank you. And this concludes today's question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call back to Janelle Frost CEO for closing comments.
Janelle Frost (President and CEO)
Thoughtful and measured growth with pricing adequacy continues to be the anchor for our performance even amidst the competitive pressures of the workers compensation market. Our results this quarter reflect the strength of these fundamentals, supported by a strong balance sheet that positions Amerisafe well across the market. We remain confident in our strategy and committed to consistent execution to deliver sustainable underwriting, profitability and long term shareholder value. Thank you for joining us today.
OPERATOR
This does conclude today's call. Thank you for your participation.
Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.
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