Allstate Corp

NYSE:ALL

Earnings Call Transcript 2018-Q1

[Operator]

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to The Allstate First Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. As a reminder, today's program is being recorded. And now I would like to introduce your host for today's program, Mr. John Griek, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[John Griek, The Allstate Corp.]

Well, thank you, Jonathan. Good morning and welcome everyone to Allstate's first quarter 2018 earnings conference call. After prepared remarks by our Chairman, President and CEO, Tom Wilson; Chief Financial Officer, Mario Rizzo and me, we will have a question-and-answer session. Also here are Steve Shebik, our Vice-Chair, Glenn Shapiro, the President of Allstate Personal Lines, Don Civgin, the President of Service Businesses, John Dugenske, our Chief Investment and Corporate Strategy Officer; Mary Jane Fortin, President of our Life, Retirement, and Benefit businesses, and Eric Ferren, our Controller and Chief Accounting Officer. Yesterday following the close of the market, we issued our news release and investor supplement, along with an update to our 2018 reinsurance program, filed our 10-Q for the first quarter and posted the results presentation we will use this morning in conjunction with our prepared remarks. These documents are available on our website at allstateinvestors.com.

As noted on the first slide, our discussion today will contain forward-looking statements about Allstate's operations. Allstate's results may differ materially from these statements, so please refer to our 10-K for 2017, the slides and our most recent news release for information on potential risks. This discussion will contain some non-GAAP measures for which there are reconciliations in our news release or our investor supplement. We are recording this call and a replay will be available following its conclusion. And as always, I will be able to answer any follow-up questions you may have after the call.

And now I'll turn it over to Tom.

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

Well, good morning. Thank you for joining us and staying current on Allstate's operating results. Let's begin on slide 2. So we had excellent execution of the operating plan which increased growth and profitability in the first quarter. We also benefited from an unexpected decline in auto accident frequency, lower catastrophe losses and a reduction in federal taxes. Net income was $946 million or $2.63 a share with adjusted net income of $1.07 billion or $2.96 per share. Adjusted net income return on equity was 15%. In the table, you can see revenues grew 3.4% on the Property-Liability insurance premiums. Net investment income also increased on good performance-based result.

If you move to slide 3, we're making good progress on all of our five 2018 Operating Priorities. The first three priorities – better serve our customers, achieve targeted economic returns on capital, and grow the customer base are intertwined to ensure that profitable long-term growth creates shareholder value. We made progress on better serving customers as the Net Promoter Score increased, the customer retention improved from both the Allstate and Esurance brands which is a key driver of growth.

Returns on shareholder capital were also strong. The Property-Liability reported combined ratio of 88.0, generated $959 million in underwriting income for the quarter which was an increase of $411 million from the prior-year quarter. Auto insurance underwriting income increased for all three underwritten brands and Allstate brand homeowners insurance continued to generate substantial income and benefited from lower catastrophe losses. Allstate Life and Allstate Benefits also generated attractive returns in part due to lower taxes.

Going to the third one, grow customer base, Allstate brand policies in force increased as the auto and other personal lines grew over the prior-year quarter. Esurance policies increased on growth in the homeowners line. Allstate Benefits continued its long track record of growth with policies in force increasing 6.7% and SquareTrade policies grew 11.9 million or nearly 40% compared to the prior-year quarter.

Investment income increased due to continued strong results from the performance-based portfolio. A total return on the $83 billion portfolio was a negative 50 basis points which included a stable contribution of about 1% from net investment income but that was more than offset by lower fixed income valuations and a decline in equity markets.

Lastly, we're also committed to building long-term growth platforms. SquareTrade is making good progress on the objectives supporting the acquisition and Arity is helping to drive the expansion of Allstate and Esurance's telematics utilization.

Let's go to slide 4, it shows the Property-Liability segment results by customer segment and brand. Starting with the table at the top, net written premium was $7.8 billion, a 5% increase from the prior-year quarter. The reported combined ratio of 88.0 was 4.9 points better than first quarter of 2017 due to lower catastrophe losses, increased premiums earned, and lower auto accident frequency that was partially offset by higher operating costs and lower favorable prior-year reserve reestimates. When catastrophes and prior-year reserve reestimates are excluded, the underlying combined ratio was 84.2 for the first quarter of 2018. As you know, our strategy is to provide differentiated customer value propositions for the four consumer segments in the personal lines insurance market. The Allstate brands in the lower left competes in the local advice and branded segments. Net written premium was 5.2% higher than the first quarter of 2018 compared to the prior-year quarter.

The underlying combined ratio was 83.2, slightly above the prior-year quarter as continued improvement in auto insurance was offset by an increase in the homeowners insurance. Esurance in the lower right serves customers who prefer our branded product but are comfortable handling their own insurance needs. Esurance net written premiums was 7.9% compared to the prior-year quarter. The underlying combined ratio of 98.4 was 1.8 points better than the prior-year quarter with improvements in both auto and homeowners insurance. Encompass in the upper left competes for customers who want local advice and are less concerned about the brand of insurance they purchase so they mostly go through independent agencies. Premium declined due to the net impact of improving underlying margins. The underlying combined ratio was 87.9, up 1.3 points as we invest in building capabilities to support profitable growth.

John will now go through these Property-Liability results in more detail.

[John Griek, The Allstate Corp.]

Thanks, Tom. Slide 5 shows the underlying drivers of policies in force for Allstate brand auto insurance. Starting with the graph at the top, overall policies in force grew by 52,000 or 0.3% in the first quarter of 2018. The bottom two charts highlight our balanced approach to growing the business. The renewal ratio of 88.3 was an improvement of 0.9 points from the prior-year quarter, benefiting from our continued focus on the customer experience and a stable rate environment. New issued applications grew year-over-year for the 5th consecutive quarter, increasing 17% compared to the first quarter of 2017. Growth in new business is due to improved competitive position, increased agency productivity and the expansion of the agency footprint.

Let's go to slide 6 to cover the underwriting results for Allstate brand auto insurance. Starting with the top left graph, the recorded combined ratio for the first Quarter was 88.5, 2.2 points lower than the prior-year quarter and generated $579 million in underwriting income. The primary drivers of profitability improvement were increased average written premium, lower frequency and lower catastrophe losses. The underlying combined ratio of 90.0 in the first quarter of 2018 improved 0.9 points compared to the first quarter of 2017, driven by a 1.8 point improvement in the underlying loss ratio. The expense ratio of 25.0 was 0.9 points above the prior-year quarter due to higher agent and employee-related compensation costs.

The chart on the top right highlights the drivers of the Allstate brand auto underlying combined ratio. Annualized average premium shown by the blue line, increased 4% to $1,029 while underlying loss and expense shown by the red line increased 3% to $926. This resulted in a favorable gap of $103 per policy. The positive gap between these two trends widened in the first quarter based on lower accident frequency, partially offset by higher severity and expenses.

The bottom left chart on this page provides Allstate brand auto property damage, gross frequency and paid severity results indexed to 2013. In the first quarter, property damage gross frequency declined 2.5% compared to the prior-year quarter and favorable trends remain geographically widespread. After experiencing a sharp increase in accident frequency in 2015 and 2016, trends have improved. And as of the first quarter of 2018, property damage gross frequency is performing in line with levels experienced in 2014. While frequency has declined, property damage paid severity has experienced average annual increases of 4.3% since 2013.

The chart on the bottom right shows the quarterly trends for bodily injury paid frequency and severity. As you can see, these statistics can be volatile, given the timing between opening and settling claims as well as the impact of internal process changes. Given this volatility, we will no longer provide bodily injury paid statistics, beginning next quarter. We will be reviewing other measures that could explain economic results on this longer tail coverage.

Slide 7 shows the operating results for Allstate brand homeowners. The top part of the page provides detail on profitability. Homeowners' returns were good, with a recorded combined ratio of 80.8 in the first quarter, 12.9 points better than the prior-year quarter due to lower catastrophe losses. Performance for this line is better evaluated over a 12-month period, given weather seasonality and variability. Allstate brand homeowners insurance generated $949 million of underwriting income over the last 12 months.

The bottom half of the page provides detail on policies in force. On the lower left, the renewal ratio of 87.5 was 0.4 points higher than the first quarter of 2017 and new issued applications growth accelerated to 14.7%. On the lower right, you can see the size of this line of business, which generates $6.9 billion of premium from 6.1 million policies.

Slide 8 provides financial highlights for Esurance. Esurance generated a combined ratio below 100 in the first quarter and policies in force grew. The recorded combined ratio of 99.3 in the first quarter, shown on the left chart, was 3.1 points below the prior-year quarter, primarily driven by increased premiums earned and lower catastrophe losses, partially offset by increased loss costs.

Esurance growth trends are highlighted on the right chart. Net written premiums continue to grow on increased average premium and policy growth. Policies in force increased 1.1% compared to the first quarter of 2017 after being relatively flat since 2015, which followed a period of rapid growth. This quarter's growth was driven by homeowners' policies, as auto policies in force were essentially flat to the prior-year.

Slide 9 provides additional highlights for Encompass. Encompass continues to execute its profit improvement plan. Encompass's recorded combined ratio was 98.4 in the first quarter of 2018, 13.3 points lower than the prior-year, primarily due to lower catastrophe losses. The underlying combined ratio of 87.9 for the first quarter was 1.3 points higher than the prior-year period as a higher expense ratio more than offset improvement in the underlying loss ratio.

Shown on the right chart, Encompass's trailing 12 month net written premium declined 8.2% and policies in force were 12.8% lower in 2018. Planned reductions in states and local markets with inadequate returns has impacted overall topline trends.

Now, I'll turn it over to Mario.

[Mario Rizzo, The Allstate Corp.]

Thanks, John. Let's go to slide 10, which provides detail on the service businesses. In the first quarter, revenue growth accelerated to $313 million and policies in force reached 46.5 million. The adjusted net loss was $5 million in the quarter, a $5 million improvement over the prior-year quarter as favorable loss experience at SquareTrade was partially offset by investments in research and business expansion at Arity. As you can see on the right, SquareTrade revenues were $122 million or $63 million above the prior-year but $30 million of that was due to the adoption of a new accounting standard. Revenues from the other businesses were flat to prior-year.

SquareTrade also made progress on the three objectives supporting its acquisition in January 2017, as you can see from the box at the bottom of the slide. Policies in force grew to 41.8 million in the first quarter of 2018, an increase of 11.9 million over the prior-year quarter, largely from domestic customers. Improved loss experience led to adjusted net income of $2 million in the quarter compared to an $8 million loss in the first quarter of 2017. The transition of underwriting risks to Allstate paper is essentially complete and continued progress is being made expanding European cellphone protection policies.

Turning to slide 11, let's review our Allstate Life, Benefits and Annuities results. Allstate Life generated attractive returns on capital. Adjusted net income, shown in the top left chart, of $69 million in the first quarter increased $10 million compared to the prior-year quarter. This is primarily due to a lower effective tax rate and higher premiums and contract charges, partially offset by adverse mortality. Allstate Benefits' adjusted net income, shown on the top middle chart on the page, was $28 million. The $6 million increase from the prior-year quarter was due to higher premiums and contract charges and the lower effective tax rate, partially offset by higher contract benefits. Allstate Benefits continued its strong track record of growth, with premiums and contract charges, shown on the bottom middle chart, increasing 6.3% compared to the first quarter of 2017 and policies in force growth of 6.7%. Allstate Annuities, on the far right, had adjusted net income of $35 million in the quarter and continued to benefit from good performance-based investment results. Economic returns remain low, due to the relatively high regulatory capital requirements.

Slide 12 highlights our investment results. The chart at the top of the slide provides our asset allocation over time. We proactively manage our investment portfolio based on our long-term strategic risk profile, relevant market conditions and corporate risk appetite. We have increased the portfolio's equity allocation in response to historically-low market yields and to utilize available risk capacity. Our performance-based investments which now total $7.7 billion or 9% of the portfolio are expected to deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns.

In the lower left, net investment income for the first quarter was $786 million, 5.1% or $38 million higher than the first quarter of 2017. Market-based investment income, shown in blue, was stable. Performance-based investment income, shown in gray, was the primary driver of the increase over 2017 generating $181 million of income in the first quarter. Performance-based income was lower than the prior three quarters which benefited from outperformance by certain investments.

The components of total return on our diversified $83 billion portfolio are shown in the table on the lower right. The return was slightly negative in the quarter, reflecting lower fixed income valuations due to increased market yields and a decline in equity markets. The 12-month trailing return was 3.8%. With the adoption of the fair value accounting standard during the quarter, changes in the valuation of public equity securities are now a component of realized capital gains and losses as opposed to unrealized gains and losses.

Slide 13 provides an overview of our capital strength and financial flexibility. Our capital position is excellent. We delivered strong returns, increased book value and maintained a conservative financial position while increasing shareholders' ownership in the company by reducing the number of outstanding shares. Adjusted net income return on equity was 15% for the 12 months ended March 31, 2018 an increase of 3.1 points compared to the prior-year period and book value per common share increased 11.9% to $58.64. We returned $465 million to common shareholders in the first quarter. This included repurchasing 3.5 million shares of our common stock for $333 million, leaving $935 million remaining on our current repurchase program. We paid $132 million in common shareholder dividends. As a reminder, the board of directors approved a 24% increase in the quarterly dividend per common share to $0.46, which was paid on April 2 and is not included in the amount returned in the first quarter. We continually look to optimize our capital structure and in the first quarter we issued $575 million of perpetual preferred stock and $500 million of senior notes. The proceeds of these issuances are for general corporate purposes, including the redemption, repayment or repurchase of certain outstanding securities.

Now, I will ask Jonathan to open the line for questions.

[Operator]

Certainly. Our first question comes from the line of Greg Peters from Raymond James. Your question, please.

[Charles Gregory Peters, Raymond James & Associates, Inc.]

Good morning. Thanks for the call and taking my questions. I suppose the most obvious place to start would be just around the underlying combined ratio guidance for the year considering that the first quarter result was substantially better than what your annual target is, I'm curious if your thinking has changed or what your perspective about that is? And also in the context of generating that really attractive result, I'm curious about what your view is on product positioning and competitive positioning in the marketplace?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

Greg, this is Tom. I'll start and then maybe Glenn can add color to that as well. So first, thanks for the question. Good morning.

Based on the three months results, it's too soon to change the underlying combined ratio guidance. The returns we earned on auto insurance are really good even at the outlook range and the best way to increase shareholder value at that point is to grow policies in force. We're obviously, as you point out, at below the low end of the range in the first quarter and that was really due to an unexpected decline in auto accident frequency versus the prior year. It looks like other companies experienced similar declines in the first quarter but our guidance is based on only a really small sample of the overall industry. Our projections did assume that there would be an increase in auto accident frequency. And as you well know, auto accident frequency has been very volatile over the last three years. It increased significantly in 2015 and 2016 and then decreased in 2017. Actually you can see that on John's slide. And, of course, the underlying drivers of frequency are miles driven, economic activity, how many people are working, weather, all of which are difficult to predict individually, in combination and doing it geographically is nearly impossible. And so at this point, we're not changing our frequency outlook for the whole year or our underlying combined ratio guidance. But let me give you a couple of math points as well. Auto frequency is usually highest in the fourth quarter. In the second half of the year, it has three more days than the first half of the year and one calendar day has over half a point of impact on the quarterly loss ratio, all other things being equal. So the returns we get are really good at any level. And so we're focused on maintaining that and growing. Our competitive position, Glenn can talk about it although I would say from my standpoint, the best way to analyze competitive position is your retention levels in your new business, and both are good.

[Glenn T. Shapiro, Allstate Insurance Co.]

Yeah, thanks Tom. And Greg, good question. On competitive position, we feel good about where we are from all the metrics we looked at. We monitor our competitive position in every state and every market across the country. And if you look at how we're growing right now, we're growing in a pretty balanced way. As Tom said, we're retaining more of our customers – always best to retain the ones we fought hard to attract in the first place and our new business is up. With the new business up, if we were getting the same number of quotes but significantly increasing our close rate, you'd look at it and think that we broadened appetite or something in the way that we got it. But from a competitive standpoint, we're just getting a lot of looks at people. We're getting a lot of quotes. Our quotes are well up. We're closing an appropriate amount of those so our competitive position feels like we're in good shape.

[Charles Gregory Peters, Raymond James & Associates, Inc.]

Thanks for that answer. Just as a follow-up, I know you mentioned in your comments about your emphasis on your agency and distribution force. And I was looking at some of the statistics on, I guess, it's page 11 of your supplement. And you talk about Allstate agencies, and it looked like it was down sequentially a little bit. License sales agencies, sales professionals and Allstate independent agencies. Maybe you could just provide some color around which of those buckets you expect to grow over the course of the next year or two and which may be deemphasized?

[Glenn T. Shapiro, Allstate Insurance Co.]

All right. Yeah, Greg, I'm glad you pointed that out. Because I really think the way to look at this is on a year-over-year basis. We've been committed for several quarters. We've been talking about growing our distribution footprint and I think we are effectively growing the distribution footprint. If you look year-over-year, we're up about 1200 points of presence. 100 agents, 1200 licensed sales professionals. When you look at this, much like a lot of our other results, there's a little bit of a seasonality to it. At the end of the year, a lot of folks are running to get some people in place. The pipeline dries up a little bit. We tend to have higher turnover in the first quarter, but the first quarter of this year, our turnover was less than what we anticipated. So that was favorable. So as you look at a starting point at the end of first quarter last year to now, we got 1200 more points of presence; a little bit down sequentially but we're really always down sequentially at that. We're less down than we would have anticipated at this point. So, as we build throughout the year and we continue to look to increase our distribution footprint, we're starting from a good foundation.

[Charles Gregory Peters, Raymond James & Associates, Inc.]

Perfect. Thank you for your answers.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Sarah DeWitt with JPMorgan. Your question, please.

[Sarah E. DeWitt, JPMorgan Securities LLC]

Hi, good morning. I guess, first, I was hoping – could you just elaborate a bit on what drove the unexpected decline in auto frequency and do you have any view on what that could look like going forward?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

Sarah, this is Tom. So, it's really too early to tell what the drivers of it would be. When we look at a variety of items, there's no one thing that pops out in your mind. Obviously, weather would have some impact in the first quarter and there is different kinds of weather in different parts of the country.

Secondly, when we look at miles driven, it's actually up a little bit when we look at our driveway data so that wouldn't automatically lead you to conclude that it should be down. In fact, it would be the opposite of that so we don't have a good read now. And oftentimes even in reverse-looking at 2015 and 2016, it's hard to determine attribution between specific elements. What we do know is that it was down and obviously we've reserved well so we're feeling good about where the profitability of the business is but we also know that if it goes up, we're still positioned to be very attractive returns in the business.

[Sarah E. DeWitt, JPMorgan Securities LLC]

Okay. Great. Thank you. And then just on the performance-based investment income that declined quarter-over-quarter, how should we be thinking about modeling a good run rate for that?

[John Edward Dugenske, Allstate Insurance Co.]

Yeah. Hi, Sarah, it's John Dugenske. Thank you for asking the question. First, I wouldn't view the quarterly decline as meaningful. If you think about how we own these assets generally, we own these sets versus longer-tailed liabilities. The performance has been consistent with what we've hoped to achieve with the allocation over time.

Looking at a little more detail, in any given quarter, you may get a specific event, a transaction where something's liquidated, a particular performance of an individual investment that may make those returns a little bit volatile. I would encourage you to smooth the data and look at multiple quarters and look at the overall trend. Notably in the fourth quarter of last year, we had a number of very positive events. Three liquidations of deals that just as well could have taken place this quarter but took place in the fourth quarter that gave us a very good fourth quarter number along with some other things. So, overall, the trend is in place and we feel good about it.

[Sarah E. DeWitt, JPMorgan Securities LLC]

Okay. So, just in terms of modeling that, $200 million or so is a good run rate?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

Sarah, you might look at it as on a yield basis and on a rolling basis. So – I know that's hard to stick into a quarterly number but John is being a little humble. We had great results in quarters 2, 3 and 4 last year that the yield on their portfolio, if you just took income over the balance was in the mid-teens, but we do not...

[Sarah E. DeWitt, JPMorgan Securities LLC]

Okay.

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

Expect it to be in the mid-teens on that kind of level. We expect it to be above where you would get from public equities, so I think you really have to look at it on that basis (28:29) and we tend to think about it relative to the overall company in terms of volatility. I know you're looking at individual lines, but catastrophes bounce around, performance-based income bounces around, what we seek to do is to increase total long-term return despite the fact that it bounces around. In fact that it does bounce around gives us the opportunity. We have the ability to enable and handle that volatility; gives us the ability to earn better returns.

[Sarah E. DeWitt, JPMorgan Securities LLC]

Okay. Great. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kai Pan from Morgan Stanley. Your question, please.

[Kai Pan, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC]

Thank you, and good morning. Just first question, just a follow-up on the frequency questions. I just wondered if you could quantify the delta between the results versus your expectations?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

Kai, we don't give out the subcomponents of our expectations, because then we end up spending a whole bunch of time talking about assumptions which – on things like frequency, it's always an estimate. It's even harder to look backwards and determine why it happened so we don't give out the subcomponents.

Glenn, maybe you can talk a little bit about the absolute decline in frequency and where we saw it and that will give Kai some additional color.

[Glenn T. Shapiro, Allstate Insurance Co.]

Yeah, so we saw – obviously, we saw the decline in frequency. One way to look at this is as you compare to sort of the broader trends, so we clearly have wind at our backs when it comes to frequency; it's down. Our frequency appears to be down as you look over the last few quarters, a little more than the industry and some of that is as our book shrunk a little bit, we got to a little bit higher quality on average of the book of business.

In terms of just longer-term trends, there's a lot it, as Tom said, it's hard to predict. There's a lot of different theories on there between miles driven, miles driven per operator, safety features in cars, so we'll continue to monitor that going forward.

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

So, yeah and I think, Glenn, it's very broad-based geographically decline in frequency this quarter by accident-type. It was down in most of the accident types. The tenure of the customer was down across all tenures of customers so it wasn't just one state, one group of customers. It was broad-based, which, as Glenn said, leads us to conclude that other people had the same thing but we don't know that for sure.

[Kai Pan, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC]

So just to clarify, you still expect positive frequency through the remaining of the year?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

Kai, we haven't changed our underlying combined ratio outlook for the year, would be the way I would say that.

[Kai Pan, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC]

Okay. That's great. And then my second question is on more sort of a like high-level. If you – there's a recent IPO on the personal line brokerage and they're looking into sort of growing very rapidly in the multicarrier platform independent agency model. You – Allstate have the platform that encompass all these different distribution model but the captive agency distribution is still the majority of the revenue as well as income. How do you feel about the captive model over the long run?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

We like the Allstate agency model for a number of reasons. First, it gives us the ability to have the right price value comparison. When you're in the independent agency channel, you often get spreadsheeted (32:02) comparative rater and it's harder to maintain consistency in your pricing.

Secondly, the captive channel gives us the ability to really control the customer experience, which is really important when you're delivering value. And as we head into telematics, it gives us an ability to build even greater relationships because people will be more connected with us. That said, we think there is a place in our portfolio for all the businesses. So we like to do it direct with Esurance. We'd like to grow Encompass. We wanted to get its profitability right and get its capabilities positioned which is I mentioned we're working on. So we'd like to grow in that channel as well.

And, of course, we have a platform which we believe is the biggest in the industry right now, called Answer Financial, which is an electronic version of an independent agency. And it's got a very strong position and we're continuing to build up that model, leaning into telematics on that piece as well.

[Kai Pan, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC]

Thank you so much.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jay Gelb from Barclays. Your question, please.

[Jay Gelb, Barclays Capital, Inc.]

Thank you. As the Allstate brands auto policies in force are now growing, how can the company make sure it doesn't become impacted by the new business penalty where the margins for the new business tend to be somewhat lower than legacy business?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

Well, Jay, you're correct in that, particularly in the preferred customer segment, there tends to be a new business penalty where you earn less money on a new customer than you would on somebody who has been around for seven or eight years. And so that is basically endemic to the industry and of growth. What I would say is I would maybe take your question – it's really not possible not to be impacted by that. But what I would say is we feel comfortable that we know how to manage growth and overall profitability to be able to increase shareholder value by both growing and maintaining margins.

And Glenn mentioned this. We run the business at a local level. So we're looking at it by state, by product line, by risk class. We slice and dice it every which way, so to the extent that the growth would not be properly priced in certain places, we would obviously be able to – we'd see that and would react accordingly. And then I would also say the increasing use of telematics also helps us get even more accurate in our pricing.

[Jay Gelb, Barclays Capital, Inc.]

That's helpful. Thanks. On the investment side, I guess I was a little surprised that the market base, essentially the fixed income investment portfolio, investment income that that generates was down year-over-year and then also versus the prior quarter. I thought with higher interest rates, that could be rising. What am I missing there?

[John Edward Dugenske, Allstate Insurance Co.]

Yeah, Jay, it's John again, thanks for the question. I would encourage you to take a look at the portfolio as a whole and think about how income has been generated that way. There are a number of dynamics going on in market base.

First, as our performance-based assets increase, our market-based assets decrease. So there's just a lower base by which it can generate income.

Second, the asset mix, within our market-based assets, changes. So, generally, we've used high-yield and other higher yielding assets within market-based to fund our performance-based assets. So, lower balance and lower high-yielding assets will decrease that. Another thing to think about is just how does the book react to higher interest rates? Think about Allstate, real simply, it's two different. Our Life and Annuities business, which generally tends to be liability-matched and where there's not a lot of new purchases. The turnover is very low. That doesn't react very quickly. Even within our protection businesses, only a small part of the portfolio would roll over in any period of time, therefore it only captures an interest rate rise gradually throughout the year.

I can give you further statistics on that, but a real rough gauge would be if interest rates moved up 100 basis points across the course of the year, given turnover and everything else, expecting no other changes in the portfolio, we'd expect our yield to move up by 6 basis points or roughly $45 million to $50 million in net income.

[Jay Gelb, Barclays Capital, Inc.]

That's really helpful. Thanks very much for that. And then, just finally – I just wanted to recognize I think this is the first quarter since 2007 the company has generated over $1 billion in operating income. And at the same time, the share count has been reduced by 40%, so keep up the good work.

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

Thank you, Jay. I would hear that and I'm...

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Paul Newsome of Sandler O'Neill. Your question, please.

[Jon Paul Newsome, Sandler O'Neill & Partners LP]

I have two unrelated questions. The first one is, there – and it's not going to be – (37:29) actually, there's a lot of private equity and other folks looking to buy blocks of Annuities, do you have any additional thoughts on your own Annuity (sic) [Annuities] (37:43) and Life book and would you be interested or you thought about some of this increased demand for people to buy some of these blocks?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

That's a really good question, Paul. The returns on capital are low for the payout annuity block versus the deferred annuity block, so we split it into two chunks. And the payout annuity block backs a lot of structured settlements, really long-dated liabilities and it is underperforming. Our approach with all of our underperforming business as you know has been to go at it multiple ways to be proactive, but to take action. And that block is about $12 billion so we're doing the same thing that we've done on all of our businesses.

So just if you go back and go up a little bit, we transferred the VA block versus reinsurance in 2006. At first, we got lucky and that was before the financial markets crashed. We shut down sales of new annuities over a period of years. (38:48), so we've taken a variety of actions. What we've been doing on this one is first and foremost, getting the investments correct, so that rather than funding this block with fixed income, we've been funding portions after seven years with payout annuity or with performance-based which generates a much bigger return. That generates more capital for us and makes it less underperforming on a long-term basis. What it does on a short term basis is it makes it even more underperforming because you have to put up a whole bunch of capital for those equities even though you really shouldn't have to because the risk is big in equities, it's actually lower than the risk of being in fixed income for a long-dated liability. So what we've been doing is working with the NAIC to reduce the capital requirements and we made some progress to them to the extent we can do that, that will enable us to free up some capital. At the same time, we're also looking at how we structure those investments so we may be able to structure them in different ways so they don't have to carry as much capital.

Obviously, as interest rates go up, that should help that portfolio and the lower tax rate is obviously also increased value so we've improved value in that block. We have things to do to further improve it but we're not done. And, of course, our goal is to maximize our economic value per shareholder, so we'll continue to look at all different ways to do that.

[Jon Paul Newsome, Sandler O'Neill & Partners LP]

My second question is has there been any change on a regulatory front for the insurance business in your opinion?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

For insurance, I missed that last part, Paul?

[Jon Paul Newsome, Sandler O'Neill & Partners LP]

Just any change in the regulatory environment in the insurance business?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

Well, that's a broad question. I would say there are a couple of things from a regulatory environment that we're all looking at. One is cybersecurity. The New York Department of Financial Services put out some new cybersecurity rules. We're all working hard; we would work hard anyway to make sure we're protected but we're working to make sure we have the specific elements in those specific regulations covered.

Secondly, there's always the issue of privacy in data. And you're starting to see it is not yet in insurance but we're thinking about how would we deal with increased requirements on it. So as it relates to pricing, claims and a variety of things, I would say it's business as usual. Glenn, do you agree with that?

[Glenn T. Shapiro, Allstate Insurance Co.]

Yeah, I agree. There was a lot of discussion last quarter about with the tax changes and everything, but we continue to work with regulators on state-by-state basis and our filing process is business as usual.

[Jon Paul Newsome, Sandler O'Neill & Partners LP]

Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bob Glasspiegel from Janney Montgomery. Your question, please.

[Robert Glasspiegel, Janney Montgomery Scott LLC]

Good morning, Allstate. Question on where we are in the competitive landscape which you sort of spoke about. As we look to the rest of the year, it looks like the industry came in maybe 3 points better in 2017 and your key competitors were around 103 (42:13). But if you take Allstate and Progressive out, they were at 106 (42:18). So we're trying to sort of handicap or I'm trying to handicap how your mutual competitors and travelers in Progressive are going to take the rate actions over the balance of the year. It looks like you're competing and winning on the margin but are we looking at rate increases to be more moderate by your competitors and where do you think the world is going, rate-wise?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

We don't know, Bob. I can't tell you what everybody else's plans are. We see the same numbers you see and perhaps at a greater level of granularity. So, we look at Progressive, Geico, State Farm, not only in total but by state, by risk class. We think some of that group still has some – if we were them, we would be increasing prices. I don't know what they will do given that we are not them but Glenn can talk about our rate outlook for the future, which is modest.

[Glenn T. Shapiro, Allstate Insurance Co.]

Yeah. If you look at our – where we are now, it's always dangerous to talk about this in a global level, because as Tom said, it really is state-by-state. We have great need in some places and we don't in others. Broadly-speaking, we're clearly in a better pricing and rate situation than we were a couple of years ago. I would also caution you, as you think about that, Bob, to look at what happened from the last year because a lot of what is in the results this year is what rates they took last year. So when you look at whether it's the CPI and compare to how rates are coming in in auto insurance in the first quarter, it really is the rates that were taken over the last 12 months. And so a lot of this year is already baked from whatever folks did last year in their rates and what they do this year is really more of a forward-looking basis.

[Robert Glasspiegel, Janney Montgomery Scott LLC]

It looks like you and Progressive's margin – underwriting margin versus the industry just continues to widen year after year. I think I had it at 12 points for the two of you versus the industry last year. Is it technology pricing? You got the rates up right? What do you think sort of explains how your margin versus the industry continues to widen on a neutral basis?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

Yeah, I think, Bob, when you look over a long period of time, Progressive, Allstate and Geico, our combined ratios look to be about the same and much better than the industry. The 12 points seems like a bigger gap to me than I've seen versus the industry. But we have traditionally been at about the same zone. I think that's, in part, pricing accuracy. I think it's a different view as to what return on capital we want to get on the business, so mutual companies have a different view as to what their capital objective function is, and I think we're effective and efficient the way we do it. That would be auto insurance.

What I would say on homeowners insurance is we appear to be substantially better than other people in the industry, and I don't think there's many companies with our size and scale that generate the kind of income we have. And if you look at the slide John showed, it's over $900 million of income from underwriting of our homeowners business in the last 12 months, and it's been pretty consistent like that for five or six years. So I would not ignore the benefits that we generate from being in the homeowners business.

[Robert Glasspiegel, Janney Montgomery Scott LLC]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Josh Shanker from Deutsche Bank. Your question, please.

[Joshua D. Shanker, Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.]

Yes, thank you. So looking at the growth rates of Allstate brand and Esurance, obviously Esurance is a much smaller base but there's a lot of natural growth in direct. I would have thought you'd be adding policies in direct at this point in time, right now, given that I assume the pricing metrics you have around both distribution channels are similar. Why is the Allstate brand channel growth here than direct? Is there a theory behind that or is it just times change and different products sell better at different times?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

First, I don't think there are – you're appealing to different customers, different geography bases and therefore different competitive environment. We feel good about the Allstate brand business and that's really been coming. As Glenn said, we expanded distribution all through last year. You didn't see it in any of last year's numbers but you see it this quarter and we would expect that growth to continue in terms of the distribution and hopefully that will turn into growth in items in force. So Esurance, slightly different position. Its growth is really driven by expansion and homeowners, but we think there's plenty of opportunity to grow Esurance. Well, you just didn't see it this quarter. So I think both businesses, we would expect to grow items in forces as we go forward from here.

[Joshua D. Shanker, Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.]

Okay. Sometimes I tell people it's hard to tell why stocks are going to go up in the future as what's explained what they did in the past and I think you've talked around this but I hope you can answer the question better than me. We have enough time, half the 2015 frequency spike and now we are in a frequency, I don't even know what you're going to call it right now – levels (47:59) are lower than they were before the spike back then. I think you touched upon it but I'm hoping that maybe you have a little better color. Is there a grand theory about why frequency went up three years ago and maybe another grand theory about why it seems to be coming down right now?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

As a grand theory, it makes it sound like there's like one reason, so no. I would say – so, look, frequency came down for a long, long period of time because we had third tail light, anti-drunk driving laws, three cars per household versus two drivers, anti-lock brakes, there's a whole variety of things that happened and then it kind of leveled out for a period of time – maybe five or six years. And then in 2015 and 2016, it spiked up. Some of that was obviously related to economic activity – more people back at work, because about a third – if you look at where people drive their cars, a third is to work, a third is on errands, a third is for leisure, so they were driving more to work and if you have more money, you do more leisure. And so miles driven went up so people got more accidents. Some people would say it was somewhat related to distracted driving. I think that's impossible to predict because you're talking about knowing whether somebody was looking at their phone or just put their phone down right before they got in an accident. That information just is not available so people are looking at results and trying to come up with conclusions as to why it might be that way. What we do know is that it went up and we had react. It went up for two years in a row. We increased our prices to account for it. It came down last year and I think the clarity on that is as far as the increase, which is we just know it went down and that puts us in a better profit position in getting to see opportunity to grow. It's down this quarter, but I don't think you should take that to a trend. I think frequency bounces around a lot and when we give our underlying combined ratio guidance, it's because it does bounce around a lot. It had nothing to do with our view on the economics of the business. We earn really high economic rents from our customers because we do a really good job for them and we do that when our competitors don't, so it's not like we're taking advantage of anybody. We're just good at what we do and we think that auto business is a good profit generator and a growth vehicle as it will be in the future, irrespective of what happens to frequency.

[Joshua D. Shanker, Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.]

Well, good luck and let frequency be low for everyone, drivers and companies.

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

Yes, thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Yaron Kinar from Goldman Sachs. Your question, please.

[Yaron Kinar, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC]

Good morning, everybody. Just a couple of quick ones, I think. So looking at the 17% year-over-year growth in new issued applications in Allstate brand auto, did you see momentum accelerate there over the quarter? Did it decelerate? Was it roughly constant?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

The 17% year-over-year growth in new business, Glenn, the question was...

[Glenn T. Shapiro, Allstate Insurance Co.]

Yeah.

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

...did it accelerate? You're getting into monthly numbers, which we don't disclose.

[Yaron Kinar, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC]

Yeah.

[Glenn T. Shapiro, Allstate Insurance Co.]

Well, so thanks, Yaron. First of all, the growth came in pretty balanced way. We got growth across a lot of different states. We got growth in areas that we targeted that we wanted growth. We invested in local marketing. What I would say is that it's been pretty balanced and pretty healthy in that the whole system is responding right now. As Tom mentioned, we've talked about for a few quarters, the fact that we're trying to grow our distribution system, but also make it more effective. So, I'd say one, it's growing. I mentioned that before – 1,200 more points of sale out there and less turnover. Two, the system is more efficient. We've got quotes per agent up, new business per agent across the country up.

We're serving our customers' needs more broadly because we're selling across the system more so even – I know you're talking about the 17% in auto, but we're up 15% new business in home, too. So we're selling across the system more effectively. And then, and I think maybe most importantly, the system is investing in itself right now. Agents feel good. Everywhere I go across the country, agents are positive. They're feeling good about their opportunity, their economic opportunity in the system. They're marketing in their local environments. They're hiring staff and leaning in, so all of those elements are really driving pretty broad growth.

[Yaron Kinar, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC]

That's helpful. Thank you. And then my second question is around prior-year development. So, the adjustment for the company's bodily injury claims handling has clearly been a positive for favorable prior-year development. How much longer do you think this favorable tailwind continues? And then are there other initiatives in place or on the way that could lead to lower losses or more efficient reserving?

[Mario Rizzo, The Allstate Corp.]

Yeah, hi this is Mario. So I'd say, look, we are continually looking at our reserve balances across all coverages and we feel really good about where our reserve position is. Because of some of the things we've done on the claim side to manage, particularly the injury coverages we've seen, some favorable development over the last several quarters, I would tell you it's – I'm not going to sit here and predict whether that will continue or not. I will tell you we'll continue to look at reserves.

And claims, I think is a process that's a moving target. You always want to get better in your claim handling. And when we talk about continuous improvement, that's really an area where continually reinventing ourselves in how we handle claims is really a critical part of our business model. And we've been pretty successful at that historically. And I think that's what's generated some of the equity you've seen in our reserve position, but we feel good about reserves. We'll keep looking at them. And it's hard to predict whether they'll continue to favorably develop at the same pace.

[Yaron Kinar, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC]

Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Your question, please.

[Elyse B. Greenspan, Wells Fargo Securities LLC]

Hi. Good morning. Thank you. My first question is just on the capital side of things. You guys issued debt in some preferreds in the quarter. Can you just update us is this part of just normal adding to your leverage? Do you see yourselves as you using this for your buyback or is there maybe a component of having some capital flexibility for future acquisitions built in there? And then, if there is a component of flexibility for acquisitions, if you could just update us on some things that you might be thinking about in terms of that could be additive to the Allstate profile?

[Mario Rizzo, The Allstate Corp.]

Thanks, Elyse. This is Mario. So I guess where I'd start is we feel really good about our capital position. We got a really strong capital position overall. And having said that, we're always looking for ways to optimize our capital structure, and what you really saw in the first quarter was an opportunity to issue securities at attractive levels, both from a senior debt perspective as well as perpetual preferred stock, which we view as really a permanent part of our capital structure.

So we did the issuances. We're going to use the proceeds to pay down some debt that's maturing in May and also call some junior subordinated debt that had lost equity credit that, on a floating rate basis, had a relatively higher coupon. So we're going to do that. So we're going to swap out some debt or some of the debt that we just issued at more attractive rates.

And then we have the opportunity – and we haven't decided on this yet, we have the opportunity to call some of our preferred stock later in the year and we took the opportunity to issue again what we view as permanent capital at really attractive levels. And we'll make that decision in terms of what to do with the proceeds going forward, but we feel really good about where we're at from a capital perspective and we really like the flexibility that gives us, both to invest in growth in the business and look for other opportunities that might come along.

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

And with our capital position earnings power, we don't need to prefund anything to do an acquisition. We don't need to go out and raise money in advance to try and do something. If we wanted to do something, we would just fund it at that point in time.

[Elyse B. Greenspan, Wells Fargo Securities LLC]

Is there something, Tom, on your radar screen or it's just dependent upon maybe some things that become available in the market?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

If you look at our track record, we're not averse to buying things but we're kind of picky. And it's got be related to our strategy and it has to be a good company. So, SquareTrade, which we bought a little over a year ago, was related to our strategy to insure more things for people, particularly the electronic items that they have. And Don might want to just comment on how we've done relative to that. But we said we're thoughtful about it. Other places we might look would be to the extent we could expand other lines of business that could be sold by our Allstate agencies, would be interesting to us. And then as there is always new stuff in the market, so we're not averse to it, but I don't have like a list of here's five companies we have to buy so that we can be strategically sound. We're in a really good position.

Don, maybe you just want to mention about SquareTrade?

[Don Civgin, The Allstate Corp.]

Yes. Look, the first full-year is behind us now. As I'm sure you were all thinking about a year ago, a lot can go wrong when you do an acquisition. We laid out three objectives for the acquisition. I'm happy to say we're hitting all of them. The first was growth and you can see again this quarter continued growth, both in policies and in premiums. Second was to be able to improve the returns in the business. And as Mario mentioned, we've taken more of the underwriting in-house, but on top of that the loss ratios are running well and the company is just performing well from the profitability point of view. The third was to improve their growth opportunities outside U.S. retail which is where the main business is and they've done a really nice job in that. The European business, albeit a little under 10% of their total book has nearly doubled in the last quarter.

So, the three objectives we've set, I feel like we're hitting all of them. If you remember when we did the acquisition, we said we chose SquareTrade because they were service-obsessed and that fit well with the way we want to treat our customers. Having met with a number of their existing and prospective customers, I can tell you they are really good at onboarding and serving their end-customers and creating value for the retailer. So I feel like we made the right choice. I'm glad we did it and if we had that choice again, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

Let me just add one other piece here. So when we talk retailers, that's both electronic and big-box.

[Elyse B. Greenspan, Wells Fargo Securities LLC]

Okay, great. And then just really quickly on SquareTrade, there was a $30 million boost to the topline from the accounting change in the quarter. Was there any impact from that accounting change on the bottom line earnings in the quarter?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

No. It was net neutral to income. It was just the revenue impact from the accounting change.

[Elyse B. Greenspan, Wells Fargo Securities LLC]

Okay. Thank you.

[John Griek, The Allstate Corp.]

Jonathan, we have time for one more question.

[Operator]

Certainly, our final question comes from the line of Amit Kumar from Buckingham Research. Your question, please.

[Amit Kumar, The Buckingham Research Group, Inc.]

Thanks for fitting me in. I guess, very quickly, just going back to the questions on the unexpected decline in frequency, should investors brace for a time when we would have an unexpected reversal in frequency too? Is that sort of the takeaway in constantly reminding us that this frequency is an outlier? How should we think about that?

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

Amit, I think you brace for things when something bad is going to happen to you. What I would say is our auto business is very profitable. It would be very profitable and we should be growing it even if we were at a combined ratio that was 86% to 88%, which is our annual outlook. And so what I think investors should be excited about is the fact that we have a business that is very profitable; that business is starting to grow and that should add, increase shareholder value when it was getting smaller over the last couple of years as we improved this profitability. So we no longer need to do that, so we're on the offensive now beginning to grow that business and I think that's what investors should be focused on versus – this is not just a profit machine, it's a shareholder value machine. We have auto insurance, we have home insurance, we've got our performance-based stuff, we've got Life business and Benefits, we've got SquareTrade and all of those things create incremental value for our shareholders and are consistent with our strategy. So I think to get too focused on one specific measure is just the wrong way to think about investing in our company. That's not the way we run the company. We run the company for long-term shareholder value and so I wouldn't brace for anything. I'd be looking forward and being optimistic about the amount of money we're making in this business and how we can grow it.

[Amit Kumar, The Buckingham Research Group, Inc.]

Got it. But the only other quick question I have is on the pricing discussion. And we didn't spend time on discussing the rate trends which you've shown on page 18 of the supplement. How should we think about, I guess, the trajectory of the rate filings from here? And thanks for fitting me in.

[Thomas Joseph Wilson, The Allstate Corp.]

Well, we've talked about this before. Given the kind of combined ratios we have, you shouldn't expect to see big increases in the topline on an average premium standpoint but we'll make up for that, in part, by growing the business. So I would just say, don't get too focused on the one measure of performance on one line for the entire company. This is a large corporation. We got lots of ways in which we make money and add value to our customers. All of those did really well in the first quarter or better than we expected. And even if they had been at the level we expected it, it still would have been a great quarter. So, I feel like there's – don't get too focused on one item really; think about the whole value creation and we've got lots of value to create by growing the business at really attractive returns. So, thank you all. We're off to a good start. We look forward to talking to you in second quarter.

[Operator]

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.