Hci Group Inc
NYSE:HCI
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Hci Group Inc
Earnings Call Analysis
Q4-2023 Analysis
Hci Group Inc
HCI Group concluded the year 2023 on a high note, with its fourth-quarter earnings demonstrating robust financial health. The company reported a substantial pretax income of $54.2 million and earnings per share at $3.40. This strong quarter was bolstered by an impressive 30% surge in in-force premiums, which rose to approximately $1 billion, indicating a firm uptrend in the company's core insurance operations. Homeowners Choice and TypTap Insurance Group, the company’s insurance divisions, continued to contribute positively to HCI's steady earnings.
Maintaining its shareholder-friendly stance, HCI sustained its dividend payout with a $0.40 per share payment, marking the 53rd consecutive quarter of dividends. On the strategic front, the company successfully undertook policy assumptions from Citizens, which exceeded expectations by reaching $273 million in premiums. Moreover, the formation and licensing of a new reciprocal carrier, Condo Owners Reciprocal Exchange (CORE), added another layer of growth potential, with an additional $38 million in-force premium secured from Citizens, alongside plans for further assumptions in the upcoming months. These strategic strides, paired with a successful capital raise of $85 million through a common stock offering and the early retirement of preferred shares, have significantly enhanced HCI's financial structure and growth trajectory.
Financially, HCI has demonstrated strong performance across the board. It reported a yearly pretax income of $117 million, and its quarterly performance sustained impressive growth with diluted earnings per share reaching $3.40. Gross premiums saw an 18% increase compared to the same quarter in the previous year, reflecting robust policy growth and successful takeouts with Citizens that contributed an additional $23 million to earned premiums. An active and prudent investment strategy amid fluctuating interest rates resulted in a 50% increase in investment income for the quarter compared to the prior year. This strategic financial management has effectively positioned the company to optimize its investment portfolio and minimize capital risk.
HCI has experienced a favorable shift in its loss trends, with the gross loss ratio declining from 39.4% to 30.4%, aligning with previous expectations. This achievement resulted from meticulous underwriting, prudent rate actions, and a decrease in claims and litigation frequency. It should be noted that this achievement was not at the expense of reducing reserves, which were in fact higher year-over-year. Simultaneously, the company's effective expense management maintained costs flat despite the company's growth, thus contributing to an impressive annual combined ratio of 85%.
A testament to HCI's robust capital management is the substantial increase in its book value per share, which soared from $18.91 to $33.36 over the course of the year. Additionally, HCI has enhanced its financial leverage standing, with the debt-to-capital ratio significantly improving from over 65% to 48%. Expectations are set for this ratio to decrease further to under 40% by the end of Q1 2024, indicating a healthier balance sheet and stronger financial leverage.
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Good afternoon, and welcome to the HCI Group's Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. My name is John, and I will be your conference operator. [Operator Instructions] I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded and will be available for replay through April 6, 2024, starting later today. The call is also being broadcast live via webcast and available via webcast replay until March 7 2025, on the Investor Information section of the HCI Group's website at www.hcigroup.com. I would now like to turn the call over to Matt Glover, Gateway Investor Relations. Matt, please proceed.
Thank you John, and good afternoon everyone. Welcome to HCI Group's Fourth Quarter 2023 earnings call. On today's call is Karin Coleman, HCI's Chief Operating Officer; Mark Harmsworth, HCI's Chief Financial Officer; and Paresh Patel, HCI's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Following Karin's operational update, Mark will review our financial performance for the fourth quarter of 2023, and then Paresh will provide a strategic update. To access today's webcast, please visit the Investor Information section of our corporate website at www.hcigroup.com.
Before we begin, I'd like to take the opportunity to remind our listeners that today's presentation and responses to questions may contain forward-looking statements made pursuant to the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as anticipate, estimate, expect, intend, plan and project and other similar words and expressions are intended to signify forward-looking statements.
Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future results and conditions, but rather are subject to various risks and some of these risks and uncertainties are identified in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Should any risks or uncertainties develop into actual events, these developments could have material adverse effects on the company's business, finance and results of operations. HCI Group disclaims all obligations to update any forward-looking statements. Now with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Karin Coleman, Chief Operating Officer. Karin?
Thank you, Matt, and welcome, everyone. HCI Group wrapped up 2023 by reporting another excellent quarter with pretax income of $54.2 million and diluted earnings per share of $3.40 in-force premiums increased 30% in the quarter to approximately $1 billion. Similar to prior quarters, each of our business segments had a positive contribution to our results. At our insurance divisions, Homeowners Choice generated another quarter of consistent earnings and TypTap Insurance Group reported its fourth straight quarter of GAAP profitability.
HCI continued to deliver on its commitment to shareholders paying a dividend of $0.40 per share, our 53rd consecutive quarterly dividend. On our last earnings call in November, we discussed several initiatives underway, they included both of our existing carriers were in the process of assuming policies from Citizens. We said we expected those to total between $150 million to $250 million of in-force premium. I'm pleased to announce we completed 3 de populations from Citizens totaling $273 million of in-force premium.
We also spoke about plans to form a new reciprocal carrier to be named condo owners Reciprocal Exchange or core for short, with the intention of it writing commercial, residential insurance in Florida. In 5 months, core went from being a concept to now being a fully licensed carrier with the Demotech ratings has fully placed its reinsurance and last week, completed its first Citizens assumption of $38 million of in-force premium. This is in addition to the $273 million I just mentioned.
Core also has been approved for an April assumption and has applied for a June assumption as well. I look forward to providing updates on these in the future. In addition to these significant accomplishments, we took an opportunity to retire the Centerbridge preferred shares in TypTap, a year ahead of schedule. We also successfully raised $85 million through a common stock offering. To summarize, in a few short months, we were able to add a significant amount of premium, improve our ratio, launch a new carrier and simplify our balance sheet. Now I'll turn it over to Mark to provide more details on our financial results.
Thanks. So as Karin mentioned, this was another really good quarter for the company. Pretax income was over $54 million for the quarter and $117 million for the year. Diluted earnings per share were $3.40 for the quarter and $7.62 for the year. These results reflect the continuing positive direction we've been discussing for a while now. growing premiums, higher investment income, better loss trends and expense management.
Gross premiums earned were 18% higher than the same quarter last year, driven by higher average premium per policy and enhanced by the takeouts we've done with citizens. While the full impact of these takeouts is not yet reflected in earned premium, they did add $23 million of earned premium in the quarter. Investment income was about 50% higher than in the fourth quarter than the same quarter last year. When interest rates were low, we held on to our cash and now we are seeing the benefits of careful duration management.
Cash and fixed-term investments now total $1 billion, and we have positioned the portfolio to generate impressive yields with minimum capital risk. Other positive trend you can see in our results is the continued improvement in the gross loss ratio, which was 30.4% in the fourth quarter, down from 39.4% in the same quarter last year. When the floor of the legislative changes were announced, we said we expected the consolidated gross loss ratios to drop from 40% to 30%, and that's exactly what's happened.
We got here through careful underwriting and rate actions, along with lower claims and litigation frequency. We're not getting to these lower loss ratios by reducing reserves. In fact, net reserves at the end of 2023 are higher than at the end of 2022. If you looked at the balance sheet, you might notice that total reserves are lower than a year ago, but those are gross reserves. They're down for 2 reasons. First, because of the payments made on storms like Ian and Irma; and second, because we have significantly reduced the ultimate expected loss for Hurricane Ian.
Originally back in September of 2022, we set the ultimate expected loss for Ian based on the models at $960 million. At the end of 2022, we lowered that to $845 million. And at the end of 2023, we lowered it again down to $740 million. While we have lowered the ultimate by more than $200 million to date, we are still at the top of the actuaries range for this storm. The last trend I wanted to mention relates to expenses. If you look at the combination of labor, policy acquisition and operating expenses, they're flat quarter-over-quarter and as a percentage of premiums, they're down as we continue to manage expenses.
The company is growing, but our expenses are not. Along with the declining loss ratios, expense management is driving significant improvement in the combined ratio, which was 85% for the full year. Now that I've talked about improvements to the income statement, I should also talk about improvements to the balance sheet and liquidity, driven by profitability, debt management and capital management. As you know, we raised $85 million of new equity during the fourth quarter, issuing 1,150,000 new shares. We also expanded the capacity of our credit facility with Fifth Third Bank from $50 million to $75 million during the quarter.
As of December 31, 2023, we had just over $215 million of cash and financial investments at the holding company level and when combined with the credit facility, about $290 million of total holding company liquidity. This is about $100 million higher than it was a year ago. As Karin mentioned, there are a couple of other capital transactions that have happened since the year-end. First, we redeemed the preferred shares owned by Centerbridge. And second, we began the process of converting the balance of our 4.25% convertible notes into common to be completed by the end of the first quarter.
A couple of other numbers to mention. Book value per share continues to grow. During 2023, book value per share increased from $18.91 to $33.36. Our debt-to-capital ratio has also improved considerably. At the end of 2022, it was just over 65%. And at the end of 2023, it was down to 48%. With the transactions happening in the first quarter of 2024, this should reduce further. By the end of the first quarter of 2024, we expect the debt-to-cap ratio to be under 40%.
To summarize, the fourth quarter was a great ending to a really strong year. Revenue is growing, expenses are not, the balance sheet is improving and so is our holding company liquidity. We've positioned ourselves well, and we look forward to the coming year. With that, I'll hand it over to Paresh.
Thank you, Mark. Sometimes the numbers just speak for themselves. Karin talked about the multiple operational achievements over the last 5 months. Mark provide an update on the financial impact of these achievements, both to the income statement as well as to the balance sheet. Each of these items completed successfully is great just by itself. The fact that we managed to do all of them at the same time is really something. This is possible because of our people and the technology that we have developed. The net result of this is that we crossed the $1 billion of in-force premium, which is a major milestone and with record back comps. Stepping back from the numbers for a moment. Our actions have impacted not only our shareholders but our policyholders as well. .
We now provide coverage to the most policyholders in our history. The steps we took helped to improve market conditions and reduce insurance anxiety in Florida. Through our depopulation efforts as well as forming new carriers, we have helped the situation. Citizens is still too large with over 1.1 million policies but it is smaller today than at any time in 2023. We look forward to help shrink it further. And the events of the last 5 months -- possible when prudent preparation and planning meet the right opportunity and if you know how to execute successfully. That is exactly what we have done.
In closing, while Q4 2023 was our best quarter so far, it is only our best quarter so far. With that, we will open for questions.
[Operator Instructions] Thank you, sir. At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. First question comes from Matt Carletti with Citizens JMP.
Thanks. Good afternoon. Terry, you -- your last comment there, you gave us a little peak into your continued appetite for business and to grow in Florida. Can you give us a broader picture of kind of what the competitive landscape looks like and maybe how that might have changed, if at all, over the past 3, 6 months?
Sure, Matt. So what's happened is we started carrier last year. We've done the populations. We had -- we were very successful at it in the sense of when we made offer 70 -- over 70% of the people accepted the offer, right? So all of this was very successful. And we watch the competitive landscape as a whole -- and we noticed that there are a lot more depopulations occurring now. I think there are depopulation is happening all throughout the year all the way to June at the moment.
So all of these are very positive things. There are other carriers who have stepping up to depopulate for the first time ever. So these are all positive signs building on the things that Mark talked about last year that litigation reform that we will have an effect. We're seeing everybody else vote with us that, that is occurring.
Having said all of that, I also want to maybe understand where we sit. Citizens, which had swelled to those expectations, they would swell to almost 2 billion -- 2 by the end of 2023. Has started to shrink. It is now about the same size as it was at the end of 2022, right? So the depopulation effects impacts are having an effect on the size of citizen. It's still very big, 1.1 million. So there's plenty of opportunity, but these are the first signs of a healthy market returning to Florida. And we're glad we participated in it. Yes.
Great. Can you give us any more color on -- I mean, Karin, you commented on core, the $34 million in-force assumptions last week and mentioned April approved, I think filing for May. Can you give us any indication of kind of potential size of those assumptions?
Matt, let me take that 1 as well. When we started core and given this capital funding, et cetera, we are trying -- we have our initial objective was to grow to about $75 million of in-force premium. So 38% is a very good step towards that. The April and June depopulations will sort of top us up to the number that we want to see. And we've already reinsuranced for all of that. So core is up and running and healthy, yes.
Great. And then just a couple of numbers questions, probably for Mark, but for anybody. Cap surplus at year-end as well as what was gross written premium for TypTap for the year?
So surplus for TypTap is $92.5 million. And what was the other question, Matt?
Gross written premiums at TypTap for full year '23.
For the full year. Hang on a second. TypTap was full year $363 million.
Awesome. Congrats on a really nice quarter here. .
The next question comes from Michael Phillips with Oppenheimer.
I guess maybe just a high-level question, Paresh, for your growth loss ratio, which I mean you guys talked you expect it to be around 30% given what's happening in Florida. But why target for such a low ratio that's clearly light years ahead of anybody else in the state or anybody else in the country. Are you -- do you feel like you leave money on the table for growth if you are shooting for such a low loss ratio and it's probably even some conservatism in that, I assume, given what you're doing with your reserves.
Good question. I think the gross loss ratio and just for the sake of -- follows along, we define that as our total losses that net losses divided by gross earned premium. That low partly because some of it is because of Florida. But the reason we also do that is it's just how well our technology works, right? We charge a competitive premium. It's just that technology is so great -- sorry, I'm bragging about it at this point, that it picks the right policies, and we've curated a set of policy orders now who they file a claim when they have to, but they don't file a claim when they don't have to and it creates a better stable outcome, right? It's just been 1 of those things.
The other side of this also is a moment in time because when Mark a year ago was talking about the loss ratio going from 40% to 30%, right, it seemed like a very big lift that, that would occur. And here we are, done and dusted. So that's the item of where we sit, right? It's something we aspire to. And once in a while, we achieve it, which is a great thing.
So is it harder to get those policies that you talked about that has such great loss ratios? Is it harder to get that same kind of client base, the more you expand that technology outside of Florida?
Actually, let me try to see if I can explain in a slightly different way, right? And we actually talked about this about what's going on inside Citizens, right? So Citizens has 1.1 million policies in it, yes. And when you look at those policies, you just see 1.1 million policies. What our technology allows us to do is very quickly look at all of those homes, and we think of them as red houses and greenhouses. We've talked about this before, right? .
Green houses is 1 that if you take at current prices and how keep them for, let's say, 100 years, it will be a profitable outcome. Red houses are ones that won't be profitable. And it could be a combination of things. reinsurance cost is too high or losses will be too high or premium is too low. A number of reasons. The computers decide what screen and what's red. But if you can separate them out, you can out of the same book, separate in the Red House and greenhouse and have a much better outcome than the pool you're selecting from, right?
And things that we can see is we can see that in Citizens, there's still probably about 4,000 green homes, but we can tell them apart from the 700,000 red homes that are in there. A lot of other people can't, and that's what gives you that item, right? We are not getting these numbers because we charge more or less, we're charging a very market competitive rate is just better policy selection. And we have an advantage because we can sell red from green as opposed to, let's just say, somebody who's colorblind.
Okay. Thank you for this, I guess sort of related, what can you say about the margins of the books that you're getting from Citizens I know there's a couple of anomalies like for now, reinsurance calls and commissions. But on the normal run rate, how does that profitability of the margin in that book look compared to your normal book? And I guess part of the reason why I asked is what you just talked about is presumably, you're not using your technology for those new policies that you're getting from citizens, but you will eventually maybe when you renew. So is there a different margin profile in that book compared to your normal underlying book?
Okay. Actually, our technology runs through the entire citizens book and decides what's red and green, right? So the policies we took over, we already had pretty much processed in terms of what we expect, right? So that's the value and the ease with which we can do this, right? So that is all technology and is great, right? .
Now the mark side of the house, which is finance, et cetera, where we take a more conservative view, right? So until we have that book on that we take over that book and we study it and we let it age out for about 6 months to a year, right? Finance takes a much more conservative view, and they will reserve to a much higher loss ratio than would otherwise necessarily be indicated, which is exactly as it should be because that has been conservative. And eventually, when the book has enough history on our paper, the loss ratio will be adjusted on that book, right? But going in, that assumed -- those assume citizen policies carry a higher loss ratio than our existing TypTap and Homeowners Choice book, yes. Does that help?
Yes, it does. Yes. Last one, kind of a numbers question, but it sort of relates to a repetitive question. In the gross written premium number that you gave us the $320 million you split between TypTap Choice, I think there's some accounting of the depopulation in that. And I don't know if you can just like that out for -- the reason I ask is what's the underlying growth of the 2 businesses without that number in.
Yes, good question. So it's Mark. If you look at the consolidated number, so I think we put in the press release the CONSOL at 4, it doesn't affect any other quarters, obviously. Of that $320.5 million that you see in Q4, $143 million of that is from the Citizens depop. And then if you want to further break , I think in your question, you said, how does it break down by underwriter? If you look at homeowners choice, of the $182 million in Q4, $120 -- weight. Sorry, I don't -- I apologize, I don't have that in front of me. But $143 of the $320 million is the consolidated, I thought I had it my underwriter here in front of me.
And Michael, a new thing is presumably asking this to update your model, et cetera. you should be aware that our 2 underwriters don't like renew policies evenly throughout the year. TypTap is very heavily skewed in Q4 and early Q1. And it has a very high GWP rates in Q4 -- Homeowners Choice on the other hand, tends to do most of new in April through August time frame, yes. So it creates a different dynamic from a growth rate premium perspective. Obviously, on our own premium, it just evens out, yes?
And Michael, it's Mark again. Of that $143 million in Q4 and the consolidated total $19 million of that is TypTop. So of that $119 million, the $20 million is TypTop up in $123 million homeowners choice. .
[Operator Instructions]
the next question comes from Mark Hughes with Truist.
Yes. The loss ratio that -- do you think this is -- have you made all the progress? Does this fully reflect the reform and the -- the results of your underwriting? Or is this a stop along the way?
I think -- Mark, it's Mark. I think 30% is a pretty good estimate of where we are right now. So if you're trying to project out to 2023 or 2024, sorry, I think 30% is about where the book is at. Again, that's consolidated. We can't control the weather, of course. We have certain quarters where it can be we tend to get a little bit more weather in Q1 and Q2. So there's a chance it could be a little bit higher in those 2 quarters. But 30% is about, I think, where we're at. And it's -- as I said it in my prepared remarks, but the impact of the legislation has been pretty much what we expected it to be. We expected claims frequency to drop significantly because a significant percentage of claims were AOB claims. We expected it to drop and it did. We expected the incidence of litigation to drop, and it did, and it dropped, both dropped very very close to what we had expected them to.
But we're only a year or 1.5 years into it. So we're still watching it closely, and there is a certain amount of crude in those numbers, of course, as we watch this develop. But we thought we'd get to 30%, and I think the 30% is about where we're at.
Yes. Would you say the improvement in the Ian losses? Is that AOB and litigated plans as well? Or is that just -- well, obviously, it's more information that's driving it. But do you think it's the same factors that are working through those storm claims?
Yes. Yes. So Mark, Don't forget, Ian was after the first time of reform but before the second round of reforms. But the bigger thing, I think, what's driving the numbers there is a totally different set of things. Mark's initial number, I think 960 he said, was entirely driven from the models, right? RMS AR, all the -- to estimate the losses right after the store makes landfall. That's what drove that number. We were already thinking that, that number was way overstating for us. .
And as time has gone on, we've got more comfortable because of actual developments and actual claims and everything else to reduce the number because keeping that original model number is just not justified. And as Mark did say in his comments, we're still at the top end of the range. Putting it differently also is that the book that we are curating seems to outperform modeled losses when an actual cat event happens, right? This is pretty big. And we didn't just miss it by a little, but we seem to be improving in the models by a huge amount. And we think this is a good thing for future events, yes.
Yes, yes. at this point, your appetite for growth and voluntary policies in Florida. You obviously did well in depop, are you interested in those green policies out there from a voluntary standpoint?
Yes, we are. And I think we actually all through most of this last Q4 and Q1, we continue to write voluntary policies, but it wasn't -- the volume of that was more than offset. And by the depopulations, right? They just become big guns and that's just the nature of what happens. So yes, I think we will we are will continue to write new policies, but it's slight -- it's small numbers compared to what we did in the depopulations.
And we had communicated this because the items that people were looking for were the state needed, whatever we're talking about was how do you shrink citizens. And you have a lot of people there who are looking to lease it -- a better home to go to, and we provided that. And in all 3 takeouts we did. We're very careful as to how we curate who we may but the people we made offers to 70% plus took us up on those offers, right? I point this out because I think in the November takeout, when we made offers, we got a 70% acceptance rate. Everybody else who was participating in that takeout, their combined acceptance rate was probably under 30%.
And could you expand on that? Why do you think that is that your premium any different than the others? Or just the size, the brand? What's driving that?
I think it's all of the above, right? It's -- you have to bring multiple things to the table, tracked, make sure you make a compelling proposition to the policyholders that they should come with us. We have long courted agents or I think -- and we should give a shout out to them. Almost universally all the policies we selected, the agents who are active returning the policy orders, this is a better place for you to go to. If I got to put you there in the first place, I would have so take the offer.
So these are all individual little items that all come together that work while the other side of things also in all takeout, all 3 takeouts we actually made fewer offers than we were approved for by the OIR. And we did some of that because unless we think the policyholder is going to be happy with us long term, we tend not to make the offer, right?
We want people to join the HCI family who want to be with the HCI family. And you're seeing the culminations of all of these things coming together in the right way, yes.
Yes. Yes. Okay. Mark, given the tone on the takeouts in the first quarter and the magnitude, any thoughts about kind of earned premium contribution in Q1. I think when we get into Q2 might be a little more straightforward exercise, but just given the pacing of things. I wonder if you can provide any guidance on that.
Yes. So I think Karin and I both mentioned $273 million of premium in force, and that's 3 takeouts 1 in November, 1 in December, 1 in January. So I'll just focus on the in 2023 first. There should -- we booked $23 million -- well, actually put them together. We booked $23 million of earned premium in Q4 and if you look at the timing of the assumptions that were done in '23 and in '24, earned premium in Q1 would be closer to $60 million to $62 million. out of the $23 million that we have yes, and then a little bit higher than that in Q2.
And then the January takeout...
Sorry, I sort of shifted gears halfway through their Mark. I apologize. I included both of them. So in -- yes, so in Q1, there should be about $40 million more earned premium than from those takeout than there was in Q4. And then there'll be a little a little bit more again in Q2, because 1 of those assumptions was towards the end of January. Does that make sense? That answers your question?
Yes, that's perfect. And then due to the -- I think the question might have been asked earlier, and if you answered, I'm not sure they picked it up, but could you give kind of a sense of the bottom line contribution from the takeout of the $23 million in premium do you have a number for the bottom line contribution?
It's about $14 million. And so -- and of course, that number will be significantly higher in Q1.
Yes. Okay. Does that margin flow through? Is that 14 out of 23? And then if we did simple math...
So keep in mind, from now until May 31, you've got no reinsurance in there, right? So the margin -- initially, the margin is about 65%. We're reserving 35% on that book. So you've got 65% initially. As you start to -- there's also no policy acquisition expense initially.
Now as policies start to renew in March, some policy acquisition expense will start to creep in so that will erode that margin a little bit. But for the first 5 months of the year, the margins are obviously very significant. And then when June 1 comes along and reinsurance kicks in, of course, the margins will deviate toward with the rest of the book. But for Q4, Q1 and Q2, you've got a very significant amount of premium that's coming in at a very high margin.
Yes. Okay. Super helpful. Congratulations.
Thanks, Mark. .
The next question comes from Casey Alexander with Compass Point.
I have a couple of questions here. You're doing the core assumptions in April and June. And just thinking about the company's timing, normally, they don't do assumptions right ahead of the busiest storm season. Can you discuss the timing of those assumptions? And why not wait until later in the year when you're past the storm season before making those assumptions? .
Casey, great question of a true veteran, right?
The reason for that -- all of that stuff is that -- these are all the mechanics of depopulation ideas, meeting a new start-up and everything else or started with $25 million of surplus. And because of that, we sort of put -- and we have to have reinsurance for it in place when we do the first depopulation in February 27. So we had to put that into place. So we bought reinsurance for a certain size book, right? Other little things that go on is because of citizens depopulation schedules and blackout times, et cetera. .
It's difficult to hit that peak depopulation size all in 1 go because of renewal cycles and so on. So that's why we're going to do the April and the June ones to top up what we already got in February, right? So you are trying to over 3 takeouts do what -- in theory, you could say you could do it all in 1 go. But in practice, it's easy -- it's better to layer it in over 3 takeouts than to do it in one. So in reality, it's the April and the June takeouts could almost be thought of as delayed February takeout, yes.
Understood. If you already have the reinsurance in place, then you're covered for the upcoming season. So that makes perfect sense. Secondly, your discussion about the declining reserves against Ian. The change over $200 million from the models. I'm just curious, the next time there's a storm would you again just go off the models first and then work it down? Or is your experience with the book, knowing that it tends to outperform the models would you reserve it differently next time? Or would you do the same thing and just go by the models and then work it down?
So Casey, look, the item that happens, right, is the day after a storm, everybody is going off the models and everybody uses those numbers, right? That's kind of like what happens. And actually, if you recall, that vividly do the days after Ian happened, people are busily -- the whole industry modelers, et cetera, they say, "Oh, Ian's going to be $30 million. Then it became $40 million, Then it became $50 million. I think it peaked out at over $70 billion was what Ian's estimate was.
And we were already looking at it within 10 days given our technology that given our market share, it would be virtually impossible to spend $70 billion on claims that we had. But we are also subject to actuaries and industry models and everything else. That's why Mark is almost obligated to book with what the model will say, right?
It's only when about 5, 6 months go by and we start switching over to claims received, payments made, all those kinds of things that you can switch to your own experience model. And that has what's gone on, right? And Mark's comments about having to reduce Ian. If you recall, he also said he's at the top end of the range. I don't think at this point, the actuary is telling you he can't put up more for Ian than that number, right?
We have plenty of reinsurance left, but this is how this is going. And as I answered in 1 of the earlier questions, this is all not by accident. It is a result of the technology and how it curates a superior book and how it actually performs in the storm. These things are now becoming inescapable as to how well this stuff is working.
All right. That again makes perfect sense. My last question is TypTap has now generated 4 straight quarters of profit kind of removed Centerbridge from the equation. So what else does TypTap have to do before you guys would be willing to create a capital transaction for the company.
Casey, I don't necessarily know that TypTap has been hampered by things we have to do to create a capital transaction. I think we could do that reasonably well and reasonably short order, right? Don't forget, we did all the way to an S-1 3 years ago. But part of that whole situation, it's tempered by 2 items. One is market macro conditions out there in terms of IPOs and stuff, and we watch and monitor that.
So that's what we are being told is the market is -- conditions are very good for follow-on offerings, but they are less favorable for IPOs. So that gives us some pause. And the second item is, obviously, where does -- is TypTop actually need of new capital. If it isn't, do you want to keep enhancing its value and showing how -- what a great outfit, company and technology it has and only when it's fully appreciated by the market, then have the capital event. So these are things that are causing us to not move as quickly as people might anticipate because in being patient, we're actually, I think, creating greater value for our shareholders, which ultimately is the goal, yes.
Okay. And my last question is there's significant indication that interest rates are likely to be declining at some point in time here in the next several months, just look at Chairman Paul's testimony earlier today. And you guys have a significant cash hoard at what point in time do you start to kind of extend duration a little bit and try to capture some of some of that yield curve for a little longer compared to where short-term rates are likely to go over the next 12 to 24 months?
Funny, you bring that up. We were just having that discussion internally, right? And I think in the coming months, we will be extending duration and going more towards fixing the yield on our cash hoard, yes. So yes, we are exactly the same mind, and we are starting to move in that direction, yes.
Okay. I appreciate it. .
At this time, this concludes the question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the call back to Paresh Patel, who has a few closing remarks.
Thank you. On behalf of the entire management team, I would like to thank our shareholders, employees, agents, and most importantly, our policyholders for their continued support. Thank you.
At this time, this concludes our question-and-answer session. This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.