Yahoo Finance Donegal Group Inc. (NASDAQ:DGICA) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
Donegal Group Inc. (NASDAQ:DGICA) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 22, 2024
Donegal Group Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.11 EPS, expectations were $0.23. DGICA isn't one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Karin Daly: Yes, good morning and thank you for joining us today. This morning, Donegal Group issued its fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings release outlining its results. The release and the supplemental investor presentation are available in the Investor Relations section of Donegal website at www.donegalgroup.com. Please be advised that today's conference was recorded and all participants are in listen only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a prerecorded question and answer session for responses to several questions. Submitted ahead of the call know that we have incorporated responses for many of the questions we received directly into management's prepared remarks. Speaking today will be President and Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Burke, Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Miller, Chief Underwriting Officer, Jeff Hay, Chief Operating Officer, Dan diameter, and Chief Investment Officer, Tony VRG.
Please be aware that statements made during this call that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements and necessarily involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary materially. These factors can be found in Dynepo Group's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 10 K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The Company disclaims any obligation to update or publicly announce the results of any revisions that they may make to any forward-looking statement to reflect the occurrence of anticipated or unanticipated events or circumstances after the date of such statements. With that, it's my pleasure to turn it over to Mr. Kevin Burke. Kevin?
Kevin Burke: Thank you, Jeremy, and welcome, everyone. We're pleased to provide an update today and a number of accomplishments in 2023 as well as our areas of focus for 2024. Our primary objective is to improve our underwriting profitability, and we believe the action plans and rate increases we implemented during 2023 will lead to incremental improvements in our results for 2024 and beyond. Donlin Gold's fourth quarter 2023 results did not meet our expectations, nor did they reflect the efforts of our team during the year and executing many initiatives that will lead to better financial performance over the long term. While our commercial lines segment results improved from the prior year quarter, primarily as a result of lower weather-related and large fire losses.
Our personal lines segment results came in well below expectations despite the significant premium rate increases we implemented over the past two years, you'll hear more details about our results and the actions we have taken to generate improved performance going forward. As discussed in our third quarter earnings commentary we began non-renewing all commercial policies in the state of Georgia and Alabama during the second half of 2023 due to sustained profit challenges in those states. That process continued during the fourth quarter and contributed to a modest net decrease in commercial lines net premiums compared to the prior year quarter. We will not have any commercial exposures in those two states after we complete the run-off initiative in the third quarter of 2024.
In early 2024, we kicked off inception activities for our last two major software releases within our systems modernization project. The planning development testing and rollout of these releases will run in parallel over the next two years. And major commercial systems release will include a new commercial package policy and modernize the other commercial products remaining on our legacy systems. These products serve middle market and larger commercial accounts for which we already compete effectively. While we are actively writing new personal lines policies on the new platform at a controlled pace that is essentially offsetting natural policy attrition. The majority of our Personal Lines renewal policies still reside on the mainframe based legacy system.
See also 23 Richest Countries That Give Citizenship By Birth and 18 Fastest-Declining Cities in the US.
To continue reading the Q&A session, please click here.
