Hiscox Ltd Ord New (HCXLF) Q2 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Well, good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today. Now it feels like it's only been a few weeks because it has only been a few weeks that you've heard from us at the Capital Markets Day. But today we're here to update you on our first half performance and the progress we're making on executing our strategy and achieving our ambitions. Now turning to our business performance, well the market conditions are evolving and we're once again seeing the benefits of our diversified business model. We've added $160 million of premium in the first half, capturing opportunities across each of our businesses, and we're growing profitably, achieving a robust combined ratio of 92.6% in a period which included the highest ever losses from wildfires. Now the diversity of our business model and execution of our strategy is leading to strong returns reflected in the group operating return on tangible equity of 14.5%, in line with our mid-teens target. Now, these strong returns are delivering attractive growth in net asset value per share, which is up 15% year over year. And as you can also see here, over the last few years, the group has generated significant capital. The step-up in capital formation since 2022 is the result of strong rate adequacy in Bitsa Kip, a growing and increasingly profitable retail business, and higher investment returns. Now, the material earnings growth, in particular the expanding revenues and profitability of retail, have enabled a step up in our progressive dividend twice in two years. We increased our final dividend per share by 20% in 2024, and we've committed to doing that once again this year. The significant profit improvements in Big Ticket have supported substantial special capital returns to shareholders, with a $150 million buyback in...