Hiscox Ltd Ord New (HCXLF) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Nice to see you all and thank you for joining us here. 2024 has been another strong year of delivery from Hiscox. We're achieving broad-based growth and positive earnings momentum across the group. We've increased our revenues by around $170 million in the year, of which about $150 million has come from our retail business. And the quality of this growth is is reflected in the undiscounted combined ratio at 93.6% and retail profits of around $300 million. Our effective cycle management in Big Ticket means we've been able to achieve an excellent undiscounted combined ratio of 81.6% in an active last year. With each of our segments delivering strong results, our group for the second year in a row is reporting record profits at $685 million and an excellent return on equity of 19.8%. With the strength of our business performance, and in particular the accelerating momentum and improved confidence in the retail business, this creates the flexibility to pursue multiple growth opportunities and to step up our progressive dividend. We're increasing our final dividend by 20%, which means a full year 15% increase to our DPS, And we're also announcing a further substantial special return of capital of $175 million through a share buyback, reflecting the strength of the capital generated in the year, the robustness of our balance sheet, and the confidence we have in the quality of our underwriting. So taking all of this together, our business performance is such that we can pursue an ambitious growth plan and return 10% of Hiscock's equity to our shareholders. Now, as usual, I'll go through each of our business segments, beginning with retail. We're achieving growth and earnings momentum across our retail business, as the management actions we've deployed over recent years are ...