Goosehead Insurance, Inc Price & Performance (GSHD)

Thank you and good afternoon. Before we begin our formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that part of our discussion today may include forward looking statements, which are based on expectations, estimates, and projections of management as of today. Forward looking statements in our discussion are subject to various assumptions, risks, uncertainties that are difficult to predict which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied the forward looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and therefore undue reliance should not be placed on them. We refer all of you to our recent SEC filings for more detailed discussion of risks and uncertainties that could impact future operating results and financial condition of Goosehead. We disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward looking statements except to the extent required by applicable law. Would also like to point out that during this call, we will discuss certain financial measures that are not prepared in accordance with GAAP. Management uses these non GAAP financial measures when planning, monitoring and evaluating our We consider these non GAAP financial measures to be useful metrics for management and investors to facilitate operating performance comparisons period to period by including potential differences caused by variations in capital structure, tax position, depreciation and amortization, and certain other items that we believe are not representative of our core business.

For more information regarding the use of non GAAP financial measures, including reconciliations of these measures the most recent comparable GAAP financial measures we refer you to today's earnings release. In addition, this call is being web cast and archived version be available shortly after the call ends on the Investor Relations portion of company's website at goosehead.com Goosehead. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to our President and CEO, Mark Miller.

Thanks, Dan. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter twenty twenty four earnings call.

Before we dive into the results, I want to take a moment to acknowledge those Our thoughts are with the individuals and families impacted by this tragedy. These events serve as a powerful reminder of the critical role insurance plays in rebuilding lives and we're deeply thankful for our agents who are on the ground supporting clients during these most challenging times. Throughout 2024, we saw many powerful reminders why insurance is more than a product. It's a lifeline when it matters most. It was a year of significant natural catastrophes and insurance market challenges which underscore the critical role we play for clients, agents and carriers A recent report by Gallagher Reeb estimated that U. S. Catastrophe related insured losses were $117,000,000,000 in 2024. 27% higher than the five year average U. S. Economic losses were estimated $222,000,000,000 leaving a substantial insurance coverage gap. For many years, households have treated personalized insurance as a commodity. A decision based solely on cost. But extreme events of 2024 and the recent California wildfires remind us of the risks of inadequate coverage. At the same time, premiums have increased rapidly and certain geographies have product limitations. This has left the consumer confused on where to turn.

Fortunately, Goosehead was uniquely built for this challenging market. This is why we exist Our expert agents backed by a strong network of top tier insurance carriers, simplify the complexities of insurance to find the right coverage at the best possible price. Our agents evaluate proper deductibles, replacement costs and key perils such as fire, [indiscernible] liability and personal policy terms And we accomplished this while providing a true shopping experience with access to over 200 carriers, Our value proposition is equally compelling for carrier partners. By leading with home, Doucet brings high quality bundled clients to carriers who retain well, which drives favorable loss ratios. We work with each carrier to understand their risk appetite and then leverage technology to deliver the exact type of client they're looking for. Delivering profitable growth for carriers allows them to open up for us even when they're closed for other distribution partners.

We're not just a partner, We drive growth and profitability for their businesses where, when they need it most. Turning to market conditions, over the past two years, have successfully navigated unprecedented product challenges I'm pleased that the market is now continuing to show gradual signs of improvement. Through the first nine months of the year, the industry statutory auto direct loss ratios were 64.5% down from 74.8% a year ago, and homeowners direct loss ratios were 66.8% versus 81% a year ago, And fourth quarter results for publicly traded personal lines companies have generally improved. Auto premium increases are slowing and in some instances as more carriers are continuing to open up auto product capacity and look for growth, Homeowners product remained tight in Q4, but we're seeing signs of carriers starting to open capacity or indicate they intend to open more product as the year progresses, Although this varies by carrier, An improving market will allow us to better serve clients, lean more heavily into technology rollouts in areas such as quote to issue that have been limited to some extent by carriers' appetite for growth. Turning to our results, we delivered an outstanding 2024. With 20% total revenue growth, 17% core revenue growth, 29% premium growth, and EBITDA near $100,000,000 up 43% year over year with a record margin of 32%, [indiscernible] Delivering these numbers in this market speaks to our team's no excuses mindset to deliver results.

Here's how we got there. Reaccelerated growth by increasing producer headcount, which drove year over year PIF growth to 13% in Q4 up from 12% in Q3 and 11% in Q2. We believe this momentum signals even stronger growth ahead in 2025 We enhanced profitability through disciplined cost management, all while continuing to make critical investments in our people, technology. We extended our leadership in technology innovation by expanding and refining proprietary tools like our quote to issue capability [indiscernible] and referral partner marketing technology, With these advancements, we're setting a new standard for tech enabled insurance. We strengthened our talent by on boarding over 800 top tier sales agents across corporate, enterprise and franchise distribution a record recruitment effort We continue to transform our largest piece of business franchise distribution, which accounts for 83% of our producer force, Franchise progress included scaling of existing franchises, with average producers per franchise at 1.9 versus 1.6 a year ago, and franchise producers up 7% year over year. Dramatically increasing our franchise new business productivity which was up 49% in 2024. Significantly reducing franchise terminations given higher quality across our network improving the onboarding time and performance of new franchises, Just to give some data on overall franchise sales, total average gross pay to franchises in 2024 was up 47% when compared to 2023, Our franchises got stronger and more successful across the board despite the market getting more difficult.

Building on our achievements in 2024, we're excited to accelerate momentum in key areas for 2025. Franchise distribution expansion will be driven by Expanding recruiting of producers and onboarding of franchises As an increasing percentage of our franchise base, we'll look to scale their businesses. Today, roughly 38% of our franchise base has multiple producers compared to twenty seven percent two years ago.

Increasing franchise launches through expanded franchise development resources In 2024, we doubled the size of our franchise development team to position us for more rapid expansion as market conditions improve. And attracting larger middle market franchises, the types of franchises we are adding changing More and more we're looking for franchises with larger growth potential and built in lead flow. This includes businesses like mortgage servicers and realtors that want to access insurance economics by embedding a franchise in their business. We had early success in 2024 and will ramp these efforts in 2025 with a continued focus on support, training, and resource allocation to help franchises maximize growth. We also expect to continue to convert successful corporate agents to franchises. In corporate distribution, we will be growing across both traditional corporate agents that work with referral partners and enterprise sales agents, which handle inbound digital and partnership leads. Our corporate agent count at year end was four seventeen, an increase of 39% of which 65 were enterprise sales agents. We'll likely grow corporate agent count at a slower pace in 2025 given our larger starting base particularly in enterprise sales, which doubled in 2024.

Texas continues to have our largest concentration of corporate agents, but we are quickly diversifying our footprint to capitalize on changing market opportunities For example, we successfully launched our new Phoenix, Arizona office in Q4 and initial production per agent has been strong. New corporate offices will help revenue in underpenetrated regions and provide a consistent stream of highly skilled future franchise owners. Enterprise sales should continue to grow faster than total corporate producer count as we're building capacity to ultimately capitalize on a robust partnership pipeline. On the technology front, we will be launching the Goosehead mobile app empowering clients with unprecedented self-service functionality, from proof of insurance to claim tracking. And we'll continue our expansion of our quota issue technology across carriers and This technology is quickly becoming the standard that will allow the broker, carrier partner or client to seamlessly transact business and ultimately deliver a direct to client experience that opens up new pools of client We strongly believe that knowledgeable and independent agents will always play a major role in personalized insurance for those clients that want and need agent expertise These tools allow those agents to be more productive while giving us access to new clients.

Additionally, we believe AI will impact virtually every aspect of how we sell and service personal lines insurance in the future. To capitalize on these opportunities, we're investing in our data infrastructure sophisticated AI tools and the talent necessary to design and build these capabilities. We currently use AI in a variety of ways. For our service and sales teams, we use AI to assist in auto drafting emails, to more effectively and efficiently communicate with clients. We also utilize AI to draft code that is used in the testing of our current software. In the near term, we expect to use AI to capture and summarize conversations with clients for our service center which will allow us to analyze sentiment and identify service improvement opportunities in real time. In addition on the sales side, we intend to leverage AI to create a policy recommendation engine creating a better experience for both the sales agents and the clients.

Ultimately, AI tools are becoming ubiquitous. Accumulated experience are proprietary to the Goosehead Goosehead. That is why we believe we have a unique opportunity to widen our moat and create a Our company is built for sustained profitable growth and we're just getting started. We're continuing our trajectory toward becoming a rule of 60 company with a combination of revenue growth, and profit margin exceeds 60%.

In 2024, we ended the year as a rule of 50 company, delivering 20% revenue growth, an impressive result amidst challenging market conditions. I'm confident that our investments in innovation, people, and operational excellence will propel us toward and sustain Rule of 60 performance for many years to come. Although we're pleased with our success thus far, Goosehead is just beginning its journey. As a reminder, we are still less than 1% of The U. S. Personal lines market share. Backed by a clear strategy, unparalleled capabilities our relentless commitment to precision execution and an ever expanding competitive moat we are poised to redefine what's possible in the insurance industry. Goosehead's future is brighter than ever, and I want to thank our employees agents and partners for their tireless efforts. Your dedication and innovation fueled everything we achieved. Now I hand it over to our CFO, Mark Jones, Jr, to review the financial details. Thank you.

Thanks, Mark, and good afternoon to everyone on the call. Over the last year, Mark and I have spoken extensively about Goosehead's strategy for reaccelerating growth, Expanding productive headcount and agent productivity, leveraging technology, strengthening partnerships, diversifying lead sources most importantly keeping the clients at the center of our universe.

I could not be more pleased that the fruits of our efforts are beginning to materialize in our results and should continue to benefit us in 2025 and beyond. Today, Mark Miller also talked a little bit about the overall landscape of the personal lines industry and our 2025 priorities.

I'm going to hit a little deeper on these topics and provide some additional insight into our 2024 Over the past two years, Personal Lines Insurance has shifted from a product that was on autopilot for many clients to a significant focus due to rapid premium increases and evolving risk exposure nationwide. Today discussions also include policy nuances what's covered and importantly, what's not. As carriers have navigated the last couple of years to get more sustainable underwriting results, there have been changes to coverages, deductibles, and new entrants into the market that many clients are not used to. An increasing percentage of business has shifted to the excess and surplus lines market adding complexity for clients, referral partners independent agents across the industry. Is where Goosehead Thrive. Solving the unique challenges of our key stakeholders through advanced technology, robust product offering and a fully integrated back office.

Looking at our agent force, specifically the franchise business, it is now healthier than ever and positioned strong sustainable growth. We've been able to achieve this through continued investment in our technological advantage further widening our competitive moat by providing our agents with tools that we believe do not exist elsewhere. In the industry.

Our quote to issue platform is now at a scale where we are issuing thousands of policies each month allowing us to learn, adapt and deploy changes that make the platform more user friendly for agents and more targeted for our carrier partners at a really rapid pace. As we look to the future, the improving landscape for underwriting profitability should allow us to to further capitalize on the development work we have done as more carriers allocate their capital to growth based initiatives. Year end franchise producers totaled 2,092 up 7% and producers per franchise was 1.9%, up 19% from one year ago. As we've discussed in the past, growing the average number of producers per franchise is a highly leveraged strategic initiative. Each time an agency adds a producer, the productivity of everyone in that agency improves. As more of the franchise base progresses from a single producer location to scale businesses, the impact of total new business production becomes exponential. We're still in the early stages of this powerful growth lever and expect to see continued momentum. During the fourth quarter, 37 operating agencies terminated or transferred within the network, turnover rate of 3% for the quarter, which we believe to be a healthy level.

We launched twenty three and ninety seven new franchises for the three months and full year ended December 31, respectively. The quality of which can be seen directly reflected in first year franchise productivity numbers. The productivity of first year franchises is up 63% for the quarter We believe these strong metrics are a leading indicator of the future success of these newly launched franchises. Our continued progress in our franchise development efforts, we expect to drive operating franchise count growth in 2025. Turning to our strategy surrounding middle market franchises. These are agencies that we embed within another existing business with natural inbound lead flow.

Home insurance has become a hot topic of conversation among mortgage servicers as rapid premium increases can impact the default rates of their existing books of business. As their executive teams look to find ways to add value to their clients, and solve the complex problem of national home insurance coverage, they're left without many options to choose from.

To that end, we've seen a significant uptick in inbound interest from national mortgage servicers integrate into our platform either through a strategic partnership or through an embedded franchise. Our unique ability to provide product access from coast to coast extraordinary client service and technology that improves cross sell rates differentiate our model and make us the natural choice for national brands. We recently launched an InVetta franchise with a national bank containing both mortgage origination and servicing divisions. Their franchise has access to tens of thousands of clients and through our proprietary technology national footprint and fully integrated back office, we believe they will be much more productive than the average franchise. The pipeline for franchises that look just like this one is large and growing. With multiple others in various stages of implementation. This allows us to diversify our lead flow and insulate us from fluctuations in home closing transaction volumes.

Corporate producers at quarter end were 4.17 up 39% from a year ago Within that 04/17 is 65 enterprise sales producers who are focused solely on our digital and partnership lead channels, which is now the fastest growing division in the The enterprise sales team provides an additional track for career development for our traditional corporate agents as well as our top service agents. Who have a deep product knowledge and provide a top tier client experience. Over the next year, we expect this team to become a more meaningful portion of Moving to the financial results. Quarterly premiums grew 28% year over year to $966,000,000 and full year premiums for 2024 were $3,810,000,000 up 29% for the year. The quarter included franchise premiums of $778,000,000 up 33% and corporate premiums of 187,000,000 up 9%.

With continued stabilization in client retention, ultimately improvement in client retention over time, coupled with acceleration in new business production through productivity enhancements and total producer growth we remain confident in our ability to drive Total revenues for the representing 49% growth over the prior year period with core revenues growing 19% to $68,000,000 accelerating over the 16% core revenue growth rate in the third quarter of twenty twenty four. Further underscoring the improving health of the personal lines industry, contingent commissions for the fourth quarter were $24,000,000 bringing the full year to $31,400,000 82 basis points of total written premium substantially higher than we anticipated earlier this year. Our core loss ratios with some of our largest carriers improved significantly in the second half of the year, coupled with our continued high growth rate of total written premium leading to a strong contingent commission year. Looking into 2025, we're remaining conservative in our forecast and compared to the 2024 levels as a percentage of premium approximately 40 to 65 basis points as there's still uncertainty in how loss trends will progress. Additionally, view our carrier relationships in total through the lens of core commissions, cost of service, technological ability and there may be trade offs from one year to the next and resource allocation.

Over the longer term, we see no reason to expect contingent commissions would not trend to the historical average of 80 basis points to 85 basis points of total Cost recovery revenue for 44% decline from the previous year period. As a reminder, franchise fees are recognized over the ten year life of the contract and when an agency exits the system, any unamortized revenue is accelerated and recognized upon franchise termination. As franchise turnover is down significantly year over year and has now stabilized, we expect the fourth quarter run rate to be an appropriate forecasting guidepost for 2025 effectively growing with new franchise launch Policies in force as of year end were $1,700,000 a 13% increase in the second consecutive quarter of accelerating growth. We expect to continue to drive gradual expansion in the policies and force growth rate through 2025 our strategic initiatives to drive new business production take hold, our agent force continues to expand and mature and client retention ultimately improves through a combination of agent training process improvements in both sales and service, and the year over year increases in homeowners premiums abate. Our client retention as of year end was stable when compared to the second and third quarters of twenty twenty four at 84%.

We see no structural impediments to our client retention returning to our historical high of 89%. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter grew 164 percent $37,400,000 up from $14,100,000 in the year ago period. This is where the true value of our model shines. Because we have been so disciplined in avoiding the potential distraction of vertical integration, or expansion into other lines of business we've been able to focus on what maximizes our profitability. Distributing high quality business through our carrier partners and providing world class client service. We are very intentional about our position in the value chain and while that may mean we miss some periods of potential upside, we're also insulated to some extent from the volatility of underwriting results. Because of our close proximity to the client relationship, we've been able to build a business that can deliver consistent results through both up and down macro environments. Looking into 2025 and beyond, there's a significant opportunity for us to capture additional market shares we expand our go to market strategy through strategic partnerships further technological advancements. Clients more and more want to interact in a digital and fully integrated environment and we believe we have a big head start on the industry.

Seasoned this opportunity will take significant investment in our people, bringing in new types of talent that this industry has struggled to attract for its entire history developing new software and expanding on our existing highly differentiated platform. Because our existing go to market strategy is so tightly driven by relationship our agents make in their local community, We believe our further progress into the digital world only enhances our existing strategy.

There will always be a place for a knowledgeable independent agent being able to meet clients via the medium they want to engage we believe will improve the productivity and success of our existing agents while unlocking a client pool we've not historically had access to. Turning to our balance sheet. We ended the year with $54,300,000 of cash on the balance sheet and total debt of $93,100,000 We were pleased to have completed a new term loan B offering of $300,000,000 in January of twenty twenty five and a revolving credit facility of $75,000,000 Cash from the new term loan was used to pay down existing debt and pay a cash dividend to shareholders totaling $2.00 $5,000,000 We were pleased to deliver strong operating cash and free cash flow growth in 2024. Operating cash generation for the year was $71,500,000 up 41% while free cash flow of $59,400,000 increased 53% for the year. We would note that adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four includes a sizable amount of contingent commission revenue that will be included in operating cash flow in the first quarter of twenty twenty five upon collection. Looking ahead to the coming year, our guidance for 2025 is as follows.

Total revenues for the year are expected to be between $350,000,000 $385,000,000 representing organic growth of 11% on the low end and 22% on the high end of the range. Premiums for the full year are expected to be between $4,650,000,000 to $4,880,000,000 representing 22% organic growth on the low end of the range and 28% on the high end. Our premium and revenue forecast assume gradual decline in price tailwinds through the year conservative client retention levels. Thank you to our team for helping us deliver a record year at Goosehead. I'm incredibly excited to deliver for our clients our employees and our carrier partners as well as our shareholders again in 2025. With that, let's open up the line for questions. [indiscernible] Our first question comes from the line of Tommy McJoint with KBW. Your line is now open.

Hey, good afternoon guys. Thanks for taking our questions. Yes. The magnitude of the contingent commission true up certainly caught us by surprise. Could you spend some time talking about how such a large number came through? And along the same lines, I want to make sure I heard you correctly that you don't think your normalized contingent commission figure having changed relative to this historical average just because of what happened this quarter? [indiscernible] around 35 to 40 basis points of premium as contingent commissions. But throughout really the fourth quarter, we started getting more of core loss ratio information from some of our largest underwriters. And the core performance of the book was much better than we had anticipated it to be, which that led to us getting some relatively large continued is from carriers we weren't necessarily expecting to. Looking forward to 2025 it's hard to pinpoint exactly what that's going to look like as there was still a lot of catastrophic losses during 2024. So there's puts and takes from one year to the next. As those contracts come through. And as I mentioned in my prepared prepared remarks, right, we're looking at the relationship with the underwriters holistically between core commissions, service, technology and contingent commissions.

So there may be changes in that entire kind of dynamic of the portfolio from year to year.

Don't see any reason why over time it shouldn't be between eighty and eighty five basis points of total written premium. I think this year proves that as well. But just for next year in our current forecasting, we want to be conservative.

Got it. Makes sense. And then switching over, do you have any thoughts on the direction of the EBITDA margin? And then 2025? And when we think about that, is there going to be any margin drag from the investments in some of those AI tools that you talked about or anything else that you would call out?

Yes.

So we do plan to grow core revenue fast than what we are growing the expense base, which will naturally lead to margin expansion over time. Given that we are planning for contingencies to be a smaller portion of total written premium in 2025. That could cause kind of puts and takes on what total margin looks like. But on a core basis, so EBITDA margin excluding contingent commissions, would expect to drive margin expansion. So when you take into a factor all the technological advances putting through the business today, The pace of that kind of depends a little bit on what the underwriters are doing as well. And what their appetite looks like. As they pivot more to growth, you should expect to see us lean more into that and we'll provide more updates to that as the year progresses.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Carletti with Citizens JMP. Your line is now open.

Hey, thanks. Good afternoon. Mark, in your opening comments, you hit a couple of times on kind of product coming back to the market. And that being a good thing. That's kind of been improving several quarters now. Is that kind of across geographies and perils, because obviously different parts of the country have had their kind of own issues, or are you seeing it in certain places more than others and There are certain places where either the underwriters still aren't comfortable with a certain payroll or might be regulatory or whatever it could be.

Yes, Matt, like I said, I think it varies by product. By state. Certainly, some states, it's come back in a lot more quickly. Texas, we're starting to see that's our biggest market where most of our agents are. We're seeing it come back into Texas more on the E and S than the admitted side. On auto picking up very rapidly across The United States, And so like I said, it just varies by state. By product. California, we've had a pretty healthy product portfolio there for a while. And we're starting to see parts of California open up. Of course, the wildfires curtailed that for a little bit. But overall, we're happy with the way the product is coming back in.

Okay, great. And you got to let me into my next question, which was specific to California.

Is there anything production wise we should think about in Q1 from any underwriting moratoriums or anything like that? I mean, we have the annual [indiscernible] [indiscernible] kind of the situation that California is in, kind of how you see that for Goosehead longer term a headwind or an opportunity?

I mean, I would say we have Really good product compared to competitors in California. Our agents are doing a great job of supporting clients on the ground, providing advice through all of this. Despite temporary closures, we continue to see the state pretty operational at this point. The admitted market is still tight. E and S is thriving in California. And we're seeing things return to kind of pre [indiscernible] And we see significant potential for the independent brokers in California and we will continue to increase our our franchise footprint there. In the future Great. Thanks for the color. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Meredith with UBS. Your line is now open.

Yes, thanks. A couple here for you. The first one in the guidance, what are you assuming or thinking about with respect to commission rate ex contingents? And what's going to happen with client premium retention rates?

Hey, Brian. Thanks. So if you break down the total revenue guide and break it into its buckets, Contingent commissions, we kind of gave you a guidepost there of generally planning for a smaller amount in '25 compared to 24. We talked a little bit about cost recovery revenue effectively being that the fourth quarter number is a good guidepost for your run rate for next year. And so that would lead you then to core revenue really accelerating off of what the full year 2024 was going into next year. I would expect probably over the next year we drive average commission rate up as the admitted market starts to heal and more product access comes online. So you rely on less state run plans and your excess and surplus plans that have lower commission rates. But also just a point to the product market healing, we're now having conversations with carriers who are actively coming to us and ask to raise commission rates because they want to incentivize growth. The product market ceiling and then from a client and premium retention standpoint, we are expecting the pricing tailwind to slow down going into next year and that it remains to be seen how quickly that recovery and client retention is.

If those happen one to one, they kind of perfectly offset each other.

But we're being conservative with client retention. We expect to drive it up, but I can't guarantee exactly what the number is. And then premium, you're assumption should be we're planning for basically pricing tailwinds to abate throughout the year. [indiscernible] Helpful. Thanks. And then my second follow-up question is, Mark, you alluded to in your comments the direct to consumer experience. And at some point down the future, how long are we from actually that being implemented?

I mean, we are actively working on it now. I think you'll see it on the auto side before you see it anywhere else. The home is a little bit more complicated. But I'm not going to give a timeframe on when we'll actually put it out there.

Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Paul Newsome with Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.

Good morning or good afternoon, wherever it is. Thanks for the help here.

I was hoping you could go a little bit further here and maybe thinking a little bit longer term with respect to the organic growth [indiscernible] It feels like you have pretty good core revenue growth which I think is the sort of the core organic growth for the year. But your organic growth for the rest of next year is in the middle there, right? Not much in the [indiscernible] maybe just sort of reconcile that to us and maybe thinking about further if there's any thoughts here, I mean, I think some folks think that you can get to sort of some of the very high 30 plus percent organic growth that you always get, but you getting too big to the point where maybe that's [indiscernible] yes, we're expecting to drive accelerating core revenue growth in '5 over '24 when you look at the full year.

Now quarter to quarter there can be timing differences. But for the full year, you should expect to see core revenue growth accelerate '25 over '24. The total revenue guide includes a couple of things that we talked about in one of those previous questions, right, contingent commissions lower in 25% compared to 24%. And then cost recovery revenue effectively at the Q4 run rate, which should make the full year lower. So all in all, we are expecting still very strong organic growth out of the business. And longer term, we're doing everything we can to gear back up towards those 30% -plus growth rates. Through the middle market franchise effort through some of our QTI efforts and driving productivity through a lot of different methods.

That's my only question. Thank you very much for the help.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Kligerman with TD Cowen. Your line is now open. [indiscernible] afternoon. So maybe just following up on Paul's question just now with the revenue growth.

Maybe Maybe tying it into your written premium guide, which would imply up 22% to 28% this year. To kind of get there, I'm looking at your franchise producer count, which was up 7% And maybe you could provide a little more outlook, but directionally, given that you mentioned it that the franchise has stabilized in the quarter. One, I would expect that would be up producer count would be up a lot more than 7%. And then on corporate agent count separate second, up 39% this quarter. You might see that decelerate as you said, but probably not that much. So where do you see that going? That's part two. And then just tying it back to the written premium. If you were able to do 29% written premium growth last With franchises not even growing that much, why wouldn't you be able to do better than 22% to 28 this year in written those two producer groups are on a nice trajectory and would would certainly [indiscernible] Andrew, me take a couple of those things first. So franchise produce account growth, up 7% year over year. We talked about in our prepared remarks that the turnover rate of franchises is now really at a healthy level.

You should probably expect around that rate. Next year, maybe slightly lower, but feel like it's at a good healthy level where you're promoting highly productive franchises and holding people accountable to brand standards. But having said that, it was we were still down 13 operating agencies sequentially in the quarter, but we are expecting to grow operating franchise count in 2025 and more than that grow the producer count. So you should continue to see producers per franchise expand with the level of productivity improvements we've been able to drive on the franchise side of the business, that should continue to drive nice levels of growth. Where you're seeing the relatively conservative premium growth guidance numbers is we don't know exactly how the pricing impact is going to flow through the book and and the rate of the recovery of client retention. So we're at 84 today, the same number, three quarters in a row. We feel good about that, but we would like to see that be back up towards the 89 number. We don't think there's a real structural impediment why it can't get back there. But part of that is macroeconomic factors the product environment. And so as that heals, it's very possible you get client retention improving much faster, which would naturally yield better premium results.

So remember, significant portion of our book is renewal when compared to new business. So the franchise growth while very, very good, has a lesser impact than client retention improvement.

I see. I see. So that's the big part. Of it. I see.

Maybe going back to the macroeconomic drivers. It sounded like from an earlier question, companies are coming back offering more products So that's a good thing. Maybe with regard to home sales, which is another big big driver and I know I could look at the national data, but but not necessarily your regions like Texas and other areas where your biggest How are you seeing home sales as we head into 2025 and how might that be affecting Goosehead's business this year?

Yes. So really the tail end of twenty twenty four and the early portion of twenty twenty five, I think we're seeing upticks in transaction volume. So in aggregate, lead flow I think is moving in the right direction. Our agents have done a good job going out to build more referral partners. We've started out 2025 with more referral partner activations and I think we've ever had in any kind of first couple of months of the year.

So it's a positive leading indicator. Certainly, as housing vent volume picks up, that's a very positive thing for us because we've built these new relationships with a bunch more referral partners. But we're also working as we talked about in our prepared remarks with more of these embedded type franchises that can over time help insulate the business from fluctuations in housing new housing transaction volume. So more to mortgage servicers who are really trying to capitalize on their existing book. And for the most part, actually, add value to their clients. It's much less to them about building a business that pays them a lot of money. It's more about helping retain their existing business. But similar to us, right, our goal is to drive our core business as effectively as possible. Same thing with these mortgage servicers. They want to prevent default rate and add value to their clients. Think it's going to be a very good avenue for us to go down and that will help insulate us from housing volatility.

Great. And if I could just sneak one last one in. You were alluding to wholesaling in the E and S markets. Goosehead doesn't have its own wholesale brokerage, right? And if you don't, why not start one?

Yes. We don't have our own wholesale brokerage. We do distribute through multiple others to get product access to the excess and surplus mines. We've looked at what that type of offering would look like and ultimately decided our focus is best where we drive the most value and that's in our core business. And not getting distracted through other types of operations to try and get an extra couple of points [indiscernible] what is still a small portion of the business. Now it has increased over the last couple of years, I wouldn't expect that that trend continues indefinitely. And maybe it continues for a little bit longer with some of the challenges in Florida and California. But over time, I would expect the admitted market to go back to being the lion's share of the business. Now, we'll keep an open mind if that doesn't go back in that direction, but that's not currently our expectation.

Got it. Thanks so much.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Katy Sakas with Autonomous Research. Your line is now open. Thanks. Good evening. My first question was about you guys' expectations to hire in both the franchise channel and the corporate channel. How long does it take for an average higher to become margin accretive these days? And how does that compare across channels?

So it depends on a couple of things. What geography they're in and then whether they're on the franchise side of the business or the corporate side. So on the franchise side, when we're helping a franchise find a candidate, now remember these are still their higher fire decisions, we're helping be really a recruiting resource for them to source candidates. But when they start in their business, they're effectively margin accretive for us almost on day one. Not a lot of costs associated to that with us.

It's not like we're charging franchises a lot of money to do it. It's a really nominal fee. It's a value add for us. But they're on the franchise's P and L. It's what's in everybody's best interest.

So almost accretive on day one, but remember, it's $20 on the dollar on new business on the franchise side for production. On the corporate side, it varies based on geography because there is differences in premium per policy. So as you can imagine an agent in Houston produces at a different level in their first few months than an agent in somewhere like Columbus, Ohio, which has a lower value of premium per policy. So you may be able to sell the same amount of policies you just had a total dollar value. So somewhere between that kind of six to eight month timeframe is usually where you start to get margin accretive.

Thank you. That's helpful. And then seeing in the similar vein, Thinking about the geographies where you guys are looking to either increase your franchise presence or add through the producer count per franchise. How does that compare to geographies where you're expecting to see capacity come online in 2025?

That's the key is to make those two match with each other right? And so we're we're not saturated in any state in The United States would say when you compare it to the overall market opportunity, But would we like to spread it out and put the agents where we think the opportunity is? Yes. And so you saw in my comments that we just opened up an office in Tempe, Arizona. That is to match up with demand in that area with good product. In Texas, as we hire more corporate agents this year, we're trying to spread them to our other offices just until Texas capacity comes comes back. So I could go state by state, but that's literally how we think about it. We have a geographic map agents where we think the demand is going to be and where we have adequate product.

If you don't mind me asking one more follow-up. Are there any states beyond Arizona and Texas that you guys would call out? There's a lot of white space all the way across country. We've got I think it's 13 different growth states and that information is in our investor deck of where we're targeting for new franchises. I wouldn't expect to see us open a new corporate office imminently, but we will continue to evaluate where are the right places we can launch future top decile franchises out of the corporate team and we may plop down a few more of those offices over time in the right geographies. But we do have a corporate office footprint that spans across several different states, right? We've got a Denver office, a Chicago office, Charlotte, Columbus.

So we've got decent geographic dispersion. It's about putting agents in those offices. As opposed to the Texas offices and making sure we've got the right management capacity in those other offices.

And we still plan to take those corporate offices and use them for feeder grounds for future franchises. And I would say that was a highly successful program over the last couple of years. Taking corporate agents allowing them to have franchise ownership. They're some of our most productive new franchises And so we'll continue to do that from those offices that Mark just mentioned.

Got it. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Zarevsky with BMO. Line is now open. Hey, good evening.

On the corporate sales agents account guide You updated us saying that just given given the size, absolute size being much larger that next year's growth probably be not as as big of a growth rate. Just curious now that is that I thought last quarter not just nitpicking given the growth has been phenomenal, but I felt last quarter you kind of said that this looked like kind of the new the new normal for at least 25% in terms of the corporate agent growth rate. And it seems to kind of have come down a little bit. Is as you guys have had few more months to kind of go through all those hires and how things are working anything kind of is that is my read correct? Yes. I mean, Michael, this is Martin Miller.

What we typically see, you know that we do all of our hiring for corporate agents in the summertime off of college campuses. And when they start in the summer months and you typically see it naturally fall off This year it followed the same pattern which is what we would expect. We still maintain super strict production standards. Some of our older, more tenured agents decided that they didn't want to lean quite into the marketing strategy to go get new referral partners as the market got tight. And they opted out. However, our new agents that we've brought in the summertime are doing extremely well. And they're adapting to the model quickly. We're just trying to make sure that the corporate agents that we bring in, we don't flood the Texas market, which is traditionally been where we put a huge percentage of our college hires. We're spreading them out. So we just we just slowed a little bit on the new hiring. It's not done yet.

For this year that will start in the summer. But I wouldn't say it's dramatically it's down a little bit, but I wouldn't say like I think you said died off. I wouldn't say died off would be the word I would use for it. I would just say we slowed it down just a bit We'll continue to go heavy at the agent count from the franchise side. We have what we call the agency staffing program that Mark just talked about where we help franchises add headcount. And you'll continue to see us add more agents per franchise going forward. Yes. And Greg, just to layer on there, Mike, So we're also investing into the enterprise sales team with both of us kind of hit on a little bit in our prepared remarks. And that team will continue to grow at a higher rate just as we get more into partnerships and digital lead flow, making sure we can execute on all that as quickly as possible. So, over time, you'll probably see us start to break that out for now, but still included in the corporate agent headcount. But that's an area that's growing really, really rapidly.

And I continue to remain super bullish on the the agent model that franchise agent and the corporate agent model And you'll see us continue to add in, but the term we always use is absorbed capacity, which we have to have the management layer to be able to absorb it we're bringing up the tenure of the corporate agents as fast as we can. And when we do, we will add more corporate agents so that we can responsibly add them to the network. And they can be productive quickly.

Okay, got it. And apologies if I came off as saying died off. I just didn't announce it. I meant to kind of tick down a bit. [indiscernible] a lot of color, good color you've given us. On the outlook, but just trying to to make sure I'm clear about the large kind of the wide gap on the guidance on organic revenue growth ex supplementals and cost recovery it's If I'm incorrect, I think it's much, much wider than your historical guide. I just want to make sure I'm understanding what's what's causing the the wider gap than in the past.

Yes. But I'm not going to put specific numbers on the core revenue growth. What I would say again is we expect core revenue growth rate to accelerate from 2024 to 2025 and I don't know that if you do the implicit math that it's actually all that wide. But if you could think about what the factors are in new business growth, we feel about the way that the franchise side of the business is performing. We feel like we've got a big crop of new corporate agents that are going to perform very well.

We've got a good pipeline of potential partnerships in an enterprise sales division that's growing. Quite well. And then the other side of that is the renewal business. So largely driven by client retention as well as pricing. And so there's as pricing slows down and client retention improves, the timing of that will impact the growth rates of the renewal book. So we're just being a little bit conservative of that in the forecasting. Okay, got it. Maybe I was just looking at last year's and it was only a three point delta. But okay. And then just lastly on the same topic directionally, all the exciting things you guys are doing on the mortgage servicer side, the national bank relationship you have, Is this a material part of your guidance at this point or is it still kind of small but growing? I wouldn't say it's massively material yet, but it is getting to a point where it's becoming a really real piece of the business. And over the next probably year, year and a half, it will get to be pretty big. Especially if we can execute it the way that we think we can. So it's one to keep an eye on.

Okay. And maybe I'll just sneak one last one in that someone asked on California earlier and I thought the the response was that things are still directionally opening up. Just want to make sure we're not missing anything we should put in our model on 1Q or 2Q on contingent subs or anything like that? Or productivity due to the tragedy in California in 1Q.

No, I wouldn't expect that to really move the needle. It's not as if production was shut off for a month and then you got two months of production in one month. Nothing like that. It wouldn't be massively material. Remember California is kind of a high single digit market share of our total written premium.

So that's not going to swing the needle.

Okay.

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Hughes with Truist Securities. Your line is now open.

Yes. Thank you. Good afternoon. Your premium retention report has been very steady here lately. If I were to do a little math, I might conclude that the franchise retention has gotten a little bit better, but you're corporate retention has It dropped off a little bit.

And I'm just sort of curious, as you look at the business, is there anything that might account for a little bit of a difference in the retention one to another. Again, the overall number is is holding steady and as you report But is there some reason for a difference between the two channels?

Yes, super easy answer. So corporate, we've been in tech 12.

So considerably larger portion of the book in the corporate side is located in Texas, which has been a really hard product market for a couple of years, had some of the highest year over year price increases, which is dragging down the Texas retention numbers. That's part of the strategy to diversify outside of Texas in the corporate footprint. So we can normalize the book like we have in the franchise side of the business that retains Thank you for that. And then the interest expense, with the dividend and the current debt load, a good run rate interest expense Yes. So $300,000,000 term loan I think if you read the release, it's so far plus $3.50. So that's what I would put in your model. Okay.

Thank you very much.

Yes.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Pavel Singzon with JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Hi, good evening. I might have missed this in the earlier discussion, but but there's talk right now about Homer's business in California moving towards E and S. And perhaps in other states. So can you talk about how Goosehead made [indiscernible] are you able to retain most of the economics there?

I'm sorry, I didn't quite follow that. Can you break it into pieces and we'll try to answer the best we can. So let's start with the first one. It's just so the premise is more Homer's business moving to Yannis, right? So some of it California specifically, right? If you sell in that environment, is there a risk of commission leakage if a wholesale broker gets involved? Or are you able to retain most of the economics from selling? Yes. So the average commission rate in the E and S book is going to be lower than the regular admitted market. I don't expect that to be the long term go forward strategy for the entire market. I would expect the admitted market to heal and go back to being kind of the dominant force. That may change, I might be wrong. And if that does, we will revisit this kind of wholesale discussion. But now, I don't think that really makes sense. And it doesn't dilute the economics all that much. Okay. Thank you. That makes sense. And then second question I was wondering if you could give a sense of the percentage price increases you're getting for homeowners today It seems like if you look at the pricing exposure impact on the overall book, it's about mid teens if you compare PIF growth and revenue growth.

So with order pricing flattening out or having come down, it seems like home price inflation growth should be much higher than the teens. Is that fair? Or there certain elements I'm missing? No, that's probably the right way to think about it. Homeowners is 61% of our book 36% is auto. So the majority of that is going to be related to homeowners, but auto is a much lower rate of There is some areas, small percentage where we actually have seen premium declines year over year, which allows us to really go add value back to the clients and make sure we're staying in front of them. But homeowners, yes, it's probably slightly higher than the total book average. Like you called out the difference between policy and four growth rate and premium growth rate. I think that's the right way to look at it. Got you. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Scott Helaniac with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Yes. Well, thanks.

Just wanted to ask first on the special dividend. How you decided now was the right time to do that, the dollar amount and how often we can expect to see these type of special dividends? I know we've seen them before, but how are you thinking about that in terms of Just investing in the business and I know you do a little share buyback, but just how you're thinking of that over time?

Yes, Scott, we're in a really good position in that this business funds itself very well, super cash flow positive. And we want to make sure we're maintaining an efficient balance sheet. So we have been investing a half, you should expect this type of transaction to come and that historically use of proceeds from something like this has been a special dividend. Now I think we also showed during 2024 the propensity to go buyback stock when there's market dislocation. That will continue to be part of the capital management strategy. And over time, if you watch our leverage ratio, really even back all the way to 2016, We'll lever up distribute cash to shareholders through one way or another, delever through earnings growth, lather, rinse repeat, you should expect to see that in the future as well.

Okay.

That's helpful. And then the only other question I would just the QTI, you said you're issuing 1,000 policies per month now.

Can you talk about where that was maybe a year or two ago? And where you think you can get to maybe over the next couple of years? What is there any kind of target you're looking at? In the QTI?

Yes. I would say if you roll it back a year ago, it was a very small amount of volume going through QTI. I mean, we were still in the process of building out a lot the pipes. I mean, we had some nice progress. But during this year, we picked up a lot of steam and we said thousands per month. I wouldn't say it was 1,000, considerably more than that. We've written tens of thousands of policies through the platform now. I would expect that that continues to take hold in our agent force as we develop more pipelines with carriers and the product becomes more online. We still have a lot of states where carriers want to do the implementation work, but they're really waiting for underwriting profitability. So I expect that that's going to be the way our agents distribute in the future. And I think that's best for both clients as well as agents, but also for carrier partners because we could be really and who gets to what carrier and make sure we're meeting all of their underwriting guidelines. Really better than any independent agent out there. The key is you don't really connect it for a carrier and just done with it.

You go carrier by state. And so we just continue to add more carriers and more states. And it will take a while to get it completely embedded across the whole organization. But we see a big uptake from our agents. They really like it and it saves a lot of time. And it is the backbone to build out everything else that we want to do with direct connections to the carriers.

Okay. Sounds like it was a big year for Thanks for the detail.

Thank you. And I'm currently showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to hand the call back over to Mark Miller for closing remarks.

Okay. I just want to thank everybody for taking the time to join us today on the call. We appreciate your continued interest and support. And we're looking forward to talking to you again in April.

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