Slide Insurance Q4 2025 Earnings Call - Record Q4 as Citizens depopulation and reserve tailwinds fuel 57% GWP growth and $170M net income

Operator: Greetings, welcome to the Slide Insurance fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to hand the floor over to the Slide team to begin.

Unknown, Investor Relations / Moderator, Slide Insurance: Thank you. Good morning. With us today are your hosts, Bruce Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Slide, and Andy Omiridis, Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to our earnings release, which was published yesterday after the market closed and can be found on our website at ir.slideinsurance.com. 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 the expectations, estimates, and projections of management regarding the company’s future performance, anticipated events or trends, and other matters that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements in our discussion are subject to various assumptions, risks, uncertainties, and other factors that are difficult to predict and which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements.

These statements are not guarantees of future performance and therefore under-reliance should not be placed upon them. We refer all of you to our earnings release and recent filings with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could impact the future operating results and financial condition of Slide. Our statements are as of today, February 25, 2026. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements we may make, except as required by law. In addition, this call is being webcast, and an archived version will be available shortly after the call ends on the investor relations portion of the company’s website at www.slideinsurance.com. With that, I’d now like to turn the call over to Chairman and CEO, Bruce Lucas. Please go ahead.

Bruce Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Slide Insurance: Thank you, and welcome to our 4th quarter 2025 earnings call. We appreciate your continued interest in Slide and are excited to be speaking with you today. 2025 was a significant year for Slide. We took the company public and continued to demonstrate the ability of our tech-enabled coastal specialty focus to deliver the best top-line and bottom-line performance in our sector, and we believe the best is yet to come. We closed out the year with another industry-leading performance. We delivered 4th quarter results that materially outpaced our prior guidance for gross premiums written and net income, primarily as a result of higher voluntary sales, better retention ratios, favorable loss development, and assumption activity from Citizens Insurance. Our voluntary sales in the 4th quarter showed strong performance once again, and we believe the trend for year-over-year higher top-line growth will persist in 2026.

For the quarter, we meaningfully accelerated our gross premiums written, which increased by 57% year-over-year to $618 million. We were opportunistic with respect to the ongoing Citizens depopulation and assumed a significant number of policies in the quarter, driving another strong top-line performance. Our vast data set and technology-enabled underwriting approach allows us to find policies and Citizens with very attractive return characteristics. We expect to continue to be opportunistic with respect to Citizens depopulation efforts in 2026, albeit at a lesser level, as we believe there will be fewer policies that meet our criteria to assume. We expect to grow our gross premiums written in 2026 year-over-year as a result of higher policy retentions, higher voluntary sales, and the launch of new states in the Northeast and California.

In addition to our strong top-line results, Slide produced $170 million in net income in the quarter, more than doubling the $75 million in the prior year quarter, which represents yet another quarterly record for Slide. Along with net income, fourth quarter return on equity was once again strong at 16.4% in the quarter. For 2025, Slide produced a 57.4% return on equity, notwithstanding the substantial capital raise in the second quarter from our initial public offering. Meanwhile, our conservative approach to underwriting and reserving continues to lead to best-in-class margins, with a quarterly combined ratio of 38% versus 60.9% in the prior year period. Quite simply, our fourth quarter and full year 2025 performance was once again clear evidence of the power of the Slide business model.

Our long-term value proposition continues to deliver excellent earnings and attractive returns on equity, creating long-term shareholder value. All of these accomplishments provide us with significant momentum as we progress through 2026. We have carefully and thoughtfully created a high-momentum coastal specialty insurer, as evidenced by our industry-leading performance, and we have the strongest balance sheet in the coastal specialty sector. Slide is the only coastal specialty insurer to surpass $1 billion in book value, ending the year at just over $1.1 billion, along with $2.9 billion of assets, only 2.9% debt-to-capital ratio, and over $1.2 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Our superior balance sheet and future earnings give Slide ample capital to scale faster than its peers, which is a tremendous market advantage.

We intend to use our balance sheet and profitability to further expand our geographic footprint in 2026. We have successfully established ourselves in Florida and South Carolina, but as previously mentioned, it is time to pivot toward growing our operations and bringing our unique skill set to other catastrophe-exposed markets. To that end, we continued to produce strong voluntary sales in South Carolina during the fourth quarter, and we believe this trend will continue through 2026. Importantly, we remain on track, pending final regulatory approval, to begin writing by peril tailored policies in New York and New Jersey in the first half of 2026, Rhode Island in the second half of 2026, and we expect to launch an excess and surplus product in California in the next 30 to 60 days.

As we diversify into these new geographies, we will utilize our decades of experience and our proprietary ProCast technology to underwrite policies that enhance our portfolio, manage our concentration of risk and our reinsurance expense, all while optimizing profitability. We expect to expand thoughtfully in these new states, using our large data set and balance sheet to generate growth and enhance bottom-line results. We have achieved extraordinary growth from our startup origins, far exceeding our expectations. Since Slide’s launch in 2022, we have produced the best top and bottom line results of any coastal carrier in my career. Since 2022, we have achieved a 55% compounded annual growth rate in gross premiums written, while delivering a 7,399% compounded annual growth rate in net income. Our track record is unmatched in the industry. We are not resting on our prior success.

We believe that there is a tremendous long-term opportunity ahead of us, and our results to date have positioned us to successfully continue on this trend moving forward. We’re poised for continued growth in 2026, with double-digit increases in policies in force and gross written premiums in our expanding footprint outside of Florida. Our strategic diversification will establish Slide as a leader across multiple regions in catastrophe-exposed homeowners insurance, fueling our growth engine for years to come and delivering sustained long-term success and shareholder value. In the fourth quarter, we repurchased $20 million in equity at an average price of $16.38 a share.

On our prior earnings call, I noted that Slide’s earnings and balance sheet growth are substantially outpacing our prior estimates, and this trend accelerated in the fourth quarter, as evidenced by $170 million in net income in the quarter versus our guidance of $115 million-$125 million. I expect our earnings to be on a strong upward trend through 2026, and we will deploy excess capital in a manner that increases shareholder value. At current trading levels, I fully expect to opportunistically repurchase our stock throughout 2026, as the company has more than enough capital to meet our business plan for growth while retiring undervalued common stock. There are several reasons why we intend to continue our share repurchases in 2026.

As mentioned, Slide has an abundance of capital at its disposal, and the earnings power of the business is significantly outpacing our prior estimates. We expect that 2026 will produce gross written premiums in the range of $1.85 billion-$1.95 billion, and after-tax net income between $455 million and $470 million. As of yesterday’s closing price, Slide is trading at less than 2x book value and a sub 5 trailing P/E ratio, despite producing a 57% return on equity in the prior year. Our current forward P/E ratio for 2026 is similar to our trailing metrics. At these levels, it is very accretive for Slide to retire common stock that is undervalued until a more normalized valuation is reflected in our share price.

Our incredible success is a team effort. I would be remiss if I did not thank all of our employees for their relentless efforts to make Slide into the company it is today. I’m extremely proud to work with you and truly appreciate your sacrifice for our company. We appreciate your continued support of Slide. With that, I’ll now turn the call over to Andy Omiridis to provide some color on our excellent fourth quarter and full year 2025.

Unknown, Investor Relations / Moderator, Slide Insurance: Thank you, Bruce, and good morning to everyone. For the fourth quarter of 2025, gross premiums written were $618.5 million, a 57% increase compared to $394.6 million in the prior year period. Strong top-line growth was primarily driven by the acquisition of additional policies from Citizens, as well as relatively consistent year-over-year renewal rates of existing written policies and a strong increase in commercial residential premiums. At the end of the quarter, we had approximately 493,500 policies in force, up 44% from one year ago and up 40% from September 30. In the fourth quarter, Slide assumed approximately 152,000 policies from Citizens.

As a reminder, all Citizens policies assumed have different renewal dates, assumed premium, and renewal premium, which can create lumpiness in how premiums earn through in forward quarters. Total revenue of $347 million increased 46% compared to $238.5 million in the prior year period, primarily attributable to the assumption of policies from Citizens and renewals of existing policies, driving an increase in net premiums earned. During the fourth quarter, net losses and loss adjustment expenses incurred were $27.1 million, with no losses from significant storms. This compared to $59.1 million in the year-ago quarter, which included catastrophe losses of $32.1 million from Hurricane Debbie, Helene, and Milton.

The company takes a conservative approach to reserving for losses. Our loss ratio for the fourth quarter of 2025 improved to 8.3% compared to 26.3% in the prior year period, reflecting favorable prior year development. Policy acquisition and other underwriting expenses in the quarter were $42.3 million, compared to $29.1 million in the prior year period. The increase was primarily attributable to greater policies in force on a year-over-year basis and greater investments in technology. G&A expenses were $51.4 million, compared to $45.7 million in the prior year period, due primarily to growth in staffing to support the company’s continued expansion.

Our combined ratio improved to 38% compared to 60.9% in the prior year period, primarily as a result of increased net premiums earned from the growth of policies in force, a decrease in cat losses from both hurricane and non-hurricane weather activity, and release of reserves related to non-cat events. Net income more than doubled to $170.4 million, compared to $75.1 million in the prior year period. Diluted earnings per share for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $1.23 per share. Return on equity was 16.4% during the fourth quarter and 57.4% for the full year. Turning to our balance sheet.

As of December thirty-first, 2025, we had cash and cash equivalents of $1.2 billion, an additional $481.8 million of restricted cash held for the benefit of our captive reinsurance cells, invested assets of $593.7 million, and outstanding long-term debt of $33.7 million. We believe our balance sheet will enable the company to continue to profitably grow our business over the long term. In the fourth quarter, we repurchased approximately 1.2 million shares at a weighted average price of $16.38. There is approximately $80 million available under our $120 million share repurchase program. I would like to give further detail on the 2026 guidance that Bruce provided.

As Bruce stated, 2025 marked a key evolution for Slide, as we scaled rapidly through Citizens’ depopulation and began building our presence in additional catastrophe-prone areas outside of Florida. In 2026, Slide expects to generate gross written premiums in the range of $1.85 billion-$1.95 billion, and the company expects to generate net income in the range of $455 million-$470 million. For 2026, top-line growth is expected to be driven primarily by sustained organic expansion, including double-digit increases in policies in force and premium outside of Florida, complemented by selective growth opportunities within Florida that reach our return threshold. We expect our established presence in Florida to continue to flourish while we grow into a geographically diversified leader in catastrophe-exposed homeowners insurance.

With that, I thank you for your time, and we will now open up the call for Q&A. Operator?

Operator: Thank you. We’ll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we pull for questions. Thank you. Our first question is from Thomas McJoynt with KBW.

Thomas McJoynt, Analyst, KBW: Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking our questions. The first one here is just on your opportunity going forward with continuous Citizens takeouts through the depopulation efforts. You know, we can see that the number of policies that are with Citizens have come down a lot over the past couple years. Can you talk about, you know, what we should expect going forward? You know, is there a constant sort of churn within Citizens that policies continuously, you know, get added and then become available for depopulation, or is the opportunity set just a lot more limited going forward? Thanks.

Bruce Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Slide Insurance: Well, good question, Tommy, and good morning to you. The answer is both. You have front-end voluntary underwriting taking place at Citizens. They’re adding about 8,000 policies a month. Now, not all of those policies are viable, but let’s just say as a baseline number, there’s 100,000 policies that they’re adding to their portfolio annually. You have to look at the existing policies. The main driver, as to whether or not those policies are a good fit is going to be the reinsurance cost. We don’t know what the reinsurance market is going to do this year. It, by all indications, it appears to be a down pricing market, which is good for before to consumer. That would open up a new tranche of policies that would look good to us.

We do think that there is ongoing opportunities at Citizens. I cannot quantify what that is at this point in time, but, suffice to say, it is a smaller opportunity than what we have seen in prior years.

Thomas McJoynt, Analyst, KBW: Thanks for that. Just second topic to talk about here. You alluded to it there briefly. You know, we’ve certainly seen the 1/1 headlines about what happened to property cat reinsurance rates coming down quite significantly at the January 1st renewals. Can you talk about your expectations and what’s embedded in your guidance for your cost of reinsurance? Just remind us sort of when it renews, is it 6/1 focused? How much of the program renews each year versus multiyear? Yeah, just talk about that. Thanks.

Bruce Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Slide Insurance: Yeah, another really good question. You know, we have not received quotes yet from our traditional reinsurance markets. Our reinsurance submission went out this week, so we expect to have a little better understanding of where pricing is going to fall in the next couple of months. I will note that we did recently place a large ILS bond. It’s about $320 million of limit, and that bond, risk-adjusted year-over-year, was down over 20%. I don’t know if that’s going to be where the traditional reinsurers come in, so I’ll just avoid any guidance on that point.

Suffice to say, our guidance does have a reduction in reinsurance expenses embedded within it, but we don’t know the extent of what that reduction will look like until we get a little further along prior to our 6/1 renewal.

Alex Scott, Analyst, Barclays: Thanks, Bruce.

Bruce Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Slide Insurance: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question is from Paul Newsome with Piper Sandler.

Paul Newsome, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Thanks, folks. Appreciate the call. Wanted to see if you had a few more thoughts on the competitive environment. We hear just a lot about price declines, particularly in Florida, but even in other areas. Was wondering, you know, in your view, over the last quarter, has it changed materially? How has this affected, you know, where you’re thinking about growing geographically or any other strategic changes that the environment may have led you to adjust your situation?

Bruce Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Slide Insurance: Yeah, I mean, Paul, it’s a great question. We’re really not seeing big swings in pricing. There are a lot of NewCos that have come in, very thinly capitalized. They came in thinking they’d get this great opportunity from Citizens that isn’t there anymore for them in the scale that they were planning. They could always reduce rates a little bit to try to get an underwriting advantage, that would be extremely detrimental to their bottom line results and balance sheet. Right now, the market is trending a little lower, I’m not seeing big swings. We’ll know more once we see what reinsurance pricing looks like, because 70% of our premium dollar or more is actually going toward a reinsurance component in the policy premium.

That’s the big needle mover, and we need a few more months to go through that renewal process to get a better understanding of what that looks like and its potential impact on rate. I do feel confident in stating a couple of things around reinsurance. First, I believe that there is, even with a reinsurance price decline, margins are going to be maintained, right? They go lockstep with one another. Bottom line numbers should be unaffected by a rate decrease. Second, there are tremendous reinsurance synergies to be gained by expanding our footprint outside of Florida and South Carolina. That is what we are really focused on more than anything else. We expect to launch California on excess and surplus lines in the next 30-60 days.

we are on track to launch northeastern states, New York, New Jersey, later this year, Rhode Island. There are a lot of other E&S pockets out there that we are going to launch later this year. So we think that even with a decline, potentially, a small one in rates this year, we still believe we’re on an upward momentum trend for top-line growth, given the diversification, new state launches, and our underwriting Slide has only accelerated over the last nine months within Florida. So that’s a good trend to have at this point.

Paul Newsome, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Is your expectation for lower reinsurance costs in your guidance and perspectively, mainly a function of the diversification benefit that you would get when you move outside of Florida? Or is it you’re actually thinking that you’ve got a little bit of expectation that the actual ultimate sort of apples-to-apples prices are could fall?

Bruce Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Slide Insurance: It’s the both. I mean, definitely the latter. Risk-adjusted rates, I believe, will come down in 2026. I just can’t comment on what the magnitude of that is going to be, and certainly don’t want to be in a public forum, you know, negotiating what I think that’s going to be with our reinsurance partners. I do think risk-adjusted rates are lower, and our cap on really reflects that. You also pick up overall diversification benefit on your reinsurance tower as you spread your footprint across a wider geography.

Paul Newsome, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Appreciate the help as always. Thanks, guys.

Bruce Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Slide Insurance: Thank you, Paul.

Operator: As a reminder, if you’d like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question is from Alex Scott with Barclays.

Alex Scott, Analyst, Barclays: Hi, good morning. First one I have for you is on, you know, some of the home affordability initiatives that are out there. Could you talk about, you know, what you’re seeing in the market and how, if at all, some of that could or may not, affect your plans, just given how strong your profitability has been?

Bruce Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Slide Insurance: Yeah. I think you’re probably referencing the comments by Kathy Hochul in New York about 30 days ago. Let’s just hope that does not happen. I mean, these coastal catastrophe-exposed areas tend to fare well when there is a profitability cap. The reason for that is you have no downside on losses, but you have an upside on profitability, and you really need both of those to be free market exercises, because over the long haul, you’re gonna have some down years there on losses, you’re gonna have some up years. You average them together, and it becomes a very sustainable model. We’ll see what the New York legislature puts in place. We’re definitely focused on it because we plan on launching New York very, very soon.

Suffice to say that, once we get a better understanding of the proposals, we can give more clear guidance and comments around that market in particular. I do firmly believe if they put in profitability caps in New York, you’re actually gonna see insurers pull out of the state and create an even bigger crisis. A great example of that would be the California admitted market. You can see it on full display. Time will tell, but right now, I don’t have any other insight other than she made some comments, the Governor, about capping profitability in homeowners insurance in New York.

Alex Scott, Analyst, Barclays: Yep, that’s helpful and a good segue into my next question, which was potential for the E&S market in California. I know you mentioned you’d be launching that soon. And appreciate you probably don’t want to provide like, you know, break that out in the guidance, but I wanted to get a feel for how impactful you expect that to be relative to the guidance you’ve given. Is that a, you know, significant contributor to your 2026 premium growth?

Bruce Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Slide Insurance: It’s a part of it. I wouldn’t say it’s significant, but it is definitely a part of it. What I will say is that within our guidance expectations, we do have a premium number that I’m not going to announce publicly, that we expect to achieve in California this year. If I were taking the over under on that number, I’d probably take the over. I think the opportunity there is tremendous. It’s the largest insurance state in the country. There is still an admitted insurance crisis in California. FAIR Plan is still adding a tremendous amount of exposure. The opportunity is still very much attractive. I think that there is a strong likelihood that we will outperform our internal expectations in California this year.

Alex Scott, Analyst, Barclays: Great. Thank you.

Bruce Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Slide Insurance: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question is from Matthew Carletti with Citizens.

Matthew Carletti, Analyst, Citizens: Hey, thanks. Good morning.

Bruce Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Slide Insurance: Good morning.

Matthew Carletti, Analyst, Citizens: A numbers question. Good morning. Just a numbers question for me. Andy, in your comments, you mentioned there were some favorable prior period development and obviously low caps. I know there’s no named storm. Can you provide those numbers, just what the dollar impact of favorable was, as well as just weather caps in the quarter?

Unknown, Investor Relations / Moderator, Slide Insurance: Sure. The number was $twenty-seven and a half million, Matt, for the quarter. I’m sorry, what was the I- because it was a little muffled, what was the rest of your inquiry?

Matthew Carletti, Analyst, Citizens: Just, the caps in the quarter. I know there wasn’t any named storm, but was there kind of other weather that was filling the caps bucket?

Unknown, Investor Relations / Moderator, Slide Insurance: No, there really wasn’t any. It’s literally it was. The breakdown was because we’d have disclosed it to in the K, which comes out on Friday, you know, it’s 2024, 2023, and 2022, but it’s all prior year development, you know, no cat changes or activity.

Bruce Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Slide Insurance: Typically, Matt, I’ll add that fourth quarter is generally the best loss ratio quarter of the year. Provided you don’t have a hurricane in October, you know, loss ratios are always extremely low in Florida in the fourth quarter. We’re not really surprised by the results. We did have the favorable development, PYD, year-over-year, $27 and a half million, which helped our numbers some. I mean, we still produced, call it, $150 million in net income even without that.

Matthew Carletti, Analyst, Citizens: Yeah, for sure. Great. That’s all I got. Thank you.

Bruce Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Slide Insurance: Thank you, Matt.

Operator: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand the floor back over to Bruce Lucas for any closing comments.

Bruce Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Slide Insurance: I would just like to thank everyone for participating on today’s earnings call.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you again for your participation.