Hagerty - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Q2 2025 delivered strong top-line and profit growth: revenue rose 18% to $368.7M and Adjusted EBITDA increased 20% to $63.7M; management raised full-year guidance for revenue, net income, and Adjusted EBITDA, citing momentum across insurance, membership, and marketplace.
• Guidance was increased to Total Revenue growth of 13–14%, Net Income growth of 43–53% ($112–$120M), and Adjusted EBITDA growth of 30–38% ($162–$172M), versus prior targets (12–13%, $102–$110M, and 21–29%) set in Q1.
• Marketplace revenue surged 327% YoY to $26.8M on strong inventory sales and the inaugural European auction at Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este; membership revenue rose 11% to $15.7M and HDC paid members reached ~908K (+6% YoY).
• Strategic catalyst: non-binding LOI with Markel to move to a fronting arrangement and allow Hagerty to control 100% of the premium starting Jan 1, 2026 (subject to regulatory approval), improving economics and operational control.
• Operating income increased 25% to $47.7M; loss ratio of 42.3% (including 1.6% catastrophe impact) was slightly higher YoY, but margins expanded and the company ended Q2 with $140.3M unrestricted cash and $176.1M total debt.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Marketplace outperformance: Q2 marketplace revenue +327% YoY to $26.8M, propelled by higher inventory sales and the first European auction; membership, marketplace and other revenue +78% YoY to $47.6M.
• Margin and profit expansion: Operating income +25% YoY to $47.7M and Adjusted EBITDA +20% to $63.7M; operating margin expanded by 70bps in Q2; management raised FY25 profit guidance.
• Strategic evolution: LOI with Markel to move to a fronting arrangement positioning Hagerty to assume 100% underwriting and investment economics with an initial ~2% fronting fee, enhancing profitability with no policyholder disruption.
  • CEO quote: “We are well positioned for accelerating rates of top and bottom line growth as we move into 2026, including the recently announced evolution of our partnership with Markel that would result in Hagerty controlling 100% of the premium next year”.

What Went Wrong

• Loss ratio drift: Q2 loss ratio rose to 42.3% from 41.1% YoY, including 1.6% catastrophe impact; year-to-date loss ratio 42.2% includes 4.1% catastrophe impact.
• Growth cadence in insurance new business: Q2 new business count declined modestly (-1.3% YoY), with management noting growth will be back-half weighted as State Farm ramps across ~25 states.
• Elevated cost base tied to investments: YTD G&A up 8.5% on software-related costs and salaries/benefits up 8.2% on merit increases/higher headcount; $20M elevated 2025 technology investments (Duck Creek/Apex) are a near-term margin drag as capacity is built ahead of revenue.

Transcript

Speaker 5

Greetings and welcome to the Hagerty Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press *0 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Jay Koval, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us to discuss Hagerty's results for the second quarter of 2025. I'm joined this morning by McKeel Hagerty, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, and Patrick McClymont, Chief Financial Officer. During this morning's conference call, we will refer to an accompanying presentation that is available on Hagerty's Investor Relations section of the company's corporate website at investor.hagerty.com. Our earnings release slides and letter to stockholders covering this period are also posted on the IR website, as well as our 8K filing. Today's discussion contains forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial metrics, as described further on slide 2 of the earnings presentation. Forward-looking statements include statements about our expected future business and financial performance and are not promises or guarantees of future performance.

They are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from our expectations. For discussion of material risks and important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to those contained in our filings for the SEC, which are also available on our Investor Relations website at sec.gov. The appendix of the presentation also contains reconciliations of our non-GAAP metrics to the most directly comparable GAAP measures that are further supplemented by this morning's 8K filing. With that, I will turn the call over to McKeel.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Jay, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you taking the time to join Hagerty's Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. This summer has been another great driving season as we remain on track to welcome a record number of new members to Hagerty in 2025, helping them protect, buy, sell, and enjoy their special cars. After four decades in the car world, I have learned that everyone has their own car story, ranging from someone who loves brass horseless carriages to modern-day high-performance vehicles, off-road vehicles to vintage woody wagons, and American-made muscle cars to Japanese kei cars. Regardless of the type of vehicle, we know it's special to that member, leading to an emotional connection that inspires safer driving habits, which in turn leads to lower claims frequency and consistently strong underwriting results.

Our team of auto enthusiasts is here to provide the excellent service, guaranteed value coverage, and a suite of Hagerty products and services to help celebrate their vehicle. This passion and love of cars, shared by one team Hagerty and our members, results in sustained high rates of growth. Let me dig into some highlights from the first half of 2025, shown on slide 3. Total revenue increased 18%. New business count fueled an 11% increase in written premium and a 12% growth in our commission revenue. Earned premium for our risk-taking entity, Hagerty Reinsurance, increased 12%. Membership, marketplace, and other revenue jumped 68% due to higher inventory sales and the launch of our European auction business. Moving to profitability, during the first six months of the year, our operating margins jumped another 210 basis points, resulting in net income gains of 46% and adjusted EBITDA growth of 28%.

Over the last three years, we have expanded first-half operating margins by nearly 14 percentage points, and we expect continued gains as we double our policies in force to 3 million by 2030. Let's move on to slide 4, which details our 2025 strategic priorities built around three themes: simpler, faster, and better integrated. First is to expand our specialty insurance offerings to protect more of the collectible market, including modern enthusiast vehicles with the launch of our Enthusiast Plus program in Colorado two weeks ago. Second is to simplify and better integrate the membership experience across our products and services, creating revenue synergies and driving cost efficiencies. This is how we engage with our members in a unique and authentic way. Third is to expand our marketplace business internationally, leveraging the trust that we have built in the U.S.

We announced two additional European auctions on the heels of the excellent results from our inaugural Villa d’Este auction in May, where we achieved a 78% sell-through rate. These include auctions built around partnerships with the ZUT Concours in Belgium and Auto Zurich in Switzerland. We are methodically building Hagerty and Broad Arrow into the most trusted brands to help people around the world buy and sell special vehicles. Finally, we are investing in the technology replatforming that will enable efficiency gains, shown on slide 5. I would note that we recently launched Enthusiast Plus on Duck Creek, a leading cloud-based insurance platform. Our technology spend should trend down as a % of revenue as we accelerate the top line in 2026 and 2027 and begin to realize the efficiency benefits from these investments.

Before I turn the call over to Patrick to share more details on our results and increased 2025 outlook, I wanted to walk you through the recently announced fronting arrangement with our longstanding partner Markel, shown on slide 6. As you know, we have had a highly successful partnership with Markel that began in 2013 when they acquired Essentia to underwrite Hagerty’s U.S. business. In 2017, we began to assume 25% of the premium and risk associated with our high-quality book of business and steadily increased it to the current quota share of 80%, with Markel retaining 20%. On July 24th, we announced that we had signed an LOI to move to a new fronting arrangement with Markel, where Hagerty would control 100% of the premium and risk commencing in 2026, while paying a 2% fronting fee to Markel to issue policies and provide administrative support.

The evolution of this partnership will result in increased profitability for Hagerty in the form of additional underwriting and investment income, along with greater operational control. We are excited to continue partnering with Markel and believe the new arrangement will position us to unlock even more value for Hagerty shareholders over the coming years. Patrick?

Speaker 0

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Let me dig into the second quarter results in more detail, shown on slides 7 and 8. In the quarter, we delivered 18% growth in total revenue to $369 million. New business count gains, combined with industry-leading retention of 89%, drove an 11% increase in written premium. This 11% is below the 13% to 14% growth we expect for the full year, given our expectations for faster growth in the second half as State Farm ramps. Our two-year rates of written premium growth during the first half were over 30% and should remain steady at those levels in the second half as growth accelerated back into the mid-teens during July. Commission and fee revenue grew 11% to $143 million. Earned premium increased 13% to $178 million. Our loss ratio remains steady at 42%. Membership, marketplace, and other revenue jumped 78% to $48 million.

In just three years, we have quickly established ourselves as a leading auction house with unparalleled automotive expertise across Hagerty's products, focused on cultivating trusted long-term relationships with our customers. Turning now to profitability, shown on slides 9 and 10, we reported an operating profit of $48 million in the second quarter, with operating margins up 70 basis points to 13%. We are maintaining tight discipline on our costs to translate double-digit commission gains into faster rates of profit growth. G&A increased 6% due primarily to higher software licensing costs from our technology transformation, and salaries and benefits grew 11% due to merit increases and additional headcount to support our growth. Adjusted EBITDA increased 20% to $64 million as we improved the efficiency of our business model. Our growing capital base at Hagerty Re and balanced investment strategy resulted in $11 million in second quarter investment income.

Interest and other income of $6 million included $2 million of interest expense and a $3 million non-cash increase in the tax liability related to our partnership structure. In total, we delivered second quarter net income of $47 million compared to $43 million a year earlier, an increase of 11%. Net income attributable to Class A common shareholders was $9 million after attribution of earnings to the non-controlling interest and accretion on the preferred stock. GAAP basic and diluted earnings per share was $0.09 based on 91 million shares of Class A common stock outstanding. We ended the quarter with $140 million in unrestricted cash and $176 million of total debt, which includes $39 million in back leverage for our portfolio of collateralized loans. Let me wrap up with our updated outlook for 2025, where we increased full-year expectations for revenue and profits, shown on slide 11.

Given our first half results and solid business momentum, we are increasing our 2025 revenue expectations with 13% to 14% growth, powered by similar rates of written premium growth and strong gains from our marketplace business. We are also increasing our assumptions for margin expansion and now expect net income of $112 to $120 million, up 43% to 53%, and adjusted EBITDA of $162 to $172 million, up 30% to 38% compared to 2024. In addition to executing on our 2025 strategic priorities, we are well positioned to deliver accelerated growth as we move into 2026, fueled by State Farm's ramp and market share gains. We are excited to welcome their 525,000 current program members and to help them grow their classic business.

Our partnership pipeline is strong and growing as top 50 carriers realize that they could benefit from a partnership with Hagerty to help them fuel their own growth and improve retention with our differentiated approach to caring for their members and special cars. Enthusiast Plus should become a material growth driver over the medium term as we target more of the modern enthusiast vehicles with the right product and pricing to service these vehicles. As we continue to get smarter at utilizing our data to target members with superior driving characteristics with their special toys, we have more precisely defined our target market for 25 to 40-year-old cars that are more likely to be collectible versus just an older vehicle that might still be used as a daily driver. This includes filtering by vehicle and body type, equipment, and powertrain packages, and original MSRP.

The 1999 Toyota Camry would be a good example of this. We believe we have a long runway in front of us, given our penetration of this 35 million car target market is only 6.7%. When you combine our top line momentum and growth levers with our ongoing efficiency initiatives and the proposed Markel fronting arrangement, we believe we are pulling together all the ingredients necessary for strong shareholder value creation over the coming years. With that, let us now open the call to your questions.

Speaker 5

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press *2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the * key. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Mark Hughes with True Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah, thank you. Good morning. Good morning, Mark. The marketplace revenue is quite strong this quarter. Do you have any thoughts on kind of pacing on Q3, Q4 when you look at the event that you've got in front of you? What's the trajectory of that going to be? When we look at your full-year total revenue guide, how much of that is marketplace? I don't know if you can share that detail.

Speaker 0

Sure. First, on the second quarter, we had a very strong second quarter in terms of private sales, some of which included inventory sales. I think we've talked about the fact that opportunistically at times, we will purchase cars and then resell those either at auction or in this case, privately. The way that that works just through the accounting is the full sale price of the car ends up being the revenue. Obviously, we're doing it to make the margin on that. There was a fair bit of that activity in the second quarter. Private sales, even when we're not talking about inventory, so pure agency transactions, also have been quite strong the first half of this year. I think that's a key driver for the year-to-date revenue. The second half of the year, the growth really will come. We feel good in a week or so.

We've got Monterey coming up, and that auction came together well. We'll see what happens in the room, as always. As McKeel Hagerty talked about in the comments, we are launching additional auctions this year. We'll have an auction in Belgium, Switzerland, and then also Las Vegas. Those will drive incremental growth. None of those three existed last year. That's reflected in the guidance for the second half of the year as well.

Very good. When you say the $20 million in incremental technology spending, what's the outlook when we think about 2026? Is that all going to go away, or is that going to drop by half, or any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think we've talked about this on previous calls, and we try to be very careful with our language. We're intentionally not describing it as a one-time that would go away, as you're suggesting. The concept is that we had to increase spending. It's $20 million, $15 million of which is related to technology. The other $5 million is really related to marketplace. Putting together the team and for the auctions that I just talked about, we've meaningfully grown our footprint in Europe to support the business. The $15 million way to think about it is it's the fact that as we've invested heavily in our new technology platform, which is now actually in use, we've launched Enthusiast Plus, and we're selling policies. Think of that as pre-revenue spending, right? We spent on both technology and people to get ready to launch the platform.

Now we're starting to actually sell on the platform, but we're only in one state. It'll ramp up over time. What we're trying to explain is there's a pinch point in profitability because we're spending those dollars in advance of when the revenue shows up. The concept is not that it goes away. We'll actually be delivering real revenues, both from the insurance side and the marketplace side on a go-forward basis. We gave clarity on that really to just explain that pinch point. Does that help, Mark?

It does. That's costs that you'll be leveraging. I think I understand what you're saying. How about the.

The licenses for our new platform, which is a Duck Creek platform, we started spending money on those in 2025. For the first half of the year, there was no revenue associated with it. The second half of 2025, there's a little bit as we launched Enthusiast Plus, but it ramps up from there. Similar on the marketplace, right? We hired those people, and now in the second half of the year, we'll start producing revenue against it.

Yeah, the earnings, the impact from the Markel shift, other things equal, is that how would we look at that contribution to the bottom line?

Sure. We put out a set of slides when we announced that 10 days ago, whenever it was. The concept is, by picking up the incremental 20% of quota share, going from 80% quota share up to 100%, the benefits to us are, one, we get the incremental underwriting profit on that. As you know, within Hagerty Re, the way that business works is it runs at about an 89% combined ratio. On the incremental 20 points, we'd expect to earn, call it 11 points of operating profit. That's a meaningful benefit at the Hagerty Re level. If you can take the current book of business that we're running and gross it up by the incremental 20% of quota share, that's a way to think how it flows through.

Additionally, we're now getting that earned premium within Hagerty Re, so we'll be able to make the investment income on that as well. We're earning something like, I think, 4.4% right now on investment earnings. Those are the two big economic drivers. We do have to step up a little bit. We're taking on a new scope of work, and that's a little bit of an offset to the two positives. I think if you just focus on the incremental investment earnings, the incremental underwriting profit, you'll get most of the answer.

Understood. If I could squeeze in one more, when you think about the shopping behavior of the customers, I think you've mentioned on earlier calls that some of the higher pricing across the industry has perhaps been beneficial as consumers have shopped around and you've had an attractive offering. How would you characterize the market right now in terms of just the potential flow related to the dynamics across the broader space?

Yeah, I'm happy to take a crack at it. McKeel can add. We're in business with all the top insurance companies, and we talk to them about what they're seeing in their core business and share with them what we're seeing. The general theme now, with the exception of Progressive, is people are seeing this being a year where unit growth is a bit below what they'd expected. Progressive, obviously, is in a different situation where they're spending heavily and they're growing quite aggressively. I would say it's somewhat of a balance marker right now. We're not in one of those phases where there is intense spending on new customer generation in the broad industry that's leading to those high levels of shopping, maybe that we saw in years past. It seems more muted, again, with the exception of Progressive.

Having said that, our quote bond continues to be very strong and up year over year. We're confident from a new business perspective, but maybe not kind of the frothy environment that you can see in other times.

Very good. Thank you.

Speaker 5

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Greg Peters with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good morning, everyone. I wanted to go back to your expansion into Europe. Maybe you can help. I know you've talked about this before, so just maybe remind me about what you see in terms of the addressable market for your business as we think about the next couple of years.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Hey, Greg, it's McKeel. Thanks for that. We're pretty excited about our expansion into Europe. You know, really with auctions being the lead step here, the auction at Villa d’Este, which is a very, very high-end auction and concours environment that takes place at the Como. Concours, hopefully. That was a real estimate that we had the team to go out there and build this business for us in Europe. We can't emphasize enough that live auctions and private sales are very client-oriented. In order to have the business, you can't just hang the shingle out and hope for the best. It's very much like if you have the team, you have the specialists, they go out and generate the business, find the potential buyers in the auction room, especially if you do it at a fun place like Como and Villa d’Este.

You know, off to a good start. The idea being that, you know, with the two additional auctions at the ZUT Concours in Belgium, which is a very well-attended, high-end concours environment, lots of different motoring activities take place there, long history of auctions being successful there. That was the next one we announced. Then on to Auto Zurich, which is a very strong, both enthusiast and kind of more towards this modern enthusiast car. They call them young timers, actually, over in Europe, kind of the German-speaking term for that kind of newer vehicle category, which is where all the expansion is and where a lot of our, I guess, most greatest demand is in our auction business. What we think we've done here is built the right team for Europe.

We're focusing on the right, most growing marketplace, rather than trying to just beat, you know, kind of beat into a tougher market of, you know, older cars and where there's a lot more, it's a little bit frothier at that high end. What we found already is, again, great team, plenty of demand, and, you know, a lot of sort of early indications that we've made the right moves at the right time. So far, so good in Europe. We, you know, we'd look to see in the next couple of years an even bigger auction calendar for us in Europe and also build out that private sales capability. Looking forward to that, as well as a full auction schedule for us in the U.S.

Right. Thanks for that detail. Can we pivot to State Farm? I know this seems like it's beginning to really impact your financials. Maybe you can give us a sense of where you are in the process of the State Farm integration and rolling out your business to all of their agents.

Happy to. This is a very important partnership for us, and it will be one of the future State Farm. If you think of it as like a job to be done, they hired us to help really serve those passionate car people that they had on their books. They're a big insurance company, and this was not an area they specialized in. Right now, I think we're live in 17 states. We might have added a few more, even 16. I think we're adding a couple more even as soon as this week. That is focused on new business. This is where when you open up to the agents in those states, State Farm in total has a little over 19,000 agents. Each state has a large number of them. It focuses first on new business.

We've been already doing new business in four of those states, and now we're starting the process of rolling the existing books in those four states over to us now. It's up and running. The next couple of years are going to be high volume, both from a new business standpoint as well as starting that roll over of the existing business with them. So far, so good. It was a complicated technology integration. The teams worked really hard to make sure that we were both doing it correctly the way we want to do it on our end. Mating up with State Farm's very large systems has been a heavy lift, but we're happy to say we're up and running and so far, so good.

The best thing that we're seeing is that the new business numbers that we, every time we turn on the states, the agents are very excited to be able to have access to this product, and they're a highly motivated sales team. We would look to see this to be an ever more important part of our new business story.

Thanks for that. That's interesting. Do you have an objective like to be in 30 states by the end of the year? I mean, ultimately, I guess your objective is to be in all of those states, but maybe there's nuances of, you know, at State Farm that prevent just a straight line rollout. Maybe you can give us some perspective.

Yeah, they have a clear cadence. They have a clear cadence that they're, you know, they want to be careful that they can pre-communicate, they can train their agents, they can create all their territory and regional people to be ready for this. I think the goal is, you know, something in the 20s, right?

25 states by the end of the year.

Yeah, 25 states. That swung up and down one state or two. The idea would be to be in all of the available states by, you know, over the next couple of years. There are states like California, for all the things you read about in the news, that tend to be challenging and lag a little bit, and they will for this too. It's important to note that State Farm doesn't do business in every single state. I think notably, like Massachusetts, I don't think they do business there for this type of business. Yes, the goal is to be in all. I think just to double click on the one thing, this is not one of those cases as we have with other partners where it's, you know, you put the product on the shelf and you hope that somebody buys it in the store.

This is a case where there's a big chunk of business that will roll over to us as some of these states roll on and we get into the conversion process. It's just different than when sometimes we, you know, it's exciting to turn on a new partner and you hope they sell a lot. They're both going to sell a lot and convert a lot. That's why State Farm's quite important to us.

Makes sense. I guess the last question, you touched upon it in your comments and your answer before, but just curious about the background in the change of the fronting arrangement with Markel. What got you to the point where you wanted to go to 100% retention? Just curious how you were thinking about that going into those conversations.

I'll start, Patrick, and if there's details I missed here. From the very beginning, 2013, the very base core intention of the business was that we would eventually take risk, and we would eventually take all of the risk. The form of that, you know, being an MGA and how we would take risk behind it via a quota share arrangement was that became the most practical way to do it through the year, starting in 2017, ramping up the quota share to the current 80%. From the beginning, this was a, you know, this was a friendly, intended evolution of how the business would work. Both the timing and the terms of that final phase of where you go from 80% to 100% has always been something that we would be discussing with Markel through the years.

It just, you know, through our sort of normal partner, you know, they're a big owner of the company too, but sort of normal partner discussions with them. We just kind of mutually agreed that it was time for us to go from that 80% to 100% and then to change the form of that from kind of the quota share to a normal fronting fee. They own a big fronting business called State National. They did not have that business when we first started with them, and they've decided that they really prefer that fronting relationship. Natural evolutions, both from their side and our side, but it's a happy thing for Hagerty because, as Patrick, I think, detailed a little bit earlier, it's economically a very good thing for us over the next couple of years.

We have the ability, we have good experience at the 80% quota share level, and we're ready to take on that last 20%.

Great. Thanks for the answers, McKeel and Patrick.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Greg. Good to hear from you guys.

Speaker 5

Our next question comes from Pablo Sengoin with J.P. Morgan. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, this is Kevin on for Pablo. Premium growth in the first half of 2025 is running a little below your full-year outlook. Why is that, and what factors do you think will help a recovery in the second half?

Speaker 0

Sure, it's Patrick. It's a little light to what we had planned for and expected. There are a few factors going on there. One is on the new business front, it's coming in a little bit below what we'd expected. Most of that is intentional. We have de-emphasized growth in certain markets where we just didn't see adequate profitability. You can think about markets like California and New York. We're working on changes in those markets to get back to a position where we can grow again. We did pause that a bit in the first half of the year. We've actually transitioned our direct approach in terms of how we spend. We refined our model, and we're much more focused on a return on advertising sales approach versus previously we were more focused on minimizing our cost to acquire a customer. You can imagine the logical outcome, right?

We're getting what we believe are better customers as measured by our expected lifetime value. In some cases, we're getting less customers. We're just optimizing for a different metric now. Those are the factors that went into it. We actually feel very good about both of those decisions. We think that things will change in the markets where we had to slow down a bit. We're really excited about our new approach to maximizing returns on new customers. In the second half of the year, what we're going to see is we just talked at length about State Farm. That will start to really ramp up. McKeel talked about the fact we're in 16 states. The original four have started conversions. We've got another seven or so states that will start conversions in the fall timetable. That really does ramp up in the latter part of the year.

Is that helpful?

Yes, thank you. A follow-up to that, the tax rate in the first half has been running a little low. Do you have an expected tax rate for the second half of the year?

Not at this time. I mean, our tax situation is quite interesting, the nature of the partnership structure that we have. With the new Big Beautiful Bill Act, we're still doing our analysis of what the implications of that are. We don't have an update on that right now. It's implied in what we put in terms of the net income guidance, but there's some moving pieces right now.

Okay, thank you.

Speaker 5

Our next question comes from Mark Hughes with True Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah, thanks for taking the follow-up. Patrick, on the State Farm arrangement, the marginal economics on that business, given the kind of the risk structure, I think State Farm retaining risk, how does that work, you know, just in terms of the latest thoughts on how it flows through the P&L with that written premium being quite strong, but then kind of flowing through the rest of the income statement a little differently?

Speaker 0

Sure. The way to think about State Farm is there is no risk. It's written on State Farm paper, and there is no quota share to Hagerty. This is a pure agency relationship. The way to think about it is State Farm continues to do all the distribution, right? State Farm agents are managing the, excuse me, the existing customers. They're going out and finding the new customers and managing that whole scope of work. You can kind of think about that as sort of like a broker relationship. In our normal business, where we're paying brokers, whatever it ends up being at 10%, 12%, 13%. In the State Farm situation, it's their paper. They've got their own sales force, and so kind of carve that economics out.

The easiest way to think about it is in our core MGA for the core program, the commissions are kind of 41% to 42%, depending on where the CUC shakes out. If you back out of that, the fact that we don't have to pay distribution costs, the commission that we're getting for the State Farm relationship is kind of 11 or 12 points less than the 42. It's still very attractive and healthy commissions for all the value that we're adding. You just back out that distribution component. If you look at the State Farm book, ultimately, it's going to be, right now there's 525,000 vehicles. The pricing on their book is a bit less than what ours would be in terms of the average premium, and that will evolve over time.

Our opportunity is to convert all that business, help them continue to grow, and we'll be earning a 30, you know, 30, low 30-ish type % commission on that book of business. We're doing it through the core MGA, right? Everything else, we're leveraging our existing expertise, our existing process, and we anticipate this being a very profitable business. Whatever we sell in terms of HDC to the new State Farm members, that will be incremental economics for us. Is that helpful, Mark?

Sure is. Appreciate that rundown. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Our next question comes from Mike Zeremski with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, thanks. Good morning. I think just one question on pricing or premium per vehicle trends. Looks like it's trending down a bit. The overall market, you know, we kind of can see loss costs are perhaps nine and competition's building. Any comments there? I believe just to intertwine in, you just said the State Farm average premiums per vehicle are also a bit lower than the portfolio. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Just looking a little bit on the outside-in approach, and thanks for the question. It's a good one. As you may know, we publish something that we call our Hagerty Value Index. It's through our valuation tools. We have an amazing team of people that track the market out there. It is true, based on the index you look at, that pricing or valuation specifically of cars is, you know, call it soft, flat, whatever it is, especially at the high end, but it's remaining quite steady. What you don't see in uncertain economic times in this market is a lot of, say, panic selling or, gosh, my car isn't increasing in value this year, so I'm going to go sell it. People just hang on to it and continue to pay their insurance premiums.

So valuation is, you know, from a, again, that index and marketplace standpoint, kind of soft to flat, but holding steady by almost every measure. I'm not sure if that addresses the second part of the question, though. Patrick, was there anything you had there?

Speaker 0

Yeah, you know, the average premium, you know, it can tend to move around a bit. Right now, what we're seeing relative to last year and our own expectations is pretty much in line. We're not, as McKeel said, the elements that drive rate for us are going to be obviously rate changes. We did have a period where we were increasing rates. This is going back a couple of years in most of the states, and that has washed its way through the book. We do have valuation. Typically, long-term trend, we see values increase. Right now, we're more in a stable market, so there's less rate that's coming from increasing underlying values. There's nothing that we're looking at that gives us pause. You mentioned something about increased competition. If you clarify that question, what are you seeing or what are you looking for there?

Your answer is helpful. Just increased competition. We're just meeting from a top-down level to looking at just pricing KPIs for other competitors in the industry. You can see CPI data too. Okay. When it comes to, sorry, go ahead.

When it comes to competition within our niche, things operate very differently in the collector car niche. When we look at the specialists who compete, it feels pretty normal. You can see pockets where people are competitive and other pockets where it's less so. We're not seeing something fundamentally different on that front either.

Okay, got it. If we divide up, if we create a KPI called vehicles per policy, it doesn't seem like it moves around much, of course. I think it's gone up a tiny bit over the last couple of years. Is there anything we should be thinking about in terms of initiatives to increase vehicles per policy?

Speaker 2

Yeah, I mean, thank you. It's a great question. It's a beautiful, you know, for us, it's a beautiful thing. People tend to have, I think we're at 1.7 vehicles per policy today if you think about kind of the core business and what we call our flex business. One of the entire reasons we've launched this Enthusiast Plus program is to be able to say yes more to the inbound business that is coming our way. Sometimes this will be somebody adding additional vehicles to their policy that we otherwise could not underwrite because of whatever, you know, sort of pricing or risk dynamics that we didn't feel comfortable with in the core program. It's also really meant to say yes to more newer customers that we don't currently have. That doesn't necessarily increase the 1.7, but it allows us to say yes more.

The intention with that Enthusiast Plus business is that it will have higher average premiums. For us, the big initiative, and it's been a multi-year complicated initiative, has been to launch Enthusiast Plus. That includes buying the driver's edge insurance company, which we mentioned is live in a single state that will start expanding over the coming months and quarters. Standing up the entire new, what we call our Apex platform, is to be able to handle all of that newer business with more flexible pricing, as well as eventually to manage the core business over time. I must say that between the tech and the launch of Enthusiast Plus, it's been kind of a month of celebrations here after lots of years, several years, and certainly a lot of quarters and months of hard work. That should start addressing that.

Thank you.

Speaker 5

We have reached the end of our Q&A session, and I would now like to pass the floor back over to McKeel for closing comments.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Operator, and thanks to all of you for your continued support. Hagerty is firing on all cylinders, and we have solid business momentum and a long straightaway in front of us. Sustaining this trajectory year after year requires great talent. Over the last month, we have been able to fill three key positions with top-tier talent that we believe will be critical to our long-term success. This includes hiring Adam Van Loon, our new Head of Omnichannel Insurance Distribution after a career of working at Bain, Chubb, and Plymouth Rock. We also hired S.E. McHenry to lead our insurance products after great success at Geico, Progressive, and Lemonade. Our third addition to Hagerty is Mark Burns, who was brought on board to tightly integrate Hagerty's brand and marketing efforts across our suite of products and services for car lovers. One team Hagerty has never been stronger.

We look forward to seeing some of you over the next two weeks as we head to Monterey Car Week, including our two-day Broad Arrow auctions where we will present some of the best cars yet. Until then, never stop driving.