Earnings call transcript: Slide Insurance Q3 2025 sees EPS of $0.79

Slide Insurance Holdings reported strong financial results for the third quarter of 2025, with earnings per share (EPS) reaching $0.79. The company’s revenue climbed to $265.7 million, marking a 33% increase year-over-year. Following the earnings announcement, Slide Insurance’s stock price rose by 2.31% to $16.42 in aftermarket trading, reflecting investor optimism.

Key Takeaways

• Slide Insurance achieved a significant increase in net income, up 532% year-over-year.
• The company expanded its market presence, filing for new products in New York and New Jersey.
• Slide Insurance assumed over 60,000 policies from Citizens in October, boosting its policy portfolio.

Company Performance

Slide Insurance Holdings demonstrated robust growth in Q3 2025, with gross premiums written increasing by 34% year-over-year to $463.4 million. The company’s net income surged to $111 million, reflecting a substantial improvement from the previous year. The return on equity for Q3 stood at 12.1%, contributing to a year-to-date return of 39.2%.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $265.7 million, up 33% year-over-year
• Net income: $111 million, up 532% year-over-year
• Diluted EPS: $0.79
• Combined ratio: 48.5% (improved from 94.3% the previous year)
• Loss ratio: 13.7% (improved from 60.4% the previous year)

Market Reaction

Slide Insurance’s stock experienced a positive reaction in aftermarket trading, increasing by 2.31% to $16.42. This movement comes as the company continues to perform well within its 52-week range, which spans from $12.53 to $25.9. The stock’s recent performance aligns with broader market trends, where investors are rewarding strong earnings growth.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Slide Insurance plans to expand its operations into South Carolina and California. The company expects to begin writing policies in new states by the first half of 2026. Additionally, Slide Insurance is preparing for further Citizens policy takeouts in November and December, which could enhance its policy count and revenue base.

Executive Commentary

CEO Bruce Lucas expressed optimism about the company’s future, stating, "We believe that there is tremendous opportunity ahead of us." He emphasized the company’s strong capital position and expanding earnings, declaring, "Now it’s time to shift into growth mode."

Risks and Challenges

• Regulatory hurdles in new markets could impact expansion plans.
• Increased competition in the coastal insurance market may pressure margins.
• Potential rate adjustments could affect profitability.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about Slide Insurance’s share buyback strategy, which has a $120 million authorization. Executives also addressed the company’s conservative reserving philosophy and potential rate adjustments, confirming that there were no significant catastrophe losses in Q3.

Slide Insurance’s strong Q3 performance and strategic initiatives position the company for continued growth, as it expands its footprint and leverages its capital strength in the insurance market.

Full transcript - Slide Insurance Holdings Inc (SLDE) Q3 2025:

Conference Operator/Introducer: Welcome to the Slide Insurance Holdings third quarter 2025 earnings 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 pass the call over to the Slide team. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, and good afternoon. With us today are your hosts, Bruce Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Slide, and Jesse Schalk, Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to our shareholder letter, which was released prior to this call and which may also be found on our website at irslideinsurance.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. The 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, undue reliance should not be placed upon them. We refer all of you to our shareholder letter 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, November 5th, 2025, and 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 Holdings: Thank you, and welcome to our third quarter 2025 earnings call. We appreciate your continued interest in Slide and are excited to be speaking with you today. Before we discuss our results, I want to take a moment to thank all of our employees for their tireless effort to make Slide successful. I am extremely proud to work with you and truly appreciate your sacrifice for our company. It’s a great time to be a Slide shareholder. The third quarter was our best quarter in the company’s history as we delivered superior top and bottom-line growth. Our performance was nothing short of remarkable across the board, and we expect that momentum to carry into the fourth quarter and 2026. For the quarter, we had a meaningful acceleration of gross premiums written, which increased by 33.8% year-over-year to $463 million.

We also expect to further grow gross premiums written in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter. In addition to our solid top-line results, our net income in the third quarter set a new record at Slide. Our net income more than sixfold to $111 million compared to $17.6 million in the prior year quarter. Along with net income, third-quarter return on equity was strong at 12.1% in the quarter. Year-to-date, Slide has produced 39.2% return on equity despite a large capital raise in the second quarter from our initial public offering. Third-quarter earnings per diluted share is $0.79. I have consistently stated that we take a conservative approach to our reserving philosophy. We believe that it is better to be conservative on a quarterly basis until reserves have had time to season and more fully develop.

We are at the point where we are gaining much more clarity into our reserve development trends, and we believe our core loss ratios are more accurately reflecting their ultimate performance. In the third quarter, our consolidated loss ratio was 13.7%, a 77% reduction year-over-year. All of these factors contributed to the best quarter in the company’s history and produced a 48.5% combined ratio compared to a 94.3% combined ratio year-over-year. Our third-quarter performance is a clear testament to the power of the Slide business model and our long-term value proposition that we have built over the past several years. As we have consistently noted, we fundamentally operate our business with a long-term mindset and have to date focused on bottom-line earnings and ROE.

Backed by our decades of experience, our wealth of data, and our proprietary ProCAS technology, we believe our team knows how to most effectively underwrite homeowners’ policies to efficiently manage our portfolio, our concentration of risk, and our reinsurance expense to optimize profitability. That laser focus on underwriting, in concert with a benign hurricane season, enabled us to once again deliver superior loss and combined ratios in the quarter, along with another quarter of favorable prior-year development. Our growth model includes both voluntary business and Citizens takeouts. We typically analyze both opportunities to find the best combination of business that maximizes our ROE. During the quarter, we participated in one small assumption from Citizens that generated over $22 million in gross premiums written, while our new business voluntary premium set a new quarterly record for Slide with over $65 million of gross premiums written.

Our growth has favorably impacted our balance sheet, and I expect that Slide will be the first and only homeowners insurer in Florida to cross $1 billion in shareholders’ equity, and it will happen in the fourth quarter of 2025. We have carefully and thoughtfully created the most successful coastal specialty insurer in the country, as evidenced by our industry-leading performance. Our balance sheet is just as impressive as our earnings to date. Slide does not have an external quota share, and our net written premium to consolidated capital is approximately one-to-one, and our debt-to-capital ratio is only 3.5%. Moving forward, we intend to use our balance sheet and profitability to accelerate growth beginning in 2026. Near-term growth is a key driver to long-term success, and we are at a stage in our life cycle where growth initiatives are becoming more of our central focus.

It will take time to develop, launch, and scale new growth initiatives, but it is important to lay the foundation for growth in the near term. There is a cost to scaling top line as we invest in systems and personnel, but we feel that the investment will pay dividends as we move forward, even if it has an impact to our bottom line in the short term. I noted on our last call that we were reserving underwriting capacity in anticipation of significant fourth-quarter takeouts of Citizens’ policies in Florida. I am very pleased to note that for the month of October, we assumed 60,186 policies from Citizens. We continue to outperform the broader market on our ability to underwrite Citizens’ policies, as evidenced by the October takeout, which was the largest policy assumption in the Florida market.

While we only assume appropriately underwritten policies, these takeouts typically have superior combined ratios, meaning they should be further accretive to our net income moving forward. Our decision to take a conservative underwriting approach in the second quarter in order to save underwriting capacity for the fourth quarter was the right decision, and the company is in a substantially better position as we approach year-end. While we expect growth in policies in the fourth quarter, we are also making solid progress with respect to expanding our footprint in additional states. We experienced substantial growth in South Carolina during the third quarter as we continue to expand on this coastal opportunity. We also filed for products and rates in New York and New Jersey.

While timing is subject to regulatory approval, we are hopeful that we will begin writing by-parallel tailored products in those states in the first half of 2026, which is consistent with our original timeline. We are also making solid progress with our California launch using excess and surplus lines products. Given our strong results, we believe that the market is not recognizing the fair value of our company. In response, our board of directors authorized a $75 million repurchase program at the end of August, which we used in the third quarter to repurchase over 1.4 million shares at an average price of $14.22, which I am confident will produce a meaningful ROE for all shareholders. Our prior share repurchase authorization has approximately $55 million remaining.

Given our confidence in our long-term strategy, the board today increased our authorization to $120 million, with $100 million in remaining authorization that will be available to repurchase shares. As a result, we plan to aggressively buy back stock until we believe the share price is trading in a manner that reflects our fair value. Given our strong balance sheet and our acceleration in earnings, we have abundant capital to return capital to shareholders if the market value is understated while still executing on our core business plan, including growth. On the back of our success thus far in the October Citizens takeouts, we are currently expecting another meaningful amount of takeouts to be assumed in November and December. Post-November, we are planning to provide an update on our expectations for our fourth quarter 2025 results as the composition of our book is changing.

This guidance will be very important for investors in updating their outlook. Additionally, we expect to provide our outlook for 2026 when we report our fourth quarter earnings. As mentioned in our S-1, we remain steadfast in our commitment to strong corporate governance and transparent oversight, particularly with respect to executive compensation. In preparation for the 2026 proxy season, we have engaged Compensation Advisory Partners as our independent compensation consultant to ensure our executive pay program aligns with prevailing executive compensation parameters and best practices. The company is currently exempt from say-on-pay, but I believe we should always solicit investor feedback on compensation issues. Consistent with our focus on good governance, we also expect to incorporate investor feedback into our executive compensation framework and long-term strategy. Before turning the call over to Jesse, I want to take a minute to touch on our corporate structure.

The past several years have been nothing short of a 24/7 grind to grow Slide from an idea in my mind to fruition. We have scaled from startup in a manner that no one outside of our team thought was possible. We believe that there is tremendous opportunity ahead of us, and it will take a tireless effort by our team to continue to execute in the manner in which we are accustomed. To that end, we have made adjustments to our corporate structure to better align our talents and resources, enabling us to execute our business plan more effectively. We are pleased to announce that Chaz Powell has been promoted to Chief Revenue Officer and will oversee all aspects related to revenue, including sales, underwriting, agency services, and product.

Shannon Lucas is stepping down as Chief Risk Officer, and Matt Larson has been promoted to CRO to fill this role. Matt will oversee all aspects of risk management and our multi-billion-dollar reinsurance program. Meanwhile, Shannon will now serve as our President and Chief Operating Officer, which allows us to consolidate all operational aspects under her leadership. In addition, Andy O’Miridis will join our team effective December 1 as our Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President. Andy has over 30 years of experience and has held key roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Chubb, AIG, Argo, Kemper, and Amerisafe, and has significant public market experience. Jesse Schalk will remain with Slide until March 2 to help facilitate a smooth and seamless transition. I want to thank Jesse for his partnership over the past several years, which, of course, included helping to bring us public earlier this year.

Jesse is one of the best insurance executives I’ve ever worked with and is a brilliant problem solver and strategist. Over the past three years, he has been instrumental in our success, and I wish him all the best moving forward. We appreciate your continued interest and support of Slide, and with that, I’ll now turn the call over to Jesse Schalk to provide some color on our very successful third quarter. Thank you, Bruce, and good afternoon to everyone on the call. Let’s go right into our third quarter results. For the third quarter of 2025, gross premiums written were $463.4 million, a 34% increase compared to $346.3 million in the prior year period, driven by the acquisition of additional policies from Citizens, as well as consistent year-over-year renewal rates of existing written policies, including Citizens’ policies assumed in prior quarters, and a strong increase in commercial residential premiums.

At the end of the quarter, we had approximately 351,700 policies in force, up 28% from one year ago and up modestly from June 30th. As Bruce mentioned, we kept policies in force relatively consistent throughout the quarter to preserve growth capacity for this quarter’s Citizens takeouts, of which we assumed 60,186 policies in October. This provides us a natural opportunity to touch briefly on how Citizens assumptions work. It’s important to note that while we may assume a number of Citizens policies in a given month, the policies all have different renewal dates, assumed premiums, and renewal premiums. As Bruce mentioned, we plan to provide an update post-November on our expectations for fourth quarter 2025 after we have assumed these policies.

Total revenue of $265.7 million increased 33% compared to $200.1 million in the prior year period, primarily attributable to an increase in net premiums earned due to the assumption of policies from Citizens and increased renewals of existing policies. Losses and loss adjustment expenses incurred net were $33.2 million, and there were no incurred losses from significant storms. This was compared to $111.7 million, which was inclusive of catastrophe losses of $55.8 million from hurricanes Debbie and Helene in the prior year period. This decrease in the quarter was primarily due to lower-than-expected payments on losses incurred in earlier quarters of the current year, as well as prior years. While the third quarter of 2025 was a benign weather season for hurricanes and convective storms, the company continues to reserve for losses conservatively. Our loss ratio for the third quarter of 2025 improved to 13.7%.

Compared to 60.4% in the prior year period. Third quarter loss ratios included $33.5 million of favorable development of prior accident years compared to $1.4 million of adverse development in the prior year period. Policy acquisitions and other underwriting expenses in the quarter were $36.4 million compared to $22 million in the prior year period. The increase was primarily attributable to greater policies in force on a year-over-year basis, as well as fewer premiums earned on Citizens’ policies in their assumption period. G&A expenses were $45 million compared to $38 million in the prior year period, due primarily to the growth in staffing to support the company’s increased policies in force.

Our combined ratio improved to 48.5% compared to 94.3% in the prior year period, primarily as a result of increased net premiums earned from growth of policies in force, a decrease in cat losses from non-hurricane weather activity, and the release of reserves related to non-cat events. Net income more than six-upped to $111 million compared to $17.6 million in the prior year period. Diluted earnings per share for the third quarter of 2025 was $0.79. Return on equity was 12.1% compared to 4.9% in the prior year period, driven by increased earnings in the third quarter of 2025 due to reduction in losses incurred. As of September 30, 2025, we have generated a return on equity of 39.2% year to date.

Turning to our balance sheet, as of September 30, 2025, we had cash and cash equivalents of $861.6 million, an additional $539.9 million of restricted cash held for the benefit of our captive reinsurance cells, invested assets of $478.6 million, and long-term debt of $35.0 million. In the third quarter, we repurchased approximately 1.4 million shares at a weighted average price of $14.22. There is approximately $100 million available under our expanded repurchase program. We believe our capitalization and liquidity will enable the company to continue to profitably grow our business over the long term. With that, I thank you for your time, and we will now open up the call for Q&A. Operator. Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star 1 on your telephone keypad.

A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the queue. You may press Star 2 to remove yourself 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. The first question comes from the line of Alex Scott with Barclays. Please proceed with your question. Hey. Thanks for taking the question. So, yeah, results look really strong. It seems like you’ve got some good growth opportunities. Can you talk to me about the increased authorization on the buyback and just how you’re thinking about the trade-off between the growth opportunities you have and, obviously, if the stock’s trading below its intrinsic value at this point? Yeah, that’s a great question, and it’s something that we’ve been really paying attention to, particularly throughout the third quarter.

We have abundant capital, and our earnings are expanding. Our growth is expanding. We have more than enough capital to repurchase shares if the share price is trading below fair value while still executing on every aspect of our business plans, including accelerated growth. If we have the abundance of capital and we are trading below our fair value, it is a great way to return ROE to our shareholders, and we are not afraid to aggressively repurchase stock until the share price normalizes in a range that we feel reflects the intrinsic value of the company. Yep. Understood. Okay. Next one, could you talk about the environment in Florida a bit? I mean. We have heard about Progressive doing so well. They had to, I think, refund some premiums back to policyholders. I know that is auto, not home. But.

Are you seeing any of the national carriers or any of the Florida-specific carriers beginning to heat up in terms of competition? Certainly still getting a lot of growth, particularly with the Citizens, but I’m just trying to understand how we should think about the more organic piece of the growth within Florida over the next couple of years. Yeah. We’re not really seeing the nationals here at this point in time. I’m aware of that Progressive refund, but you’re correct. That’s auto. That’s not our line of business, and I’m not sure the details behind why they did that. As far as we look at market and competition in Florida, it feels very stable compared to what it was last quarter and last year. There are some smaller carriers with very limited capital that are out there. They can’t really write a lot against a very small capital base.

We’re not really seeing them in any meaningful way. When you look at our voluntary premiums that we wrote in Florida, I mean, it was a record voluntary production quarter for us. Same with South Carolina. There is still an abundant opportunity to expand top line via new business, organic sales. We’ve got a great rate structure, reputation, and we have the best balance sheet, we believe, in the industry. All those are attractive features to our agent force, and I’m just happy to report that the growth has continued to trend higher and above our internal expectations. Great. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Tommy McJoint with KBW. Please proceed with your question. Hey, good evening, guys. You spoke a little bit there and in the prepared remarks about the growth opportunities in some of those other coastal markets outside of Florida.

Beyond November, do you anticipate Citizens’ takeouts will also remain a significant contributor to the growth opportunity into 2026? Yeah. I mean, there’s still ample opportunity at Citizens, but what we need to do is see what policies were actually assumed in the fourth quarter. We’re going to get some updated data from Citizens within the next 30 days or so. We’ll see what’s there, what’s left. There’s still opportunity there. Obviously, the more policies that are removed, the lower the opportunity becomes. We’re very bullish about our fourth quarter assumptions. We’re going to update the market on those statistics here in just a few weeks. There’s still growth opportunities there, but I think our focus is rightfully focused on expanding our voluntary distribution channels, products into new states as quickly as we can.

We’ve spent the last three years growing and scaling the balance sheet, and we wanted to have really an AM Best level balance sheet. We have that now, writing out a one-to-one net premium to consolidated capital. It’s pretty unheard of in Florida. Now it’s time to shift into growth mode. Which sounds kind of weird because we’ve grown in three years from zero to our current numbers, but we do think there is a very large growth opportunity outside of Florida, and that’s really what our focus is going to be on as we move into 2026. Got it. And you mentioned that one-to-one ratio there of net written to capital. Do you think that’s the right number to use going forward for you guys, just to stay conservative?

Perhaps as you expand outside of Florida, does that enable you to write at a higher premium leverage if you have more diversification? Can you talk about how that number might trend? Yeah. It’s an incredible number to have as a coastal specialty insurer, and I mean, nobody has a number like that. It’s just a hallmark of stability when you have a really good balance sheet. To answer your question, we can absolutely put more leverage on. With our earnings profile and the ROEs that we are generating, which are just absolutely incredible, we’re going to have even more capital coming into the equation here in 2026 that we can use to grow and scale and maintain conservative writing ratio leverage. Thanks, Bruce. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press Star 1 on your telephone keypad.

A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the queue. You may press Star 2 to remove yourself from the queue. For anyone using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the Star keys. The next question comes from the line of Paul Newsom with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question. Good afternoon. Thanks for the call. There has been a fair amount of discussion about tort reform having, if anything, a bigger effect than folks expected. That, in turn, putting a little pressure on rates. Stalled rates. Do you anticipate having to stall some of your peers and cut rates a little bit because of the tort reform? I guess, relatedly, what is going on with the inflation-guarded offsets? Yeah. Good question, Paul.

I mean, we’ve been steadily decreasing rates for the last two years, so that trend is still kind of intact. You get a lot of variability, too. This year, you look at the first nine months of 2025, it’s been a very light FTS, severe convective storm season. We haven’t had really any hurricane activity, of course. That is helping loss ratios a lot, but you also should expect that there will be a little bit more weather-related losses as you move forward because this year was such an aberration. We don’t really see big rate decreases on the horizon at this time. A lot of the rate that we have is really driven by our reinsurance program. Now, if reinsurance rates go the way some people are expecting them to go, maybe that has an offset. We buy more reinsurance than anybody else in the market.

We buy 30-band coverage. We’re buying to a level well in excess of regulatory requirements. As long as we have the expenses to justify the rate, I really don’t see a meaningful move. At this point, no, we don’t have any plans for significant rate decreases because we’ve already taken down rate, and we think that the market’s relatively stable at this price point. Is there any inflation-guarded book through as well? Yeah. Sorry. Yes. We are doing 5% on TIV at renewal. It’s important to mark your book appropriately. There are impacts on rebuilding costs due to tariffs, etc. We need to make sure that we are maintaining a portfolio that is in line with the inflationary pressures to rebuild the home. The growth rate and premium came in a little bit better than we expected this quarter.

I think last quarter, there was talk about sort of a shift in where you were picking up policies within Florida that sort of reduced the average premium. Is there any sort of similar thing happening this quarter with the shift in kind of where you’re picking up premiums versus maybe last quarter or something that’s in there that’s not just pure TIV changes? Yeah. I mean, Paul, when you get to look at our treaty date, it is June 1 every year. And so when we’re looking at Q2, we’ve given projections to the reinsurers as to what our probable maximum loss statistics are going to look like. We wanted to be conservative in the second quarter and not overshoot those projections out of the gate. It gives you no wiggle room as you move through hurricane season.

Once we got through the Q2 numbers, we took a harder look at what our trends look like. We had room for growth. We had record growth in the third quarter. We also saw a meaningful increase in commercial residential premium. And those have much higher average premiums than a personal lines policy. And so that contributed pretty significantly to the growth rate, and that is continuing into the fourth quarter. I appreciate the help, Brent. Thank you very much. Thanks, Paul. The next question is a follow-up from Alex Scott with Barclays. Please proceed with your question. Hi. Thanks for taking the follow-up. I wanted to ask about just the strength of the balance sheet comments you have made. One of the things we have seen, I guess, even more broadly across the industry is a fair amount of favorable PYD from property.

Just in light of the benign season as well. Any comments you can make about, I do not know, whether it is the IBNR levels in your reserves. Or anything else you can tell us about the way that you have been booking. Attritional losses that gives you confidence in making the statements you are making around the balance sheet strength? Yeah. That is a great question. We are a relatively newer company. We have only really been on risk for three and a half years. As a result of that, we rely a lot on industry experience as we look at what our loss reserves should be booked at. As we have kind of gone through our life cycle over the past three and a half years, we have, as I have stated, numerous times, taken a very conservative approach to our reserving philosophy. We are at the point now where we are seasoning more.

We have more clarity into the ultimate development of those losses. Wherever we feel like we are comfortable in terms of a PYD release, we are going to go ahead and do that. We did it in the second quarter a little bit. There was a little over $30 million pre-tax that was released in the third quarter. As we continue to age out the prior quarters and prior years, we are going to take a harder look at where the reserves are, and we will mark the book accordingly. It has been nothing but a favorable trend, really, for us over the past several years. Reserve releases, as we move into the end of each calendar year, have been a pretty normal phenomenon at Slide. Did it last year. We are doing it again this year.

That’s really a reflection of a very conservative reserve profile. Yep. Understood. That makes sense. Just as a housekeeping item, could you tell us what the cats were, if there were any this quarter? I just didn’t see it in the Sheryl DeLetter. I wanted to make sure I had the number. Yeah. This was a cat-free quarter, which is our favorite type of quarter. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, and that concludes the question-and-answer session. That also concludes today’s teleconference. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time.

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