With a market cap of $2 billion, Lemonade had traded at about eight times its annual sales. Most traditional insurers, like Allstate and Travelers, trade at around one multiple of the year’s sales. The price-to-sales ratio for Lemonade is seemingly reasonable relative to its growth expectations. Since it went public a couple of years ago,…
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Last few months have seen private market investors pouring capital into promising insurtech startups, while the public markets sent the value of recently public insurtech companies lower and lower. The decline in the value of public insurtech unicorns has been an oft-repeating theme. Contrarily, global insurtech venture activity has been hitting new highs. In 2021,…
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In its fourth-quarter and full-year 2021 shareholder letter, Lemonade’s CEO wrote that 2022 is expected to be a year of peak losses. This follows unfavorable development and product mix changes that plummeted 2021 loss ratios into the 90s, 20 points higher over comparable 2020 periods. The projection is that 2022 will see highest losses, with…
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In the past year, technology stocks trailed on Wall Street, but insurtech stocks saw major declines. Lemonade fell to a market cap of $2.3B, more than 50% compared to its trading day price. Since its SPAC merger, Hippo’s market cap dropped to $1.5B from $5B. Root, a car insurance specialist went public in 2020 and…
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2021 has been momentous for deals. From AT&T’s media businesses merger with Discovery, Kansas City Southern railroad’s takeover and Square acquiring BNPL company Afterpay, global deals are on a roll. Transactions are expected to top $5 trillion this year. All this, while the pandemic is rising again, the global economy is still flaky, and developed…
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Insurers seemingly don’t attract the adulation they deserve from investors. Despite a core subset of insurers delivering strong operational results, share-to-price performance has largely lagged other financial companies. The KBW Nasdaq Insurance Index (KIX), which reflects performance of US carriers, has trailed performance of the Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLF), which tracks financial-services companies,…
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