Slide Insurance (SLDE) — Turning Hurricanes Into Spreadsheets

Date: 2025-08-17

The one-minute takeaway

When lawsuit noise falls, pricing gets cleaner, and reinsurance is pre-funded for the bad day, the insurer with the best underwriting discipline turns coastal chaos into compounding. Slide’s edge is exactly that mix: disciplined, data-driven underwriting in Florida and other coastal markets, paired with a deliberately engineered reinsurance tower (including multi-year catastrophe bonds). Add a state policy shift nudging policies from the public insurer back to private hands, and you get a business that can grow premiums without sacrificing loss quality.

How the business makes money

Home insurance is a simple equation with noisy parts:

Premiums in.
Claims, legal and handling costs out.
Overhead out.
Investment income in.

Slide’s engine aims to keep the noisy parts quieter than peers: select better risks, price them precisely, fight fraud early, and buy protection (reinsurance/cat bonds) so that even a nasty storm hits earnings once, not the balance sheet forever. The goal is a low, steady combined ratio (claims + expenses as a % of premiums) through the cycle, not just in lucky weather years.

Why now? Three structural tailwinds

Florida cleaned up the rulebook. Recent reforms (SB 2-A and related laws) curtailed one-way attorney fees and limited post-loss benefit assignments. Translation: fewer opportunistic lawsuits, faster claim resolution, and a more predictable loss trend for well-run carriers. Predictability is gold for pricing.
The state wants policies back in the private market. Florida’s public insurer, Citizens, runs an ongoing Depopulation Program that matches its policies with approved private carriers. For efficient underwriters, this is a pipeline of customers with lower acquisition costs and decent renewal visibility—if you can price the risk correctly.
Multi-year reinsurance, increasingly via cat bonds. Slide has been an active sponsor of Purple Re catastrophe bonds—fully collateralized, multi-year hurricane protection. That locks in capacity and price for several seasons and reduces “year-to-year” roulette. The broader cat-bond market has also been deep and receptive in 2025, helping carriers shift peak risks to investors at rational terms.

What sets Slide apart

Precision first. Segment risks by roof age/materials, micro-geography, and build quality; bind the good, price the questionable, and walk from the rest.
Tower by design, not habit. Use state layers (FHCF), private reinsurance, and cat bonds to cap the “first big hit” at a level earnings can absorb.
Cheap, repeatable growth. Depopulation and digital distribution lower acquisition costs; the real trick is keeping these customers with fair pricing and fast claims.
Culture of “measure twice, bind once.” In catastrophe lines, restraint is an advantage: in some months, the best policy written is the one you didn’t write.

The thesis in one picture you can hold in your head

Imagine two insurers on the same street in Tampa:

Insurer A prices broadly, buys short-dated reinsurance each year, and litigates too many claims.
Insurer B (Slide’s aspiration) prices house-by-house, locks multi-year protection, and stops disputes early.

Both collect $1 of premium. In quiet years, they look similar. In real life—with storms and lawyers—Insurer B’s combined ratio wobbles less and compounds faster. The market pays up for steady profits in an unsteady place.

Valuation sketch

If Slide can keep a mid-60s combined ratio on a larger book and hold reinsurance costs in check with multi-year coverage, its earnings power steps up.
On normalized, through-the-cycle earnings (not a perfect year, not a disaster year), a 10–11× multiple is reasonable for a specialty carrier with visible growth and risk transfer locked in.
Our stance: BUY, 12-month fair value $24 per share (illustrative range $20–$28). That’s the midpoint of a simple “normalized EPS × 10–11×” framework, assuming steady underwriting quality and capacity. (This is not a promise; it’s the price we’d be happy to own more at given the risk/reward.)

What could go right

A quiet storm season. The earnings “bridge” becomes obvious, confidence rises, and the market closes the quality discount.
Smooth depopulation intake. More policies at lower acquisition cost without denting loss quality.
Cheaper, stickier protection. A benign reinsurance market and healthy cat-bond demand extend visibility beyond a single season.

What could go wrong

A big landfall in a dense book. Towers absorb a lot, but not everything. Very large or repeated events could dent earnings and capital.
Policy pushback or pricing friction. Regulators can slow rate adequacy; policyholders can churn if pricing gaps open.
Concentration. Florida remains the center of gravity; diversification takes time.

How to track the thesis at home

Combined ratio — staying in the mid-60s to high-60s through normal weather.
Reinsurance visibility — multi-year coverage in place before hurricane season, including cat bonds.
Litigation/claims handling — lower dispute rates and faster closures post-reform.
Growth quality — new policies from Citizens depopulation that don’t blow up the loss ratio.
Capital cushion — the “first big event” retained loss looks manageable versus annual pre-tax profit.

Bottom line

Insurance in hurricane country will never be quiet. But it doesn’t have to be noisy on the income statement. Slide’s playbook—precise underwriting, pre-funded risk transfer, and low-friction growth—can turn a historically boom-bust niche into something closer to steady compounding. That’s the alpha: less drama per dollar of premium.