“Línea Directa ha hecho los deberes para estar en un momento de crecimiento”. Carlos Rodríguez

Hello, good afternoon Marta, how are you? Well, first of all, very good. First of all, thank you very much for having us as always here at Negocios Televisión, it's a pleasure to have Línea Directa. So, the company reported a profit of 25.4 million euros in the first half, driven mainly by the strong improvement in the underwriting margin and good commercial performance.

Well, I think the assessment is very positive. I think it reflects everything we have been saying since last year, where the company made a series of strategic decisions to recover the margin we had lost due to inflationary pressure, which has a very significant impact on our most important business, which is motor. And I believe that all those actions, which also led to a significant loss of customers, are clearly beginning to turn around. From my point of view, what I would highlight is a very good evolution of the technical margin: our combined ratio at the company level stood at 95.5%, and in the last quarter even at 93.6%. I think that is an enviable combined ratio. At the same time, we have begun to see evolution in terms of customer growth. In the first quarter we said it would be difficult, and that in the second quarter we would start to see that positive evolution, and that is what we have seen. We have grown by about 19,000, almost 20,000 customers in the year-to-date. And I think these two indicators show that the company has done its homework in the past and is now truly in a moment of growth, both in terms of volumes and in terms of the income statement and profit. A profit of 25.4 million euros before taxes means 40 million euros more than last year. Premiums are also growing.

Well, we have improved a lot. I think last year, with the average premium increases we made, we lost portfolio. However, what we are seeing as the year progresses is that our customer retention capacity is frankly very good, much better than last year, and that is logically helping us because our customers are not looking for alternatives outside Línea Directa, and that helps the earned premium a lot. On the other hand, in the individualized price adjustments we make, it is true that last year we had to make perhaps more severe adjustments than this year, mainly because we did our homework before the competition. The market is raising average premiums by nearly 9%, and we already did that exercise last year, and all that is helping us retain better and also attract much more than we had anticipated. And I think that as the year evolves we will see these figures continue to improve when we also analyze the different legs of the business.

Well, the main driver continues to be our auto business. It is true that it no longer has the same weight as a few years ago when it was practically all of our revenue, but motor/auto is still the growth lever of the company. We are very satisfied with how we do this business; I think we do it very differently from our competitors, very directly, and it remains the big driver of our business. However, for some time now our CEO has been indicating that we want to become more of a multi-product company, and that is what we are working on. The home business already has a significant presence and weight in the income statement in terms of premiums, around 13%, and our health business, which is the youngest, having only been around since 2018, is also starting to gain relevance. So, motor remains the key element for our growth, but home already contributes a very important volume of premiums, and health, well, I think it has improved a lot. So I believe the company's evolution will be towards a much more multi-product company, and as you have seen, this year we have already launched anti-occupation insurance, pet insurance, that is, we are gradually adding products to our portfolio.

Well, 0.01, I prefer to talk about 15 million, which sounds more relevant, but you're right, and we should also look at it in terms of dividend yield, in absolute terms. Correct, correct. Well, we already said it, I think I said it already in the first quarter. In the first quarter the company was already in the second quarter making money, but the board wanted to be very prudent regarding dividend distribution. In the first quarter we said that we were going to see the evolution, try to consolidate those positive results. And in the second quarter, well, they have been consolidated, the results have been consolidated in a way. I think the board, while still prudent — because we are talking about a payout of approximately 59% — has made the decision to start rewarding the shareholder, which I think is very, very, very important. This is a company that historically has had quite a high dividend when things were going much better from an earnings point of view. And since the company has returned to profitability and the results are very good, what we have to do is reward shareholders. If you don't have another use for the funds, which we don't at the moment, you have to reward the shareholder.

Well, very positive. I think the evolution we have had, if we look at separate quarters, we had a very good first quarter, we have had an excellent second quarter, and I think that will be the evolution until the end of the year of the company. We will see how things evolve. We have to be a little careful in the home business with weather events because the first half was very good from a weather perspective because there were practically none, but I would be very optimistic about the evolution in the remaining two quarters. And I think this company will ultimately have a year of, let's say, a return to normality from a results perspective.