Cincinnati Financial Earnings Call Insights: Margin Improvement and Workers’ Comp

Cincinnati Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:CINF) recently reported its fourth quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call.

Margin Improvement

Michael Zaremski – Credit Suisse: Very impressive margin improvement. One segment that really stood out was the commercial property. If I’m calculating this correctly, I’m getting an accident year excluding cat combined ratio of 27%. If that’s correct, is there a non-recurring element benefiting that ratio?

Steven J. Johnston – President and CEO: Mike, we’ve got some numbers here I want to check real quick before we answer that. You’re looking at commercial property? That loss ratio is at the current accident year loss ratio 28.1 improved from 31.1 and that’s before catastrophe losses. 28.1 before catastrophe losses versus 31.1 fourth quarter a year ago. And then for the full year, which I think really for all of our lines is one to look at as well, it’s 46.1 and 69.7 for the full-year 2012 compared to 2011 and that’s current accident year before catastrophe losses.

Michael Zaremski – Credit Suisse: So I guess the moral of the story is (I need to kind of take for you guys) last 12 months average more so than looking at the absolute level this quarter versus – I guess it’s just that ratio – that’s like a very, very good ratio.

Steven J. Johnston – President and CEO: That’s a good point Mike and we look at all the numbers obviously, but we do tend to focus on the full year numbers.