Old Republic International Earnings Call Nuggets: Expense Catch-Ups and Earned Premium Drops

Old Republic International (NYSE:ORI) recently reported its fourth quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call.

Expense Catch-Ups

Geoffrey Dunn – Dowling & Partners: If you could, I got two questions for you, one, in the Title segment, another strong result, but with revenues up we did see the margin slip sequentially was that just like an agency direct business mix issue or was there any kind of catch-up recall on comp or other expense catch-up at the fourth quarter?

Aldo C. Zucaro – Chairman and CEO: I think you have little bit of all of those, Geoff. We had some litigation cost that we try to address in the quarter, actually we addressed them in most of the three quarters of last year, then as I recall. So, we had some beefing up of general expense types of reserving. But nothing that is of such a significance, Geoff, that it would have changed the pattern of earnings that you see it’s still strong earnings pattern. And as Rande said before, we feel good about what looks like a strong year in 2013.

Geoffrey Dunn – Dowling & Partners: on the GI side, you have two questions; one can you give any color as to any kind of cat impact on the commercial auto line this quarter? And then two, as you think about the loss cost pressures on workers’ comp are your options basically just to weigh this out and let the top line take care of it or is there any incentive to maybe think about shifting mix a little bit to help that even out the results we go into ’13, ’14.