Share count
149Mpeak FY2022
← All companies ← ACRS Manual ACTG → ← ACIC Insurance — Property & Casualty AFG →
ACT, Enact Holdings Inc.
Insurance — Property & Casualty financial
We are a leading private mortgage insurance company serving the United States housing finance market since 1981 with a mission to help people buy a house and keep it their home.
Our principal mortgage insurance customers are originators of residential mortgage loans who typically determine which mortgage insurer or insurers they will use for the placement of mortgage insurance written on loans they originate.
As a private mortgage insurer, we play a critical role in the United States housing finance system.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$1.2B
+2.8% YoY · 2% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $1.2B 5-yr avg $1.2B
Net margin 54.5% 5-yr avg 56.5%
Revenue $312M +1.7% vs yr-ago qtr
Net income $168M yr-ago $166M
Net margin 53.8% yr-ago 54.0%
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What moves the needle
- Commissions on the premiums it places, and organic growth. What decides it: insurance prices in the market, since it earns a slice of them; new business won and kept; and a capital-light fee stream that carries none of the underwriting risk of the insurers it sells for. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on customer concentration, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
- Is it a good business?
- Operating margin has run at the high end of fee-business margins across the record (median 77%, above 25% in 7 of 7 years), the economics of a business that takes a cut without carrying the risk. It earns this on little capital, so return on equity has run near 14%, the leverage of a model that needs almost no plant to grow. A high return that does not fade can mark a moat, but whether the commissions keep renewing as rates turn is what the 10-K settles, not the multiple.
Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, 2019–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | TTMTTMMar 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | ||||||||
| $979M | $1.1B | $1.1B | $1.1B | $1.2B | $1.2B | $1.2B | $1.2B | RevenueRevenue |
| 85.1% | 44.3% | 66.8% | 86.7% | 78.3% | 77.3% | 73.5% | 73.4% | Operating marginOp. mgn |
| 69.2% | 33.5% | 48.9% | 64.3% | 57.7% | 57.3% | 54.6% | 54.5% | Net marginNet mgn |
| $678M | $370M | $547M | $704M | $666M | $688M | $674M | $676M | Net incomeNet inc. |
| 19% | 22% | 21% | 22% | 22% | 22% | 21% | 21% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | ||||||||
| 18% | 10% | 13% | 17% | 14% | 14% | 13% | 13% | Return on equityROE |
| 11% | −2% | 8% | 11% | 10% | 12% | 10% | 10% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| Balance sheet | ||||||||
| — | $5.7B | $5.9B | $5.7B | $6.2B | $6.5B | $6.9B | $7.0B | Total assetsAssets |
| $585M | $453M | $426M | $517M | $636M | $603M | $582M | $549M | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| $3.8B | $3.9B | $4.1B | $4.1B | $4.6B | $5.0B | $5.4B | $5.3B | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | ||||||||
| 163M | 163M | 163M | 163M | 162M | 158M | 149M | 143M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $6.01 | $6.79 | $6.86 | $6.71 | $7.13 | $7.63 | $8.28 | $8.70 | Revenue / shareRev/sh |
| $4.16 | $2.27 | $3.36 | $4.31 | $4.11 | $4.37 | $4.52 | $4.74 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $1.54 | $2.69 | $1.23 | $1.54 | $1.32 | $0.71 | $0.81 | $0.86 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $23.50 | $23.84 | $25.21 | $25.11 | $28.62 | $31.71 | $35.86 | $37.46 | Book value / shareBVPS |
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 6-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +5.5%/yr | +4.0%/yr |
| EPS | +1.4%/yr | +14.7%/yr |
| Dividends / share | −10.1%/yr | −21.3%/yr |
| Book value / share | +7.3%/yr | +8.5%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2019–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$1.2Blow FY2019
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →
Is it a good business?
- Operating margin 73.5%Wide fee margin (≥30%)Operating income $909M ÷ revenue $1.2BIndustry peers: median 11%
What this means
The heart of a insurance broker: how much of each fee dollar survives the cost of running the business. Commissions are a slice of the premiums it places, earned without taking the underwriting risk itself, so it is a capital-light fee stream that rises with new business, retention and the price of insurance. A high margin held for years, through a market it does not control, is the operational mark of a real franchise.
- Net margin 54.6%WideNet income $674M ÷ revenue $1.2B
What this means
What reaches the owner after tax and interest. For a capital-light fee business this should be a wide share of revenue; when it is thin despite a high operating margin, debt taken on for acquisitions is usually the reason, so read it next to the balance sheet.
- Return on equity 13%SolidNet income $674M ÷ equity $5.4BIndustry peers: median 18%
What this means
Because the business ties up little capital, a healthy fee stream throws off a high return on the equity behind it. Read it with the buyback record: returning capital lifts this ratio honestly, but heavy debt taken to do so can flatter it.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Low contestabilityThe moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.
In its own filing Raised, but not as a competitor
The filing raises AI among its risks, but in other terms (security, regulation, energy or the like), not as a competitor to its product.
AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Management, ownership & pay
read the proxy →From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.
| Fiscal year | Chief executive | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Net income |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Mr. Rohit Gupta | $11.0M | $14.1M | $547M |
| 2022 | Mr. Rohit Gupta | $7.9M | $9.5M | $704M |
| 2023 | Mr. Rohit Gupta | $8.1M | $13.9M | $666M |
| 2024 | Mr. Rohit Gupta | $10.0M | $19.0M | $688M |
| 2025 | Mr. Rohit Gupta | $9.9M | $22.9M | $674M |
Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Net income is the whole business's, as filed, for the same fiscal years.
- Insider ownership<1%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- CEO pay ratio61:1
What the chief earns for every dollar the median employee makes, per the 2026 proxy. A high ratio alone settles nothing; some businesses are genuinely top-heavy in scarce skill. A runaway figure is where Buffett starts asking whether the board is doing its job.
- Stock-based compensation$19M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 2% of revenue, equal to 2% of operating profit. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.
What an owner would ask, FY2025
read the 10-K →- How much of the revenue rides on one buyer?≈$149M · 12% of revenue on the largest customer (TTM)
“Our largest customer accounted for 22% of total NIW and 12% of our total revenues for the year ended December 31, 2025, 20% of total NIW and 11% of our total revenues for the year ended December 31, 2024, and 19% of total NIW and 10% of our total revenues for the year ended December 31, 2023.”verify →
- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Revenue recognition, Credit & receivables, Insurance reserves as critical estimates
each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →
The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.
Peers, Insurance — Property & Casualty
The same industry, side by side on fee margins. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.
| Company | Revenue | Op. margin | Net margin | ROE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ERIEErie Indemnity Company | $4.1B | 15.2% | 12.4% | 25% |
| RYANRyan Specialty Holdings Inc. | $3.0B | 16.5% | 3.9% | 11% |
| BWINThe Baldwin Insurance Group Inc. | $1.5B | -3.2% | -4.3% | -6% |
| ACTEnact Holdings Inc. | $1.2B | 77.3% | 57.3% | 14% |
| CRVLCorVel Corp. | $959M | 11.2% | 8.8% | 26% |
| ARXAccelerant Holdings Class A | $913M | -8.3% | -14.2% | -204% |
| HGTYHagerty Inc. | $678M | 4.0% | 7.2% | 52% |
| LIFEEthos Technologies Inc. | $388M | 18.8% | 18.4% | — |
| Group median | — | 13.2% | 8.0% | 14% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFEnact Holdings Inc. is profitable, but its owner-earnings base could not be formed from this filing’s tagged data (operating cash flow or capital spending is missing), so the owner-earnings reverse-DCF has no base to grow. We read the price from both ends instead: type a price to see the profitability it demands, then set the mature margin you would believe and weigh the two against each other. Nothing leaves your browser unless you enter it in your notebook.
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The assumptions
Revenue, delivered2%/yr’20→’25
Enter a price to run it.
Owner earnings it must reach—
Margin the price demands—
Owner-earnings margin today—
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
Two reads of one future. From your price: the owner earnings the company must reach, valued at a mature multiple and discounted back at your rate, expressed as the margin it implies on revenue grown at your rate. From your belief: the mature margin you would credit, set on the dial above. When the margin the price demands runs above the one you would believe, you are paying for a future taken on faith. For a deep cyclical at a trough, normalized through-cycle earnings are the better lens; this mode is for the genuinely unprofitable, and for the profitable business whose capital spending currently outruns its cash.
Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Enact Holdings Inc. (ACT), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/ACT, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← ACRS its page in the Manual ACTG →
Industry order: ← ACIC the Insurance — Property & Casualty chapter AFG →