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AMSF, AMERISAFE Inc.

Insurance — Property & Casualty financial

AMERISAFE, Inc. is a specialty provider of workers' compensation insurance focused on small to mid-sized employers engaged in hazardous industries, principally construction, trucking, logging and lumber, agriculture, services, manufacturing, and maritime.

We employ a proactive, disciplined approach to underwriting employers and providing comprehensive services intended to lessen the overall incidence and cost of workplace injuries.

We provide safety services at employers' workplaces as a vital component of our underwriting process and to promote safer workplaces.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K

AMSF · AMERISAFE Inc.

The business

What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.

Revenue · FY2025

$317M

+2.7% YoY · −1% 5-yr CAGR

Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average

Revenue $325M 5-yr avg $310M

Combined ratio 92% 5-yr avg 87%

Loss ratio 61% 5-yr avg 58%

Return on equity 19% 5-yr avg 19%

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: Underwriting discipline and the float. What decides it: whether the combined ratio stays below 100% so the policies make money on their own, how large the float is against equity, and what that float earns once it is invested. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
Is it a good business?: It underwrites at a profit, about a 92% combined ratio (it keeps roughly 8% of premiums before investing the float). Book value per share, the measure Berkshire is judged on, has compounded about −6% a year across the record. The float runs about 2.4× equity, the leverage that magnifies both the underwriting and the investing. Whether the discipline holds through a soft market, and how the float is invested, are what the 10-K decides.

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, 2016–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left

2016’16	2017’17	2018’18	2019’19	2020’20	2021’21	2022’22	2023’23	2024’24	2025’25	TTMTTMMar 2026
											Income statement
$397M	$375M	$381M	$370M	$339M	$316M	$299M	$307M	$309M	$317M	$325M	RevenueRevenue
$369M	$346M	$350M	$333M	$304M	$276M	$272M	$267M	$271M	$283M	$289M	Premiums earnedPremiums
$28M	$29M	$30M	$32M	$29M	$25M	$27M	$31M	$29M	$27M	$27M	Investment incomeInv. inc.
$78M	$46M	$72M	$93M	$87M	$66M	$56M	$62M	$55M	$47M	$46M	Net incomeNet inc.
31%	44%	18%	20%	19%	17%	18%	20%	20%	20%	20%	Effective tax rateTax rate
											Cash flow & returns
$114M	$131M	$98M	$79M	$63M	$38M	$28M	$30M	$24M	$11M	$10M	Operating cash flowOp. cash
$113M	$130M	$97M	$78M	$62M	$37M	$26M	$29M	$23M	$9M	$8M	Owner earningsOwner earn.
≈ 77%	≈ 85%	≈ 83%	≈ 77%	≈ 76%	≈ 86%	≈ 84%	≈ 86%	≈ 89%	≈ 91%	≈ 92%	Combined ratioCombined
54%	60%	58%	53%	52%	58%	56%	56%	58%	60%	61%	Loss ratioLoss
17%	11%	17%	22%	20%	16%	18%	21%	22%	19%	19%	Return on equityROE
0%	−9%	−3%	1%	−0%	−9%	−14%	−11%	−12%	−1%	−1%	Retained to equityRetained/eq
											Balance sheet
$743M	$772M	$798M	$773M	$761M	$745M	$696M	$674M	$651M	$614M	$602M	Float (reserves)Float
$1.5B	$1.5B	$1.5B	$1.5B	$1.5B	$1.4B	$1.3B	$1.2B	$1.2B	$1.1B	$1.1B	Total assetsAssets
$89M	$81M	$55M	$44M	$62M	$71M	$61M	$39M	$44M	$62M	$34M	Cash & investmentsCash+inv
$456M	$425M	$410M	$430M	$439M	$399M	$317M	$292M	$257M	$252M	$247M	Shareholders’ equityEquity
											Per share
19.2M	19.2M	19.3M	19.3M	19.4M	19.4M	19.3M	19.2M	19.2M	19.1M	18.9M	Shares out (diluted)Shares
$4.05	$2.40	$3.71	$4.80	$4.47	$3.39	$2.88	$3.23	$2.89	$2.47	$2.46	EPS (diluted)EPS
$5.86	$6.77	$5.04	$4.03	$3.23	$1.89	$1.35	$1.52	$1.22	$0.47	$0.42	Owner earnings / shareOE/sh
$3.96	$4.29	$4.38	$4.50	$4.58	$5.15	$5.20	$4.85	$4.46	$2.55	$2.59	Dividends / shareDiv/sh
$23.75	$22.10	$21.24	$22.26	$22.66	$20.57	$16.43	$15.21	$13.43	$13.18	$13.07	Book value / shareBVPS

Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded

	9-yr	5-yr
Revenue / share	−2.4%/yr	−1.1%/yr
Owner earnings / share	−24.5%/yr	−32.0%/yr
EPS	−5.4%/yr	−11.2%/yr
Dividends / share	−4.8%/yr	−11.1%/yr
Capital spending / share	+3.1%/yr	+18.8%/yr
Book value / share	−6.3%/yr	−10.3%/yr

The record, charted

FY2016–2025

Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.

Share count

19Mpeak FY2021

Revenue

$317Mlow FY2022

III

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?

Combined ratio ≈ 91%

Underwriting profit

Total benefits, losses and expenses $258M ÷ premiums earned $283M

Industry peers: median 94%

What this means
The heart of a property-casualty insurer: claims and costs as a share of premiums. Below 100% means it is paid to hold the float, the gold standard; above 100% means it loses money on the policies and must make it back on investments. Approximate here, taken from the filer's total benefits, losses and expenses over premiums, so it can sit a point or two off the company's headline figure; a number held below 100% across cycles is the mark of a disciplined underwriter, the rarest thing in the business.
Return on equity 19%

Strong

Net income $47M ÷ equity $252M

Industry peers: median 4%

What this means
What it earns on shareholders' capital, the underwriting result plus what the float earns invested. Durably above the ~10% cost of equity is what compounds book value.

The float

Float (reserves) $614M

2.4× equity

Loss and claim reserves $614M, 2.4× equity

What this means
Money held against future claims and invested in the meantime. Buffett's insight was that good underwriting makes this float cost less than nothing, a pool of other people's money the owners earn on. Measured here from loss and claim reserves only; it excludes unearned premiums and funds held, so the true float is somewhat larger than shown. The larger it is against equity, the more that leverage works, for better or worse.
Investment income $27M

4.4% on the float

Net investment income $27M, 4.4% on the float

What this means
What the float and capital earned this year. This is the second engine: an insurer that breaks even on underwriting still wins if the float is large and invested well.

Does AI threaten the moat?

Low contestability

The moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.

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”	Owner earnings
2021	G. Janelle Frost	$1.9M	$1.1M	$37M
2022	G. Janelle Frost	$1.5M	$2.2M	$26M
2023	G. Janelle Frost	$2.1M	$2.4M	$29M
2024	G. Janelle Frost	$2.3M	$2.7M	$23M
2025	G. Janelle Frost	$2.4M	$2.8M	$9M

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. Owner earnings are the whole business's, from the record above, for the same fiscal years.

Insider ownership2%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
Stock-based compensation$3M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 1% of revenue, equal to 5% 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 →

Which reported numbers are a judgment call?
Management names Income taxes, 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 the underwriting lens. 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	Combined ratio	Loss ratio	ROE
BOWBowhead Specialty Holdings Inc.	$552M	96%	64%	12%
HIPOHippo Holdings Inc.	$469M	107%	—	-43%
GBLIGlobal Indemnity Group, LLC	$451M	—	59%	4%
ASICAtegrity Specialty Insurance Company Holdings	$424M	91%	59%	12%
ACICAmerican Coastal Insurance Corporation	$335M	—	62%	2%
AMSFAMERISAFE Inc.	$317M	84%	57%	18%
NODKNI Holdings Inc.	$285M	—	69%	3%
AIIAmerican Integrity Insurance Group Inc.	$276M	66%	40%	30%
Group median	—	91%	59%	8%

The price

What a price has to assume.

What the price implies

price / tangible book

An insurer is worth a multiple of its tangible book value, and the multiple it deserves is set by the return it earns on that book. Type today’s price; we show what you would be paying against what AMERISAFE Inc.’s record justifies.

Today’s price $

The assumptions Cost of equity 10% Long-term growth 3%

Tangible book / share, delivered−11%/yr’20→’25

The justified multiple is (return on tangible equity − growth) ÷ (cost of equity − growth). An insurer earning exactly its cost of equity is worth about one times tangible book; the premium above that prices each point of durable excess return. A higher cost of equity lowers the justified multiple for an insurer.

Enter a price above to run it.

Price / tangible book—

Justified by the return—

Normalized return on tangible equity18%

Price / book—

Earnings yield—

P/E (3-yr avg ’23–’25)—

Graham’s price gate—

Graham applied the same standards to financial enterprises (Intelligent Investor ch.14): the 15× multiple cap on averaged earnings, and P/E times price-to-book at most 22.5. The gate marks the bargain-hunter’s floor, not a verdict.

Tangible book $247M on 19M shares, a 18% normalized return on it. The dials set the multiple such a return would justify; your price sets the multiple you are paying. It assumes the insurer keeps earning that return; an underwriting cycle, a reserve shortfall or a bad year on the float changes it, which is what the record and the 10-K are for.

Weigh AMSF against another business →

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "AMERISAFE Inc. (AMSF), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/AMSF, data as of 2026-07-09.

Manual order: ← AMSC its page in the Manual AMT →

Industry order: ← ALL the Insurance — Property & Casualty chapter ASIC →