Share count
100Mpeak FY2021
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ESNT, Essent Group Ltd.
Insurance — Property & Casualty financial
Essent Guaranty, a Pennsylvania-domiciled monoline mortgage guaranty insurance company licensed in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and approved by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and also offer other credit risk management solutions, including contract underwriting, to our customers.
We serve the housing finance industry by providing private mortgage insurance and reinsurance, and title insurance and settlement services to mortgage lenders, borrowers and investors to support homeownership.
All prior period segment information has been recast to conform to the new segment presentation.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$1.3B
+1.5% YoY · 6% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $1.3B 5-yr avg $1.1B
Revenue $336M +5.8% vs yr-ago qtr
Net income $172M yr-ago $175M
Net margin 51.1% yr-ago 55.2%
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 customer concentration, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
- Is it a good business?
- The underwriting result is not cleanly tagged in the filings. Book value per share, the measure Berkshire is judged on, has compounded about 16% a year across the record. The float runs about 0.1× 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 | |||||||||||
| $458M | $577M | $719M | $868M | $955M | $1.0B | $1.0B | $1.1B | $1.2B | $1.3B | $1.3B | RevenueRevenue |
| $423M | $530M | $649M | $777M | $863M | $873M | $843M | $917M | $991M | $984M | $998M | Premiums earnedPremiums |
| $28M | $40M | $64M | $84M | $80M | $89M | $124M | $186M | $222M | $237M | $238M | Investment incomeInv. inc. |
| $223M | $380M | $467M | $556M | $413M | $682M | $831M | $696M | $729M | $690M | $686M | Net incomeNet inc. |
| 29% | 5% | 15% | 16% | 16% | 17% | 16% | 15% | 15% | 16% | 16% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||||
| $275M | $369M | $625M | $590M | $728M | $709M | $589M | $763M | $862M | $856M | $827M | Operating cash flowOp. cash |
| $271M | $366M | $621M | $586M | $725M | $707M | $586M | $759M | $855M | $851M | $821M | Owner earningsOwner earn. |
| 17% | 20% | 20% | 19% | 11% | 16% | 19% | 14% | 13% | 12% | 12% | Return on equityROE |
| — | 20% | 20% | 18% | 9% | 14% | 17% | 12% | 11% | 10% | 10% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| $28M | $47M | $49M | $69M | $375M | $407M | $216M | $260M | $329M | $447M | $486M | Float (reserves)Float |
| $1.9B | $2.7B | $3.1B | $3.9B | $5.2B | $5.7B | $5.7B | $6.4B | $7.1B | $7.4B | $7.6B | Total assetsAssets |
| $160M | $356M | $219M | $387M | $103M | $81M | $81M | $142M | $131M | $123M | $444M | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| $1.3B | $1.9B | $2.4B | $3.0B | $3.9B | $4.2B | $4.5B | $5.1B | $5.6B | $5.8B | $5.7B | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||||||||
| 92.2M | 95.2M | 98.0M | 98.2M | 106M | 112M | 108M | 107M | 107M | 100M | 94.6M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $2.41 | $3.99 | $4.77 | $5.66 | $3.88 | $6.11 | $7.72 | $6.50 | $6.85 | $6.90 | $7.26 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $2.94 | $3.84 | $6.34 | $5.97 | $6.82 | $6.34 | $5.44 | $7.08 | $8.02 | $8.51 | $8.69 | Owner earnings / shareOE/sh |
| — | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.30 | $0.65 | $0.70 | $0.86 | $0.99 | $1.11 | $1.22 | $1.30 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $14.57 | $20.38 | $24.15 | $30.39 | $36.31 | $37.97 | $41.45 | $47.63 | $52.59 | $57.55 | $60.23 | Book value / shareBVPS |
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 9-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +10.9%/yr | +7.0%/yr |
| Owner earnings / share | +12.5%/yr | +4.5%/yr |
| EPS | +12.4%/yr | +12.2%/yr |
| Dividends / share | — | +13.3%/yr |
| Capital spending / share | +8.9%/yr | +26.2%/yr |
| Book value / share | +16.5%/yr | +9.6%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2016–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$1.3Blow FY2016
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?
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median 97%
What this means
Premiums or claims weren't found in the filing data.
- Return on equity 12%SolidNet income $690M ÷ equity $5.8BIndustry peers: median 13%
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) $447M0.1× equityLoss and claim reserves $447M, 0.1× 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 $237Mearned on investmentsNet investment income $237M
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 contestabilityThe 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 | Mark A. Casale | $9.1M | $6.2M | $707M |
| 2022 | Mark A. Casale | $8.9M | $6.2M | $586M |
| 2023 | Mark A. Casale | $8.9M | $20.1M | $759M |
| 2024 | Mark A. Casale | $9.8M | $12.7M | $855M |
| 2025 | Mark A. Casale | $10.0M | $22.4M | $851M |
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.
- Stock-based compensation$21M
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?≈$128M · 10% of revenue on the largest customer (TTM)
“For the year ended December 31, 2025, one customer represented more than 10% of our consolidated revenues.”verify →
- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Revenue recognition, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SKWDSkyward Specialty Insurance Group Inc. | $1.4B | 94% | — | 13% |
| SAFTSafety Insurance Group Inc. | $1.3B | 97% | 65% | 10% |
| ESNTEssent Group Ltd. | $1.3B | — | — | 16% |
| MTGMGIC Investment Corporation | $1.2B | — | — | 14% |
| RDNRadian Group Inc. | $1.2B | — | — | 13% |
| SLDESlide Insurance Holdings Inc. | $1.2B | — | — | 40% |
| AGOAssured Guaranty | $1.1B | 109% | 50% | 7% |
| NMIHNMI Holdings Inc. | $706M | — | — | 15% |
| Group median | — | — | — | 14% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
price / tangible bookAn 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 Essent Group Ltd.’s record justifies.
$
The assumptions
Tangible book / share, delivered10%/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 equity16%
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.
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.
Tangible book $5.6B on 92M shares, a 16% 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.
Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Essent Group Ltd. (ESNT), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/ESNT, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← ESI its page in the Manual ESOA →
Industry order: ← ESGR the Insurance — Property & Casualty chapter FAF →