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LIFE, Ethos Technologies Inc.
An insurance broker, paid a commission to place coverage without bearing the risk itself.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
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 supplier & input dependence, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
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.
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
Is it a good business?
- Operating margin 18.8%Solid fee marginOperating income $73M ÷ revenue $388MIndustry 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 18.4%WideNet income $71M ÷ revenue $388M
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.
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median 15%
What this means
Equity is zero or negative (often from buybacks), so the ratio would mislead.
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.
Current Position
as of the latest quarter, Mar 31, 2026Can the business pay what it owes this year, off the freshest balance sheet: the quality of the assets, the debt actually coming due, and what a low ratio means here.
- Cash & short-term investments$145M
- Receivables$53M
- Other current assets$61M
- Accounts payable$66M
- Other current liabilities$89M
From the company's latest filing.
Management, ownership & pay
From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid.
- Stock-based compensation$11M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 3% of revenue, equal to 15% 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 Revenue recognition, Stock compensation 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 Brokers
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BWINThe Baldwin Insurance Group Inc. | $1.5B | -3.2% | -4.3% | -6% |
| 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% | — |
| GSHDGoosehead Insurance | $365M | 17.0% | 3.6% | 51% |
| TWFGTWFG Inc. | $249M | 14.8% | 0.7% | 4% |
| NPNeptune Insurance Holdings Inc. | $160M | 53.5% | 23.4% | — |
| Group median | — | 13.0% | 5.4% | — |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFType today's close and see the owner-earnings growth you'd have to believe to justify it, beside what Ethos Technologies Inc. has delivered.
—
9.0% = the 4.55% 10-year Treasury (Jul 15, 2026) + 4.45 points of equity premium. The rate you require is yours to set.
Enter a price above to run it.
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.
Graham capped the multiple at 15×; Buffett and Munger let that rule go: a wonderful business can deserve 50× if the thesis holds. The gate marks the bargain-hunter's floor.
Prefilled with the 10-year Treasury (4.55%, as of Jul 15, 2026). Edit it for today’s exact figure, or a AAA corporate yield.
Graham measured a stock against the bond you could own instead, the heart of his margin of safety. Enter a price above to weigh the owner-earnings yield against this bond.
Owner earnings $55M on 48M shares outstanding (a weighted basic average, the only count this filer tags); net cash $145M. The base is the latest year by default; Normalize values it on the through-cycle median owner-earnings margin (to avoid paying on a peak year). Net of stock comp treats option pay as the expense it is. The dials set the multiple a growth belief justifies; the price, and every dollar on this page, is yours.
Manual order: ← LIF its page in the Manual LII →
Industry order: ← HGTY the Insurance Brokers chapter MMC →