Landing a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) and the Bear of the Day, Goosehead Insurance GSHD is a stock that may need to be avoided based on its stretched valuation and inadequate balance sheet.
While Goosehead’s growth has been captivating since going public in 2018, GSHD looks uncomfortably expensive at over $100 a share. This is especially true with broader industry risks on the horizon in key markets such as Los Angeles.
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California Wildfires & Balance Sheet
Although underwriting margins have been very favorable for property/casualty and multi-line insurance companies in recent years (higher inflationary environment), the tragic wildfires in Los Angeles have led to a high number of claims and increased financial burden on insurers.
Notably, Goosehead also has operations in San Diego and Sacramento while other smaller insurance companies have scaled back or left the California market altogether.
Long-standing insurance giants like Progressive (PRG) should be able to sustain and be relatively unaffected but investors will want to be mindful of emerging companies like Goosehead which are more vulnerable to rising costs and have inadequate balance sheets.
To that point, Goosehead only has $50 million in cash & equivalents despite its growing niche as an independent personal lines insurance agency. More concerning, Goosehead is barely solvent with its total assets at $358 million compared to $356 million in total liabilities.
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Goosehead’s Stretched Valuation
Taking away from its compelling growth narrative is that Goosehead stock trades at 55.4X forward earnings and EPS estimates have dropped 10% in the last 30 days for fiscal 2025.
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GSHD is at an alarming premium to its Zacks Insurance-Multi Line Industry average of 9.9X forward earnings with the benchmark S&P 500 at 22.5X. Furthermore, Goosehead still trades at more than 10X sales with the industry average at 1.5X and the benchmark at 5.6X.
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Bottom Line
Scheduled to release its Q4 results on February 19, there appears to be more downside risk ahead for Goosehead stock and it wouldn’t be surprising if the company’s outlook for FY25 is underwhelming.
At current levels, the risk to reward isn’t favorable as a large pullback looks inevitable with GSHD up nearly +200% in the last two years.
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