$Lemonade(LMND)$ Best comment I read today from SA, I have no position of LMND, yet
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The majority of bears clearly do not understand how this company operates.
Likewise, the majority of the bulls clearly do not understand how this company operates, either.
Lemonade is pop tech applied to insurance with a garnishing of Buzzwords For Millennials™.The only way Lemonade significantly grows into its premium valuation in an extremely fragmented, mature, and politicized market that has more mathematical science under its belt than NASA, is by finding ways to cut costs that otherwise hide in plain sight.That said, revenue growth for insurance companies is extremely hard to measure, in part due to the arcane ways in which insurance companies calculate revenue. It will take a long time to see if this story does play out, but as it stands, Lemonade is a call option on Millennial pop culture.Baby Boomers used "pop" music to force the Beatles on the world which most people accepted because they were kind of a good band, in some regards. Gen Xers used "pop" to mutilate 1970s rock over the 1980s, ultimately leaving the world with Justin Timberlake and the Emos. Millennials took that garbage and gave us Cardi B. Just imagine what they will do to insurance.
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One brick from the opposite side, also briliant
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This seems too much a rehash of previous arguments and not a sophisticated understanding of how insurance works.
The first question to ask is what does "disruptive" mean? The term is liberally thrown around. The only semi-meaningful definition I can think of is a new approach to a business that fundamentally alters its economics and results in a changing of the industrial hierarchy. Disruption can come from technology, but not necessarily. For example, when US courts reinterpreted general liability clauses in insurance policies in the 1980s so as to cover environmental and asbestos claims it disrupted the industry. Most, if not all, of the leading players were supplanted by insurers without this exposure.
Now as to Lemonade. Saying they use bots, provide a better experience, etc. are not inherently disruptive. The industry has vast quantities of data and is very sophisticated in how it is mined for underwriting decision making. So you need to ask yourself if tech alone will reduced in altering the two key variables that drive insurance economics --> loss ratio and expense ratio.There is little evidence to this point that the answer is yes. Nor anything that points to the answer becoming yes. At this point they should already be able to fully absorb corporate expenses and produce a profit. Keep in mind that the main personal lines companies are massively profitable, have long entrenched customer relationships, retention rates run well above 90%, deep underwriting and pricing systems and most importantly a huge cost of capital advantage vs. Lemonade.Lemonade is totally dependent on reinsurance availability and pricing. Allstate, by comparison, uses reinsurance as an arbitrage against its own capital. They do not need it to exist or succeed. Also, reinsurance is a concentrated, clubby world. As the reinsurers allocate their capacity they will always service their big, important customers first. Lemonade is looking for crumbs. Currently, due to the active storm season and claims from the pandemic, reinsurance markets are under severe stress and capacity issues heading into January renewals. This is really bad news for Lemonade.
Lastly, I have no view on the stock one way or the other. I would caution that like so many tech dependent investment stories that AI (doesn't really exist, but that is another issue), bots and whatever else is the flavor of the day does not confer business success.
Cardi B is fundamentally a better artist than JT tho...