PRA - ProAssurance Corp

[cr6196]

ProAssurance provide physician and medical product liability insurance (mainly the former). They have a fairly long record of success in the area, grow through acquisitions, management seems pretty good, and there is a record of favourable loss development which leads me to think that the company is slightly overcapitalised. The company is generally underfollowed too. At ~9x trailing earnings and 1.3x book PRA looks fairly cheap but not extraordinarily so as it is hard to see from the outside where they can apply capital in the future...although management has a great record so why not give them the benefit. What puts me off is that the business has a longer tail than I am used to and I really don't have a massive amount of familiarity with the specific category, my general instinct is that it is a fairly dicey business.