So now let's move on to the next stock that I want to talk about which is Skyward. Skyward is a stock that I've also talked about on my channel here a few times and I actually bought a small position in the low 40s but I ended up selling it because I couldn't build the conviction in this business since it is in the insurance industry and the insurance industry tends to be out of my circle of competence.
It's just a really hard industry for me to understand. That said, the stock has done very well, especially after reporting its earnings. And from trough to peak, it did see about a 53% gain there.
And it is still up about 35% from the lows that it set in before earnings. And I continue to believe that this is still a very well-managed interesting insurance business. So, I want to run you through some of the highlights from the earnings report.
So, this screenshot shows us the summary of the earnings. And here we can see that premiums were up 17.5%. Gross written premiums increased by 13.3%. The combined ratio is still very low at 89.5%.
They have begun buying back shares. Book value is up 14.6% and earnings per share increased by 46% to $130. These numbers on their own are very impressive, but they're even more impressive because the insurance industry as a whole is going through a softer market.
I don't know if you guys know this, but the insurance industry is quite cyclical by nature, and a lot of Skyward's competitors are seeing flat to slight declines in their growth.
So, Skyward is one of the only businesses that I have seen in the entire insurance industry that is still growing and not just growing, but also growing by well into the double digits.
And I believe that this suggests that the business is actually still very well-managed and they have a little bit of a competitive advantage. This next screenshot shows us some of the longerterm growth of their KPIs.
And we can see that their written premiums are growing very strong. Again, earnings per share hit an all-time high of $1.30 and it is consistently growing on a quarterly basis.
On an annualized basis, Skyward is also doing $5.20 in earnings per share now. And as we saw, book value grew 14.6% 6% to $28.55 now. So across the board, Skyward is still posting strong results and seeing very good growth.
This next screenshot from their quarterly investor presentation shows us their insurance portfolio and it is very diverse. They operate in 11 different industries and divisions with the largest being only 12% of the portfolio.
And this does give Skyward a competitive advantage because if one area of their portfolio is seeing weakness, then they can slow that down or even shrink that portfolio and go over to the different segments of their portfolio that are seeing growth.
And this is how they continue to grow through different market cycles. And this next screenshot shows exactly what I am talking about. So their gross premiums written and their accident and health segment is up 58%.
However, their captive segment saw a 16.6% 6% decline. And if you just pause the video and take a look at all of their different industries here, you can see the ones that they are accelerating and the ones that they are pulling back on.
So again, if a certain line of insurance is seeing weakness, then they can slow it down and accelerate the ones that are seeing strength and that lets them grow through market cycles.
So now, let's head back over to Stock Unlock, and I want to show you a couple of their KPIs here really quickly. And the first one is simply their long-term revenue growth. Since the fourth quarter of 2021, they have compounded their revenue by about 29.4% annually.
And you can clearly see that their revenue growth rates are actually accelerating and this is a clear outlier in the insurance industry right now. This is the same story with Skyward's earnings.
However, their earnings have been a little bit more volatile historically. But over the longer term, they have compounded by 42.4% 4% and in the most recent quarter, their earnings were still up 46% on a year-over-year basis, doing $188 million in earnings now and hitting an all-time high.
Let's now quickly take a look at their PE and they're currently sitting at a price to earnings ratio of about 13.6. They're clearly not as cheap as they were when I initially started covering the stock when they were around 10 times earnings, but if you take a look relative to their history, the stock is still on the lower end of its range.
If we also take a look at their forward price to earnings ratio, we can see that it is sitting at about 11 now, which is still well below the company's historical averages and median.
However, again, it's not as low as it was back in June when it was selling for only eight times forward earnings. So, when it comes to Skyward, I think that it's huge valuation disconnect that it was seeing earlier on this year has largely corrected itself.
However, I still think that this business is selling for a very fair price today, especially if it can continue to grow by double digits over the longer term, especially as we leave that cyclical down cycle in the insurance market.
This business has done an incredible job growing. Its management seems very conservative and it seems like a very well-run insurance company. So, this is one that I would definitely add to your watch list, but again, it's not one that I'm going to be adding to my portfolio because I've tried and tried.
I actually bought a small position and then I ended up selling it because it's just out of my circle of competence and I couldn't gain