Contrasting Lincoln National (NYSE:LNC) & Slide Insurance (NASDAQ:SLDE)

Slide Insurance (NASDAQ:SLDE) and Lincoln National (NYSE:LNC) are both mid-cap finance companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, earnings, risk, dividends, profitability, institutional ownership and valuation.

Volatility and Risk

Slide Insurance has a beta of 0.13, suggesting that its share price is 87% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Lincoln National has a beta of 1.16, suggesting that its share price is 16% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Dividends

Slide Insurance pays an annual dividend of $0.28 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.0%. Lincoln National pays an annual dividend of $1.80 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.5%. Slide Insurance pays out 6.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Lincoln National pays out 15.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Both companies have healthy payout ratios and should be able to cover their dividend payments with earnings for the next several years.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Slide Insurance and Lincoln National”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Slide Insurance	$1.16 billion	2.74	$443.96 million	$4.10	6.60
Lincoln National	$18.21 billion	0.42	$1.18 billion	$11.54	3.45

Lincoln National has higher revenue and earnings than Slide Insurance. Lincoln National is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Slide Insurance, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

72.8% of Lincoln National shares are owned by institutional investors. 50.8% of Slide Insurance shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 1.0% of Lincoln National shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares Slide Insurance and Lincoln National’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Slide Insurance	40.02%	50.69%	18.39%
Lincoln National	12.21%	17.35%	0.41%

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and recommmendations for Slide Insurance and Lincoln National, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Slide Insurance	0	2	6	1	2.89
Lincoln National	1	5	7	0	2.46

Slide Insurance currently has a consensus price target of $25.60, suggesting a potential downside of 5.43%. Lincoln National has a consensus price target of $48.67, suggesting a potential upside of 22.27%. Given Lincoln National’s higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Lincoln National is more favorable than Slide Insurance.

Summary

Slide Insurance beats Lincoln National on 9 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Slide Insurance

Launched in 2021, we are a technology enabled, fast-growing, coastal specialty insurer. We focus on profitable underwriting of single family and condominium policies in the property and casualty (“P&C”) industry in coastal states along the Atlantic seaboard through our insurance subsidiary, Slide Insurance Company (“SIC”). We utilize our differentiated technology and data-driven approach to focus on market opportunities that are underserved by other insurance companies. We acquire policies both from inorganic block acquisitions and subsequent renewals, as well as new business sales through a combination of independent agents and our direct-to-consumer(“DTC”) channel, through which we sell our insurance products directly to end consumers, without the use of retailers, brokers, agents or other intermediaries. We do not depend on any one key product or product line within the coastal specialty homeowners insurance market. We control all aspects of our value chain, including technology, underwriting, actuarial, distribution, claims and risk management which allows us to maximize profitability while maintaining disciplined underwriting standards. Our goal is to deliver long-term value for stockholders by focusing on underserved, coastal specialty markets where market capacity is limited and demand for insurance products is high. Coastal specialty market demand for insurance products has increased over the last few years as the larger, national insurance carriers have reduced their underwriting capacity in such markets which has created a unique market opportunity for us to capitalize on the imbalance of supply and demand. A prime example of this market shift is Florida, where large national carriers have reduced their market share of premium from 62% in 1999 to 28% in 2022, creating an opportunity for accretive expansion. We have built a highly entrepreneurial company that we believe can identify and execute on such opportunities faster and more profitably than our competitors. We believe we have a significant technological advantage that allows us to assess, manage and price risk for individual and bulk policy acquisitions. Our technology is built to estimate future costs of policies and compare it back to our base rates to better understand profitability in real time on an individual risk basis and to assess large and/or bulk transactions. This technology permits us to only select policies that we believe to be profitable based on future reinsurance and all other perils (“AOP”) costs. Our underwriting technology has been an important component of our success and is backed by our proprietary $6 trillion total insured value (“TIV”) underwriting and claims dataset, which provides us with real-time intelligence to drive superior decision making. We believe that traditional markets inefficiently and inaccurately underwrite coastal specialty risks without properly understanding prospective loss ratios and reinsurance costs. We believe other insurance companies do not have the same ability to assess these metrics in real time and their technology limits their ability to consistently select profitable policies. We believe our underwriting technology allows us to more accurately assess the future cost of each policy, which enables us to focus on profitable growth opportunities often overlooked or mispriced by our competitors. We believe our proprietary technology combined with our highly experienced and entrepreneurial leadership team allow us to make better underwriting decisions that generate higher margins for our business. We market and write insurance policies through two channels: our independent agents and DTC. As we continue to scale our operations, we anticipate that our DTC distribution will grow as well through our focus on accretive market opportunities. We have significantly grown our business and scaled it profitably in our targeted coastal specialty markets by leveraging our seasoned management team, technology and strong balance sheet. We have grown our shareholders’ equity from $102 million at the end of 2021 to $433 million at the end of 2024, a compound annual growth rate (“CAGR”) of 62%. In this same time period, we have grown from $0 of in force premium to $1,334 million at the end of 2024, while running an average consolidated combined ratio of 80.3%. Our return on equity and combined ratio were 46.9% and 79.0% for 2023, and 60.0% and 72.3% for 2024, respectively. For the three months ended March 31, 2024 and March 31, 2025, we had gross premiums written of $245 million and $278 million, policy fees of $1 million and $2 million, consolidated combined ratio of 66.7% and 58.9% and net income of $55 million and $93 million, respectively. As of March 31, 2025, we had total assets of $1.9 billion, shareholders’ equity of approximately $532 million and tangible shareholders’ equity of approximately $524 million. For the three months ended March 31, 2025, we had a return on equity of 19.2% and a return on tangible equity of 19.5%. For the years ended December 31, 2023 and December 31, 2024, we had gross premiums written of $875 million and $1,334 million, policy fees of $3 million and $7 million, consolidated combined ratio of 79.0% and 72.3% and net income of $87 million and $201 million respectively. As of December 31, 2024, we had total assets of $1.9 billion, shareholders’ equity of approximately $433 million and tangible shareholders’ equity of approximately $423 million. For the year ended December 31, 2024, we had a return on equity of 60.0% and a return on tangible equity of 62.6%. Our principal executive offices are located in Tampa, Florida.

About Lincoln National

Lincoln National Corporation, through its subsidiaries, operates multiple insurance and retirement businesses in the United States. It operates in four segments: Life Insurance, Annuities, Group Protection, and Retirement Plan Services. The Life Insurance segment provides life insurance products, including term insurance, universal life insurance (UL), indexed universal life insurance, variable universal life insurance (VUL), linked-benefit UL and VUL products, and critical illness and long-term care riders. The Annuities segment offers variable, fixed, and registered index-linked annuities. The Group Protection segment offers group non-medical insurance products consisting of short and long-term disability and statutory disability; paid family medical leave administration and absence management services; term life; dental and vision; and accident, critical illness, and hospital indemnity benefits and services to the employer marketplace through various forms of employee-paid and employer-paid plans. The Retirement Plan Services segment provides employers with retirement plan products and services primarily in the defined contribution retirement plan marketplace; individual and group variable annuities, group fixed annuities, and mutual fund-based programs; and various plan services, including plan recordkeeping, compliance testing, participant education, and trust and custodial services. The company distributes its products through consultants, brokers, planners, agents, financial advisors, third-party administrators, and other intermediaries. Lincoln National Corporation was founded in 1905 and is headquartered in Radnor, Pennsylvania.