Revenue at claims management firm Crawford & Company rose 12% to $US313 million ($470.95 million) in the first quarter, its 10th consecutive quarter of revenue growth.

Net income more than doubled to $US10.7 million ($16.09 million). Excluding a 3% hit from exchange rate movements, revenue was up 16% from a year earlier. North America Loss Adjusting revenues rose 20% to $US77.1 million ($116 million) on an operating margin of 10.5%.

Australian revenue made up 7% of total revenue, rising to $US22.99 million ($34.59 million) in the quarter, from $US18.72 million ($28.17 million) a year earlier.  

“Crawford delivered exceptional first quarter results,” CEO Rohit Verma said. "Our international business continued its turnaround, achieving revenue growth and margin expansion. We feel good about our continued trajectory.

“Our fantastic start to 2022 provides strong momentum for the rest of the year and beyond.”

International Operations revenues rose 3% to $US91.9 million ($138.28 million) and posted earnings of $US3 million ($4.51 million) in the 2023 first quarter after a loss of a similar size a year earlier. The operating margin was 3.3%.

"We're making progress in our international operations despite continued margin pressures due to ... benign weather activity, and weakness in certain pockets,” Mr Verma said.  

“While economic activity in our international market is gradually coming back, it is not rebounding as quickly as anticipated. Nevertheless, we remain confident in our ability to alleviate these margin challenges and are keenly focused on exploring ways to improve the profit contribution from the underperforming segment.”

President Joseph Blanco said Australian operations exhibited some “transitory weakness” in the first quarter but would see recovery in the second quarter from unprecedented flooding in Queensland and NSW.

"The Australian weakness should really be alleviated by the storm source that we are seeing right now, and … on a better trajectory. So overall, we feel like by the end of the year, we should be in a much better position than where we are right now,” Mr Blanco said.  

"There was definitely some weakness in Australia, although we think that weakness is short-lived because of the activities that we're seeing as a result of the floods and we expect that we should see a lift coming from that in the second quarter and subsequent quarters,” he told analysts.

“Overall we're encouraged by our international segment.”