Conduit Holdings Limited

Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Conduitree first half of 2022 results call. Please note the disclaimer on page two. Today, after a brief introduction by our chairman, Neil Eckert, our CEO, Trevor Carvey, will present the first half of 2022 highlights, followed by Greg Robert, CEO, providing an update on the underwriting side of the business. Elaine Whelan, our CFO, will then cover our key financials before some final key remarks from Neil.

Thanks, Antonio. Yeah, before the rest of the team is going to tell you about our results for the first six months, I'd like to spend a couple of minutes giving you some thoughts. Conduit is now beyond the startup phase. That's visible from the maturity of the operation we've built, the skills in our team, and most of all, the support that we've received from brokers and clients. Since we started in December 2020, we have now passed the billion-dollar mark of ultimate written premiums. As they now increasingly earn through, the quality of our results will start to surface. Beyond this excellent start to our journey, I'm pleased with the way that we've handled the Ukraine numbers. We've been transparent in that and disclosed the full loss including, and I would stress including, our aviation. The beauty of our business is the simplicity. We're a pure play reinsurer, low policy count, which enables us to assess exposures to events such as this. With that, I'll pass on to Trevor.

Thanks very much Neil. Yes, so the first six months of 2022 demonstrated I think that the business we've put together has become a real engine for growth. You know, it's our commitment to produce a portfolio that's got lower volatility but within it and when we blend and write the overall portfolio we're not over reliant on any one specific class or category of business i think we view that as a significant strength and it's something that we're firmly wedded to so year on year our gross premiums written have increased by more than 70 percent and gross premiums written of 359 million dollars On an ultimate basis, we've written almost $500 million of premiums, which is up 49% on the first year, half year 2021. And it's actually pretty close to the total figure for the whole of last year. So real commendation, I think, to the team there and the work that they've done. Greg Roberts will talk more shortly on makeup of the portfolio generally, but it remains broadly 70-30 in terms of non-CAT versus CAT. And I think that's a clue to where it's wise to be skewed towards in this market. And the industry, just as a general comment, is really offering up great value, really good value in that space. And it's something that we can take advantage of as pricing continues to improve. As regards to CAT, though, the first half of 2022 has been reasonably active. And the frequency of CAT losses around the globe ranging from LATAM crop losses to Australian floods, has been prevalent. But we're pleased to report that we had generally minimal exposure to those NatCat events in the first half year. Moving on to page four, which is the next slide. The slide here, just a few words around the operating expense and the trend that, you know, is in place in a startup business such as ourself. From a premium growth standpoint, I think it shows the tremendous work, which, as I mentioned, the team has done over the last 18 months and has generated almost $750 million of cumulative written premiums. This, of course, means now that we're seeing the benefits from an expense viewpoint. An operating expense ratio, as expected, has been solidly trending downwards quarter by quarter to around currently the 8% mark. The operating expense generally is a key advantage to what I call the Bermuda-based treaty model and was part of the design process when we put the plan together originally. The start-up and build-up costs were a big feature in year one and creating the new brand entity and bringing that to the market. It's now great to see the more normalised state of the business emerging through. On that I pass to Greg and he can talk through more detail some of the underlying divisional and segmental business in the overall market.