Conduit Holdings Limited

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Conduit's 2026 Interim Results Conference Call. Thank you for joining us. On the call are Neil Eckert, Chief Executive Officer, Elaine Whelan, Chief Financial Officer, and Stephen Possilway, Chief Underwriting Officer. Please note our disclaimer language on slide two. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Neil Eckert.

Thanks Brett and welcome everyone. Today's presentation will cover our business performance for the first half of 2026 as well as an update on market conditions and the outlook. Steve will cover performance in each of our segments and Elaine will provide some additional detail on our financial and investment highlights for the period before closing remarks and time for questions. I'm pleased to report a solid first half performance for 2026. We generated comprehensive income of $80.3 million and a return on equity of $7.8 while growing tangible net assets per share by 8.4% during the first half and 23.2% over the past year. These are strong levels of shareholder value creation and a meaningful improvement compared to our performance in the prior year. As market conditions have become more competitive, we have remained disciplined in our deployment of capital. We continue to grow in areas where we believe pricing remains attractive, particularly casualty, whilst reducing exposures in parts of property and specialty where rates no longer meet our return hurdles. This included a reduction in certain quota share treaties as we continue to rebalance our portfolio. Gross premiums written were $789 million, down 1.8% from the prior year, reflecting this deliberate portfolio management. Underwriting performance benefited from a much more benign catastrophe environment compared with the first half of 2025. Our undiscounted combined ratio improved to 92.6% compared with 122.1% in the prior year period. On investments, our managed portfolio grew approximately $375 million over the last 12 months to $2.3 billion. Our growing asset base continues to support higher net investment income, which increased more than 20% year on year. Investment income of $46.7 million during the first half contributed meaningfully to our earnings and is expected to continue to support our overall earnings going forward. Our investment results in the first half was impacted by rising Treasury yields, which resulted in unrealised mark-to-market losses and a lower overall investment return of 0.9%. We also remained active in returning capital to shareholders. During the first half of the year we repurchased 6.8 million shares for $38.9 million, while also returning $28.7 million through dividends. These actions, combined with solid earnings generation, contributed to tangible net assets per share increasing to £5.70 as of June 30th. Lastly, we have continued to attract talent to the organisation and strengthen our personnel with new hires across several key functions. We have recently hired an experienced Chief Operating Officer who will be starting shortly and have several senior additions to our property team that will join the company later this year. Turning to our underwriting performance, our focus throughout the first half has been to protect margins, manage volatility and position the portfolio for the next phase of the cycle. Overall, gross premiums written were down 2% year over year. This reflects continued growth in casualty where rates have remained stable, offset by reductions in property and specialty as we responded to softer pricing conditions. Across the portfolio, risk-adjusted rates declined approximately 6% during the first half, While pricing remains broadly adequate, we have continued to see increasing competition as the year has progressed, particularly in property and certain specialty classes. Terms and conditions have also begun to ease modestly in selected areas. Despite those pressures, underwriting performance improved significantly from the prior year. The undiscounted combined ratio was 92.6%, benefiting from a relatively benign catastrophe environment. Results were impacted by some modest exposure to events arising from the Middle East conflict and other risk losses, but those losses remain below our reporting threshold individually and in the aggregate. Importantly, we have also increased retrocessional protection during 2026. Whilst that has increased seeded costs, it supports our objective of stabilising underwriting results and protecting our capital through the softening phase of the cycle. With that, I will hand over to Steve, who will present on performance and market conditions in our three segments.

Thanks, Neil, and good morning, everyone. Through the mid-year renewals, the team work hard to secure our positions on renewals and select new business that aligns to our portfolio objectives as we seek to gradually shift towards excess of lost business in property and specialty segments, protect our margins as pricing soften and manage underwriting volatility. We are comfortable with the portfolio reducing modestly in this environment as some business will not meet our technical pricing requirements. Turning to the property segment, Gross premiums written declined 9% to $454.8 million. This reduction was anticipated and reflects our continued strategy of reducing gross share participations with more marginal profitability characteristics, while selectively increasing excess of lost business where we believe the risk return profile is more attractive. We have also been successful in securing international opportunities which add diversification to our portfolios. We remain committed to progressing the portfolio towards a greater proportion of excess of lost business which should improve portfolio margin and provide a more balanced risk profile over time. Property risk adjusted pricing declined by approximately 10% during the first half with some acceleration observed during the year as we expected. Industry capital continues to grow supported by strong returns over recent years and increased participations from both traditional and alternative capital providers. Property cap excessor loss rates were generally off 15% to 20% at mid-year, with some variation around that range. The gross share of treaties saw continued upward pressure on ceiling commissions. Despite the softer market backdrop, fundraising performance improved materially year over year. The property undiscounted combined ratio improved to 72.8% from 130.5% in the prior period, reflecting the absence of major catastrophe losses such as the California wildfires that affected results in 2025. Turning to casualty, in our view, casualty continues to represent an attractive segment of the market, although some classes demonstrate firmer prices than others. We've continued to focus on areas of the casualty market with more sustainable pricing momentum. During the first half, gross premiums written increased 21% year-over-year to $217 million, consistent with the growth rate we achieved during 2025. Growth was driven through expanding our relationships with preferred clients that continue to demonstrate disciplined cycle management behaviour in their underwriting approach. These broader client relationships have added diversification in classes and geographies to our casualty portfolio. We have also selectively trimmed or non-renewed areas of the portfolio where loss experience or the underwriting approach didn't align with our objectives. Pricing remains relatively stable with risk-adjusted rates down approximately 1% during the first half, demonstrating the relative resilience of the casualty market. Market conditions vary across classes and territories, but overall remain broadly consistent with our expectations. We continue to find attractive opportunities to deploy capital. The general third-party liability class continues to see the strongest original rate increases and has driven much of our growth in casualty. Under-rising performance remains stable, with an undiscanted combined ratio of 102.9%, broadly consistent with the prior year period. We remain aware of industry loss trends and carefully consider frequency and severity dynamics in our pricing approach. Our reserving philosophy remains consistent and the portfolio continues to perform in line with expectations. Turning to specialty, competition continues to increase and we have scaled back the portfolio slightly during the first half, with premiums reducing 5% compared to prior year to $117.2 million. We have reduced participations in classes where competitive pressures increased or pricing no longer met our expectations. While overall market conditions have softened, the specialty segment remains highly diverse. We continue to find opportunities in selected areas where pricing is improving, including aviation, political violence and terrorism classes. In aviation, we saw strong submission activity. and have successfully written several new attractively priced excessive loss and quota share accounts at mid-year. Risk adjusted rates were down 7% during the first half. Attractive diversification characteristics continue to draw capital from new and existing markets into many specialty classes. Recent loss activity has helped stabilise pricing in certain classes but we expect the market will remain competitive. The underscanned combined ratio during the first half was 104.8%. This result includes the impact of losses associated with the conflict in the Middle East. Overall, our approach remains highly selective. We will continue to prioritise margin over volume and focus our participation on opportunities where expected returns remain attractive. We also remain ready to capitalise on any class-specific shifts in pricing as we are actioning in aviation currently. One of the most important strategic actions we have taken over the last year has been to strengthen our retrocession programme. As market conditions become more competitive, reducing volatility and protecting capital become an increasingly important part of our underwriting strategy. During 2026, we expanded our retrocession coverage across both peak and secondary peril exposures. This included increased limit and lower retention within our core programme. We also maintained cover for second and third event scenarios. The benefit of these actions can clearly be seen in the reduction of our modelled net PMLs, both at the 1 in 100 and 1 in 250 year return periods. Net exposures are lower than they were at the beginning of 2025 and 2026, with further improvement achieved at the 1st of July 2026. While this enhanced programme increases retrocession costs, we believe it provides valuable earnings stability and balance sheet protection as we move into the peak Atlantic wind season. I will now hand over to Elaine to go through our financial and investment highlights.