The Baldwin Insurance Group, Inc.

and welcome to the Baldwin Group third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. And it is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Ms. Bonnie Bishop, Executive Director, Investor Relations. Thank you, Ms. Bishop. You may begin.

Thank you. Welcome to the Baldwin Group's third quarter 2024 earnings call. Today's call is being recorded. Third quarter financial results, supplemental information, and form 10-Q were issued earlier this afternoon and are available on the company's website at ir.baldwin.com. Please note that remarks made today may include forward-looking statements subject to various assumptions, risks, and uncertainties. The company's actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by such statements. For more detailed discussion, please refer to the note regarding forward-looking statements in the company's earning release and our most recent form, 10-Q, both of which are available on the Baldwin website. During the call today, the company may also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. For more detailed discussion of these non-GAAP financial measures and historical reconciliation to the most closely comparable GAAP measures, please refer to the company's earnings release and supplemental information, both of which have been posted on the company's website at ir.baldwin.com. I will now turn the call over to Trevor Baldwin, Chief Executive Officer of the Baldwin Group.

Good afternoon. and thank you for joining us to discuss our third quarter results reported earlier this afternoon. I'm joined this afternoon by Brad Hale, Chief Financial Officer, and Bonnie Bishop, Executive Director of Investor Relations. The third quarter ended with Hurricane Helene and was quickly followed by Hurricane Milton, marking one of the more intense hurricane seasons in recent history, particularly for Florida's West Coast. With over 1,000 colleagues throughout the state of Florida, we witnessed firsthand in our communities the destruction and loss caused by these two major storms. We worked quickly to assess the safety of our colleagues and simultaneously focused on assisting with the recovery efforts of our clients throughout the affected areas. As we continue to work through the recovery process, I am reminded yet again of the critical role we in the insurance sector play during some of the most challenging moments of our clients' lives. It is during these times when people and businesses have endured catastrophic loss and are dealing with displacement, financial uncertainty, property damage, and overall disruption that our industry steps in to help make people financially whole and get back on their feet. My sincere pride and gratitude extends to our colleagues who are working tirelessly for our clients to provide them with expertise, guidance, and solutions to navigate the aftermath, lead the recovery, and ultimately continue to protect the possible. With that, I'll go through our results for the third quarter, where we saw steady momentum across the top line while also delivering margin improvement and adjusted free cash flow expansion. Both organic revenue and core commissions and fees revenue grew 14%. a testament to the strong underlying performance we are seeing in the business and the overall resiliency of our business model in the face of increased headwinds from external market dynamics. Year over year, adjusted EBITDA grew 14% or 18% normalizing to the pro forma impact of the sale of connected risk earlier this year. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded approximately 60 basis points to 21%. And adjusted free cash flow grew 15% to 27.8 million. Year-to-date, we've generated adjusted EBITDA margin accretion of approximately 160 basis points to 24%, and adjusted free cash flow of 99.2 million, which is up 31% from the prior year period, or up 49% excluding the impact of one-time third-party refinancing costs incurred at the time of our debt refinancing in the second quarter. We remain bullish on the long runway of operating leverage ahead as our business continues to scale. We are now less than two quarters away from satisfying substantially all of our remaining earn-out obligations, which will result in a step-function improvement in our net leverage, and adjusted free cash flow profile over the course of 2025 and beyond. Turning to our segment results, in IES, overall organic revenue growth for the quarter was 7%, bringing the year-to-date total to 9%. Organic commissions and fees revenue was up 6% for the quarter and 10% year-to-date. We absorbed increased headwinds from rate and exposure compression in the third quarter of 4.7%, driven by timing-related softness in our construction practice as a result of certain new job starts from our existing clients pushing out, which negatively impacted project-based revenues, as well as flat exposure growth in our employee benefits business. This compares to a 1.3% tailwind from rate and exposure in the prior year period, a 600 basis point differential year over year. Offsetting those external market-driven headwinds, our internally driven new business production remains industry leading, as sales velocity for the quarter was 22%, a 400 basis point improvement over the third quarter of last year, which brings our year-to-date sales velocity to 21%, a 430 basis point improvement over the prior year period. Client retention. was roughly flat year-over-year at approximately 90%. Notably, after generating 30 million of new business in the quarter, a 36% increase over Q3 of last year, our year-to-date new business production through the third quarter stands at 95 million, a 46% increase over the same period last year, and a 7% increase over total new business produced in the entire calendar year of 2023. These outsized results in both sales velocity and absolute new business production, two key indicators of the underlying health of our IAS franchise, give us conviction in our double digit organic growth outlook for the full year and reinforce the resiliency of our business model to outperform through market cycles. Lastly, in the wake of our rebranding this year, we have seen a broad-based acceleration in the recognition and awareness of our reputation among industry-leading talent, evidenced by growing success on the advisor hiring front, which we believe will enable us to continue delivering organic growth in our IS business that out-indexes that of our peers for the foreseeable future. Our UCTS segment had a fantastic third quarter, with organic revenue growth of 26% and commissions and fees growth of 31%. Our multifamily and home portfolios continue to thrive, generating 26% and 39% organic commissions and fees growth, respectively. Additionally, we continue to seek growing contribution from our 2023 new product cohort and Juniper Reef. both of which individually added 2.5 points to the UCTS total organic growth rate. Our MIS segment delivered total organic revenue growth of 14% and commissions and fees revenue growth of 11% in the face of a moderating personal lines rate and exposure environment and capacity challenges in some key markets such as California. Additionally, Westwood added another major builder partner in the quarter. It's seventh in the last 12 months as our value proposition as the embedded insurance provider of choice to the builder channel continues to be validated in the marketplace. Our national mortgage and real estate operation is making strong progress on the embedded front and remains on track to break even on a run rate basis in 2025, which should be a margin tailwind for us in 2026 and beyond. In summary, we are pleased with the strength of our results for the third quarter amidst the evolving market backdrop we're seeing, and I remain confident in our ability to continue to deliver outsized organic growth, margin accretion, and expanding free cash flow well into the future. The resiliency of our business model was on full display this quarter, reinforcing our ability to outperform and deliver outsized top and bottom line growth through market and economic cycles. With that, I'll turn it over to Brad, who will detail our financial results.