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spk03: I would like to reiterate that impression. Now I'll turn the call over to David Einhorn.
spk01: Great. Thanks, Greg. And good morning, everyone. The Solace Glass Fund returned 5.2 percent in the first quarter. Our long portfolio added 4.4 percent. The short portfolio was flat. And macro added 1.8 percent. During the quarter, the S&P 500 index advanced 10.6 percent. The largest positive contributors were long investments in Greenberg Partners and Tenant Healthcare, an interest rate-related position, and gold. The largest detractors were long positions in Console Energy and Penn Entertainment and a single-name short position. Greenberg Partners advanced 16 percent after the company announced strong fourth quarter results. The company continues to perform well in its core markets and appears well positioned for another strong year in 2024. Tenant Healthcare rose 39 percent, benefiting from ongoing strengths in healthcare utilization and the sale of additional hospitals at premium multiples. Early in the quarter, we established a new macro position by selling December 24 SOFR futures. At the time, the market expected the Federal Reserve to cut short-term interest rates between six and seven times this year. The position benefited as the market came around to our view by the end of the quarter, with only about two to three 25 basis point cuts priced in for 2024. We trimmed the position to take some profits. Gold was also a significant contributor as the price advanced more than 8 percent during the quarter. Console Energy shares fell 17 percent due to moderately lower coal pricing early in the quarter and the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore Harbor later in the quarter. The bridge collapse will prevent Console from exporting coal from its local terminal in the near term, but we do not believe this to have a long-term relevance for this investment. I will note this is the first time in many years where we saw risk aggregation on both sides of the balance sheet, which is a rare occurrence. On the other hand, Console has insurance for the interruption and should be able to recoup much of its loss. We established a long position in Penn Entertainment, an operator of land-based casinos and ESPN BAT, its new online gaming business. The shares declined 30 percent during the first quarter as the market appears to be concerned about the amount of marketing spend the company undertook to acquire customers while launching ESPN BAT. We believe the launch was successful and the company acquired one million customers in less than two months and guided to profitability a year earlier than previous guidance. Last quarter we referred to a new large position we were building in an undisclosed materials company. We unveiled this position as Salve, a Belgian chemicals company, at an investment conference in early April. After undergoing a corporate restructuring which spun out a specialty chemicals division as ScienceCo, the new Salve's key products are soda ash and bicar, as well as peroxides, silicas, fluorine, for earth formulations and solvents. We expect Salve to earn near seven euros per share in 2028 and we acquired our position for less than four times those earnings, all while the company plans to pass the annual dividend of nearly 10 percent per year on our investment. In addition to Penn and Salve, we had a productive quarter and found a number of other promising long investments. We established a new medium-sized long position in HP, Inc. and a macro position to benefit from higher copper prices, as well as the small long positions in Royvon Sciences and the Class A shares of Liberty Global. The Salve's class portfolio returned one percent in April and has returned 6.2 percent year to date as of April 30th. Net exposure in the investment portfolio was approximately 40 percent at the end of April. Greg has now been with us for just over four months and the management transition has been very smooth. He's a prolific manager and leader and we just had a fantastic board meeting in Cayman where I've observed an energized team with a shared strategy and vision. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Pharmaars to discuss the financial results.
spk04: Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone. During the first quarter of 2024, we generated earnings of $27.0 million or 78 cents per diluted share compared to $5.9 million or 17 cents per diluted share in Q1 2023. The underwriting book generated a 3.4 million profit after underwriting-related G&A expenses, which equates to a combined ratio of 98.0 percent. Current period catastrophe losses accounted for $12.4 million or 7.7 combined ratio points, mainly related to the Baltimore Bridge incident as well as losses from satellite failures. As Greg stated, we have booked the bridge loss at the full limit of our share of the underlying international group cover. Adverse loss development in the quarter primarily related to 2023 events, including an oil platform fire, hurricane Otis, and U.S. convective storms as well as reserve strengthening on a general liability program relating to the 2015 to 2017 years. The adverse development was partially offset by reserve releases on the fall 2021 year and the rest of the current in-force book performed in line with our expectations. The net adverse development of $5.4 million accounted for 3.3 combined ratio points during the first quarter of 2024. The rest of the current in-force book performed in line with our expectations. During the first quarter, our net premiums written increased by $18.8 million or 10.7 percent to $194.1 million compared to the same quarter in 2023. The growth was split between our casualty and specialty books while the property book offset some of the increases. The net premiums earned were $161.5 million, an increase of $18.9 million or 13.2 percent compared to the same quarter in 2023. Turning to our casualty book, net premiums written increased by $12.3 million or 14.1 percent during the first quarter primarily related to multi-line contracts, which is mostly composed of the Lloyd Syndicate business. The composite ratio for the casualty business improved to 91 percent in the first quarter compared to 103.8 percent during the comparable period in 2023. Moving to our specialty book, net premiums written increased by $11.6 million or 18.7 percent during the first quarter mainly within the marine and other specialty classes. The composite ratio for the specialty business increased to 110.7 percent in the first quarter compared to 75.8 percent during the comparable period in 2023. While the Baltimore Bridge incident accounted for much of the increase, adverse development related to the 2023 oil platform explosion also contributed to the higher composite ratio this quarter. Within our property book, net premiums written decreased by $5 million or 19 percent during the first quarter, driven primarily by a non-renewed homeowners contract that Greg mentioned earlier. Excluding this contract, our net premiums written for the property book increased by $3.8 million or 22 percent. The composite ratio for the property book business was 71 percent for the first quarter compared to 113 percent during the comparable period in 2023. The improvement was partially driven by fewer U.S. convective storm losses that had impacted the homeowners contract in the first quarter of 2023. Total general and administrative expenses increased by $0.8 million during the first quarter to $10.7 million compared to $9.9 million in the first quarter of 2023. We have been successful in recruiting talented individuals across the organization as we grow in all three jurisdictions in which we operate. We reported total net investment income of $26.4 million during the first quarter of 2024 compared to $5.2 million in 2023. Our investment in the Solus Glass Fund reported a gain of $18.2 million or 5.2 percent while our innovations investments reported a small loss in the first quarter. We earned $8.6 million of interest income on our restricted cash and cash equivalents and on our funds deposited at Lloyds. At the end of the first quarter, our fully diluted book value per share was $17.39, an increase of 3.9 percent from December 31, 2023. I will now hand the call back to the operator to open it up for questions.
spk02: Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to be placed in the question queue, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing star 1. One moment please while we poll for questions. Once
spk03: again, that's star 1 to be placed into question queue.
spk02: Thank you. We have reached the end of our question and answer session. That concludes today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today. Are there any further closing comments?
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