Kingstone Companies, Inc

Hello, and welcome to the Kingstone Company's first quarter 2023 earnings call and webcast. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Jennifer Gravel, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. Yesterday afternoon, the company issued a press release detailing Kingstone's first quarter 2023 results. On this call, Kingstone may make forward-looking statements regarding itself and its business. The forward-looking events and circumstances discussed on this call may not occur and could differ materially as a result of known and unknown risk factors and uncertainties affecting Kingstone. For more information, please refer to the section entitled Factors that May Affect Future Results in Financial Condition in Part 1, Item 1A of Companies Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2022, along with commentary on forward-looking statements at the end of the company's earnings release issued yesterday. In addition, our remarks today include references to non-GAAP measures. For reconciliation of our non-GAAP measures to GAAP figures, please see the tables in our earnings release. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Kingstone's Chairman of the Board and CEO, Mr. Barry Goldstein. Please go ahead, Barry.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining Kingstone's first quarter earnings call. In addition to Jen, our chief financial officer and head of investor relations, also with me today is Merrill Golden, our chief operating officer and the president of our insurance company. Let's get straight to it. We're not happy to be reporting an underwriting loss, of course, and an underwriting loss in the first quarter is really not unexpected given the northeast winter. Looking back, this year's results are in line with what we've experienced in three of the last five years and reflect a reality of operating in this region. Nevertheless, we remain committed to our focus on the Northeast. It's proven to be a valuable and productive territory for us over the long term, especially when compared to other parts of the country like Florida, California, the Southeast, the Gulf Coast. So at a high level, This winter we saw a few days of freezing temperatures that resulted in almost $4 million of catastrophe losses that we just announced the other day. We also experienced the number of large losses that were primarily water-related and which increased our underwriting loss for the first quarter. I'll let Jen and Meryl go over those in more detail. Our industry offers many opportunities for growth and innovation. particularly for those who understand this highly complex and regulated field. With that said, it's also a difficult business with so many exogenous factors out of our control drive our results. We can take all the right steps, and a few days of freezing temperatures set us way back. And it's not just adverse weather that we're dealing with. We're also navigating record high inflation, volatile interest rates, the hardest reinsurance market we've seen in decades, just to name a few of these headwinds. So despite these challenges, I'm encouraged. I'm encouraged by the positive signs we're seeing in the market. There is light at the end of the tunnel. I believe that the macroeconomic factors that have been negatively impacting our results may have peaked and conditions will soon start to improve. Over the past eight or nine months, we've seen a consistent decline in annual inflation readings, which is a promising trend. Additionally, the Federal Reserve recently indicated that it is no longer just assuming that further race hikes will be needed, which suggests to me that economic conditions are stabilizing. And from what I've heard from our team and our intermediary, the reinsurers we've spoken with are indicating that capacity is available in the market this year, and that rates may have, in fact, peaked. Taken together, these developments give me confidence that we're moving in the right direction. But what that means for our shareholders is that better times are ahead. We've been working diligently to strengthen and fortify our business, and as many of those headwinds we faced begin to slow, we expect results of our efforts to play out. And as we progress through the year, we expect to realize even more of the benefits from the strategic actions we've taken. Overall, we are bullish on our future, remain committed to our strategy, and are confident in our ability to position ourselves for success in the years ahead. With that, I'll pass the call over to Jen to review our first quarter results. Go ahead, Jen.