Skyward Specialty Insurance Group, Inc.

good day and thank you for standing by welcome to the skyward specialty insurance fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call at this time all participants are on a list only mode after the speaker's presentation there will be a question and answer session to ask a question during the session you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone you will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised to withdraw your question please press star 1 1 again please be advised that today's conference is being recorded I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Natalie Schoolcraft, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Shannon. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Today, I am joined by our Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Robinson, and Chief Financial Officer, Mark Hochul. We will begin the call today with our prepared remarks, and then we will open the lines for questions. Our comments today may include forward-looking statements, which by their nature involve a number of risk factors and uncertainties which may affect future financial performance. Such risk factors may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections or forward-looking statements. These types of factors are discussed in our press release as well as in our S-1 that was previously filed with the Securities and Exchange Commissions. Financial schedules containing reconciliations of certain non-GAAP measures, along with other supplemental financial information, are included as part of our press release and available on our website, skywardinsurance.com, under the Investors section. Now, I will turn the call over to Skyward's CEO, Andrew Robinson. Andrew?

Thank you, Natalie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. It has been a long road, but we are extremely happy to be speaking with you today on our first earnings conference call as a public company. The Skyward team's dedication, agility, and innovation brought us to this point, and we believe the results we have achieved so far are compelling. We are proud that we were able to successfully execute our IPO in January, the first in the US market in 2023. And we remain thankful for the support of our investors who share our vision and our excitement about the direction we are heading. Our strong fourth quarter results reflect the continued momentum hitting on all levers that drive our business, including underwriting performance, written premium growth, and increased investment income. Specifically, gross written premiums for our continuing business grew over 21% in the quarter, surpassing $1.1 billion for the year. Mark will talk more about premiums in a minute, but at a high level, we continue to benefit from broadly favorable market conditions and strong execution across our eight underwriting divisions. Our adjusted combined ratio is 92.8%, inclusive of CAATS, An adjusted operating income of $11.6 million, or $0.36 per diluted share, is up 54% from the fourth quarter of 2021. We were minimally impacted by winter storm Elliott, with CAT losses of only 1.2 points on the combined ratio and well within our retention. We continue to realize pure rate in the high single digits, and that is meaningfully above our lost cost inflation estimates. We also continue to benefit from the cash position we had entering the year and the strong cash flow from our operations. In this last quarter, we invested our new money at over 5% all to our core fixed income portfolio. We achieved an adjusted return on equity of 13.8% for 2022. We believe that this result, together with our strong growth, further reinforces the financial momentum we expect will continue in 2023. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mark to discuss our financial results in greater detail. Mark?