Skyward Specialty Insurance Group, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Skyward Specialty Insurance Group conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-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 11 on your telephone, and you will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Natalie Schoolward, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Amanda. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Today, I am joined by our Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Robinson, and Chief Financial Officer, Mark Hochschild. 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 10-K that was previously filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 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 CEO, Andrew Robinson. Andrew?

Thank you, Natalie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Q1 was another solid performance, and we're pleased with our continuing strong financial and strategic momentum. Specifically, gross written premiums grew approximately 28% in the quarter. Mark will talk more about premiums, but at a high level, we continue to benefit from broadly favorable market conditions and strong execution across our underwriting divisions. Our adjusted combined ratio is 90.3% inclusive of CATS. adjusted operating income of fifteen point five million dollars or 42 cents per diluted share We are minimally impacted by first quarter convective storms with cat losses of only 1.8 points on the combined ratio and well within our retention We continue to realize pure rate in the high single digits and that is above our lost cost inflation estimates We also continue to generate very strong cash flow from our operations In this last quarter, we invested our new money at 5.3% all into our core fixed income portfolio. We achieved an adjusted return on equity and tangible equity of 13.3% and 16.5% respectively for the quarter. We believe that this result, together with our strong growth, further reinforces the financial momentum we expect will continue in 2023. Strategic investment in our business portfolio continues as evidenced by our recent inland marine and global agriculture launches, and we continue to add A-plus talent and invest in technology to amplify the capabilities of our underwriters and claims professionals. I'll talk more about this later. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mark to discuss our financial results in greater detail. Mark?