Skyward Specialty Insurance Group, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the first quarter 2024 Skyward Specialty Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 11 on your telephone. 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 Schoolcraft, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Liz. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Today, I am joined by our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Robinson, and Chief Financial Officer, Mark Hochul. We'll 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. With that, I will turn the call over to Andrew. Andrew?

Thank you, Natalie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We started 2024 strong, reporting Q1 adjusted operating income of 75 cents per diluted share. Gross written premiums grew 27%. Our continued strong growth is a direct reflection of our strategy to have a well-diversified portfolio of underwriting divisions that allow us to allocate capital to those areas we believe offer the best opportunity for profitable growth and shareholder returns. I'll remind our analysts and investors that growth during 2023 was not the byproduct of writing new property CAD. We see limited property CAD opportunities that fit with our rule or niche strategy in which we aim to build defensible positions that allow us to deliver top quartile underwriting profitability across all market cycles. Our combined ratio was 89.6% and our annualized adjusted return on equity and tangible equity were 18.3% and 21.1% respectively. Altogether, these metrics reflect the power of our ruler in each strategy and our outstanding execution across all eight underwriting divisions and the functions that support our underwriters. Operationally, rate, retention, and submission flow in the quarter continue to be strong, and we continue to find opportunities to profitably grow our business. I'll talk more about these later in the call. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mark to discuss our financial results in greater detail. Mark?