Skyward Specialty Insurance Group, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Skyward Specialty First Quarter 2025 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 would need to press star 11 on your telephone. You would 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 like now to turn the conference over to Natalie Schoolcraft, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Michelle. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Today, I am joined by our Chairman and 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-GAP measures, along with other supplemental financial schedules, are included as part of our press release and available on our website 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 had a great start to the year, reporting net income of $42 million and adjusted operating income of $37.3 million, driven by $28.5 million of underwriting income. For the quarter, our adjusted operating income was 90 cents per diluted share. Each metric I highlighted is the best reported in company history. Our strong growth this quarter of 17% is a direct result of our diversified business portfolio and the strong execution of our rural or niche strategy. In this quarter, our A&H division and our global agriculture unit were standouts, delivering extraordinary growth, while transactional E&S, surety, and specialty programs all contributed nicely to our growth. In this quarter, we had the widest spread of growth across our divisions that we've experienced as a public company. We believe the diversity of our portfolio is unique to a company of our size and allows us to rapidly reallocate capital to underwriting units that offer the greatest returns, and importantly, to continue to deliver strong growth in operating income, when many others in this market will struggle to do so. I'll talk more about this later in the call. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mark to discuss our financial results in greater detail. Mark?

Thank you, Andrew. We had another strong quarter, reporting company-best adjusted operating income of $37.3 million, or $0.90 per diluted share, and net income of $42.1 million, or $1.01 per diluted share. Gross written premiums grew by 17% for the quarter. Agriculture, accident and health, specialty programs, transactional ENS, and surety each contributed meaningfully to growth this quarter. Net written premiums grew by 20%, and our net retention of 64.1% was up over the prior year of 62.6%, but in line with our full prior year net retention. We added agriculture and credit insurance and reinsurance as our ninth division. Previously, we consolidated agriculture with global property and credit with surety. While in the quarter, this division accounted for 16% of our gross written premiums, there is significant seasonality to these lines, and we expect that this division will account for 10 to 12% of our premiums for the full year. Turning to our underwriting results, our first quarter combined ratio was 90.5% and included 2.2 points of cat losses, principally from Midwest convective storms and California wildfires. The non-CAT loss ratio of 60.2% for the quarter improved 0.4 points compared to 2024 and is also the best in company history. For the quarter, we did not recognize any prior year loss development, yet we saw favorable emergence. Our reserve position continues to be strong as IBNR now makes up in excess of 70% of net reserves, up from 69% at December 31st. As we have discussed previously, the proportion of our IB&R to total reserves has increased while we have also shortened our liability durations and increased the speed of recognition in claims. The expense ratio of 28.1 improved 0.6 points over the prior year quarter and was in line with our expectations of sub-30s. The business mix shift continued to impact acquisition costs for the quarter but was offset by improvements in our other operating and general expenses ratio, benefiting from scale of our business. We expect our expense ratio to increase somewhat over the remainder of the year. We're still targeting sub-30s. Turning to our investment results, we reported net investment income of $19.3 million in the quarter, compared to $18.3 million a year ago. In the first quarter, we put $126 million to work at 6%. In the first quarter, we found better relative value in structure versus investment grade corporate credit as credit spreads were near at all time tight levels. The net investment income from our fixed income portfolio increased to 16.7 million from 12.5 million in the first quarter of 2024, driven by a higher portfolio yield and a significant increase in the invested asset base. Our embedded yield was 5.2% at March 31st versus 4.7% a year ago and 5.1% at December 31st. We reported a loss of $2.1 million in our alternative and strategic investments portfolio due to the change in the fair value of limited partnership investments. Our financial leverage is modest as we finished the quarter with a low 12% debt to capital ratio. Given our undrawn capacity from our revolver and our current leverage, we have ample debt financing flexibility. Our effective tax rate of 18.2% was 3.5 points lower than the first quarter of 2024, driven by stock-based compensation awards that best in the first quarter of each year. By the end of 2025, we expect our full year effective tax rate to be between 21% and 22%. With respect to the material weakness in IT controls that we reported at year end, which I'll remind you had no impact on our financial statements, new controls and procedures have been designed and are in the process of being implemented. We expect to remediate the material weakness this year. Lastly, April 1st is when we renew property reinsurance programs, including our CAT program, global property quota share, and property excess of loss. All of these renewals were orderly and we are satisfied with the terms and structures of these programs. Our property CAT treaty renewed at the expiring structure, specifically a 15 million first event net retention and 36 million cover. Overall, our property placements provide greater protection at lower costs and or better terms. Now, I'll turn the call back over to Andrew.

Thank you, Mark. Our outstanding first quarter performance reflects the strength of our diversified portfolio, our underwriting discipline in light of the softening market across several lines, and our ability to adapt quickly to evolving market conditions. Our global agriculture unit and accident health division contributed meaningfully to our growth this quarter. This is noteworthy since we're intentionally seeking growth in high return areas that are less exposed to the P&C cycles. Our investment in our agriculture unit has been timely given the changes in the P&C backdrop. We serve markets that have government-subsidized programs, and we've constructed a well-diversified global portfolio. In specific instances, we've developed unique solutions that are in high demand from our clients, and our results so far are even better than we expected. we are very bullish that we can continue to grow earnings in this business with very attractive returns on capital. Our accident and health division had strong growth in 2024, driven principally by our captive offering to the medical stop-loss market. The first quarter was a continuation of that trend plus a return to growth in the traditional stop-loss business as a result of the failures of a handful of MGAs due to poor performance. We had anticipated this given irrational pricing and the market capacity that supports it. Just a reminder that we are not competing against companies focused on large accounts. Our focus is on smaller accounts, generally with 500 lives or less. That said, the poor performance in the large group market has been a contributor to the improving conditions in the market we serve. Our USP around medical cost management is distinct and is one reason we are winning. Our approach to claims is the second reason we are winning, as providers are systematically cost shifting, which is a trend that will increase given the administration's cutback on health care funding. Our competitors are paying and pursuing as compared to our unique capabilities to negotiate final payment before any cash goes out the door. And of course, our talent and technology are the third reason we're winning. We simply have an outstanding team. And as I've discussed in the past, we have a leadership position in technology including our use of AI and predictive analytics and risk selection and pricing. We continue to see a decrease in global property premiums, but we are very pleased with the first quarter performance. We had 95 plus percent account retention. And while the market softened very quickly, we were prepared in our underwriting strategy to deploy our primary layer capacity over longer stretches to defend our position. This allowed us to keep accounts maintain a strong risk-adjusted price while foregoing some premium to maintain underwriting margins. The strength and performance of our global property business, where we often lead on the primary layer, was rewarded with a strong renewal of our quota share reinsurance program, including an increase in capacity, which will enable us to go further with the underwriting strategy I just outlined. Our lead role in writing the primary layer, and when appropriate, leading the market in settling claims, Plus, our longstanding relationships with the chief risk officers of our insureds strengthens our ability to weather what is clearly a tougher market. Beyond what I just noted, we have double-digit growth in transactional E&S, surety, and specialty programs. Transactional E&S remains a vibrant division and is a true surplus lines writer of property and liability. Our book is somewhat less exposed to the E&S light risks that flow back and forth between the admitted and non-admitted market. Nonetheless, there are no shortage of instances of irresponsible behavior we observe in our market, in particular from fronted programs and certain MGAs. In surety, we are very mindful of both the potential economic slowdown and reduced federal funding, including that flowing to states and munis. We did observe a reduction in bonding activity for federal contractors, but on the other hand, our SBA activity continues to be strong. Overall, Q1 bid bond requests were up 19% from the prior year, And so notwithstanding my comments on the federal contracts, the demand in Q1 was robust. In programs, our growth was originated by those program managers where we have an ownership position, which is roughly 75% of our total programs division. This ownership is a further measure of alignment in addition to the underwriting performance compensation structures we employ when we delegate authority. Professional lines was down slightly given softening conditions in the lines we target. Irresponsible competition is coming from a number of sources, but again, fronted programs and certain MGAs seem to work on economics that is distinct from the rest of the industry. It will only be a matter of time before the irresponsible fronts in these MGAs and professional and transactional ENS and the capacity that supports those programs recognize the financial outcomes of their actions. Until then, we'll keep our powder dry. Lastly, construction and energy solutions was somewhat impacted by our intentional actions in commercial auto and a selective approach on other casualty. That said, we continue to find attractive new business opportunities in both areas. Turning to operational metrics, we saw some improvements compared to the fourth quarter. On renewal pricing, we were consistent with our prior quarter at mid-single digits plus pure rate. Retention improved to roughly 80% for the quarter, driven by business mix and the wrap-up of actions on commercial auto. Lastly, we continue to see strong submission growth, which was in the mid-teens this quarter and over 20% in transactional ENFs. Altogether, our low earnings volatility, consistent earnings growth, our strong underwriting results, and strong returns on equity are a direct outflow of the Skyward team's excellent execution of our rural earnings strategy. We remain confident we'll continue to generate top quartile returns at all parts of the market cycle. I'd now like to turn the call back over to the operator to open up for Q&A. Operator?

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. The first question comes from Alex Scott with Barclays. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning. First one I had is on the growth opportunities you're seeing in agriculture and credit insurance in particular. And maybe if you could just give us a little more color and texture to what you're doing there and how it's driving such great growth.

Yeah, thanks, Alex, and thanks for the question. So first on ag, I don't know if I want to say too much more in this instance beyond what I said in the prepared remarks. What I will highlight, you know, we hired just a fantastic industry veteran, James Tran, to lead our entry into it. And we had sort of the basic premise that we wanted to have a global portfolio because we want to be well diversified. We didn't want to add volatility to our business. And I just think that he's brought that capability. I think we're probably active in probably eight or nine different countries at this point. And what we have seen is just some great opportunities where we've been able to press down. They are in the same opportunities year to year, but James and his team have done an excellent job. And I think we feel very good about how we're approaching those markets, the position that we've built quickly. and the portfolio that we have, and I think just our general sense is that we have line of sight for that to continue, quite honestly, already with some very substantial treaty opportunities that are lined up for Q3. With credit, it's quite a diversified approach. So we started with a focus on mortgage. It's a relatively quiet time in mortgage. We're an insurer for Fannie and Freddie. We're reinsurers for the PMIs. But the fellow that we hired, J.P. Latour, to lead that effort has also brought us in to participate on a reinsurance basis and trade credit and other areas of credit insurance. And I think today we're probably being a little bit more defensive than we were last year just simply because the uncertain economic backdrop And so, in this quarter, that really wasn't a particularly meaningful contributor to the growth that you saw in that reporting division.

Got it. That's all helpful. For the next one, I wanted to see if you could talk a little bit about the environment and just tariffs in general and, you know, how you're thinking about lost cost trend across your businesses. I mean, you know, you guys are in a lot of niche areas, so it's, you know, not always

easy for us on the outside to kind of tell how some of these things would funnel their way into your lost cost trend yeah so a great question alex um and you're right with how you framed it you know there's a lot about sort of the specifics of our business that um you know probably makes unpacking it a little bit more difficult but you know overall i think we're still in the view that you know lost cost trend in our portfolio in total is somewhere in the five to six range By and large, we've tried to limit the amount of exposure we have in what we see as being sort of the high inflation exposed bodily injury categories in casualty and liability. I think one of the things that we make sure that we do is we're keeping our limits short. Much of what we do in excess is written over our own primary. And so from a casualty perspective, we're trying to keep it in check as much as we can. On the property side, there's probably a few different pieces to it. I think from an inflation related to tariffs, we probably have some in APD. And certainly on the global property side, reconstruction costs are going to go up. I think on the flip side, you know, much of what we have inside of our E&S portfolio is a cash value. And so I think it's less inflation exposed. And as I've mentioned in the past, as materials go up, we benefit from that on surety because effectively you're getting a bond that's increasing in size without sort of a proportionate, you know, loss cost increase. And so, you know, we have some countermeasures that are beneficial in our book. I think the other thing I'd say to you, Alex, is that, you know, a little bit surprises because we've listened to the questions that have come in prior calls. And while, you know, for us, we're certainly not ignoring the tariffs question. It's clearly on our, you know, on our thinking. We just think that there's so many other things that are going on in the economy to pay attention to that our leaders have have started to prepare themselves in our monitoring, whether it be cost shifting in health care. Going on I think you know certainly tariffs might impact the cost of drugs and and particularly from coming from you know other countries I will say that the you know, the Reduction in federal funds that are flowing downstream to states Into munis is probably going to lead to a reduction in capital projects and some cost shifting going on you know watching sort of the credit environment and You know, we're watching obviously safety, you know, on job sites and so forth, because you're going to have probably a reduction in oversight at OSHA. And if we have a softer economy, you know, the sort of the maintenance and attention to safety might come under pressure. So, you know, we're looking at all these things and you layer on top of it potential, you know, economy that as it gets a little bit tougher, you start to see instances of moral hazard emerging. And so when we think about the environment, you know, we're thinking about all those things. And I have to sort of hand it to the leaders of our organization. They've done an excellent job of sort of outlining, you know, which of those things are potentially impactful to each of their businesses and how it is that we're preparing ourselves from a countermeasures perspective. And so I would just widen the conversation and say, That's the dialogue, and I think we're probably about as well prepared as anybody can be, given the uncertainty that we're seeing right now.

Thank you. You're welcome.

And our next question comes from Matt Carletti with Citizens. Your line is open.

Hey, thanks. Good morning. Good morning. Andrew, you talked a bit in your opening comments about some of the extraordinary growth you saw in crop and A&H. And if I recall, kind of last year, there was definitely some, you know, for lack of a better term, kind of seasonality to the growth rate across the year. I was hoping maybe you could just touch on that, how much kind of frame Q1 within kind of your expectations for the rest of the year and how much of that might be helped or hindered by some of the opportunities that are specific to kind of Q1 timeframe.

yeah uh thanks matt um i appreciate the question uh because it does give us a chance to talk a little about this so um last year i think you'll remember we grew at 20 for the full year first quarter was was a high growth quarter second quarter was a lower growth quarter third and fourth quarters were again high growth quarters and there is definitely seasonality i'll just i'll highlight a few of the few of the items that are particularly important today You know, the January 1 renewals in A&H is a monster renewal. It tends to make up over 50% of the annual written premium. And so if you're going to capture, you know, a market opportunity, that's the moment in time that you're going to capture it. So it kind of amplifies what you see in terms of growth overall. And so, and you saw that here, as I mentioned, you know, sort of the backdrop and the reasons why. On the flip side, it's a lower sort of renewal quarter in the second quarter. And conversely, global property, the second quarter is the largest quarter for the year. And in the sort of go back two years, you'll see that it was an incredibly large growth quarter in global property. Last year, we were down a little bit, I think 6% or 7%. And of course, this year we're in a tougher market, so I wouldn't be surprised if global property shrinks a bit. And so when we do look at it all together, the second quarter is for us going to be a lower growth quarter. The third quarter will be a higher growth quarter. And the fourth quarter is really determined on what the end of the year competition looks like as folks are trying to close out their plans. But I'll go back to what I said when we gave guidance last quarter. We guided to a mid-teens growth number. We did that last year as well. We guided to mid-teens last year. We delivered 20. This year we guided to mid-teens again. And I feel confident, notwithstanding some of the uncertainty in the economic backdrop, that we're well-positioned to deliver that and probably be at a rather distinctive level of a growth. for the year, you know, given our portfolio.

Great. That's super helpful. Thank you. And then if I could ask one more, just on reserves, I think, Mark, you commented that there was, you know, obviously you didn't release anything during the quarter, but that there was favorable emergence behind the scenes and walked us through some of the other numbers. Could you just give a little color on kind of what areas of the book you're seeing that favorable emergence?

sure so uh just a little bit of background look we just finished year end right where we did our ground up so in the first quarter what we what we rely on is our a to e and and in the quarter 2020 our accident years 2020 and after emerged favorably specifically a map and property surety and and professional liability The occurrence liability lines also developed or emerged favorably for the same accident years, while we had a little bit of increase in the prior accident years, meaning 19 and prior. All in that, we saw favorable emergence across the company, but we didn't recognize that. We've talked a lot about here how we look at reserves relative to indicated seasonality and magnitude. And once the accident years we feel like are mature, they'll converge. But all in, Matt, it was favorable emergence in the quarter and our book versus indicated the margin is increased relative to where it was at the end of the year. Does that help?

That's perfect. Thanks for the color. Appreciate it. Thanks, Matt.

And the next question is from Meyer Shields with KBW. Your line is open.

Great, thanks so much. Andrew, one last tariff question if I can. I understand that it's maybe not the most pressing issue, but in terms of the global agriculture, Brooke, does it face the same challenges as domestic crop insurance does if crop prices fall? And how should we think about that risk more broadly?

Well, look, I mean, you know that here in the U.S., you know, the federal program is effectively a price and yield program. And so, you know, You know, there is obviously, you know, some exposure relative to price if consumption due to exports and, you know, becomes an issue. And similarly, although it's very crop-specific whether, you know, imports might create greater demand domestically, what I'd say to you is that of what we have written so far this year, our Our U.S. business is about 40% of our portfolio. This goes back to my point of being well diversified. And I think that we've taken measures to protect ourselves. And I will also say to you, Mara, that we have reserved very conservatively. I'd say well above what we would expect the ultimates to be. And so I feel like even under sort of a stress situation that we're pretty well protected.

Okay, that's very helpful. Thank you. And then I apologize if I missed this, but is the first quarter acquisition expense ratio a good proxy for the rest of the year? I know you talked about other expenses coming back maybe later in the year.

Yeah, Mayor, maybe I didn't do a good job. Yeah, I think it's a pretty good proxy. Look, I'm expecting it to tick up a little bit. But yeah, I would look at the first quarter as a pretty good proxy, yeah.

I mean, the thing that you can imagine is that there's a really wide spread, right? So unsurprisingly, most of our wholesale-driven businesses, right, transactional ENS, our marine unit, which sits in there, our professional lines business, all that is relatively high acquisition costs. Obviously, surety is off the charts. Surety, in fact, depending on what class, can be as much as 40%. On the other hand, we have some quite low acquisition cost businesses. Part of this is just where we're seeing the growth. I think I'd echo Mark maybe a little bit more conservatively. I personally, given how I see the earn through and the opportunities that are in front of us, I think that we will see acquisition costs tick up here over the coming few quarters. I believe we'll also make some progress, continued progress on our controllable OUE. But in aggregate, you know, it's probably likely that we're going to go up from kind of the low 28 number, you know, partly due just to the mix of business. And also, you know, we're going to continue to invest in our business because we continue to believe there's good opportunities.

Okay. That's very helpful. And Mark, it's for sure me, not you.

And their next question is from Gregory Peters with Raymond James.

Hi, Andrew and Mark. Hey, Greg. Good morning. So, Andrew, in your comments, you spoke about the submission growth and the retention. And I, you know, all submissions aren't necessarily created equal, right? And so some of the other companies in the public market have reported some volatility around their submissions. So maybe you could give us some texture about what you're seeing in the submissions. Are they all interesting opportunities? Are you still turning away a big chunk of them? Any color there would be helpful.

yeah that's a great question so so i'll see if i can sort of parse it out um let me let me start with the with the the big one that a lot of folks focus on which is within our our ens area where i highlighted that uh in this quarter we were above 20 and and i would actually say materially above 20 um i think that there's still a very good flow i will say that the competition for the business is increasing. So I wouldn't distinguish by saying we're seeing more submission activity that doesn't fit as compared to prior quarters as much as we're seeing more competition on the things that are flowing. Now, I will tell you that we really are a true surplus lines writer. So a lot of the stuff that we're writing is less exposed. But boy, you know, occasionally you see some pretty crazy behavior out there, and sometimes you see, you know, a lot more activity than otherwise you might see. But good submission activity, and I don't think there's a difference in terms of the quality. Within, you know, a couple other areas, so for example, in industry solutions, you know, that submission activity is kind of running around 10%, and I think that we're pretty focused in terms of our distribution. And quite honestly, we tend to know the books reasonably well. So unless it's new business to those brokers, it might be accounts that we've competed on in the past, haven't won, and we want to compete again this year. And so I think that that's pretty steady. And I gave my commentary on... where we don't include bid bonds in our submission activity, but bid bonds are the best early indicator and the numbers of 19% up over the prior year is a pretty good indicator that there's still a strong flow that's going to follow. And then I would just say to you as it relates to other parts of our business, global property, A&H, the numbers aren't big enough to make a difference. One highlight for you is that, just to give you a sense for how strong we're hitting in A&H, our RFP submission count for A&H was up 59% year over year, which speaks entirely to what a compelling proposition we've built in that market. We have a lot of distributors, trading partners who want to do more business with us, and we're seeing that in the RFP submission count.

Interesting detail. In one of the other answers, or I mean, I guess it was in your commentary, when you're talking about the surety business, you talked about the government-related work, the federal contractors and stuff. Can you give us a sense of or size that component? You know, how much of your business is government-related versus private contractors?

Yeah, so the government portion, and I won't get these numbers exact, but the $150 million plus excluding anything tied to the SBA is about, I don't know, probably $20 million of our book. And we have a couple of distributors who are really sort of focused on that part of the market. And then otherwise, the business is either business that is, you know, private or public private together or public works. And, you know, that runs the gamut, you know, states, munis, et cetera. And I highlighted the federal sort of piece because it was the one piece in the first quarter that stood out. In fact, it's probably the only piece where we saw an outcome that was less than what we'd expected.

Got it. Okay. If I could just slip in one follow-up question on the program business. You emphasized that you have an ownership position. It feels like in the marketplace, there's growing interest in the program market, or at least a lot of other companies are talking about that. Can you give us just a reminder, a refresher on how you approach new programs and the due diligence process, et cetera, and how you're thinking about that market in the next couple of years?

Yeah, Greg, thank you. That's a great question. Let me just start. I think probably most folks are aware that the program world has – meaningfully outgrown the rest of the commercial market. Um, and there's a whole bunch of reasons there, you know, there's obviously a great deal of private equity and private equity consolidation, a huge amount of money behind it. Um, and you know, and I, and I will say that there are some fantastic, uh, MGA's program administrators out there. And I'd like to think that, you know, we want to partner with those guys. Our strategy around that world is the same as our strategy, um, with everything that we do that we manufacture, which is we're looking to rule our niche. So if we can partner with somebody who has capabilities that we can't replicate on our own, whether they be owing to some technology or product or expertise or distribution relationship or whatever the case may be, and we see them as having a view on how to build a really competitive position, and we can partner with them the right way, That's the sort of profile for success. And if you go down sort of our roster of program partnerships, they check the box on those items. Now, I'll highlight a couple other things for you that are really important. As I mentioned, we have material investments, and that is a further mechanism for alignment. We try to ensure that the mechanisms that we use for compensating the program administrators align as much as possible to our own internal measures for how it is that we compensate underwriters. And so that's a critical component. I'll highlight a couple other things that are really important. We are very intentional about ensuring that at a minimum, the data flow that we are receiving is as close to equal to the data flow that we have for our internally managed businesses. So that If we want to ask and answer a question on, hey, we want to look at a particular risk factor in terms of the frequency in, you know, developed over the first six months as compared to every prior, you know, accident year, you know, can we answer that question? And we should be able to answer that question as we could with any internally managed, internally underwritten business. And so whether it be data as a minimum has to be equal. but oftentimes we're exchanging technology and other things. And the last point I would make that's really important is I would argue that in many classes in our industry, it is absolutely impossible to perform at an equivalent level to a competent full-stack insurer that has the claims. And now there are instances, for example, You know, we have a brown water, green water marine program with a great program administrator, and the claims expertise around that is very specific, and who does the claims is sort of singularly focused on that area of expertise. But it's really hard in like a GL class or a PL class. to believe that they're going to do it anywhere near as well as we can. And so in every instance where we can do the claims, we do. And that's a huge difference in terms of how we approach it. And, you know, this bifurcation between underwriting and claims and the belief that you can deliver excellent results with those things sort of operating independently inside different organizations, particularly if those organizations are kind of like the larger TPAs, is absolutely just that is a proposition that I just don't believe in and don't support. And we tend to sort of operate, you know, our specialty programs business accordingly.

That's great detail. Thanks for the answers.

You're welcome.

And the next question comes from Andrew Cleggerman with TD Cohen. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning. Global ag, terrific, terrific growth. And I kind of would like to get a little more kind of color on where you're participating in the reinsurance markets. Is it more quota share, excess of losses? Is some of it catastrophic in nature? What countries outside of the U.S. are really big for you? Just trying to get a little color around that. you know, what you like there and, and the kind of returns, you know, whatever you could share.

Um, yeah, thanks Andrew. Uh, and thanks for the question. Um, so, uh, I'll share, you know, this is an area where I'm normally very open and transparent as area. I'm, I'm, I'm going to be, I actually listened to a, another company's call and a similar question was asked. And, uh, that particular CEO was, uh, was, um, was not answering the question fully, and I might not answer your question fully, because I think there's more we want to say. But that said, look, to just list the countries, and this would not be a complete list, it would include, in addition to the US, Canada, Brazil, China, India, Thailand would be a handful. Are there others I'm missing? Those are major ones. It would include both crop as well as dairy livestock. We actually, I think, have a couple of things in aquaculture, believe it or not. So it really runs the gamut. I'd say probably 90% of our exposure is quota share. And yeah, I don't think that there's much more than I can say about it other than, as I referenced in my commentary, At least in a couple of instances, we have product that we believe nobody else offers in the marketplace, which is part of the reason that we're winning. And as I said, I don't want to go too much further, but this is one of the places where, you know, if you bring in one of the best people out there and, you know, we surround them with sort of the right kind of capabilities, you can do something special. And I think it's showing up in our results.

That was actually very helpful. The next question is around the global property. So I see your gross rate and premium came off about 18.5%, but the retention was very good. I think you called that out in your remarks. So maybe, Andrew, could you talk a little bit about the pricing environment, maybe any color on where rate's going and maybe into kind of subcategories of the global property, regional, whatever. Again, same thing, whatever you can share there would be of interest.

Yeah, no, I'd be happy to share quite a bit. And also, thank you for that question. So, well, first off, we're writing Global 1000 accounts. We're writing accounts with very, very, very large schedules. As I mentioned, we're writing the primary layer. What that means is we're writing the layer that sits right above their deductible self-insured retention, which will oftentimes run in the tens of millions of dollars. During sort of a hard market period, we might write, for example, a share of the primary $100 million. And as I mentioned in the remarks, one of the things that we're doing is we're writing over larger stretches. So we might be writing over $200, $250 million. And the way that we've been able to do that is, you know, I think that there is a greater abundance of, in addition to, we have a very large line that we work with, with quota share support. And that line, by the way, got even larger by a full third as a result of our 401 renewal. But prior to that, you know, we were using that full line and then augmenting it with, I think, what's been a relatively abundant fact market, you know, to provide something that is a really substantive, you know, primary layer cover. And what I'd say to you is in terms of pricing, you know, it's a little bit hard because you're stretching over longer stretches and so forth, but, you know, it's definitely down, you know, kind of high single digits. But that said, the way that sort of the risk-adjusted pricing runs through for us, we are pretty darn confident that in combination with where we use FAC and so forth, that our risk-adjusted pricing or effectively our expected net underwriting margin probably is a lot less than the reduction in pure rate.

I see.

And I will say our results have been so damn good that this is the reason that we were able to not only increase our capacity by a full third, we had a very significant increase in participants who support us. And I'm actually, we're so well positioned against this market right now. I'm really, really pleased where we are in what is clearly a very, very sort of rapidly changing rate environment. But I think our proposition is one that's rather unique just simply because of the line size that we can bring.

So it sounds like you really like your returns in that business. Is there a risk that pricing comes off a lot more sharply, you know, in the next year or two? Or do you think it could stabilize?

Well, it's come off really fast. Like, I mean, you know, like we were tracing it. So last year, this quarter, The second quarter last year, I think we were down about 7%. And that's where we really started to see things kind of level and maybe come off a bit. And, you know, the third quarter is a very quiet quarter for the global property market. And the fourth quarter is, you know, quite a, quite an active quarter. And so, you know, fourth quarter things came up, it felt like just things, just the bottom dropped out here in the first quarter. And I, you know, listen, I don't, I don't know. You know, it's, it's one of these things where we like our position, I think we rode the market up as the market presented. But the fact that we have over 95% account retention tells you that of the 100 plus accounts that make up that book, it's really sticky stuff. And I feel like we're going to continue to generate a good underwriting return under most sort of backdrops. And that compares, Andrew, I'll remind you that Like when the cat markets were going crazy 18 months, two years ago, and we expressly said, you know, we're not going to just go right into the cat markets because that stuff's going to come off. You know, I was listening to the commentary of, you know, one of our competitors on their earnings call saying, you know, well, you know, the market's gotten soft really quickly and, you know, and we're losing accounts. Well, of course that's capacity swapping in that market. And we don't want to be in that place. We want to be in a place that we can be durable even as the market softens and I think global property is a really good example of that. And I think that even if the market softens, yeah, could our business be, when it peaked out at 250, could it go down to 150? Sure, but my guess is that we will find a way to make a good underwriting profit and we will find a way to maintain a decent position with a good portion of that 100 plus accounts that we do business with.

That's great. Thanks for the insights.

And our next question comes from Mark Hughes with Truist Securities. Your line is open.

Yeah, thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Anything on the loss pick when we think about subsequent quarters? You've talked about some of those growth dynamics, and that's very helpful. When we think about the accident year loss pick, is this a good place to go, or will that move around a little bit?

Well, I'll let Mark jump in. I think that probably as opposed to the prior years, in select circumstances for this accident year, our loss picks, we started to reflect some of the performance that we were seeing, meaning in specific circumstances we adjusted down, some circumstances we adjusted up. Yeah, look, I mean, I think that, you know, setting aside kind of the earn through on mix, you know, it was a good quarter for us. It was our best XCAT, you know, accident or loss result that we've ever had. And I think it's a good reference point. I wouldn't encourage anybody to take down their model. You know, we think that, you know, kind of the The overall guidance that we gave at the beginning of the year is probably the right guidance. But, yeah, I think that you won't see a lot of volatility in our action year loss results as you haven't seen a lot of volatility in our action year loss results in the 12 quarters that we've been public.

I think that's right. Yeah, very good. Andrew, a key part of your strategy has been to hire new people, bring them on. They build out their books, and that supports your overall top-line growth. how is that climate now, your ability to hire, your appetite for hiring? Is this the right time in the cycle to be doing that? Just some perspective would be great.

It's a great question. I think that what we are doing, Mark, is that we're evaluating our hiring plans based on what we're seeing in the performance of our business. So if we're if we're performing according to expectations and we don't see things moving to yellow in the markets, we're proceeding. And in other instances, we're unquestionably slowing down. There are a couple of things that we're working on that are strategic. They tend to be combining the expertise of our organization as it stands today with technology to potentially go after an adjacent part of the market and Those investments and the resourcing around them are going to continue because they're strategic for us. But I think if you ask, hey, there's a particular region in surety that we've been looking to fill. And if we have a candidate, we would say, how are we performing? Do we have confidence? Do we want to make that kind of commitment right now? And that kind of conversation repeats itself every day in our organization. I think as opposed to a year and two years ago, I think we were just sort of pedal to the metal because we had confidence across the board. Now we're just making sure that we're not making decisions on resources that we're going to regret at a later point.

Yeah, OK. Mark, do you have the cash flow number in the court? I think you said you put $126 million to work at 6%. But if you looked at the cash from operations, do you happen to have that number?

I'm pretty sure it's right at $100 million, Mark, but I'll confirm it. I'm pretty sure.

Okay. Very good. Thank you. Thanks, Mark.

And our next question comes from Michael Phillips with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Good morning, Mike. Hello? Sorry, can you hear me okay? We can hear you now. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, thanks. You hit the pump. Sector data, you recast that to action year basis, I think, for the recent four or so action years. When I look at, and Andrew, this is kind of around, I guess, your commentary on commercial auto recently, pretty cautionary comments. When I look at the action year loss pick for commercial auto, it's down, you know, six, seven points in the recent action year, 2024. I assume that's just maybe because of repositioning that you've done. But just any comments you can make there on that pick for commercial auto. Thank you.

Yeah, I think it's three simple things. One is, to your point, it's absolutely about mix. We're down to a book where we really were very satisfied with the mix. Obviously, we've driven a lot of price in, as has everybody, no surprise there. But the thing I would absolutely unequivocally point you to is please do look at our frequency. If you look at the 24 year as of 12 months, the frequency is down by over 50% as compared to only five years earlier. And you'll see at every period of seasonings, so 12 months for 24, 24 months for 23, et cetera, et cetera, the frequency is way way way down and um and that frequency is really uh you know a key driver obviously uh you know against uh an increasing severity backdrop that that is flowing through into our loss picks yeah okay perfect thank you i saw that i appreciate that um and totally random question but when we see lumpiness in the uh alts and strategic investments row um you know i know your strategic investments is more on the private insurance space

I think the lump of this is more from the alts and not the latter. Just kind of want to check on that.

Yeah, it is the alts. Yeah, and it's the old opportunistic fixed income portfolio, the arena-managed portfolio that is down to 5% of our total investments at this point. That's the driver of the volatility. Okay. Thank you very much. You are welcome.

I am showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Natalie Schoolcraft for closing remarks.

Thanks everyone for your questions, for participating in our conference call, and for your continued interest in and support of Skyward Specialty. I am available after the call to answer any additional questions that you may have. We look forward to speaking with you again on our second quarter earnings call. Thank you and have a wonderful day.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.