Verisk Analytics, Inc.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Verisk's first quarter 2026 earnings results conference call. This call is being recorded. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After today's prepared remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session where we will limit participants to one question so that we can allow everyone to ask a question. We will have further instructions for you at that time. For opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Verisk's Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations, Ms. Stacey Broadbar. Ms. Broadbar, please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good day, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today for a discussion of our first quarter 2026 financial results. On the call today are Lee Schabel, Verisk's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Elizabeth Mann, Chief Financial Officer. The earnings release referenced on this call, as well as our traditional quarterly earnings presentation and the associated 10Q, can be found in the investor section of our website, Verisk.com. The earnings release has also been attached to an AK that we have furnished to the SEC. A replay of this call will be available for 30 days on our website and by dialing. As set forth in more detail in today's earnings release, I will remind everyone that today's call may include forward-looking statements about their future performance, including those related to our financial guidance. Actual performance could differ materially from what is suggested by our comments today. Information about the factors that could affect future performance is contained in our recent SEC filing. A reconciliation of reported and historic non-GAAP financial measures discussed on this call is provided in our 8K and today's earnings presentation posted on the investor section of our website, Verisk.com. However, we are not able to provide a reconciliation of projected adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, and adjusted EPS to the most directly comparable expected GAAP results because of the unreasonable effort and high unpredictability of estimating certain items that are excluded from projected non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, and adjusted EPS, including, for example, tax consequences, acquisition-related costs, gains and losses from dispositions, and other non-recurring expenses, the effect of which may be significant. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Lee Schabel.

Thanks, Stacey. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today, I will provide a broad overview of our first quarter financial results, and then Elizabeth will go into more detail in her financial review. I will give some details on our innovation activity, including some recent AI developments, and finally, I will wrap up with highlights from our client engagement during the quarter. Turning to the results, Verisk delivered organic constant currency revenue growth of 4.7%, with growth across both underwriting and claims and sustained strong growth of 7% in subscription revenues. Our focus on efficiency and cost discipline drove organic constant currency adjusted EBITDA growth of 5.9%, delivering 60 basis points of margin expansion. This growth was modestly ahead of our expectations and included the impact of the factors we previously communicated, namely the carryover impact of the very low weather activity, tougher compares from strong renewals last year, and a work stoppage in a federal government contract. So while this quarter's performance is modestly below our typical growth levels, we have confidence that the resolution of these short-term factors and continued core growth momentum will result in a gradual improvement in revenue growth as we move through the year. Moreover, we expect 2026 to be another year of performance in line with our long-term growth targets. Last month, we hosted an investor day where we outlined our strategy to drive compounding growth by focusing on four key initiatives. Specifically, strengthening strategic client relationships, expanding our proprietary and contributory data advantage, delivering a steady stream of innovations to the market, and expanding networks across our businesses. We also reiterated our growth targets for the next three years and provided detailed overviews for each of our key divisions. We truly appreciate that so many of you attended in person or watched the live webcast and would encourage others to look at the materials which are available on the investor section of our website. One hallmark of Verisk's business model is that we have delivered consistent growth across varying macroeconomic, geopolitical, and insurance-specific operating environments. This is due to the mission-critical nature of our solutions, our scale-driven economic advantage, and our diversified set of offerings across underwriting and claims and personal and commercial lines. Today, the insurance industry backdrop in which we are operating is healthy yet evolving. 2025 marked one of the strongest underwriting results in years with robust industry profitability and near record low combined ratios, helped by unusually low catastrophe losses. With ample capital, carriers are shifting their focus from profitability to growth, resulting in more competition and softening pricing. This dynamic is most pronounced across the property lines, specifically commercial property, On one hand, this drives carriers to be more focused on cost efficiency. However, it is precisely in these types of markets that underwriting discipline and enhanced risk selection is a key focus for our clients, contributing to the need to be informed by the most complete and comprehensive data and analytics available. To that end, our level of engagement remains high as our clients are turning to Verisk as a trusted partner in that pursuit. At Verisk, we are focused on supporting our clients with the most advanced data, analytics, and insights, and investing its scale in new technologies to help them better understand risk and navigate through these dynamic times. We are not only introducing new innovations to the market at a faster rate, but these solutions are more impactful as they address some of the industry's most pressing challenges with more timely and more frequent insights and more efficiency and automation. As an example, within our underwriting data and analytics solutions business, we continue to enhance and strengthen our leading property solutions through our innovations using aerial imagery. By integrating this advanced technology, we have innovated with more accurate property-level insights at scale. Namely, our roof age and aerial imagery analytics solutions that address longstanding challenges for the industry. We have invested behind continuous data refreshment and have expanded our analytical capabilities, resulting in a product that offers better risk selection and faster underwriting. Client adoption has been strong with our enhanced aerial imagery offerings, growing revenue more than 30% over the last two years. We have additional innovations which are slated for introduction this year including wind and hail peril scores and remaining roof life. And within our anti-fraud business, our digital media forensics is an AI-powered solution that automates anomaly detection in photos and documents, a growing source of fraud risk for the industry. This innovation reinforces our position as a key partner in fraud analytics and highlights our scale and ability to organically build new contributory data sets to help the industry address a growing challenge. Through innovation, we are driving growth in a heavily penetrated business, and in fact, just this quarter, we onboarded the sixth top 10 carrier to the digital media forensics platform. The changes to our go-to-market strategy, first implemented in 2024, and continued throughout 2025 have enabled us to get ever closer to our clients, understanding their specific needs, and delivering better service with high levels of client satisfaction. We are continuing to improve our client engagement with the addition of new sales leadership in our claims business, added sales resources across the business, and the expansion of our client strategy group, which focuses on our largest clients. We recently hosted two key client events, the Insurance Fraud Management Conference, or IFM, our signature anti-fraud event, and the Verisk Insurance Conference, or VIC, as it is known throughout the industry. VIC is our flagship event where we strategically engage various market participants to learn, network, and explore the latest industry trends, innovations, and various solutions that address the most top-of-mind industry dynamics. In fact, this year, 75% of respondents viewed VIC as a must-attend industry event. Both events attracted a record number of attendees from across the global insurance ecosystem, including representatives from the carriers, brokers, reinsurers, regulators, and our channel partners. AI featured prominently across the education program with 23 sessions covering AI-driven product innovation and the role of AI across underwriting, catastrophe modeling, life and annuities, specialty lines, and core platforms. These sessions were the most attended, including hundreds of clients representing a wide range of scale from large global multi-line carriers to regional and small carriers. In the Solutions Gallery, the AI showcase focused on five workflow-based AI demos reflecting how we're scaling practical AI in our underwriting, catastrophe and risk, and specialty business areas. Demonstrations focused on showcasing solutions that embed AI directly into workflows, augment human decision-making, improve the usability of complex data, and reinforce Verisk's commitment to responsible, regulator-ready AI. I note in an AMBEST report on AI and insurance released this week, surveyed insurers identified data readiness as the top impediment to AI implementation, even ahead of security and privacy. Companies are keenly focused on how they can partner with Verisk and capitalize on our robust and proprietary data sets through this significant technology transformation. I was particularly impressed with the engagement with our largest clients as they develop their AI strategies. In several instances, clients have included us in their own internal discussions to explore how we can integrate our data and capabilities into their AI strategies as a co-development partner. There has been a recurring theme that while AI can be powerful, it requires both deep industry knowledge and relevant data sets to be most effectively applied. Coming out of both events, client interest and sales pipelines are robust and competitive win rates have been very strong. Additionally, we are experiencing a faster pace of trial and growing number of proof of concepts for our AI solutions. In fact, we already have over 20 follow-up meetings set up related to augmented underwriting. That said, in certain cases, we are seeing an extended sales cycle related to the more complex contracting to incorporate AI governance and compliance. We are also engaging with many of our large clients, regulators, and the frontier model companies on partnership opportunities to leverage our data and insights. A key focus for all parties is accountability, transparency, governance, and protection of intellectual property. Based on our interaction with several frontier model companies, it is clear that they recognize the importance of leveraging not just proprietary data sets, but also deep industry-specific knowledge and established workflows, all of which we have at Verisk. For these reasons, as well as our focus on accountability, compliance, and governance, Verisk was the winner of a competitive RFP process to be the strategic partner of a global insurance firm to support the creation of a next-generation digitally native underwriting entity. Verisk will contribute its established data, actuarial, and analytics capabilities alongside a growing suite of AI-driven platforms and marketplace solutions to co-develop the operating model. This opportunity reflects continued momentum in commercializing Verisk's multi-year investments in agentic technologies and expanded role in enabling innovation across the insurance value chain. And with that, Let me turn the call over to Elizabeth for the detailed financial review.