Assured Guaranty Ltd.

Good morning and welcome to the Assured Guaranty Ltd. First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Ed and I'll be the operator for today's call. All participants are currently in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star zero on your telephone keypad. After the presentation, there'll be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Robert Tucker, Senior Managing Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you all for joining Assured Guaranty for our first quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. Today's presentation is made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The presentation may contain forward-looking statements about our new business and credit outlooks, market conditions, credit spreads, financial ratings, loss reserves, financial results, or other items that may affect our future results. These statements are subject to change due to new information or future events. Therefore, you should not place undue reliance on them as we do not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise them except as required by law. If you are listening to a replay of this call, or if you are reading the transcript of the call, please note that our statements made today may have been updated since this call. Please refer to the investor information section of our website for our most recent presentations and SEC filings, most current financial filings, and for the risk factors. This presentation also includes references to non-GAAP financial measures. We present the GAAP financial measures most directly comparable to the non-GAAP financial measures referenced in this presentation, along with a reconciliation between such GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures in our current financial supplement and equity investor presentation, which are on our website at AssuredGuaranty.com. Turning to the presentation, our speakers today are Dominic Frederico, President and Chief Executive Officer of Assured Guaranty Limited, Rob Bailenson, our Chief Operating Officer, and Ben Rosenblum, our Chief Financial Officer. After their remarks, we'll open the call to your questions. As the webcast is not enabled for Q&A, please dial into the call if you'd like to ask a question. I will now turn the call over to Dominic.

Thank you, Robert, and welcome to everyone joining today's call. Assured Guaranty began 2026 with a strong first quarter. The quarter's adjusted operating income per share came in at $2.50. Our new business production generated $73 million of PVP, almost twice the PVP of last year's first quarter, as we saw increases for each of our three financial guarantee underwriting groups. Rob will fill in the production details in a few minutes. We also produced $44 million of adjusted operating income in our asset management segment, During the first quarter of 2026, nearly four times the amount produced in the first quarter of 2025. Our pivot to increasing the proportion of alternative investments in our overall investment portfolio over the past few years has increased the all-in return of the investment portfolio. The inception to date annualized internal rate of return for all of our alternative investments was 12% at the end of the first quarter 2026. The Assured Life Free team has received positive feedback from potential customers with clear interest in our AA insurance for MAGRO, as well as general market desire for fresh reinsurance capacity. Currently, we've had positive discussions with potential partners in the U.S. MIGA market and in the UK PRT market, in addition to interest from other non-U.S. potential partners. We've made good progress integrating our staff with experienced employees already employed by Assured Life Free. Annuity reinsurance exemplifies the type of business opportunities we look for, those which will further diversify the company, create synergies with our existing business lines, generate attractive returns, have risk profiles in line with ours, and benefit from our core competencies. Economic uncertainty, political and geopolitical discord, and war permeate the news investors have been seeing recently. Investors understandably find high-quality municipal bonds attractive. Our Guaranty can expand the supply of high quality bonds and in certain cases reduce the borrowing costs and support the market value of even naturally AA rated municipal bonds. We believe municipal bond issuance will have another strong year. We're off to a good start for 2026. I believe our financial guarantee business will provide us with many insurance opportunities as we continue to expand our business in U.S. municipals, global infrastructure, and structured finance. We are also focused on building out our new annuity reinsurance business and on managing our capital prudently and profitably to support the growth in these businesses while protecting our policyholders and rewarding our shareholders. I will now turn the call over to Rob to provide more details about our production results.