Argo Group International Holdings, Ltd.

Good morning. Thank you for attending today's ARGO Group First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Amber and I will be your moderator for today's call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad at any time. I now have the pleasure of handing the conference over to our host, Greg Charpentier with ARGO. Greg, please proceed.

Thanks and good morning. Welcome to Argo Group's conference call for the first quarter ended March 31st, 2022. After the market closed last night, we issued a press release on our earnings, which is available in the investor section of our website at www.argogroup.com and was filed with the SEC. Presenting on today's call is Tom Bradley, Argo Group Executive Chairman and Interim Chief Executive Officer, and Scott Kirk, Chief Financial Officer. As the operator mentioned, this call is being recorded. During this conference call, ARGO management may make comments that reflect ARGO's intentions, beliefs, and expectations for the future. Such forward-looking statements are qualified by the inherent risks and uncertainties surrounding future expectations generally and may materially differ from actual future results involving any one or more of such statements. ARGO Group undertakes no obligation to publicly update forward-looking statements as a result of events or developments subsequent to this call. For a more detailed discussion of such risks and uncertainties, please see Argo Group's filings with the SEC. Also note that we will be referencing certain non-GAAP financial information. More information regarding these non-GAAP financial measures is provided in our earnings release. I will now turn the call over to Tom Bradley, Argo Group Executive Chairman and Interim Chief Executive Officer.

Tom Bradley Thank you, Greg, and thank you to everybody for joining us today. Before I jump into our results for the quarter, I'd like to take a moment to discuss our announcement last week. Over the last year, Argo has instituted a number of substantive strategic initiatives, actions that we believe have positioned the company for a clear and consistent long-term path to stable growth and profitability. The board of directors and management team, however, do not believe these initiatives are adequately reflected in the company's current market valuation. After much thoughtful and deliberate discussion and analysis, our board, with the assistance of our advisors, has initiated an exploration of potential strategic alternatives. In this review process, our objective is simple, to maximize the value of the company strategy and its considerable long-term prospects for the benefit of all shareholders. To that end, the Board will consider a wide range of options for the company, including, among other things, a potential sale, merger, or other strategic transaction. As is typical in these situations, There can be no assurance that this process will result in the company pursuing a particular transaction or other strategic outcome. The company has not set a timetable for completion of this process, and it does not intend to disclose further developments unless and until it determines that further disclosure is appropriate or necessary. As Kevin remains on leave, I will lead the efforts with the board to evaluate the range of potential strategic alternatives. It's a privilege to serve as interim CEO and lead this company forward. We continue to wish Kevin a full and speedy recovery, and I'm grateful to all our Argo associates for their hard work and dedication while he has been on leave. It's an honor to work with such a dynamic leadership team and impressive employee base. You need to look no further than our results for this quarter to see their continued focus on implementing our strategy. Now turning to the quarter. I'm happy to speak today about the strong results we reported last night. Our first quarter 2022 performance provided a solid start to the year and is representative of the continued execution of our strategic priorities of improving underwriting margins, reducing volatility, and managing expenses. Our operating earnings per share was $1.24 for the quarter, reflecting strong contributions from both our U.S. and international operations and a significant reduction in catastrophe losses. ARGO's annualized operating return on common equity was 11.4%, and a combined ratio of 95% was driven by improvements in both the loss and expense ratio. This is directly attributable to the strategic initiatives we have implemented at ARGO, and positions us well in achieving our 2022 financial objectives. Over the past year, we have highlighted our strategy to reduce the volatility of our underwriting results and allocate capital to businesses with more stable returns. Total cap losses of 8.7 million for the quarter decreased 38.8 million from the first quarter of 2021. Our efforts to reduce property cat exposure has resulted in improvements in year-over-year CAT losses for four straight quarters. While we do have some exposure to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, given the information available today, we do not view our net loss exposure to be significant and believe this contained in our expected loss ratios for the quarter. We will continue to monitor the situation closely, and our thoughts are those with those who have been affected by the war. We continue to explore all options to maximize shareholder value and take advantage of opportunities in the market. Consistent with that objective, we are entering into a lost portfolio transfer transaction for a vast majority of Syndicate 1200's reserves for the 2018 and 2019 years of account. This provides us with protection against reserve volatility for these years as an effective way to manage capital and begin to finalize these years of account. We do not anticipate a charge coming through the income statement as a result of this transaction. Now turning to expenses. We continue to make progress towards simplifying our operations and driving forward our expense reduction efforts. This was evident in our first quarter results as our expense ratio of 36% improved nearly two points from the prior year first quarter. Importantly, we are seeing a reduction in general and administration spend as benefits from our strategic efforts to create a simpler and leaner ARGO continue to materialize. Our expense reduction efforts are not complete, and there are several areas that we were focusing on to drive additional expense savings throughout the year. Given our strong first quarter results and continued expense reduction efforts, we remain confident in our ability to reach our 36% expense ratio target for full year 2022. We continue to execute on our priority of becoming a leading U.S.-focused specialty insurer as we completed the sale of Argo Seguros Brazil. We are in the ninth inning of that journey and remain confident in what comprises our ongoing business today. In our view, we are well-positioned to continue to generate favorable underlying margins as benefits from our strategic initiatives take hold and market conditions remain attractive across most of our platforms. We continuously review lines of business and respond to environmental changes in the marketplace. We have shown the ability to proactively remediate or take underwriting actions in lines we view less favorably. In terms of underlying growth, our top line in the quarter continued to reflect strategic growth in the businesses that we want to grow. Consistent with the financial objectives we set forth for this year, net earned premium growth in our ongoing businesses was 28.8%. We continue to feel good about the rates we're seeing and the direction of our markets. Rates increased in the mid-single-digit range on average across the portfolio. And importantly, the rate we are achieving continues to trend at or above lost cost inflation expectations. Overall, I am very pleased with the results for the quarter and the progress we've been able to make on our strategic objectives. I'll now turn the call over to Scott to discuss the results in more detail.