Bowhead Specialty Holdings Inc.

Hello and welcome to Bowhead Specialty's 4Q24 earnings call. After the prepared remarks, we will hold a question and answer session. For those in the Q&A room, please click the raised hand button found at the black bar at the bottom of your screen to join the question queue. Also, a reminder that this call is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Shirley Yap, Head of Investor Relations. Shirley, you may begin.

Thanks, Danielle. Good morning and welcome to Bowhead's fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. I'm Shirley Yap, Bowhead's Chief Accounting Officer and Head of Investor Relations. Joining me today are Stephen Sills, our Chief Executive Officer, and Brad Mulcahy, our Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this morning, we released our financial results for the fourth quarter of 2024. You can find our earnings release in the Investor Relations section of our website. Later in the week, our Form 10-K will also be made available on our website. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statement. These statements are made only as of the date of this call and are based on management's current expectations and beliefs. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by these statements. You should review the risks and uncertainties fully described in our SEC filings. We expressly disclaim any duty to update any forward-looking statement except as required by law. Additionally, we will be referencing certain non gap financial measures on this call. Reconciliations of these non gap financial measures to their respective most directly comparable gap measure can be found in the earnings release we issued this morning and in the investor relations section of our website. With that i'll turn the call over to Stephen Stephen.

Thank you, Shirley. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our first year-end earnings conference call as a public company. We appreciate your time and interest in Bowhead, and we're excited to share our strong results with you today. Before we begin, I wanted to take a moment to extend our sincere appreciation to our colleagues and brokers, your support, dedication, and hard work played a crucial role in making 2024 such a successful year for Bowhead. Next, I'd like to take a step back and reflect on the milestone year we've had. 2024 was a transformational year for our company. filled with achievements that have positioned us well for cross-cycle profitability. We'll also provide insight into our expectations for 2025, which in short, is consistent with our messaging throughout 2024. In May 2024, we successfully completed an upsized IPO, marking a major milestone in our company's journey. Then, On October 25th, we successfully closed on a secondary public offering, reflecting the strong demand for our company's stock. During our Roadshow, we highlighted strategic priorities for achieving cross-cycle profitability, which included profitability growing our existing lines of business, opportunistically and strategically expanding into new products and markets, maintaining our underwriting first culture across market cycles, and leveraging expertise, technology, data, and analytics to drive underwriting performance. We're pleased to report that we successfully executed on all these priorities in 2024. First, we profitably grew premiums by 37% in 2024, exceeding our annual premium growth target of 20%. Of the 696 million of premiums we wrote in 2024, 76% was written on an excess and surplus lines or ENS basis. While we could have written substantially more business in all divisions, in line with our underwriting first culture, we were highly selective with the risks that we brought into our portfolio. Because we began operations in November of 2020, We were not impacted by legacy reserve issues affecting the broader industry. We also do not write property or natural catastrophe exposed risks, as well as standalone commercial auto or fleet business, areas where the industry has seen adverse developments from pre-2020 accident years. Instead, we utilized our underwriting-first culture to drive profitable growth. In our casualty division, where we're seeing favorable underwriting and pricing conditions in the excess casualty space, we increased premiums by 56% for the year through rate increases, improved terms and conditions, and bringing on new business, all while reducing our average limits. In both our healthcare liability and professional liability divisions, where market conditions are more nuanced and in certain areas challenging, we had double digit growth in the year while prioritizing underwriting profitability and optimizing our portfolio. In all divisions, we remain disciplined and dedicated to our underwriting first approach. We declined or allowed others to renew our accounts when the underlying numbers didn't meet our profitability targets. And during the fourth quarter, as we've seen some carriers aggressively reaching for budget, we maintained our disciplined underwriting approach and focused on profitable growth rather than just expanding on volume. In terms of our strategic expansions in 2024, we announced two new offerings. Late in the second quarter, we launched a new division called Baleen Specialty, a streamlined, tech-enabled, low-touch, flow underwriting operation that focuses on small, hard-to-place risks written 100% on a not-admitted basis. While premiums we wrote in 2024 did not have a material impact on our bottom line in the year, We delivered the technology and offered two products in over 160 eligible classes, most frequently requested by our broker partners. We're solving a problem for our broker partners that only a limited number of markets are technologically capable of delivering. In line with our underwriting first culture, we do not compete on price. Rather, the commitment we've made to our broker partners is to provide best-in-class service, coverage transparency, and the continued development of additional products and solutions in the years to come. We've delivered on our commitment to develop a flow underwriting operation and are excited about the momentum we've generated in the first seven months of Bailin's operations. In Q4, we also released the first of our three environmental liability products, diversifying our casualty division product offerings. With our disciplined approach to underwriting and our expanding craft and flow platforms, we believe we positioned ourselves well for sustainable and profitable growth across market cycles. 2024 was a busy but successful year. We achieved a 37% growth in our premiums, invested in the development of new products, and executed on our priorities, all while improving our expense ratio by 0.5 points. We also delivered an adjusted ROE of 15.2%, which included 131 million of net proceeds from our upsized IPO, delivering attractive returns on capital to our investors. In 2024, we said what we were going to do and we achieved what we set out to do. We expect 2025 to be no different. As we move into 2025, our priorities for achieving cross-cycle profitability remain unchanged. We expect to profitably grow our business around 20% in 2025. Continue to build upon the momentum we've achieved with Bailene and apply the technology to other areas in our business. Opportunistically and strategically expand into new products or markets and maintain our underwriting first culture in both our craft and flow underwriting operations. With that, I'll pass the call over to Brad to discuss our financial results. Brad?