Bowhead Specialty Holdings Inc.

Hello and welcome to BOHEAD Specialty Q1 2026 Earnings Call. After the prepared remarks, we will hold a question and answer session. For those in the Q&A room, please click the red hand button found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen to join the question queue. Also, as a reminder, this conference 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, Mariana. Good morning and welcome to Bowhead's first quarter 2026 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. And, as we have done in previous quarters, we have invited a key member of our management team to our earnings calls to share insights from their area of expertise. Today, we are joined by Brandon Mezek, our head of digital, who will walk us through Bowhead's digital underwriting initiatives, which cover Baleen Specialty and Bowhead Express. Turning to our performance, earlier this morning, we released our financial results for the first quarter of 2026. You can find our earnings release in the investor relations section of our website, and later this evening, you'll also be able to find our Form 10Q on our website. 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-GAAP financial measures on this call. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to their respective most directly comparable GAAP measure can be found in the earnings release we issued this morning and in the investor relations section of our website. With that, it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Stephen Zilfs.

Thank you, Shirley. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join us today. Bowhead delivered a strong start to 2026 with gross written premiums increasing 24% year over year to approximately $217 million. Once again, we delivered disciplined premium growth across all divisions. with casualty driving the largest growth, complemented by strong execution in Baleen. Starting with casualty, GWP increased more than 20% to $147 million in the quarter. We continued to grow in areas where terms and pricing were favorable, while contracting in areas where we saw downward pricing pressure due to an overabundance of supply. This quarter, growth in casualty was driven by our excess portfolio. The major contributors included strong rate on our real estate book, new construction projects, and an increase in manufacturing and hospitality business. Though we see some downward pressure from admitted carriers, non-risk-bearing MGAs, and broker-side cars, overall, while there are certainly exceptions, we still see the market exercising discipline in limit deployment and coverage expansion. That said, we continue to believe excess casualty remains the most favorable segment in our marketplace today. Turning to professional liability, GWP increased 6% to approximately $28 million in the quarter. Our growth was primarily driven by our cyber liability express portfolio, which targets small and mid-sized accounts through our digital underwriting platform. Partially offsetting this growth was a reduction in our commercial public D&O portfolio, driven by lost renewals to markets who we believe have over-aggressive appetites and little to no discipline. In our healthcare liability division, GWP increased 28% to more than $30 million in the quarter. Growth was driven by our hospitals, senior care, and miscellaneous medical facilities portfolios. While we remain disciplined in expanding the book and reducing average limits deployed, the market remains challenging. particularly in connection with coverage associated with sexual abuse and molestation. Finally, we're pleased to report that Baylene generated over $11 million in premiums during the quarter, an encouraging start to the year that reinforces the confidence we have in our digital underwriting platform. As a reminder, we built Bowhead to deliver sustainable and profitable growth across market cycles, and we do so by delivering our products through two complementary underwriting platforms. The first is our craft underwriting platform, which is our foundation, led by experienced underwriters who specialize in complex, non-standard, high-severity risks, and who deliver tailored solutions for our brokers and insurers. The second is our digital underwriting platform comprised of Baleen and Express, which represents our cutting edge approach to specialty flow business. As Shirley mentioned, we have Brandon Mezek, our head of digital here with us today. Having launched our digital underwriting platform and is leading the expansion of our digital initiative, I'm pleased to pass the call over to Brandon to walk you through the details.