Cannae Holdings, Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Kenai Holdings Incorporated first quarter 2026 financial results conference call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the company's prepared remarks, the conference will be open for questions with instructions to follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded and a replay is available through 1159 p.m. Eastern Time on May 25th, 2026. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Jamie Lillis of Solberry Strategic Communications. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon. And thank you for joining Kenai Holdings' first quarter 2026 earnings call. On today's call, Ryan Castle, Chief Executive Officer, and Brian Coy, Chief Financial Officer. But before we begin, I'd like to remind listeners that this call may contain forward-looking statements and references to non-GAAP financial measures. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about Kani's expectations, hopes, intentions, or strategies regarding the future are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on management's beliefs as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to management. Because such statements are based on expectations as to future financial and operating results and are not statements of fact, actual results may differ materially from those projected. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. The risks and uncertainties with forward-looking statements are subject to include, but are not limited to, the risks and other factors detailed in our quarterly shareholder letter, which was released this afternoon, and in our other filings with the SEC. Today's remarks will also include references to non-GAAP financial measures. Additional information including a reconciliation between the non-GAAP financial information to the GAAP financial information is provided in our shareholder letter. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties described in our shareholder letter and SEC filings, and we undertake no obligation to update forward-looking statements. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ryan.

Thank you, Jamie, and good afternoon. On the call today, I want to cover four key topics. How we allocated our capital in the quarter, what is happening at our largest sports asset, Black Knight Football, where we stand on the restaurant business and exiting additional non-core assets, and how we are managing the holding company. Starting with capital allocations. In the first quarter, we returned approximately $51 million to shareholders through a combination of buybacks and our regular dividend, which currently provides a 4.2% dividend yield. Year to date, this $51 million represents about 86% of all the capital we have allocated. The remaining 14% of our capital went to existing investments. A year ago, the comparable shareholder figure return was about 70% to shareholders. The shift toward buybacks was deliberate in the quarter as we viewed the highest return investment available to us was our own equity. We will analyze our capital allocation on an ongoing basis to determine what maximizes shareholder value between capital returns and new investments. On the buyback specifically, Year to date, we have repurchased 3.4 million shares, representing about 7.3% of our shares outstanding for $43 million. Our board expanded the repurchase authorization to 14.9 million shares during the quarter so we can continue opportunistic buybacks. Now to Black Knight Football, which is the largest single position in our portfolio and, in my view, the asset with the greatest upside. AFC Bournemouth currently sits in sixth place in the Premier League. If the club holds that position, it will be the highest finish in the club's 127-year history and it would qualify the club for European competition for the first time. European qualification is not just a sporting milestone. It materially changes the commercial, branding, and economics of the club. The sporting results are even more notable because over the last 18 months, we have sold top players to Manchester City, Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, and Liverpool, totaling roughly 360 million in transfers fees. We have done this and gotten better results, not worse. That is the platform in our investment and operating strategy working. Let me give you one specific example because I think it captures the entire investment thesis of the multi-club. A player named Eli Jr. Krupe, who is 19 years old and came up through the academy at FC Lorient, which is a club we own. In January of last year, AFC Bournemouth, another club we own, acquired him from Lorient and let him remain at the club for the remainder of the season to develop and help with their requalification to League One. This season, He moved to Bournemouth. He is the leading scorer for Bournemouth, and he has scored more goals in a single Premier League season than any teenager in the history of the Premier League. That is the multi-club platform in one transaction. We developed an asset at a club and moved that asset on to another club at the appropriate time for the team and the player. In the end, both clubs benefit from an economic and a sporting perspective, and the player benefits and improves his career trajectory. This represents the value of the multi-club platform and will drive returns for our investment at Black Knight Football. The financial picture is consistent with the sporting one, with double-digit increases in revenue and EBITDA hitting $136 million, given significant player sales and improved revenues referenced above. Brian will go into these numbers in more detail in his remarks. We posted a detailed overview of Black Knight Football on Kenai's website during last quarter. I would encourage everyone on the call to spend some time with it as it captures our work. Now to the restaurants. The strategic process around the restaurant group that we announced previously is ongoing. What I can update you on today is that the board's position is unchanged. This is a non-core asset, and our focus is to monetize the asset maximize proceeds, and redeploy that capital into either higher returning investments, which will grow our NAV, or into our own stock. We are working hard to achieve this outcome and expect to be able to give you a more substantive update on the next call. More broadly, the Board continues to review our entire portfolio every quarter for the optimal time to sell non-core assets. Restaurants are not the only one we are evaluating. You should expect continued movement in our portfolio, which I will detail at the appropriate time. The last topic from me is the holding company itself. We continue to focus on reducing our corporate holding company costs. I will let Brian expand upon it in his comments, but for the first quarter, our corporate holding company costs are down approximately 45% from last year, which reflects the discipline of the board and the management have applied to reducing corporate holding company costs. On governance, the board continues to evaluate further governance enhancements. In the first quarter, we refreshed our committee composition to include the four new directors elected last year, which brings new perspective into committee deliberations. In summary, We are executing our plan. We are looking for ways to concentrate the portfolio further into sports and entertainment-related assets while monetizing our non-core assets. We are opportunistically returning meaningful capital to our shareholders at prices we believe are well below intrinsic value. We are improving our portfolio companies and providing more transparency into each of them. We are reducing holding company costs. We will keep doing these things until the discount closes and NAV increases. With that, I will turn the call over to Brian.