Everest Group, Ltd.

And welcome to the Everest Regroup first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal your conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. To answer your question, please press star then two. Please note today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Matt Rohrman, Senior Vice President and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Everest Regroup Limited first quarter of 2023 earnings conference call. The Everest executives leading today's call are Juan Andrade, President and CEO, and Mark Kosciancic, Executive Vice President and CFO. We are also joined by other members of the Everest management team. Before we begin, I'll preface the comments on today's call by noting that Everest SEC filings, including extensive disclosures with respect to forward-looking statements, management comments regarding estimates, projections, and similar, are subject to the risks, uncertainties, and assumptions as noted in these filings. Management may also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. These items are reconciled in our earnings release and financial supplement. With that, I'll turn the call over to Juan.

Thank you, Matt. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Everest started off strong in 2023 with significant growth, increased underwriting profits, an operating ROE over 17%, and total shareholder return in excess of 14%. We continue to diversify and expand our platform with both of our underwriting businesses delivering profitable, broad-based growth. In reinsurance, our leadership position was abundantly clear in the ongoing hard markets flight to quality. Our team's consistent execution resulted in record gross written premiums and expanded margins. We continued to invest in scaling our primary business while remaining disciplined. We capitalized on the diversification of our portfolio and strong pricing environment. This led to stronger underwriting profits over last year. Everest is uniquely positioned to succeed in this market. We are bringing the full power of the Everest global franchise together with underwriting discipline and the best talent in the business to drive sustainable returns. With that, I'll turn to our first quarter financial highlights beginning at the group level. Group underwriting profit, net investment income, operating income, and net income all increased meaningfully in the quarter. Growth was excellent. and we continue to see great opportunities for continued expansion. We grew gross written premiums by almost 20% in constant dollars year over year, led by the reinsurance division, which achieved record quarterly premiums. Continued rate increases, exposure growth, and strong underwriting discipline create margin expansion and keep us ahead of loss trend. We delivered $443 million in net operating income. up over 9% from prior year. The group combined ratio was 91.2%, a 40 basis point improvement from last year. It includes 3.7 points of catastrophe losses from the Turkey earthquake and the New Zealand floods and typhoon. We have no meaningful loss activity from the spring storms in the U.S. as our de-risking efforts continue to manifest themselves in both our reinsurance and insurance results. We improved our attritional loss ratio 30 basis points year-over-year, reflecting pricing momentum and improving terms. Underwriting profits were $273 million, which are among the company's highest quarterly results over the past five years. Turning to investments, our high-quality portfolio produced net investment income of $260 million, a 7% improvement from prior year driven by higher new money yields. Now turning to our reinsurance business. Reinsurance delivered an outstanding first quarter performance with significant top and bottom line growth. We capitalized on our well-positioned and scalable reinsurance franchise, our leadership position, the hard property cap market, and our deep client and broker relationships resulting in excellent outcomes for the portfolio at the January 1 and April 1 renewals. The precise and disciplined execution by our reinsurance team positioned Everest to succeed in this dynamic market. We targeted attractive opportunities to grow with trusted partners and materially improved risk-adjusted returns. Our practice of setting clear with clients and brokers, led to significant improvements in pricing and terms and conditions across our portfolio, while building long-term relationship equity. That excess of loss pricing is excellent, with risk-adjusted rate changes at January 1 of plus 50% in North America and over 40% internationally. Casualty lines, average rate increases continue to exceed trend. Importantly, our team was distinguished as the preferred reinsurance market by being proactive and constructive with our customers. The value we created with our partners gives us a competitive advantage, helps us deepen our relationships, and creates new opportunities. Our momentum continued at the April renewal, where pricing remained strong, up 44% in North America and 26% in internationally. This builds on prior rate increases in 2022 with expected returns consistent with the levels we saw at January 1. We grew strategically, most notably in specialty lines such as marine and aviation with strong risk adjusted returns. We expect to benefit from improvements in seating commissions for the remainder of the year. We expect the strong market conditions to continue through 2023 and into 2024, and we remain on offense in this robust market. Reinsurance top line results were excellent, up 23% on a constant dollar basis, to $2.6 billion in gross written premiums. As I mentioned earlier, this is a quarterly record. Growth was broad-based by line and geography, up double digits across every business unit. Property cap premiums were up 28% from last year, along with casualty and property pro rata premiums at 22% and 19%, respectively. We delivered a 17% increase in underwriting profit to $207 million on a 90.8 combined ratio, a 60 basis point improvement from 2022. This included pre-tax catastrophe losses of $108 million, net of estimated recoveries and restatement premiums from the Turkey earthquakes and New Zealand floods and typhoons. Our deliberate efforts to optimize our portfolio and reduce CAT volatility continue to improve our portfolio economics. Both the attritional loss ratio at 58% and the attritional combined ratio at 85.9 improved, down 90 basis points and 30 basis points, respectively. Remember, many of the rate and margin improvements made at January 1 and April 1 will take several quarters to earn into our financial results. This should be a meaningful benefit for earned premium throughout the year. As we head into the upcoming renewals, our value proposition and relationships in the market have never been stronger. We will continue to bolster our global leadership position and maximize our portfolio's performance. Now turning to insurance, where we delivered another solid performance in the first quarter. We achieved a 92.4 combined ratio, in line with our previous assumption, resulting in an underwriting profit of $66 million, up 12% year over year. We continued to grow and develop our world-class talent, capabilities, and value proposition to enhance our portfolio and increase every share of the global insurance market. We grew the insurance segment by nearly 12% in constant dollars and generated over a billion dollars in premiums for the eighth consecutive quarter. Growth was broad geographical. driven by a diversified mix across property and specialty lines, particularly strong in marine, energy, and construction. We remained cautious in certain lines, including monolines worker compensation and public company D&O. We also benefited from pricing improvements in the first quarter. We achieved an 8% rate increase, excluding workers' compensation across the portfolio. led by property and excess liability with continued strong rate across other lines. This is the second sequential quarter with an increase in the overall level of rate changes achieved. We expect the hard market in reinsurance to put upward pressure on primary insurance pricing. This dynamic should extend the favorable pricing environment in insurance for the foreseeable future and will also benefit our pro rata business in the reinsurance segment. Despite severe weather in the U.S. in the quarter, our CAT losses were immaterial at 2 million. The overall CAT result reflects our disciplined portfolio management actions to reduce volatility over the last several years across the company. The attritional loss ratio was 64.2, up modestly year over year. primarily due to a current accident year adjustment to a single medical stop loss program, which we non-renewed. Mark will provide more detail on this in a few minutes. Throughout the first quarter, we continued to prudently manage the business, balancing investments in our people and infrastructure as we build a company for the future. We are streamlining and scaling our operations to serve the market with greater efficiency, connectivity, and agility as we grow. We are well positioned to seize attractive opportunities in this environment. We are expanding our breadth of innovative products and advancing our leadership across the global P&C market, anchored by our underwriting discipline. Our sights are set firmly on shareholders, clients, and colleagues as we take full advantage of the robust opportunities in this market. With that, I'll turn it over to Mark to review the financials in more detail.