Everest Group, Ltd.

Good day and welcome to the Everest Limited or Everest Group Limited second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Today, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance during today's call, please signal for a 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 withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note that today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Matt Rohrmann, Senior Vice President, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Chris. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Everest Group Limited's second quarter of 2026 earnings conference call. The Everest executives leading today's call are Jim Williamson, President and CEO, and Elias Hayeb, Executive Vice President and CFO. We are also joined by other members of the Everest Management Team. Before we begin, I will preface the comments by noting that today's call will include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update forward-looking statements. Please note that forward-looking statements include estimates, projections, and forecasts of future results and are subject to the risks, uncertainties, and assumptions noted in every SEC filing. Management will also be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Available explanations and reconciliations to GAAP can be found in the earnings release, investor presentation, and financial supplement on our investor relations website.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Jim. Thank you, Matt. Good morning, everyone. Everest posted another strong quarter with significant earnings and capital generation. Meaningful contributions from underwriting and investment income produced operating income of $585 million. Annualized after-tax net operating ROE was 14.9%. Annualized total shareholder return was 16.8%. And we grew book value per share, excluding unrealized gains and losses, by 12% year-over-year. The results in this quarter further show the strength of the more focused Everest we have built. The benefits of the actions we are taking to improve portfolio quality, strengthen underwriting performance, and allocate capital to the most attractive opportunities available to us are emerging in our numbers. Our strategy is built around developing our core businesses while managing the cycle with relentless discipline. We are upgrading critical capabilities, optimizing the balance sheet, and accelerating the return of capital to shareholders. This quarter's results are further proof that the execution of this strategy is working. Our core businesses, treaty reinsurance and global wholesale and specialty, generated underwriting income of $317 million on a combined ratio of 90%. As I have said before, we continue to focus on underwriting discipline and rate adequacy while prioritizing bottom line results over top line production, especially in this environment. Our core businesses delivered $3.7 billion in gross written premium, a modest year-over-year decline driven by deliberate underwriting choices. Our reinsurance treaty team delivered another excellent quarter, leveraging the depth and breadth of our platform as competitive advantages to effectively navigate a softening property market. Our discipline focused on profitability delivered a combined ratio of 88.5% and underwriting income of $283 million. As we decisively manage the cycle, We have continued to decrease our exposure to U.S. casualty lines and selectively reduce business where pricing or structure did not meet our return thresholds. This resulted in approximately a 9% decrease in gross written premium year-over-year on a constant dollar basis and excluding reinstatement premiums. Casualty lines were down by 19%, while property premiums were relatively flat as growth in property pro rata was offset by decreases in our cap book. We continued our targeted expansion in specialty lines globally, where risk-adjusted returns remain attractive. Our strategy of building deep underwriting capabilities in specific segments allows us to capture emerging opportunities like data centers, as well as new markets within construction and renewable energy. In each of the 2026 renewals, the Evers team has been able to maximize shares on the most attractive deals while reducing or exiting programs below our return thresholds. This is only possible because of the strength of our global underwriting platform and our well-honed distribution management capabilities. While property pricing in the market was down in the range of 15 to 20 percent at both 6.1 and 7.1, pricing on our PropertyCat portfolio between both renewal periods finished down approximately 10 percent. Despite rate pressure, Terms and conditions are largely holding, and attachment points remain relatively stable. Looking ahead to the 1-1-27 renewals, we expect market conditions to remain competitive, absent large CAT losses or other external shocks. Our third-party capital platform, Mt. Logan Capital Management, has approximately $3.4 billion of AUM as of July 1, up 89% from the beginning of 2025. A major contributor to this growth is the launch of our casualty and specialty reinsurance sidecar, Annapurna RE. Annapurna provides Everest with an additional lever to facilitate opportunistic growth, generate fee income, and enhance capital flexibility. This is just another example of the work we are doing to optimize our balance sheet and, at the same time, enhance ROE potential over time. Turning to the global wholesale and specialty segment, Results were strong. Our strategy to expand the portfolio in specialty lines and targeted international markets while delivering margin expansion continues to gain momentum. Gross written premium was roughly flat year over year as growth in niche specialty lines and international business was offset by deliberate reductions in U.S. property and casualty. We grew double digits internationally with broad-based growth across financial lines, marine, and many more. The significant underwriting actions we have taken in recent years continue to pay dividends with both the additional attritional loss and combined ratios improving year over year. This is a result of the team's discipline risk selection and portfolio management. Now a word on capital management. Since I became CEO in January of 2025, Everest has deployed $1.5 billion toward share repurchases, resulting in a reduction of over 10% of our shares outstanding. Share repurchases remain a top priority for capital allocation, and our commitment to disciplined capital management was again evident in this quarter's results. This speaks to our continued conviction in the strength of our balance sheet and that Everest share price does not accurately represent the true value and earnings power of the company. Our goal is simple, to grow book value per share consistently. We're doing that through disciplined underwriting and capital stewardship, and this quarter provides convincing evidence of our approach. We are not, however, declaring victory. I am seeing more signs of irresponsible underwriting in the market. The U.S. tort environment, despite some recent reforms, is corrosive to a well-functioning economy and is putting pressure on industry reserves. And the world is experiencing unprecedented levels of risk across multiple domains with little sign of that risk being reflected in insurance and reinsurance prices. But today's Everest is up to these challenges. We have a deep bench of talented people across our organization, robust and growing analytical and technology capabilities, and superb relationships and distribution. Our intent is to strengthen our company no matter what part of the cycle we're facing. Let me end by welcoming Elias to the team as our new CFO. Elias is a seasoned finance executive with over 30 years of experience leading several global finance organizations in the insurance and financial services industry. We're excited to have him on board. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Elias.