Employers Holdings Inc

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Employer Holdings Inc. Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a Q&A session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Jeff Lisenby, Executive Vice President, General Counsel. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Bonnie. Today's call is being recorded and webcast from the Investors section of our website, where a replay will be available following the call. Statements made during this conference call that are not based on historical facts are considered forward-looking statements. These statements are made in reliance on the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Although we believe the expectations expressed in our forward-looking statements are reasonable, risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to be materially different from our expectations, including the risks set forth in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All remarks made during the call are current only at the time of the call and will not be updated to reflect subsequent developments. The company also uses its website as a means of disclosing material nonpublic information and for complying with disclosure obligations under the SEC's Regulation FD. Such disclosures will be included in the Investors section of our website. Accordingly, Investors should monitor that portion of our website in addition to following our press releases, SEC filings, public conference calls, and webcasts. In our earnings press release and in our remarks or responses to questions, we may use non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to our GAAP results are included in our financial supplement as an attachment to our earnings press release Our investor presentation and any other materials available in the investor section of our website. Now I will turn the call over to Kathy Antonello, our chief executive officer.

Thank you, Jeff. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter 2026 earnings call. Joining me today is Mike Pedraja, our chief financial officer. Attracting and retaining high-quality executives and directors is always an important priority for us, and we're pleased to welcome Stephanie Bush to our Board of Directors and Jeff Lisenby, who you just heard from, as our new General Counsel. I am confident that both Stephanie and Jeff will make meaningful contributions to our organization. As usual, I will begin by providing highlights of our second quarter 2026 financial results and then hand it over to Mike for more details on our financials. Before Q&A, I'll come back to you with some additional thoughts. If I had to sum up the second quarter, I'd say it's the quarter where the benefits of our recapitalization became fully visible. Diluted earnings per share grew 29% year over year, and adjusted earnings per share grew 46%, even though net income was essentially flat. The gap between net income and per share growth is the direct compounding benefit of the accretive share repurchases we've executed since undertaking the recapitalization. On the underwriting side, our net premium earned declined 12% year over year, while policies in force declined 5%. These amounts reflect the pricing and underwriting actions we've put in place to prioritize profitability over volume. Most of the decreases were directly related to the customer segments and geographies we targeted as part of our plan to concentrate on our core small business segment. We're currently focused on building new sources of growth. And in June, we wrote our first excess workers compensation policy. marking the successful launch of our new product line. The success of this new product continued in July with over 200 policy submissions and 20 policies bound, producing $4 million in premium. It's a new lever for growth and one that complements our core book. Our second quarter actuarial review came in as expected. As a result, we made no change to loss reserves for accident years 2025 and prior. We also maintained our current accident year loss in LAE ratio, excluding the LPT, on voluntary business at 72%, which is consistent with the full year 2025 accident year ratio. Our underwriting expenses declined to $40 million from $43 million a year ago. Driven by our continued focus on innovation and a reduction in variable expenses. Net investment income was $27 million, up 1% year over year, aided by a 40 basis point increase in our book yields, which was a result of the investment rebalancing we executed last year. We are laser focused on expanding our book value per share. With dividends, our book value per share, including the deferred gain, grew 9% year-over-year to $52.58. With that, Mike will now provide a deeper dive into our second quarter financial results, and then I'll return to provide my closing remarks. Mike?