Essent Group Ltd.

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Thank you, Amy. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our call. Joining me today are Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO, and David Weinstock, Chief Financial Officer. Also on hand for the Q&A portion of the call is Chris Curran, President of Essendon Guarantee. Our press release, which contains Essendon's financial results for the second quarter of 2024, was issued earlier today and is available on our website at EssendonGroup.com. Our press release includes non-GAAP financial measures that may be discussed during today's call. A complete description of these measures and the reconciliation to GAAP may be found in Exhibit O of our press release. Prior to getting started, I would like to remind participants that today's discussions are being recorded and will include the use of forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, projections, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties which may cause actual results to differ materially. For discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please review the cautionary language regarding statements in today's press release, the risk factors included in our Form 10-K filed with the SEC on February 16th, 2024, and any other reports and registration statements filed with the SEC, which are also available on our website. Now let me turn the call over to Mark.

Thanks, Phil, and good morning, everyone. Earlier today, we released our second quarter 2024 financial results, which continue to benefit from favorable credit performance and the impact of higher interest rates on the persistency of our insured portfolio and investment income. Our results for the quarter continue to demonstrate the strength of our business model and how Essent is uniquely positioned within the current economic environment. Our outlook for housing and our business remains constructive. Favorable demographics continue to drive housing demand, while supply remains constrained by a lack of inventory and the lock-in effect of previously low mortgage rates. We believe that the supply-demand imbalance should continue to support home prices, which is positive for our business. While housing and the labor markets have demonstrated resiliency, we also recognize that affordability remains challenged and that consumers are being impacted by higher rates and higher prices. As a risk management company, we view Essendon as well-positioned for a range of economic scenarios, given the strength of our balance sheet and our buy, manage, and distribute operating model. And now for our results. For the second quarter of 2024, we reported net income of $204 million, compared to $172 million a year ago. On the diluted per share basis, we earned $1.91 for the second quarter, compared to $1.61 a year ago. On an annualized basis, our return on average equity was 15% in the second quarter. As of June 30th, our U.S. mortgage insurance in force was $241 billion, a 2% increase from a year ago. Our 12-month persistency was approximately 87%, relatively flat compared to last quarter. Nearly 70% of our in-force portfolio has a note rate of 5.5% or lower. We expect that the current level of rates should support elevated persistency for the remainder of 2024. The credit quality of our insurance and force remains strong, with a weighted average FICO of 746 and a weighted average original LTV of 93%. We continue to be pleased with the quality of the new business, given the prudent credit box of the GSEs and the high underwriting standards of our lender partners. In our existing portfolio, home price depreciation should continue to mitigate potential claims and support near-term credit performance. In our core mortgage insurance business, we remain focused on activating new lenders and continuing to refine and enhance our proprietary credit engine, S&Edge, through additional data sources. In a challenging mortgage origination market, S&Edge is an advantage for lenders as their borrowers benefit from receiving our best rates. We remain pleased with the progress that we are making in our title business as we continue to make investments to leverage the operations and technology expertise from our MI business. In building out title, we have a longer term view and maintain a control, profitability, and growth philosophy. From my standpoint, we are currently in the control phase and do not expect that title will have any meaningful impact on earnings over the near term. Longer term, however, we believe that title will generate supplemental earnings for our franchise similar to what we have demonstrated with Essendree. As for Essendree, we continue to be pleased with its strong earnings profile. Essendree's steady performance is driven by its third-party business, which is primarily related to risk assumed from GFC, CRT, and fee-generating MGA services. As of June 30th, Essendree's third-party risk and force was $2.3 billion. We continue to operate from a position of strength with $5.4 billion in gap equity, access to $1.3 billion in excess of loss reinsurance, and over $1.2 billion of available holding company liquidity. On July 1st, we closed on our initial senior notes offering of $500 million and upsized our revolving credit facility to $500 million. These transactions strengthened Essence's capital structure and enhanced our financial flexibility. In total, we secured approximately $1 billion of total debt capacity while continuing to maintain the lowest financial leverage in the mortgage insurance industry. As of July 1st, we entered into an excess of loss transaction with a panel of highly rated reinsurers to cover our 2024 business. We continue to be encouraged by the strong demand from reinsurers for taking mortgage credit risk. Looking forward, we remain committed to a programmatic and diversified reinsurance strategy executed through the quota share, XOL, and ILN channels. Cash and investments as of June 30th were $5.9 billion, and our new money yield in the second quarter is approximately 5%. The annualized investment yield for the second quarter was 3.8%, up from 3.5% a year ago. New money rates have largely held stable over the past several quarters and remain a tailwind for investment income growth. With a year-to-date mortgage insurance underrating margin of 79%, our franchise continues to generate solid returns and remains well-positioned from an earnings, cash flow, and balance sheet perspective. Now, let me turn the call over to Dave.