Kinsale Capital Group, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Carly and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Kinsale Capital Group Q4 2025 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Before we get started, Let me remind everyone that through the course of the teleconference, Kinsales Management may make comments that reflect their intentions, beliefs, and expectations for the future. As always, these forward-looking statements are subject to certain risk factors, which could cause actual results to differ materially. These risk factors are listed in the company's various SEC filings, including the 2023 Annual Report on Form 10-K, which should be reviewed carefully. The company has furnished a Form 8K with a Securities and Exchange Commission that contained the press release announcing its fourth quarter results. Kinsale's management may also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures in the call today. A reconciliation of GAAP to these measures can be found in the press release, which is available at the company's website at www.kinsalecapitalgroup.com. I will now turn the conference over to Kinsale's chairman and CEO, Mr. Michael Keogh. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Brian Petrucelli, our chief financial officer, Brian Haney, our president and COO, and Stuart Winston, our chief underwriter, are joining me this morning for the call. In the fourth quarter, 2025, Kinsale's diluted operating earnings per share increased by 26%. and gross and net written premium grew by 1.8% and 7.1% respectively over the fourth quarter of 2024. For the quarter, the company posted a combined ratio of 71.7% and a full year operating ROE of 26%. Our book value per share increased by 33% since the year end 2024, and our float increased by 23%. Overall, E&S market conditions in the fourth quarter continue to be competitive with the level of competition and our growth rate varying from one market segment to another. As we have noted for the last year or so, much of the recent headwind to Kinsale's overall growth rate is due to the shrinking of our commercial property division, which writes larger catastrophe-exposed accounts and operates in one of the more competitive segments of the market. This decline in premium comes after several years of extraordinary growth. Excluding the commercial property division, Kinsale had growth in gross written premium of 10.2% for the quarter and 13.3% for the year. Given the success of Kinsale's disciplined underwriting and low cost business model over the last 17 years, We have confidence in our ability to generate best-in-class returns and growth while maintaining a strong balance sheet with conservative loss reserves. It's always important to maintain underwriting discipline, but especially so when the market competition is intense. Likewise, it's in a more competitive moment in the insurance cycle that ConSale's enormous expense advantage is most impactful. Kinsale last year had an expense ratio under 21%, and many of our competitors tend to run in the mid-30s or higher, some even above 40%. Given the customer's focus on low cost, it's hard to overstate the significance and the durability of this advantage. Another competitive advantage that we speak about frequently is technology. We consider tech to be a core competency of ours, alongside underwriting and claim handling. We own our one core operating system, which we custom built for our operation, and we don't have any legacy software going back 20, 30 years or longer. In addition, we have spent years developing our analytics capabilities with a growing team of actuaries and data scientists who use our data and data we acquire to discern insights and improve decision-making and and profitability in our business. Further, over a year ago, we began a company-wide push to introduce and promote the use of AI in our operation. We are making consistent use of these tools in our technology and analytical teams. We are also using AI extensively in other areas of the company, particularly underwriting. Every employee in the company has access to an enterprise AI license, And we have dozens of bots and agents being used every day in our business process, yielding interesting productivity gains, even at this early stage. Many of these AI innovations will be quickly integrated into our custom enterprise system and the continued gains we expect for both productivity and improved segmenting and pricing of risk or material. Lastly, given our recent growth rate, we are returning more excess capital to shareholders, mostly through the $250 million buyback authorization that we announced in December. Subject to a variety of considerations, we generally expect to deploy this authorization over the next year or so. Likewise, we announced an increase in our quarterly dividend to 25 cents, up from 17. Note that even with this activity, Consale still maintains a conservative level of capital, well above that required by both regulators and rating agencies. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Brian Petrucelli.

Thanks, Mike. As Mike just noted, we continue to generate great bottom-line results with net income and net operating earnings increasing by 27% and 25%, respectively, quarter over quarter. 71.7% combined ratio for the quarter included four points from net favorable prior year loss reserve development compared to 2.6 points last year, with less than a point in account losses this year compared to 2.2 points in the fourth quarter of last year. Gross written premiums grew by 1.8% for the quarter, while net written premiums grew by 7.1%. The growth in net written premiums was higher than gross due to an increase in the retention levels when we renewed our reinsurance program June 1st of last year. We produced a 20.8% expense ratio for the full year compared to 20.6% last year. The other underwriting expense piece of the ratio, which is the best measure of the operational efficiency of the business, was 10.5% for the year and about a half point better than 2024. On the investment side, net investment income increased by 24.9% in the fourth quarter over last year as a result of continued growth in the investment portfolio generated from strong operating cash flows. Kinsale's float, mostly unpaid losses and unearned premiums, grew to $3.1 billion at the end of 2024, up from $2.5 billion at the end of 2024. The gross return for 4.4% for the year and consistent with last year. New money yields are averaging around 5% with an average duration of four years on the company's fixed maturity investment portfolio. And lastly, diluted operating earnings per share continues to improve and was $5.81 per share for the quarter compared to $4.62 per share for the fourth quarter of 2024. And with that, I'll pass it over to Stuart Winston.