Old Republic International Corporation

noise after the speaker's remarks there will be a question and answer session to ask a question simply press star on your telephone keypad star one on your telephone keypad to withdraw your question press star one again it is now my pleasure to turn the call over to joe calabrese with mww please go ahead thank you tina good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us for the old republic conference call

to discuss third quarter 2025 results. This morning, we distributed a copy of the press release and posted a separate financial supplement. Both of the documents are available on Old Republic's website at www.oldrepublic.com. Please be advised that this call may involve forelooking statements as discussed in the press release dated October 23, 2025. Assumptions, uncertainties, and risks exist that may cause results to differ materially from those set forth in these forelooking statements. For more information on these assumptions and certainties of risk, please refer to the forward-looking statement discussion in the press release and the company's other recent SEC filings, and the risk factors discussed in the company's most recent Form 10-K and other recent SEC filings. You may also include references to net income excluding net investment gains or net operating income, a non-GAAP financial measure, in our remarks or in responses to questions. GAAP reconciliations are included in the press release. Presenting on today's conference call will be Craig Smitty, President and CEO, Frank Sidora, Chief Financial Officer, and Carolyn Monroe, President and CEO of our Republic's National Title Insurance Group. Management will make some opening remarks, and then we'll open the line for your questions. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Craig. Please go ahead, sir.

Okay. Thank you, Joe. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome again to Old Republic's third quarter 2025 earnings call. In addition to our earnings release, we also issued a separate news release this morning regarding our agreement to purchase Everett Cash Mutual through a sponsored demutualization. We think this is reflective of our commitment to continue to pursue profitable growth of our specialty insurance business. ECM, as it's referred, is a leading insurer of farm and agricultural operations nationwide, riding $237 million of direct premium in 2024. We also added a new slide on ECM to the appendix of our investor presentation on our website. So there's more there for you to see if you're so interested. Strategically, ECM fits very nicely into our specialty insurance portfolio, given our close cultural alignment and their narrow and deep focus on farm and ag specialty. ECM provides for further product diversification within our existing specialty insurance business, and we will not compete with any of ECM's current offerings or vice versa. So once the transaction closes, we expect ECM to be very well positioned from a capital and product perspective to pursue profitable growth geographically and through new product offerings. So we're very happy to have the ECM folks join the Old Republic family. So now turning to the earnings release. Our story of solid growth and profitability continued through the third quarter as we produced 248.2 million of consolidated pre-tax operating income. That's up from 229.2 million in the third quarter of 24. Our consolidated combined ratio was 95.3, and that compares to 95 in the third quarter of last year. On our balance sheet, it remains strong while we continue to invest in new specialty operating companies, make ongoing technology investments, and also invest in talent across the organization. Our annualized operating return on beginning equity improved to an annualized rate of 14.4%, and that compares to 11.9% in the third quarter last year, which we think reflects our strong operating earnings and thoughtful management of capital. In specialty insurance, we grew net premiums earned by 8.1% compared to the third quarter of 24 when we produced $207 million of pre-tax operating income up from $197.3 million in the third quarter last year. The specialty insurance combined ratio was at 94.8 in the quarter compared to 94 in the third quarter last year. Despite the continuation of a slow real estate market, title insurance grew premium and fees by 8.3% compared to the third quarter last year and produced $45.7 million of pre-tax operating income, and that's up from $40.2 million in the third quarter last year. The title insurance combined ratio was 96.4 in the quarter, and that compares to 96.7 in the third quarter last year. Our conservative reserving practices continue to produce favorable prior year loss reserve development in both specialty insurance and title insurance. Frank will provide more details around that topic. So, with that, I'll turn the discussion over to Frank, and then Frank will turn things back to me to discuss specialty insurance, followed by Carolyn, who will discuss title insurance, and then, as the operator says, we will open it up for Q&A. So, Frank?