Radian Group Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the fourth quarter 2024 Radian Group Earnings Conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Dan Cobell, Head of Investor Relations and Capital Management. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to Radian's fourth quarter and year-end 2024 conference call. Our press release, which contains Radian's financial results for the quarter and full year, was issued yesterday evening and is posted to the investor section of our website at Radian.com. This press release includes certain non-GAAP measures that may be discussed during today's call, including adjusted pretax operating income, adjusted diluted net operating income per share, and adjusted net operating return on equity. A complete description of all of our non-GAAP measures may be found in press release Exhibit F, and reconciliations of these measures to the most comparable GAAP measures may be found in press release Exhibit G. These exhibits are on the investor section of our website. Today, you will hear from Rick Thornberry, Radian's chief executive officer, and Sumita Pandit, chief financial officer. Also on hand for the Q&A portion of the call is Derek Brummer, president of Radian Mortgage Insurance. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that comments made during this call will include 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 a discussion of these risks, please review the cautionary statements regarding forward-looking statements included in our earnings release and the risk factors included in our 2023 Form 10-K and subsequent reports filed with the SEC. These are also available on our website. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Rick.

Good morning and thank you all for joining us today. I'm pleased to report another excellent quarter and year for Radian. Our results continue to reflect the economic value of our high quality mortgage insurance portfolio, the strength and quality of our investment portfolio, our strong capital and liquidity positions, and our ongoing strategic focus on managing expenses. Turning to a few highlights for 2024, we increased book value per share by 9% year over year. generating net income of $604 million and delivering a return on equity of 13.4%. During the year, we returned $376 million of capital to stockholders through share repurchases and dividends. Our primary mortgage insurance and force, which is the main driver of future earnings for our company, reached an all-time high of $275 billion. We continued our focus on managing operational efficiency and significantly reducing our recurring expense structure. For 2025, we are positioned to achieve our targeted reduction in run rate operating expenses. Samantha will provide more details on our expense management progress. Rating Guarantee paid a total of $675 million in ordinary dividends to Rating Group during the year. meaningfully exceeding our initial guidance of $400 to $500 million at the start of the year. Our overall capital liquidity positions remain strong with a PMIRES cushion for rating guarantee of $2.2 billion and available holding company liquidity of $885 million at the end of 2024. We are pleased that our strong financial position and capital flexibility allow us to deliver excellent financial results focused on growing our business and help our customers transform risk into opportunity while also returning value to our stockholders. In terms of the housing and mortgage market, the supply of existing homes remains constrained, which we expect will continue to provide support for home values from an HPA perspective. While the private mortgage insurance market has been relatively flat over the past two years at approximately $300 billion, Based on industry forecasts, we expect a slightly larger market in 2025. I believe it's also worth noting the continuing positive impact that we are experiencing from the current interest rate environment in terms of increasing our investment portfolio income and supporting strong persistency benefiting our insurance and force. Overall, our outlook for the housing market and our mortgage insurance business remains positive. Finally, as we work with the new administration, we continue to be encouraged by the bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for our industry as the only source of permanent private capital in front of U.S. taxpayers consistently underwriting mortgage credit risk through the market cycles. The private mortgage insurance industry is well positioned to continue promoting affordable, sustainable homeownership through economic cycles. which we believe is well understood and highly regarded by the FHFA, the GSEs, and legislators. As you've heard me say before, our mortgage insurance business model has been significantly strengthened by the PMIRES Capital Framework, dynamic risk-based pricing, and the distribution of risk, allowing our industry to continuously serve an important role in the housing finance system. Sumitta will now cover the details of our financial and capital positions.