Radian Group Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the first quarter 2025 Radian group 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 first quarter 2025 conference call. Our press release, which contains Radian's financial results for the quarter, 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 pre-tax 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, Radiant's Chief Executive Officer, and Submitta Pandit, President and Chief Financial Officer. 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 2024 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 am pleased to report a strong start to the year for Radian. Our results demonstrate the continued strength of our high-quality mortgage insurance enforced portfolio, as well as our ongoing strategic focus on capital and expense management. I will start by sharing a few financial and business highlights. We increased book value per share by 11% year-over-year, generating net income of $145 million in the first quarter and delivering a return on equity of 12.6%. Our primary mortgage insurance in force, which is the main driver of future earnings for our company, ended the quarter at $274 billion. Our insurance in force benefited from the 86% persistency rate in the first quarter driven by continued elevated interest rates, which remains significantly higher than the majority of the prevailing mortgage rates in our insured portfolio. Our portfolio continued to show positive trends in terms of new defaults and cures, consistent with our expectations for seasonality and resulting in a decline in our default rate. We continue to strategically manage capital by maintaining strong holding company liquidity of $834 million and a PMIRES cushion for rating guarantee of $2.1 billion as of the end of the quarter. while expecting to continue to pay distributions from rating guarantee to rating group and paying the highest yielding dividend in the industry to stockholders. During the quarter, we took advantage of market volatility, repurchasing $207 million of shares, representing more than 4% of shares outstanding, with a total return of capital to stockholders, including dividends of $244 million. Consistent with our strong track record of capital return at Radian, we continue to view share repurchases as an attractive use of capital, further enhanced by our continued positive outlook for our business. Sumitta will provide additional detail on our repurchase activity and plans. Consistent with our use of risk distribution strategies to effectively manage capital and proactively mitigate risk, in April, Radian Guarantee agreed to very attractive terms on an innovative multi-year quota share reinsurance structure with a large and diversified panel of third-party reinsurance providers. We appreciate the support and commitment that our growing group of reinsurance partners demonstrated to achieve this market-leading structure. We believe the results reflect the quality of our mortgage insurance business, leveraging our proprietary data and analytics combined with our talented and experienced team and high quality customer relationships. Sumitta will provide more details in a few minutes. We continue our focus on managing operational efficiency, reducing our other operating expenses by 7% year over year and 12% from the fourth quarter of 2024. We remain positioned to achieve our target of reduction in run rate operating expenses this year. We are pleased that our strong financial position and capital flexibility allow us to deliver excellent financial results and help our customers transform risk into opportunity, while also returning value to our stockholders. In terms of the housing and mortgage market, we expect that the ongoing supply shortage combined with pent-up demand from first-time homebuyers will continue to provide support for home values. The private mortgage insurance market has been relatively flat over the past two years at approximately $300 billion. Looking ahead, based on recent industry forecasts, we expect a market in 2025 that is in line with recent years. I believe it's also worth noting the continuing positive impact that we're experiencing from the current interest rate environment in terms of supporting our investment portfolio income and a higher persistency rate for our insurance in force. As I mentioned, the credit performance of our portfolios continue to be strong, and in April, our default inventory continued to decline with CURES exceeding new defaults. However, given the recent volatility in the financial markets resulting specifically from the uncertainties from tariff and global trade policies, we continue to closely monitor the impact on our business, including any changes to unemployment or other trends that may impact the credit environment. Overall, our outlook for the housing market and our mortgage insurance business remain 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 US taxpayers, consistently underwriting mortgage credit risk through the market cycles. Our private mortgage insurance products helps to alleviate one of the largest hurdles to home ownership, overcoming the financial burden of a down payment. In fact, our industry has helped millions of homeowners to purchase their home or refinance their mortgage, and is well-positioned to continue promoting affordable, sustainable homeownership through various economic cycles. We believe this is well understood by and in alignment with the FHFA, 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 our important role in the housing finance system. Sumitta will now cover the details of our financial and capital positions.