RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd.

Please stand by. Your conference is about to begin. Should you require operator assistance, simply press star and zero on your telephone keypad. Good morning. My name is Jim, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Renaissance RE third quarter 2024 earnings conference call and webcast. After the prepared remarks, we will open the call for your questions. Instructions will be given at that time. Lastly, if you should need operator assistance, please press star and zero. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Keith McHugh, Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Jim. Good morning and welcome to Renaissance Re's third quarter earnings conference call. Joining me today to discuss our results are Kevin O'Donnell, President and Chief Executive Officer, Bob Qutub, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and David Maher, Executive Vice President and Group Chief Underwriting Officer. First, some housekeeping matters. Our discussion today will include forward-looking statements, including new and updated expectations for our business and results of operations. It's important to note that actual results may differ materially from the expectations shared today. Additional information regarding the factors shaping these outcomes can be found in our SEC filings and in our earnings release. During today's call, We will also present non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to GAAP metrics and other information concerning non-GAAP measures may be found in our earnings release and financial supplement, which are available on our website at renry.com. And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Kevin. Kevin?

Thanks, Keith. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining today's call. I am pleased to report that Renaissance REIT delivered another quarter of strong performance. We earned over $540 million of operating income. This represents an operating return on average common equity of 22%. Year-to-date, we have earned $1.8 billion in operating income and delivered a 26% operating return on equity. Our results this quarter were due to a strong performance by the entire team. I believe the superior returns we have been delivering can persist into 2025. Each of our three drivers of profit continues to perform well. In underwriting, we have demonstrated our ability to grow aggressively when markets are favorable. Both our property business and our specialty business are two years into very attractive markets that show little sign of abating. Year to date, Top line growth in these businesses has been between 35% and 75%, depending on the particular line of business. In investments, interest rates have persisted at elevated levels and remain attractive relative to almost any point over the prior two decades. These elevated rates, in combination with our increased asset leverage, allows investment income to remain a significant contributor to our earnings. Finally, our capital partners business. Already one of the largest managers of third-party capital continues to grow while generating consistent management fees and attractive performance fees. Our acquisition of Validus has been a significant contributor to growth across each of our three drivers over the last year. But that is not the only way we're already creating value from the Validus acquisition. Our recently completed integration efforts have also resulted in significant capital and liquidity. We purchased Validus knowing we would unlock value by bringing it onto our platform and sharing risk with our capital partners. We have access to multiple forms of efficient capital, which allowed us to best optimize its capital structure and, by extension, profitability. The easiest way to explain how we achieved this optimization is what we call the 3-2-1 Validus portfolio transformation. Prior to the acquisition, Validus had about $3 billion of equity capital. Just prior to close, this amount was reduced through a $1 billion dividend payment. This left the entities we acquired with $2 billion of capital, which represented the amount we needed to run the company through transition over the last year. By optimizing the Validus business onto our owned and partner capital balance sheets, we freed an additional billion dollars in capital. And finally, by merging the two main Validus balance sheets into legacy RenRee balance sheets, we shifted this excess capital to our holding company. This increased our financial flexibility, enabled strong support for our customers, enhanced fees associated with our capital partners business, and increased earnings for our shareholders. Our success in generating capital, however, extends beyond the efficiencies we brought to the Validus portfolio. When we began evaluating the acquisition of Validus in early 2023, our common equity position was about $4.6 billion. Since that time, due to the strong performance of our three drivers for profit I previously discussed, We have generated almost $4.5 billion in retained earnings while returning an additional $350 million of capital to our shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. As a result, we ended this quarter with $10.5 billion in common equity. Obviously, with our significantly larger scale, we need more capital to run our business than we did two years ago. That said, a portion of this increase is on deployed capital. This positions us to both grow our business and increase capital returns to our shareholders. Bob will address our capital management plans in greater detail shortly. However, we are pleased to announce that we are increasing our share repurchase authorization from $500 million to $750 million. Importantly, this increase reflects the greater scale we have achieved, the consistent superior returns we expect to continue generating, and enhances our capital flexibility. Moving now to a few comments on the upcoming January 1st renewal, which David will elaborate more on later in the call. We are beginning from a position of strong rate adequacy in our property catastrophe book. This market began hardening after Hurricane Irma and accelerated after Hurricane Ian. Unlike prior cycles, however, we have yet to experience an influx of new capital, with the exception of certain corners of the market where we do not heavily participate, such as cat bonds. As a consequence, the market remains disciplined, with reinsurers holding on retentions and terms and conditions. At the same time, demand for reinsurance continues to increase, In 2025, we estimate that U.S. cat limit purchases will increase by about $10 billion. This should lead to new opportunities over the course of 2025 while keeping the rate environment favorable. We expect similar opportunities in other property, where Helene and Milton should assure that rates remain at attractive levels. Moving now to our casualty and specialty segment. Regarding specialty lines, Overall, these continue to remain attractive. We expect an orderly January 1st renewal, and our focus will be on maintaining our books and to seek additional opportunities with existing customers. Regarding casualty lines, we are increasingly a top reinsurer on the programs that we participate on. This provides us a broad overview of the state of the market and puts us in a strong position to set the tone for renewals and drive positive change. This is important as much of casualty is written on a quota share basis, which means we depend on our customers underwriting and rate setting more than in other lines. We think about the, we think about the casualty business cycle over a 10 year time scale. We like our current portfolio, but believe casualty rates need to accelerate in order for this business to remain attractive over the next 10 years. Consequently, We are engaging with our customers and providing feedback regarding our observations on rate and trend. This engagement has been positive, and our customers share a similar assessment of the market requirements. For this reason, we are optimistic that additional rate will be achieved, and we can continue to support our customers. This concludes my opening comments. As discussed, Bob will cover our financial performance for the quarter, followed by David, who will provide an update on our segment performance.