SiriusPoint Ltd

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Series Point's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded, and a replay is available through 1159 p.m. Eastern Time on May 20 of 2025. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Liam Blackledge, Investor Relations and Strategy Manager. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you operator and good morning or good afternoon to everyone listening. I welcome you to the Sirius Point earnings call for the 2025 first quarter results. Last night we issued our earnings press release, 10Q and financial supplement, which are available on our website www.siriuspt.com. Additionally, a webcast presentation will coincide with today's discussion and is available on our website. Joining me on the call today are Scott Egan, our Chief Executive Officer, and Jim McKinney, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we start, I would like to remind you that today's remarks contain forward-looking statements based on management's current expectations. Actual results may differ. Certain non-GAAP financial measures will also be discussed. Management uses the non-GAAP financial measures in its internal analysis of results and believes that they may be informative to investors engaging the quality of our financial performance and identifying trends in our results. However, these measures should not be considered as a substitute for or superior to the measures of financial performance preferred in accordance with GAAP. Please refer to page two of our investor presentation for additional information and the company's latest public filings. I will now turn the call over to Scott.

Thanks, Liam, and good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining our first quarter 2025 results call. I'm pleased to share the results of our first quarter, which show that 2025 is off to a strong start for Sirius Point. We achieved our 10th straight quarter of underwriting profit in spite of the impact from the unprecedented California wildfires, demonstrating the diverse book we have built can deliver target returns on equity across the cycle. We also saw double digit percentage growth in both our gross and net written premiums, marking our fourth consecutive quarter. The quarter also saw us complete on our 753 million shareholder repurchase agreement with CM Bermuda and participated in the secondary offering from the Loeb entities, repurchasing and retiring a further half a million shares. Both were accretive for our shareholders. Our return on equity of 12.9% was well within of 12 to 15% across the cycle target, benchmarking well against our ambition to deliver consistent and stable earnings that create long-term shareholder value. Our actions in the quarter follow the strong performance momentum from 2024 as we look to continue our ambition to become a best-in-class specialty underwriter. Focusing now on some of the important aspects of the result for the quarter, starting with our strong underwriting performance. We delivered a combined ratio for our core business of 95.4%. This includes a loss of $59 million relating to the California wildfires net of reinstatement premiums, which came in below our previously disclosed estimate of $60 to $70 million. This had a 10.9 point impact to our combined ratio. Dissecting our underwriting performance further, our expense ratio improved by 1.2 points, our acquisition cost ratio improved by 1.4 points and our attritional loss ratio improved by 0.4 points, driving a year over year improvement of 3 points, excluding catastrophes and prior year development. In addition, a result also contains $34 million of favourable prior year development, marking the 16th consecutive quarter of favourable higher year development. A four year consistent track record serves to underscore a prudent approach to reserving. Coming now to our strong premium growth in the quarter. Gross written premiums grew 12% year over year for our core business, where we saw strong performance across various lines of business. We achieved double digit growth in accident and health, property and other specialty lines of business, whilst premiums decreased slightly within casualty as we prioritise underwriting discipline in this area. This also marks the fourth consecutive quarter of double digit growth across the business not exited in 2023 as part of our turnaround. Growth was even stronger on a net basis, increasing 20%. This is a very deliberate strategy as we seek to retain a greater proportion of books where we have gained further experience and confidence in their profitability and track record. Underwriting margin is our number one priority, but this quarter again demonstrated that our targeted and disciplined approach is working on both fronts. An important driver of our growth comes from our MGA distribution strategy. The role MGA's play in the insurance ecosystem is becoming increasingly important as market share from this distribution channel continues to increase. We strengthened their offering during the quarter, adding five new or expanded distribution partnerships to our dedicated MGA platform. We continue to see strong premium growth coming from the partnerships we entered in 2023 and 2024 as we work with select long term partners with strong track records. Our MGA Centre of Excellence continues to be an important growth engine for Sirius Point and our reputation within this space continues to improve as we become the preferred partner for delegated business. We currently reject over 80% of the delegated opportunities which are presented to us as our commitment to underwriting excellence is unwavering. Choosing the right partners to work with is key. In addition, we are investing in our data capabilities in the MGA space during 2025, which we believe will give us a further edge in this growing distribution channel. Turning briefly to our investment results. Jim will cover this in more detail shortly, but our headline net investment income of $71 million for the quarter is tracking in line with our full year guidance, with nothing of significance to note in our investments in the quarter. This quarter also saw us complete on the steps taken in 2024 to simplify our shareholder structure with the closing of the previously announced CM Bermuda transaction in February. Additionally, entities associated with Dan Loeb conducted a secondary offering of roughly 4 million shares. On completion of the offering, their aggregate stake as a percentage of shares outstanding remains broadly unchanged, comparing before and after the CM Bermuda transaction. As part of this offering, we took an opportunity to further deploy capital and repurchased and retired 500,000 of these shares at a price below both market and book value. Our efforts are being noticed by the rating agencies, Earlier this year, Fitch and very recently AM Best revised our outlook from stable to positive whilst affirming our ratings. These are important proof points in our journey and are important signals to the market and to our customers of our strong balance sheet and significant improvements. Before I conclude, I just wanted to touch briefly on the global uncertainty caused by the tariff changes and my thoughts on their impact on our company. Uncertainty has increased and it feels like new details emerge most days. That said, we continue to proactively monitor the impact that tariffs may have as the situation evolves and our cross-function working group continues to remain alert to any developments. There is a heightened focus on monitoring the data we have available in light of the situation and we stand ready to adjust our pricing, risk appetite or book positioning accordingly should it be required. Inflation remains our number one focus and we will react early and quickly if we have to. That said, we have a diverse portfolio both in terms of the risk type our products cover and in the geographies in which we underwrite. Whilst potential impacts from tariffs naturally will vary depending on the type and location of the exposure, our level of diversification serves to reduce any volatility or inflation that could emerge in a single line of business. That said, we must not forget that periods of uncertainty can also produce opportunity for us. We exist to help our customers manage risk and navigate uncertainty. We will keep you updated as more clarity emerges and our response becomes clearer as the situation continues to play out. So to end, our momentum continues from 2024 into 2025. We are completely focused on becoming a high performing specialty underwriter that delivers stable and consistent returns for our shareholders. The first quarter is another proof point. Resilient underwriting profits, significant top-line premium growth, consistent investment income, book value growth of 5%, and an annualised return on equity of 12.9%. I am pleased to be able to present these results to the market, and as always, I want to go on record to thank our wonderful employees for another strong quarter. They work incredibly hard every day to achieve these outcomes and to take us closer to our aim to be a best-in-class underwriter. As you can see from slide nine in our presentation, the catch-up to the market has been notable. Our aim is to outperform, and that is what we are relentlessly focused on. With that, I will pass across to Jim, who will take you through the financials in more detail.