Hanover Insurance Group Inc

Good day and welcome to Hanover Insurance Group's third quarter earnings conference call. My name is Nick and I'll be your operator for today's call. This time, all participants are in listen-only mode. If you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, I'll have an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note that this event is being recorded. I'd like to turn the conference over to Oksana Lukasheva. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and thank you for joining us for our quarterly conference call. We will begin today's call with prepared remarks from Jack Roach, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Jeff Farber, our Chief Financial Officer. Available to answer your questions after our prepared remarks, are Dick Lavey, President of Agency Markets and Bryan Salvatore, President of Specialty Lines. Before I turn the call over to Jack, Let me note that our earnings press release, financial supplement, and a complete slide presentation for today's call are available in the investor section of our website at www.henover.com. Our prepared remarks and responses to your questions today, other than statements of historical fact, include forward-looking statements regarding, among other things, our outlook for the fourth quarter and full year 2020, The ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic conditions, and other factors on company performance. There are certain factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. We caution you with respect to reliance on forward-looking statements, and in this respect, refer you to the forward-looking statements section in our press release The presentation deck and our filings with the SEC, which includes supplemental risk factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic and general economic conditions. Today's discussion will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as operating income and accident share loss and combined ratios, excluding catastrophes, among others. Thank you, Oksana. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call.

I will begin by discussing our third quarter financial highlights in the context of the current business and economic environment. I will then provide a strategic review of each of our segments and our accomplishments during the quarter. And Jeff will review our financial results and outlook in more detail. And then we'll be happy to take your questions. We are pleased with our third quarter financial performance, especially given it was a particularly active catastrophe quarter across the industry. We reported earnings per share of $2.46 and an operating return on equity of 13.8% for the quarter. Our results reflect strong execution on the strategic tenants that drive our business forward. Our company and earnings stream are well diversified, and position us well to withstand environmental challenges, including weather volatility and the ups and downs of the economy and market. We remain steadfastly focused on the hallmarks of our company, our unique distribution strategy and approach, broad-based profitability, disciplined underwriting, effective expense management and a thoughtful capital allocation strategy that includes returning excess capital to our shareholders. Turning to our third quarter highlights, first, we are very pleased with the trajectory of our growth and the consistent signs of building momentum in our top line. We achieved 2.1% growth in the third quarter, which represents a significant and expected recovery from the 2.3% premium decline we reported in the second quarter, normalized for one-time premium returns. Our leading production indicators are quickly improving and we are encouraged by agency support and commitments, which once again validate the strength of our differentiated strategy and our broad and relevant product offering. Looking ahead, we are confident in our ability to drive growth across our portfolio and continue to build on the strong pre-pandemic momentum we had established.