UNIVERSAL INSURANCE HOLDINGS INC

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the UVE Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participant lines 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 then 1 on your telephone. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Rob Luther, Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our discussion on our second quarter 2021 earnings results, which were reported yesterday. On the call to me today is Steve Dunahee, Chief Executive Officer, and Frank Wilcox, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, please note today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures. Forward-looking statements involve assumptions, risks, and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those statements. For more information, please see the press release and UVE's SEC filings, all of which are available on the investor section of our website at universalinsuranceholdings.com and on the SEC's website. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to comparable GAAP measures is included in the quarterly press release. With that, Steve, I'll turn it over to you.

Thanks, Rob. In opening, I would be remiss to not acknowledge how absolutely devastated we were to hear of the tragedy in our local community at the Champlain Towers in Surfside, Florida. The devastation of an event like that is immeasurable. Our hearts and prayers go out to those affected by the condo collapse. Turning to our results for the quarter, we delivered solid second quarter results highlighted by an 18.7% annualized return on average equity. While we are pleased with our second quarter results, there are a number of industry factors that we are relentlessly focused on over the near term. First, we applaud the Florida OIR working hand-in-hand with legislators to acknowledge the issues plaguing the state's residential homeowners insurance market in comparison to the rest of the country and to bring about positive legislative change. which we are cautiously optimistic will help in curtailing some of the one-way attorney fee abuses that have impacted Florida the past couple years. That being said, the recent preliminary injunction, which blocks portions of the new law that went into effect July 1st from being enforced, namely the mass solicitation from restoration companies, leaves gaps in the bill. We continue to address the social headwinds with significant primary rate increases, exposure management, and strengthening reserves. In addition to social inflation impacts, material and labor costs are having an impact on replacement costs. We expect that as supply chain backlogs subside, we will see a normalization of some of these material costs, but are monitoring these factors and inflationary pressures closely and are utilizing primary rate pricing and operational measures to manage these risks. While macroinflationary pressures are a headwind on replacement costs, they also imply tailwinds from increased economic activity in addition to the potential for higher investment income rates of return. On top of the previously mentioned factors, reinsurance costs increased as expected and discussed in our reinsurance filing on May 28th. were more moderate in comparison to prior years we continue to address these impacts to margins through primary rate increases and our exposure management program we were pleased to not only see the vast majority of our core long-standing reinsurance partners offer increased capacity in 2021 but also that we're able to attract new reinsurer capacity at the 6-1 renewal Lastly, looking ahead to Q3 as it relates to weather, Hurricane Elsa made landfall in Taylor County, Florida on July 7th. We are closely monitoring this event as it is the first event since new legislative reform was enacted and should have more history on it in the coming quarter. We continue to be hyper-focused on driving more primary rate into our portfolio across our entire geographic footprint which is underpinned by a more strategic vision regarding desired new business exposure for the foreseeable future. These two pillars of price and exposure discipline, coupled with the recent property insurance legislation that went into effect in July 2021 in our biggest market, Florida, as well as a comprehensive reinsurance program in place for the 2021 hurricane season, puts us on solid footing to handle the continued challenges we face So with that, let me turn it over to Frank to walk through our financial results. Thank you, Steve.