Mount Logan Capital Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Mount Logan Capital's first quarter 2023 results conference call. Before we begin, I would like to remind listeners that except for historical information, the matters discussed during this call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of their applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual financial results, performance or achievements to be materially different from estimated future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by those forward looking statements. All forward looking statements reflect the company's current views with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties and assumptions we have made in drawing the conclusions included in such forward looking statements. The company is not obligated to update or revise any forward looking statements and we do not assume any obligation to do so. for a description of the risk associated with Mount Logan's capital's business, as well as information about the material factors and assumptions that could cause results to differ from any forward-looking statements and other relevant factors. Please refer to the company's public disclosure record, particularly the company's MD&A and annual information form for the year ended December 31st, 2022, which are available on CEDA. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Ted Goldthorpe, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Mount Logan Capital, Mr. Goldthorpe, you may begin.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today for our first quarter 2023 results call. During the call, we will refer to information provided in the first quarter 2023 press release, ND&A and consolidated financial statements, all of which were released on Thursday evening and are available on our website and CDAR. Joining me this morning to discuss our financial results and outlook for our business is our Chief Financial Officer, Jason Ruse, and our President, Henry Wang. As a reminder, all references to dollar amounts in this call are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated. Overall, the first quarter of 2023 was a transformative quarter for our business. Our team put in a tremendous amount of effort, achieving several notable highlights, including the successful transition to IFRS 17, progression towards the final close of our previously announced transaction with Ovation, including hiring of 16 of the former Ovation employees post-quarter end, and the achievement of a record MIGA volumes in our insurance protocol, which is driving significant growth in assets. We're also pleased to announce that we will be maintaining our dividend for the quarter, which will pay two Canadian cents per share distribution for shareholders of record as of May 18th, which will mark our 15th consecutive quarter of distributing earnings to our shareholders. Consistent with the softer market tone witnessed through 2022, macro headwinds persisted during the first quarter of 2023, primarily attributable to the bank failures of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic Bank during March and April. Our business and portfolios were well insulated with minimal exposure to the failed banks. Our managed funds capitalized on the opportunity to deploy capital into investments with attractive risk-adjusted returns following the bouts of volatility. As mentioned on prior earnings calls, the IFRS transformation we underwent in the first part of 2023 was a huge lift by all parties involved. We do not want to call out the quarter-over-quarter changes in our reported financials attributable to the IFRS 17 conversion, as well as the elevated costs associated with the implementation, coupled with the fees and expenses from recent M&A activity. IFRS 17 innovation, while important milestones for our business, creates short-term noise in our reported numbers, and we plan to follow up with a supplemental package for investors to provide additional context on the business and financial performance. Before I speak to our financial results for the year, I will provide a quick overview of the business highlights across our two key business segments, asset management and insurance. Our asset management segment encompasses our retail and institutional targeted businesses. The retail segment represents our U.S. Interim Fund, known as Alternative Credit Income Fund, or ALTSIF, the Opportunistic Credit Interim Fund, or OSIF, and our sub-advisory relationship with First Trust Private Credit Fund. The institutional business covers our BDCs and CLOs, which are our permanent and longer duration capital. For the quarter, we generated $1.6 million in management and servicing fees on our large and growing asset base. We note this figure excludes $823,000 of management fees generated from managing a portion of Ability's assets. On the retail side, Alt-SIF continued to see new fund subscriptions outpace reductions. On OSIF, the fund has performed exceptionally well since inception, returning over 21% through March 31st, 2023, and we are close to onboarding with additional distribution partners, which will accelerate its growth. Additionally, AUM, through our sub-advisory relationship with First Trust Private Credit Fund, grew 92% quarter over quarter, and we'll expect it to continue to trend upwards over the next year. On the institutional side, Our BDC and CLO funds today represent over $1.5 billion of assets and provide predictability in Mount Logan's top line due to the stable nature of the fees generated on its permanent and semi-permanent capital base. Logan Ridge achieved its third consecutive quarter of positive net investment income, with first quarter net investment income up 65% versus the prior quarter, which supported an increase to Logan Ridge's quarterly dividends. another significant milestone for the platform following the reintroduction of its dividend one quarter prior. As of quarter end, Logan Ridge had a total asset base of $216 million. Mount Logan maintains its exposure to its second BDC, Portman Ridge, through its minority interest in Portman Ridge's investment advisor, Sierra Crest. Portman Ridge finished the quarter with approximately $594 million in total assets and the management contract continues to provide consistent quarterly cash distributions to Mount Logan. Through Logan Ridge and Portman Ridge, Mount Logan has two separate BDC fee streams underpinned by sizable bases of fee-generating permanent capital, both of which continue to perform despite operating under volatile market conditions. On the CLO side, AUM for the fourth quarter was $650 million, and continues to produce a steady stream of management fee income. By the end of 2023, our revenue share on the CLOs will increase from 30% to 100%, which will increase organic top-line performance in our asset management business, resulting in an approximately $1 million increase in cash flow on a runway basis. From the insurance side, we continue to progress the integration and optimization of ability and are realizing the synergies with our asset management business, which we envisioned at close, As a reminder, Ability is a Nebraska-based insurer and reinsurer of both long-term care and annuity policies, with approximately $905 million of invested assets as of the end of the quarter. Now, Logan Management manages a significant portion of Ability's assets, which continue to grow as we increase our annuity exposure and originate floating-rate private credit assets with excess spread and attractive capital charges. which enable us to meet our commitments to our policyholders. Insurance remains a highly strategic focus for our team, and we remain focused on continuing to improve the portfolio yield through the optimization of the investment holdings, further scaling the annuity business, and performing on our reinsurance obligations. We've seen our efforts materialize in the first quarter annualized portfolio yield reaching 9%, which is up 1.27% compared to the fourth quarter of 2022, and up 4% when compared to the first quarter of 2022. On the liability side, we believe our annuity reinsurance business is attractive in the current environment. The annuity policies we reinsure contain surrender charges, which protect ability from earlier than expected policyholder withdrawals. As we reinsure more annuities, Ability's overall liability duration decreases due to the shorter duration of the annuity products we reinsure relative to that of our long-term care business. We also find the current cost of annuities to be attractive given the current asset deployment environment and diversifies our underwriting risk on the liability side of the building. In regards to growth, we're two-thirds of the way towards completing the $250 million in MIGA premiums that we've agreed to reinsure, which we signed over two contracts in the second and third quarter of 2022. Our reinsurance deals accelerate our transition from our legacy long-term care business increase predictability of our liabilities, and help Ability transform into a larger insurance solutions platform. With respect to M&A opportunities, our pipeline remains robust. We expect to announce more strategic activity in the second half of the year, which provides further scale to our platform. As mentioned on prior calls, we appreciate the importance of being able to arrive at platform-level valuations of our business and provide additional disclosure in coming weeks with respect to our two lines of business, asset management and insurance. We continue to believe the sum of parts analysis on our business implies significant upside to our share price based on where the market trades today, and we look forward to providing you additional clarity in coming weeks. Before I turn the call over to Jason Ruse, I did want to take a moment to thank our team for their commitment to Mt. Logan and helping us push forward on the various initiatives we have in flight. We are energized by the opportunity set, and we will continue to evaluate ways to grow our business, maximize value across the platform, consistent with our long-term objectives. With that, I'll hand the call over to Jason, who will review the financial results for the quarter.

Thanks, Ted. Good morning, everyone. I will now summarize our key highlights for the first quarter of 2023. As a reminder, all figures referenced on today's call will be in U.S. dollars, not Logan's functional and presentation currency. Before discussing the performance of our two businesses, Asset Management and Insurance, I would like to mention that we implemented a significant change to our financial statement presentation for our insurance segment this quarter relating to the adoption of the new insurance contracts accounting standard, IFRS 17. We've applied this standard retrospectively, thus all figures, where appropriate, will reflect the adoption of this standard. For our asset management segment in the first quarter of 2023, we generated $1.8 million of revenue. Our CLOs generated approximately $283,000 in collateral and management fees for the quarter. The net earnings related to Alt-SIF comprised of interest income, net of servicing expense, was approximately $156,000. With regard to our BDCs, Logan Ridge generated approximately $930,000 in management fees, and through our minority interest in Sierra Crest, the company recognized over $467,000 of attributable revenue for the quarter. Excluding gains and losses from investment activities, our asset management revenue decreased by 28% quarter over quarter due to the normalization of our CLO income and a reduction in the net economics related to our servicing agreement with Sierra Crest. For the asset management segment, on the expense side, for the quarter ended March 31st, we incurred approximately $5.7 million in operating expenses. For the quarter ended March 31st, Mount Logan incurred $1.3 million in interest and credit facility expenses related primarily to our incurred $1.3 million in interest and credit facility expenses, which primarily relate to our $27.5 million corporate credit facility and $15 million seller note related to ability. Our interest expense increased quarter over quarter due to higher market interest rates, and we had increased professional fees incurred in connection with the implementation of IFRS 17 and the continued expansion of the company's business into an asset management and insurance platform. Moving on to our insurance business, we had total revenue this quarter of $10.2 million, which is net of insurance service expenses and net expenses from reinsurance contracts held. Revenue quarter over quarter for the insurance business has fluctuated significantly due to the adoption of IFRS 17. Excluding the impact of the adoption of IFRS 17, our insurance business net investment income and unrealized gains on the investment portfolio were the significant drivers for positive performance this quarter. Overall, given the current investment portfolio and liability structure at Ability, we expect that rising interest rates will continue to have a long-term benefit to Ability's capacity to generate investment yield in the form of net investment income. Our insurance business reported total expenses of $35.5 million during this quarter. The increase in expenses is largely due to the lower discount rate being applied to our insurance liabilities as part of the adoption of IFRS 17. which has accelerated expense recognition for contracts deemed to be onerous, which both our long-term care and multi-year guaranteed annuity contracts are considered. With the quarter ended March 31, 2023, Mt. Logan reported a basic loss per share of $1.33 and an adjusted basic loss per share of $1.30. The decrease in earnings per share across basic and adjusted presentation is largely due to the adoption of IFRS on the team. As of March 31, 2023, Mt. Logan's balance sheet reflected total assets of $1.57 billion, total liabilities of $1.55 billion, and shareholders' equity at $21.4 million. The significant decline in shareholders' equity from previously reported December 31, 2022 figures is due to the cumulative impact of the adoption of IFRS 17, which had a day one adoption impact of $80.2 million to opening shareholders' equity. On the asset management side of the balance sheet, there were nominal changes quarter-by-quarter, with one exception pertaining to the recognition of a $2.5 million unrealized loss this quarter relating to the company's holdings and declined corporate debt. The unrealized loss is driven by uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the bankruptcy process. We continue to actively monitor this investment. These losses were partially offset by investment in OSIF, which saw its fair value rise 16% since the initial seed investment. due to capital appreciation in the underlying portfolio. At quarter end, the liabilities related to our asset management segment predominantly included outstanding debt obligations of $27.5 million drawn under our corporate credit facility, a $15 million seller note issued in connection with our acquisition of Ability, and a $4 million seller note issued in connection with our acquisition of the management of Logan Ridge, which shown net of deferred financing costs. On the insurance side of the balance sheet, total assets of $1.5 billion represented an increase of $37.4 million, or 2.5% from December 31, 2022. Cash and cash equivalents decreased by $9.7 million as a result of net deployment during the first quarter of 2023. Investments in financial assets increased by $20.2 million, reflecting the growth of the insurance segment's total asset base, which was driven by the accrued interest. Reinsurance contract assets increased by $22.5 million compared to December 31, 2022, and relate to our arrangements with third-party reinsurance providers. The increase was primarily due to the impact of finance income required to reflect the time value of reinsurance contract assets under IFRS on the team. Our insurance segment has total liabilities of $1.5 billion, representing an increase of $63.4 million, or 4.4%, from December 31, 2022. Insurance contract liabilities represent liabilities calculated under IFRS 17 related to long-term care insurance and the multi-year guaranteed annuity business. Insurance contract liabilities increased by $50.5 million compared to December 31st, 2022, primarily due to the impact of finance expenses required to reflect the time value of the insurance contract liabilities under IFRS 17. Accrued expenses and other liabilities primarily include payables for investments purchased and other accrued expenses. Accrued expenses and other liabilities decreased by $15.2 million, primarily due to a decrease in payables for investments purchased. The company remains adequately capitalized for the near future, and we expect to grow book value in our insurance segment over time, building upon combined synergies between our asset management and insurance segments. I will now turn the call back to Ted Wilthorpe for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Jason. In closing, we remain focused on identifying and executing new growth avenues to create value for our business and our shareholders, both in credit as an asset class and through strategic relationships or transactions with other platforms. We look forward to updating you on the progress on all fronts. We see a clear pathway for growth through 2023 and are in a strong position to generate value for our shareholders. This concludes our prepared remarks. We'd now like to transition the call to a Q&A session if the operator could please coordinate.

Of course, thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. You'll be advised when to ask your question. Again, to ask a question, that's star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. Our first question comes from Scott Chan of Canaccord Genuity. Scott, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks a lot. Good afternoon. Maybe I'll start with Jason. Good job on asset management. Hey, Ted. Jason, you talked about the revenue. I think you declined 28% per quarter, and you called out CLOs and Sierra Crest. I'm just trying to figure out maybe what kind of caused that sequential decline and that impact with the runway going forward for this year on revenue?

Yeah, sure. So the CLO has had a little bit of an outsized quarter last quarter, so I would say the CLO income has normalized this quarter. And then, you know, due to some investments that we've made within the sales and marketing aspect of all SIF, that's led to, you know, some costs offsetting some of the revenue within the equity investment with Sierra Crest. We would expect that to kind of maintain, you know, I would say it's going to pop up a little bit. I would say another roughly 50 grand next quarter. But I would say the run rate is as expected right now. Another factor that was reflected in last quarter's management fees is some of the OSIP investment. our equity investment in that has kind of normalized this quarter from where it was last quarter. And then some of the revenue on other asset management streams like the first trust sub-advisory agreement increased quarter over quarter, so that's a positive trend that you'll see in that number, but largely where we ended up this quarter would be roughly where I would expect to be next quarter. The other thing to call out is the interest income line also represents fee stream revenue that's reflected in the form of an interest income line because of our debt agreement between Mount Logan Capital and Sierra Crest. So you should really think about that interest income line as a management fee stream as well.

I think we're going to provide our additional disclosure. I think what we'll show you is fee income continues to grow and the volatility is much more around investment income. I think when people look at our stock, they really are looking for guidance around FRE. Some of the volatility you're seeing in that is investment income. What we'll do for our investors is we're going to provide some additional disclosure just because To your point, it looks a little funny when you look at our quarter-by-quarter trends.

And maybe to tie that in, Ted, on the FRA for asset management, it was $1.4 million down from last year, and expenses were really up in that second, too, and it looked like it was GMA. So, like, is FRA, in terms of a target this year, it seems like, It's tracking below last year, and based on Jason's comments on revenue, is that kind of fair?

Well, I'll let Jason address it a little bit, but there are a lot of one-time items in that expense. So that increase in expenses is not a recurring number. And again, a lot of the accounting fees to transition to IFRS 17 are in that number, which is really a one-time item. And so again, we have to disclose things on an IFRS basis. But again, we should break out in our investor supplement one-time items versus recurring expenses. I don't think you can take our expense vote today to be the run rate. We have made some increased investments in our retail business. So we brought on some additional salespeople and stuff, which the payback for them comes later. But by and large, a lot of the increase in expenses is really one-time in nature.

Yeah, just to layer onto that, so that the expense line, that G&A line, has about roughly 1.3 million at one time, largely related to the implementation of IFRS 17, which is running its course at this point. And then you have some of the additional investments in the retail platform. That would look to come down over time, but that's another, call it $400,000. related to that.

Okay, that's helpful. So it seems like a lot of the RFR 17 costs will put this quarter. Was there any costs that were capitalized that would impact future quarters?

Not at this time.

Okay. Ted, on ovation, know especially finance focus um you know different different protocols or lending than what you have right now uh what what's the strategy with probation uh over time are you looking at world assets meaningfully um you know i saw an update in terms of employees and stuff like that but just maybe just to get a perspective on what you're thinking there on that transaction

A lot of our transactions have been financial. This one's strategic. We not only get a permanent capital vehicle for what we think is not a lot of consideration, but we also get a best-in-class team who does what we do, but they do it better in certain niches. Again, it's very synergistic for our investment strategies. It is an asset class that is very specialized, so we think we can raise money around them. We think we can grow the fund over time. Some of the investment we made in our retail platform that Jason and I just referred to is gearing up to help sell the Ovation fund into that channel. We had to close it as a two-step transaction, so we did that first step. We're already accruing revenues and expenses for the Ovation platform. It'll close July 1st, but we're already gearing up to start trying to grow that platform.

Is the plan to use some of the Ovation investment expertise on your insurance platform at all?

Yes. Yeah. So, you know, we're really, really good at certain things within our insurance platform and some of them we have to outsource. Like some of the acquisitions that we're looking at now would allow us to insource a lot of that outsourcing. And this is, we expect them to kick off some assets that fit us very well. So, for example, you know, they do have an expertise a little bit in real estate. And, you know, a big chunk of all insurance companies' money is invested in certain aspects of real estate. So that helps us, for example, on that front. That's just, like, one example.

Okay. And maybe last question. I know our R17 got implemented, but I think it might be helpful for everyone on the call if you could provide a general update on your insurance business outside the noise.

Yeah, why don't I do that? So, you know, we... Our insurance business, it's very hard to tell from the numbers. This is why I said in my prepared remarks, we're going to provide you guys some more disclosure around how the core business is doing. A, our insurance company is growing. B, it's being de-risked because we're doing fixed annuities. The asset side is doing incredibly well. A very large percentage of our assets are floating rate in nature. We've got a lot of tailwinds in terms of earnings. These strip out Anytime you grow an insurance company, you obviously have to expense some of the costs around the origination of liabilities. If you strip all that out, the core business is doing incredibly well. The asset side is throwing off a lot more investment income than it used to. Again, we referred to the yields. We've been able to really, really, really ratchet up yields in that portfolio before interest rate increases. Now, obviously, SOFR has gone from zero to five and a quarter. So there's a lot of earnings tailwinds within our insurance business, which we're very happy about. So if you think about what's happened over the last three months, the value of insurance capital in the face of what's happened with regional banks, it just proves that these are very resilient business models. And again, the one thing that all insurance companies are levered to is rates. So higher rates are definitely good for us.

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Scott.

There are currently no further questions in the queue. Please be reminded, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. And for a final reminder today, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. And there are no further questions, so I'll hand back to Mr. Ted Goldport for any final remarks.

Thank you all for your continued interest and support of Mt. Logan Capital. Our team is excited to continue our progress throughout the year. As always, we are happy to make ourselves available for any questions and look forward to updating you via press release in the near term and during our next earnings release in August. Thank you very much, and have a great weekend. This concludes today's call. Thank you, everyone, for joining. You may now disconnect.