James River Group Holdings Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Earnings Dented by Reinsurance Charge, But Core Underwriting Remains Disciplined

Conference Call Moderator/Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the James River Group Holdings, Inc. First Quarter 2026 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker’s remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. I will now turn the conference over to Bob Ziambras, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Bob Ziambras, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, James River Group Holdings, Inc.: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to James River Group’s first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. A quick reminder that during the call, we will be making forward-looking statements that are based on current beliefs, intentions, expectations, and assumptions that are subject to various risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially. Such risks and uncertainties are detailed in the cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements in yesterday’s earnings release and the risk factors of our most recent Form 10-K and other reports and filings we have made with the SEC. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements. In addition, during this presentation, we may reference non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings press release for a reconciliation of these numbers to GAAP, a copy of which can be found on our website.

Lastly, unless otherwise specified, for the reasons described in our earnings press release, all underwriting performance ratios referred to are for our continuing operations in business that is not subject to retroactive reinsurance accounting for lost portfolio transfers. I will now turn the call over to Frank D’Orazio, Chief Executive Officer of James River Group.

Frank D’Orazio, Chief Executive Officer, James River Group Holdings, Inc.: Thank you for the introduction, Bob. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. As we do each quarter, we look forward to discussing notable highlights of our performance, updates on the execution of key corporate objectives, and the progress that James River continues to make in becoming a best-in-class E&S carrier. This quarter, our E&S results were negatively impacted by a sizable reinsurance reinstatement charge on a 2022 casualty treaty triggered by an individual claim. A disappointing development on an otherwise solid quarter. As we’ve discussed in the past, the organization restructured its E&S treaty placements in July of 2023 to prevent these types of outsized adjustments from impacting future results. In a few moments, Sarah will provide additional details on the specifics of this reinsurance charge.

Before she does, I’d like to spend a few minutes discussing our current view of the market opportunity for James River, as well as our progress across a number of prioritized corporate initiatives. First and foremost, relative to market opportunities, we continue to believe that heightened discipline is essential in a transitioning marketplace. James River has been well-served by the refinement of our underwriting appetite, focus on smaller insureds, investment in underwriting governance and performance monitoring, and prioritization on underwriting margin, particularly over the last several years. For 2026, we feel our greatest opportunity to push rate remains in our excess casualty division, and the greatest opportunities for overall growth reside in our specialty lines division as well as our small business unit. Underwriting areas that we feel hold the most attractive margin in today’s marketplace.

At the segment level, casualty rates were positive at 7.7% for the quarter or consistent with our expectations. While pressure on rates has been most pronounced in our excess property division for several quarters now, we’ve also recently seen increasing competitive pressure in our primary general casualty department. As a result, our underwriters are navigating opportunities in those lines with appropriate prudence. For the segment, submission growth was strong at 4%, for the first time in several quarters, we modestly grew gross written premiums across our E&S casualty and specialty portfolios, with 7 of our 14 underwriting divisions reporting positive growth. Excluding our manufacturers’ and contractors’ business, where we made refinements in appetite last year, and our small delegated contract binding portfolio, which is currently in runoff, our casualty portfolio was up over 6% when compared to the prior year.

Looking more closely at production, targeted growth during the quarter was driven by several areas I have highlighted this morning. In the aggregate, specialty lines were up 6%, driven by professional liability, energy, and health care, and excess casualty premiums increased 15%, largely driven by our underwriters’ ability to continue to drive rate. As mentioned earlier, during 2026, the company has prioritized a number of initiatives aimed largely at making James River a more efficient organization, while also significantly improving our business development acumen and expanding our presence with our distribution partners. Continuing the same discipline that we exhibited during 2025, we also reduced G&A expenses across the group during the quarter by 11%.

Finally, as we discussed during last quarter’s call, we are excited about the significant investments in technology that we believe will increase underwriting efficiency while improving the underwriting tools and resources available to our E&S underwriting staff. The rollout of AI-enabled underwriting workbench technology is already underway, with our first two underwriting departments being rolled out this quarter, and we expect to report on the progress of the initiative in future quarters. We are confident that the combination of underwriting improvements and appetite changes we have made over the last several years, in concert with continued expense vigilance and technology adoption, will allow us to optimize our SME platform and further differentiate our very special wholesale-only distribution model.

As we manage the market cycle, I’m encouraged by the uptick in focused production in areas we are hoping to scale and by our ability to continue to push rate where necessary as we navigate through 2026. It continues to be a dynamic and competitive marketplace, but we are well positioned to succeed, strongly supported by our underwriters and wholesale distribution partners. With that, I’ll turn it over to Sarah to walk through the financial results in more detail.

Sarah, Chief Financial Officer, James River Group Holdings, Inc.: Thank you, Frank. Good morning, everyone. This quarter, we reported a net loss to common shareholders of $10.9 million, which compares to net income of $7.6 million for the first quarter of 2025. Operating earnings were $5.8 million or $0.12 per diluted share as compared to $9.1 million or $0.19 per share. As Frank mentioned, our results this quarter were negatively impacted by $6.7 million of reinsurance reinstatement premiums, largely related to a single E&S claim from 2022 that was booked and settled in the first quarter and subject to our prior $9 million excess of $2 million casualty reinsurance treaty.

The runoff structure of that treaty includes specific amounts of reinstatement premium potential for each accident year, leaving reinstatement premium aggregate exposure of about $9 million across accident years 2022 and prior. The structural changes that we made to that treaty should mitigate the forward impact of earnings volatility for accident years 2023 and on, as we now pay a higher rate on subject premium upfront rather than pay meaningfully for these reinstatement premiums. Absent the reinsurance reinstatement impact, operating earnings would have been $0.22 per diluted share. This impact reduced net written premium, net earned premium, and underwriting income for the quarter. It added approximately 5 points to the group combined ratio of 104.6%, including almost 2 points to our expense ratio, which was 35.4%.

Absent this impact, the consolidated combined ratio would have been 99.7%, comprised of an adjusted loss ratio of 66% and expense ratio of 33.7%. For E&S specifically, the combined ratio of 96.5% was driven by 68%, a 68% loss ratio and a 28.5% expense ratio. Again, when adjusted for the impact of reinstatement premiums, the E&S combined ratio would be 91.8%, which is right in line with that of the prior quarter. Moving quickly to expenses. As Frank mentioned, expense efficiency continues to be a priority, and G&A expenses declined 11% compared to the prior year quarter, driven by reductions within Specialty Admitted, where they were down 46%, in the corporate segment, where they were down 15%.

Underlying loss trends remain stable. The reserves continue to reflect improved risk selection in the more recent accident years. We recorded de minimis favorable reserve development of $165,000 split between E&S and Specialty Admitted. Consistent with the prior year period, we continue to observe lower frequency and incurred losses in recent accident years while remaining appropriately cautious in recognizing those trends as the business seasons. During the quarter, we ceded $16.2 million of development to the E&S top-up adverse development cover, which covers accident years 2010 through 2023. There is $7.5 million remaining on that cover. Finally, moving on to investments. Net investment income was $21.3 million for the quarter, an increase of 6.6% year-over-year.

These results were driven by improved private investment income due to our move over the last 18 months to invest capital efficiency, efficiently in private credit-rated note vehicles, as well as the deployment of cash into our high-grade portfolio. While we did have strong income from our diversified bank loan portfolio, which represents about 8% of our total cash and invested assets, we also saw some volatility there as the largest driver of net realized and unrealized investment losses. Overall, though, the portfolio remains positioned fairly conservatively, with about 73% of it invested in high-grade fixed income at an average duration of 3.5 years and an A-plus average credit rating. Tangible common equity per share declined modestly to $8.77, reflecting the combination of investment market movements and the impact of the legacy reinsurance structures.

With that, I’ll turn the call back to the operator to open the line for questions.

Conference Call Moderator/Operator: Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We do request for today’s session that you please limit to 1 question and 1 follow-up. Your first question comes from the line of Mark Hughes with Truist. Your line is open.

Mark Hughes, Analyst, Truist: Yeah, thank you. Good morning. Frank, you had mentioned a little more competition in the primary general casualty. Where do you see that coming from? How, how significant do you think that is?

Frank D’Orazio, Chief Executive Officer, James River Group Holdings, Inc.: In casualty lines, first of all, thanks for the question, Mark. In casualty lines, you know, we’ve seen fairly aggressive MGAs, and just an overall increase in capacity from carriers interested in the E&S sector, as others, I think, have reported. We’ve also seen some of the newer competition not only competing on price, but in terms and conditions that, you know, at this point seem unwise, particularly in the GC space. Fortunately for James River, we’ve been in the sector for greater than 20 years with an existing portfolio and longstanding relationships with distribution partners and insurers. We definitely see a break between underwriters being able to push rate in the excess lines versus the primary lines, much more significant. There seems to be more respect for loss trend from excess casualty underwriters at this point.

Mark Hughes, Analyst, Truist: Understood. Sarah, on the adverse development cover, the top-up cover, what do the total reserves that are covered by that? If you’ve got it in front of you, how much has been paid on those, say, expected losses? Just trying to figure out what the paid versus unpaid is at this point on the relevant reserves.

Sarah, Chief Financial Officer, James River Group Holdings, Inc.: Yeah. Thanks, Mark, for the question. I don’t have the paids right in front of me, but very little of the reserve subject to those both of those structures would’ve been paid by now. Can certainly follow up with that, order of magnitude, I would expect that number to be fairly low. The top-up adverse development cover and the other E&S ADC LPT cover all E&S accident years 2010 through 2023, with the exception of the excess property book and the exception of the runoff Uber portfolio, which is covered by a legacy structure as well.

Mark Hughes, Analyst, Truist: Understood. If I could slip a third one in, Frank, you talked about the AI-enabled technology on the underwriter’s workbench, I think. Could you expand a little bit more on that? What are the kind of practical implications of their day-to-day underwriting activity? What do you think it could mean in terms of either efficiency, underwriting effectiveness? Just curious.

Frank D’Orazio, Chief Executive Officer, James River Group Holdings, Inc.: Sure, Mark. We spent the first, really the last few years, I would say, kind of updating and upgrading our core systems, which has enabled us to now explore and invest in these AI-enabled workbenches. We see it as a competitive enabler, just allowing us to optimize operational efficiency. It really runs a gamut of clearance through risk prioritization against our appetite and production source relationships, data ingestion from third parties, and ultimately will facilitate quote and bind processes. We see it as a major efficiency play relative to being able to turn around quotes quicker and in a more targeted fashion.

Mark Hughes, Analyst, Truist: Thank you very much.

Conference Call Moderator/Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Brian Meredith with UBS. Your line is open.

Brian Meredith, Analyst, UBS: Yeah, thanks. Frank, just following up on the market conditions. Perhaps you can kinda give us a little color on what’s going on as far as movements between E&S and the admitted markets. We’ve heard that, you know, we’re starting to see some business move back to the admitted market.

Frank D’Orazio, Chief Executive Officer, James River Group Holdings, Inc.: We’ve definitely seen that as well, particularly in property. We’ve definitely seen that, but we’ve now started to see it in some of the more standard lines like primary casualty as well. From a primary basis, some lines that have historically been in the E&S marketplace, now starting to attract some attention from standard markets as well. I would say, you know, to date, it’s been most broadly observed in the property area for us specifically.

Brian Meredith, Analyst, UBS: Would you, like, characterize this like a typical, you know, cycle here where business starts to move back a little bit? Do you think it’ll continue?

Frank D’Orazio, Chief Executive Officer, James River Group Holdings, Inc.: Yeah. You know, the market’s been transitioning. I’m sorry, Brian, did I cut you off?

Brian Meredith, Analyst, UBS: Yeah. Do you think it’ll continue? Yeah.

Frank D’Orazio, Chief Executive Officer, James River Group Holdings, Inc.: Yeah. Listen, I think we’re several quarters now into a transitioning market, and this is kind of an old story, right? We start to see some of this business now get the attention of the admitted market. I think it’s gonna be, you know, more specific to certain classes of business. Anybody who hangs a shingle writes a primary general casualty capability or has a primary casualty capability, that’s an obvious choice, as is property as well. We’re seeing, I think a little bit more resilience in some of the specialty lines.

Brian Meredith, Analyst, UBS: Appreciate that. That’s, that’s great. Sarah, just one other just quick question on this, on this reinstatement. Just trying to get my hands around it. I think what’s going on here, right, is that because there was perhaps some development on this claim is why you had the reinstatement premium come through. Is that true? Like, if the treaty wasn’t in effect, would there have been adverse development booked this quarter on this claim?

Sarah, Chief Financial Officer, James River Group Holdings, Inc.: Well, that, let me just be clear. The 9X2 that covers the majority of our E&S book. That’s obviously a prospective treaty, I wanna differentiate that from the retrospective treaties. We have reinstatement premiums pretty frequently. I think what stood out this quarter, Brian, was that it was a more sizable, it was a larger claim that settled. There is a fair amount in that book that that treaty protects us from on an ongoing basis.

Brian Meredith, Analyst, UBS: Gotcha. Okay. Thank you.

Sarah, Chief Financial Officer, James River Group Holdings, Inc.: Sure.

Conference Call Moderator/Operator: I will now turn the call back over to Frank D’Orazio, CEO, for any closing comments.

Frank D’Orazio, Chief Executive Officer, James River Group Holdings, Inc.: Thank you, moderator. I also wanna thank everyone who listened to our call for their time and thoughtful questions this morning. While the quarter did have its headwinds, a very positive takeaway that remains is the underlying strength of the improved business model that we continue to build, and most notably, the very targeted growth and Specialty in casualty lines, the expense discipline, and a team that is executing in today’s market. We are well-positioned for 2026 and look forward to keeping you updated on our progress in just a few months.

Conference Call Moderator/Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today’s call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.