Assured Guaranty Ltd.

good morning and welcome to the Assured Guaranty Limited first quarter 2025 earnings conference call my name is ezra and i will be the operator for today's call all participants will be in listen only mode should you need assistant please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero on your telephone keypad after today's presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Robert Tucker, Senior Managing Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you all for joining Assured Guaranty. for our first quarter 2025 financial results conference call. Today's presentation is made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The presentation may contain forward-looking statements about our new business and credit outlooks, market conditions, credit spreads, financial ratings, loss reserves, financial results, or other items that may affect our future results. These statements are subject to change due to new information or future events. Therefore, you should not place undue reliance on them as we do not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise them except as required by law. If you're listening to a replay of this call or if you're reading the transcript of the call, please note that our statements made today may have been updated since this call. Please refer to the investor information section of our website for our most recent presentations and SEC filings, most current financial filings, and for the risk factors. This presentation also includes references to non-GAAP financial measures. We present the GAAP financial measures most directly comparable to the non-GAAP financial measures referenced in this presentation along with a reconciliation between such GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures in our current financial supplement and equity investor presentation, which are on our website at assuredguarantee.com. Turning to the presentation, our speakers today are Dominic Frederico, President and Chief Executive Officer of Assured Guarantee Limited, Rob Balanson, our Chief Operating Officer, and Ben Rosenblum, our Chief Financial Officer. After their remarks, we will open the call to your questions. As the webcast does not enable for Q&A, please dial into the call if you'd like to ask a question. I will now turn the call over to Dominic.

Thank you, Robert, and welcome to everyone joining today's call. Assured Guaranty had a solid first quarter of 2025. Adjusted operating income per share came in at $3.18 for the first quarter of 2025, compared with $1.96 in the first quarter of last year. Our key valuation measures again reach new highs at quarter end on a per share basis, with adjusted operating shareholders' equity at $117.40, adjusted book value at $172.79, and shareholders' equity per share at $112.80. Our new business production in the quarter was $39 million of PVP, of which roughly 65% came from the U.S. public finance, but we enjoyed a good flow of high-quality business. balances produced in global structured finance and non-U.S. public finance. In both of those areas, deal premiums tend to be higher, but the timing of transactions tend to vary because development times are often longer in those areas. I'll let Rob give you more details in a moment. In an important achievement that we mentioned last quarter, we concluded litigation with Lehman Brothers International in early February 2025, and we recognized a pre-tax gain of $103 million in the first quarter of 2025. This positive outcome is a result of years of negotiation and litigation and is a testament to our determination to defend our legal rights to the fullest extent possible. We have the same determination to enforce our rights as a secured creditor of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority. It is again worth noting that, over the FOMB's objections, the First Circuit has confirmed that bondholders are secured by an unavoidable security interest in PREP's past, current, and future net revenues. PEPPER remains our final unresolved defaulting Puerto Rico exposure. Our strategic approach to asset management continues to focus on increasing the fee-based earnings generated through our 30% ownership interest in SoundPoint, which contributed $13 million to our income in the first quarter. In addition, our investment portfolio benefited from attractive returns on our alternative investments through SoundPoint. Total first quarter investment income from all of our alternative investments was $59 million, the highest quarterly level to date for our alternative investment portfolio. Our inception to date annualized rate of return for all alternative investments was 13%. Globally, we are currently experiencing a highly volatile market environment and an unpredictable economic environment. In other words, the kind of conditions a short guarantee is built for. We have proven for four decades the reliability and value of our guarantee and the resilience of our business model through exceptionally difficult economic and geopolitical environments. We believe the current environment, as volatile as it's been over the past two months, as the potential to drive increased demand for our guarantee as investors seek out proven instruments for reliable cash flow and capital preservation, and issuers seek out increased certainty of market access along with more efficient executions. We have the financial strength, market position, credit skills, surveillance operations, remediation abilities, and comprehensive enterprise risk management to protect our capital as we help issuers and counterparts reduce borrowing costs, improve capital efficiency, and provide investment choices designed specifically to give investors confidence in times like these. I will now turn the call over to Rob to provide more details about our production results.