Assured Guaranty (NYSE:AGO) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the Assured Guaranty Ltd. First quarter twenty twenty six earnings conference call. My name is Ed, and I'll be the operator for today's call. All participants are currently in a listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star 0 on your telephone keypad. After the presentation, there'll be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press 1 again. 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.

0:47 Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining Assured Guaranty for our first quarter two thousand and twenty six 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 update or them except as required by law.

1:33 If you are listening to a replay of this call or you are 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 assuredguaranty.com.

2:20 Turning to the presentation, our speakers today are Dominic Frederico, President and Chief Executive Officer of Assured Guaranty Ltd. Rob Balenson, our Chief Operating Officer and Ben Rosenblum, our Chief Financial Officer. After their remarks, we'll open the call to your questions. As the webcast is not enabled for Q and 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 began 2026 with a strong first quarter. The quarter's adjusted operating income per share came in at $2.50 Our new business production generated $73,000,000 of PVP, almost twice the PVP of last year's first quarter, as we saw increases for each of our three financial guaranty underwriting groups.

3:15 Rob will fill in the production details in a few minutes. We also produced $44,000,000 of adjusted operating income in our asset management segment during the first quarter of twenty twenty six, nearly four times the amount produced in the first quarter of twenty twenty five. Our pivot to increasing the proportion of alternative investments in our overall investment portfolio over the past few years has increased the all in return of the investment portfolio. The inception to date annualized internal rate of return for all of our alternative investments was 12% at the end of the first quarter twenty twenty six. The Assured Life REIT team has received positive feedback from potential customers with clear interest in our AA insurance from AGRO as well as general market desire for fresh reinsurance capacity.

4:01 Currently we've had positive discussions with potential partners in The U. S. Market and The UK PRT market, in addition to interest from other non U. S. Potential partners. We made good progress integrating our staff with experienced employees already employed by Assured Life Free. Annuity reinsurance exemplifies the type of business opportunities we look for, those which will further diversify the company, create synergies with our existing business lines, generate attractive returns, have risk profiles in line with ours, and benefit from our core competencies. Economic uncertainty, political and geopolitical discord, and war permeate the news investors have been seeing recently. Investors understandably find high quality municipal bonds attractive.

4:47 Our guarantee can expand the supply of high quality bonds and, in certain cases, reduce the borrowing costs and support the market value of even naturally AA rated municipal bonds. We believe municipal bond issuance will have another strong year. We're off to a good start for 2026, and I believe our financial guaranty business will provide us with many insurance opportunities as we continue to expand our business in U. S. Municipals, global infrastructure and structured finance. We are also focused on building out our new annuity reinsurance business and on managing our capital prudently and profitably to support the growth in these businesses while protecting our policyholders and rewarding our shareholders. I will now turn the call over to Rob to provide more details about our production results. Thank you, Dominic, and good morning to everyone on the call. Assured Guaranty closed $73,000,000 of PVP in the first quarter of twenty twenty six compared with $39,000,000 of PVP in the first quarter of last year. Year over year, PVP and U. S. Public finance PVP each nearly doubled their first quarter results, and structured finance more than doubled its PVP result.

5:56 U. S. Public finance led the way in PVP production with a 92% year over year increase to $48,000,000 of PVP, And non U. S. Public finance and global structured finance contributed $8,000,000 and $17,000,000 of PVP, respectively. For the first quarter of twenty twenty six, Assured Guaranty continued to guarantee the majority of insured municipal par issued at 53%. We insured $4,000,000,000 of par in the primary and secondary markets on a closed date basis. Market conditions and our mix of business allowed us to produce significantly more PVP than in first quarter twenty twenty five, while taking on less nominal exposure. In the secondary market, during the first quarter of twenty twenty six, we issued two twenty seven policies compared to 144 policies in the first quarter of last year.

6:50 Our guarantee has been instrumental in supporting large transactions within the municipal bond market, highlighting the institutional demand for our guarantee. This interest demonstrates that institutions are increasingly acknowledging the benefits our insurance provides, including greater price stability and improved market liquidity. Our guarantee also allows issuers to attract a broader, often more diversified base of investors, reduce borrowing costs, or raise more proceeds without increasing interest rate costs. The first quarter of twenty twenty six included nine large transactions with insured par over $100,000,000 including $444,000,000 of a taxable military housing bond for Fort Carson, where over 70% of the bonds had an underlying rating of AA, and the balance was rated single A.

7:42 Dollars $243,000,000 of Hartford HealthCare revenue bonds issued by Connecticut's Health and Educational Facilities Authority, $2.00 1,000,000 for the Western Maricopa Education Center District in Arizona, and $102,000,000 in taxable bonds for Brown University Health. Among AA municipal credits, during the first quarter of twenty twenty six, we insured 20 primary and five secondary market transactions on a closed date basis, amounting to a total of nearly $900,000,000 in insured par. This activity highlights the value our guarantee provides as a backstop against headline risk and unexpected fiscal stress, whether from broad economic or financial developments, natural events, or other causes.

8:34 For non US public finance, new business in the first quarter of twenty twenty six included a secondary local authority transaction in The UK, annual extensions of liquidity facilities, and a primary social housing transaction in France, marking our inaugural primary market guarantee in the social housing sector within the European Union. Our global structured finance results were produced primarily by fund finance and financial guarantees for life insurance capital management purposes. Fund finance continues to be a strong area of focus for us. This business is typically repeatable flow business. And since the transactions have relatively short lives, we earn the premiums much more rapidly and can recycle the capital more quickly, often within one to two years. For example, the fund finance transactions we insured in the first quarter of twenty twenty six have maturities that range from a few months to a little over two years.

9:28 And as we said, we expect the majority of these transactions will be renewed at maturity. As we have discussed in the past, both non U. S. Public and structured finance have expanded the application of our products into various new sectors and geographic markets, and we look to continue to develop additional product applications and new counterparty relationships in line with our strategic objective to accelerate our business growth. For instance, in first quarter twenty twenty six, we closed a significant capital relief transaction with a major financial institution in the Asia Pacific region, guaranteeing a portfolio of fund finance exposures for a counterparty that we had previously done a modest amount of business with. In closing, we expect demand to continue for our core products and believe we have abundant opportunities for further growth and greater diversification.

10:20 We are off to a promising start in the second quarter of twenty twenty six with a good pipeline ahead. Already in the second quarter, for instance, we have insured or issued commitments for $636,000,000 for the City of Houston's Convention and Entertainment Facilities Department, approximately $130,000,000 of senior student housing revenue bonds for Morgan State University in Maryland, approximately $300,000,000 for the Burbank Glendale Pasadena Airport Authority in California, and several large global structure finance deals. We continue to maintain that at times when challenges or uncertainty arise in the economy and financial markets, when the cost of borrowing goes up, when market execution becomes less certain, or entities are trying to better manage their capital utilization, our products can help optimize a wide variety of transactions so our clients can accomplish more with lower financing costs and obtain capital more efficiently.

11:18 I will now turn the call over to Ben to discuss our financial results. Thank you, Dominic and Rob, and good morning. I am pleased to report first quarter twenty twenty six adjusted operating income of $115,000,000 or $2.50 per share. This quarter's results include two noteworthy items. First, a $21,000,000 after tax benefit attributable to the recognition of carried interest from a SoundPoint fund that sold its single underlying asset and second, a $33,000,000 one time tax benefit due to changes in The UK's Pillar two global minimum tax legislation enacted in the first quarter that reduced the company's global minimum tax accrual.

12:09 This compares to adjusted operating income of 162,000,000 or $3.18 per share in the first quarter of twenty twenty five, which included an $82,000,000 after tax benefit related to the resolution of the LBIE litigation. Recent new business production has contributed to a steady stream of scheduled net earned premiums and credit derivative revenues, which were $90,000,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty six compared with $89,000,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty five. Our deferred premium revenue held steady compared to last quarter at 3,800,000,000 In addition, alternative investments remain an important part of our overall investment strategy.

12:58 We have an inception to date IRR of approximately 12% on the alternative investment portfolio, which compares to an average yield of 4.2% over the past three years in our fixed maturity portfolio. As of 03/31/2026, our alternative investment had a fair value of $965,000,000 This portfolio generated $35,000,000 in pretax adjusted operating income in the first quarter of twenty twenty six compared with $53,000,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty five. Other than the CLO investments, which experienced a decline in value quarter over quarter, our remaining alternative investments performed well and delivered relatively consistent results.

13:51 The remainder of the available for sale and short term investment portfolio also performed well generating $82,000,000 of net investment income in the first quarter of twenty twenty six, up from $75,000,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty five as we shifted that portfolio towards higher yielding corporate securities. Turning to our below investment grade exposures, economic loss development was $44,000,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty six, primarily attributable to BrightLine and PREPA. However, loss expense included in adjusted operating income was primarily related to PREPA as the BrightLine losses are well within our unearned premium reserve and therefore have not yet been recognized.

14:40 In terms of capital management, in the first quarter of twenty twenty six, we repurchased 882,000 shares for $75,000,000 at an average price of $85.58 per share and also returned $18,000,000 in dividends to our shareholders. After over thirteen years of consistent share repurchases, we have now bought back 81% of the shares that are outstanding at the start of the program and in that time, we have returned $6,000,000,000 to the shareholders under the program. During that same period, we increased our quarterly dividends per share from $0.10 per share to $0.38 per share, which amounted to $929,000,000 of additional distributions to shareholders.

15:31 As always, we actively assess the various opportunities to deploy our capital effectively and aim to invest in those that we believe provide the most attractive returns. At this time, we have decided to reduce our share repurchases over the next three months to a target of $30,000,000 in order to use a portion of available capital to support our growth opportunities in our financial guarantee insurance and our new annuity reinsurance businesses in addition to other strategic considerations. We are excited to grow this platform and we are advancing several promising opportunities for new business. Our holding company liquidity as of today is approximately $153,000,000 of which $56,000,000 is at AGO.

16:23 As of the end of the first quarter of twenty twenty six, we had reached record per share valuations of $128.61 per adjusted operating shareholders' equity and $188.74 per adjusted book value, reflecting the successful execution of our key strategic initiatives. I will now turn the call over to our operator to give you instructions for the Q and A period. Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality.

17:10 If you're muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please standby while we compile the Q and A roster. The first question comes from the line of Marissa Lobo at UBS. Thank you. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning. About $600,000,000,000 Hi, I'm sorry. Could you hear me? Yes. Okay, great. With about $600,000,000,000 of projected muni supply in '26 and if penetration rates hold, what what is your target for 2026 new issue insured par? And and and and is the pricing environment supportive to translate into higher gross premiums?

18:06 Well, if the market issue is up, we would reject our penetration. We're probably very inconsistent because of the credit conditions that exist in terms of spreads and rates, but we think the volume alone will give us a growth opportunity as well as we have some large deals that we know that are in the pipeline that will also help the year. So we expect a strong year, apples to apples. And in terms of return, obviously, now we have a very sophisticated ROE model. We calculate on every debt risk that we write. We have a review function now over the whole process to make sure the ROEs are in line with our cost of capital so that we're not leading at all the value of the company or the opportunities that we see, but we're being selected in terms of our underwriting choices as well as the pricing that we're looking for in terms of spread and return.

18:52 But like I said, volume will help our volume this year. And and we're seeing more triple b issuance as well as more infrastructure transactions and also in health care, which is giving us a significant amount significantly amount more premium on those transactions. Remember, we're the slave to large deals, and large deals have their own time frame in terms of closing. We've met many quarters where we expected a number of x. And because two deals didn't close at the end of the quarter and fell into the next quarter, we had a very different volume structure. But as I said, if we look at it over the year, you know, apples to apples, we expect the year to be a strong year relative to public finance as well as near return hurdles from the standpoint of profitability. K. Great. And and how are you incorporating AI into your into your processes? Where where do you see the biggest opportunity for it to improve your, you know, credit selection?

19:45 Well, that probably has the most discussion we're having in the organization. So, obviously, AI represents a great opportunity for us in terms of being able to do the work we do, which is, you appreciate, fairly repetitive on a credit by credit basis, on a surveillance basis, on a review of the portfolio basis. A lot of those functions can be machine learned, and we're obviously applying it in every facet of our business. Most importantly, you've seen the activity in the secondary market where we continue to push those numbers up significantly utilizing artificial intelligence as part of the process. But remember, the human beings also look at it to approve it. But at the end of the day, the compilation, the accessibility of the data, the molding the data into a format that would fit our process for credit and and surveillance is critical to us. So we think as a company that does a lot of repeat functionality, we should be most benefited by the use of AI. And we've got literally an AI committee that looks at everything. We're applying applications kind of across the board in areas you wouldn't even think of, like financial reporting, So there's a lot of other implications or applications that we're applying it to, and we think it's a critical tool for us to use in the future both to tell you when to manage the company and the business. Marissa, we're we're actually, that's why you see the velocity of our secondary market transactions go much more quickly because it's we're actually using AI to interact with our clients much more quickly as well. And in addition, we're our our credit reports are being done using AI, but an individual actually reviews it,

21:17 but it takes less time for an analyst to actually write them. That's great. Thank you. And just moving if I could to the loss development. On BrightLine with the going concern audit opinion that was just issued and the interest payment grace period expiring, know, can you talk to us? Is there any has AGO been approached for any forbearance or restructuring? Or, you know, what scenario might it move to to the category three here? Well, there's a lot of activity on BrightLine, as you can appreciate, and a lot of words in the marketplace in terms of the operations of the organization. However, if you look at our structure in terms of capital, the capital stack is roughly $7,000,000,000.

22:02 We're half of the top $2,400,000,000 So you say to yourself, is the company worth at least $2,400,000,000 And the answer resoundingly comes back, absolutely. We don't see this as a loss situation, but obviously we have to compare ourselves to what the rating agencies think in terms of what their capital they're gonna access, how the regulators view it. As you know, our accounting model requires us to consider all possible scenarios and probably weight them, so we gotta put a scenario out there because it's got some loss content in it. But at the end of the day, we believe in the structure. We believe in our credit underwriting. We stand very back on our historical results, and time is on our side. Remember, in our portfolio, there's not any loss that would be significant to us in terms of principal and interest only when due. There's no acceleration.

22:51 This, I think, has a $58,000,000 payment annually to about 2,042. So at the end of day, it's not free cash flow. And as I said, I don't mind owning a railroad for $2,400,000,000. Okay. Thank you very much. Your next question comes from the line of Tommy McJoint at KBW. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Morning, First question here, for investors that have become accustomed to AGO buying back roughly $500,000,000 of stock in 10 of the last twelve years, was the slower pace of buybacks year to date and the message of a slowdown in buybacks for the next three months, Was that meant to signal just a temporary slowdown here, or is this a true change in the way you guys think about capital distribution?

23:48 When you say temporary, Tommy, that's a good question. I would say we look at the capital management. It's still a critical issue, still a critical strategic objective in the company. It's what we pay the most attention to. But at the end of the day, we front the company significantly. We've got to look at how we manage that remaining capital, where the opportunities lie. As we talked about in the life business, for instance, theoretically based on its growth pattern, it could absorb or need somewhere between fifty and one hundred and fifty million of capital to continue to exercise its growth program over the next eighteen months. We wanna make sure we have plenty of capital for that as well as still have enough cushion to protect ourselves from some myopic views of loss activities such as BrightLine in terms of what the capital charges are coming out of rating agencies for that. So we have to protect the company relative to its ratings. We've to provide the opportunity to grow the business. We've done a tremendous job, and I think we're getting half the credit we deserve for the capital management we've done.

24:48 As Ben talked about, $6,000,000,000, 81% of the outstanding. Well, that's liquidating the company. We want to grow the company. And we think we've got great opportunities to grow the company. But at the same token, if we can't use the capital, if we see the excess capital continue to build as it has in the past, we will be aggressive in our capital management, and of course, we'll protect our stock as well. Got it. Thanks for that. And then I think we've talked about this in the past, but I just wanna confirm that when you think about your sort of first order or second order exposure to the Middle East crisis, I assume it's you think it's pretty minimal. But perhaps thinking of second order impacts around just the level of heightened risk globally, have you guys seen an tick in terms of like the pipeline or demand for sort of risk mitigation strategies from AGO specifically over the past few months that you can pinpoint to the crisis in The Middle East?

25:50 No. We haven't, Tommy. Thank God. If you notice, and I've been in this business, in this position for a long time, I've seen probably four or five recessions, maybe three or four more global crises. And at the end of the day, look at the results that Assured has put up. Never had a loss. In order to buy back the amount of stock and pay the dividends we have, we had to be usually profitable. I see nothing affects that going forward. We haven't seen the demand, as you're saying, in terms of people running for their exits. Our basic policy today, our growth engine is fund finance, which is a very safe, highly rated book of business. We do capital arbitrage, but the volatility in the market does allow us to open up more portals of business opportunity because of spread widening, spread is increasing, which gives us more opportunity to make money and be looking more deals.

26:42 But we don't see the panic at all. And as I said, in our life history, it really has never had an effect because the portfolio is so well written and so well protected from a credit point of view. And, Tommy, we're seeing the the increase in structured finance globally and international infrastructure due to regulatory requirements on banks becoming you know, we we're part of their solution when it comes to capital their capital management and capital efficiency and risk management. So that's where we're opening up, and they're looking at our financial guarantee as a as a solution to helping their, regulatory capital. Yeah. Think what that says to the about the company. Right? We're opening up more counterparty relationships against banks across the world globe, but providing us significant lines of credit capacity that they're willing to absorb in terms of insurance credit risk.

27:34 Why would that be? Because they realize that the strength of the company, the strength of its financial ratings, the ability to provide this capital arbitrage in spite of the market, and the results that we've been able to generate in the past. So I think that alone would indicate the confidence that the market has in us and continues to provide us those opportunities. I also just wanna add that it's in in these banks' core lending portfolios. It's not anything that they're risks that they're concerned about. It's the core lending. They wanna service their clients even further. Thanks. And and then if I could just sneak one last modeling one in. Looking at the investment portfolio, excluding the alternative investments, what was your new money yield in in the quarter relative to the effective yield on the portfolio? So I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna spend I don't have the number right in front of me, but I'm gonna say we're probably the new money yield is probably somewhere a little north of 4%. It's probably 4.4 or so.

28:28 But, you know, it might be off by, you know, 10 or 15 basis points there. Thanks. Your next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Dunn at Dowling and Partners. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good morning, guys. Dominic, I know you don't put hard numbers on this, but can you talk about how you think about the level of excess capital in the company or, alternatively, the ROE drag from the excess capital in the company? Last time I heard a number, it was north of $2,000,000,000 And so outside looking in, it seems like you have enough money for all of the above to keep an aggressive buyback plan in place as well as consider new alternatives. So you maybe flush that out a little bit more? And then also, as you pointed out, you bought back over 80% of the company over the last twelve years.

29:21 How much is the flow to the stock coming into as a factor with your buyback appetite going forward? Yeah. I don't think it's the problems to date. So that could be a problem down the road, but today, there's not been a problem. So let's talk about capital. So right now, our capital is predominantly equity capital. As we look to the future and see growth opportunities, that mix of capital has to be looked at and examined. Can we bring in more soft capital facilities to let the hard equity capital be aggressively managed from a standpoint of shareholder buybacks or other opportunities? The soft capital also would provide us opportunities to allocate some of that for growth. And right now, we're saying to ourselves, we've shrank the company significantly. Some of the triggers that now exist on the overall balance sheet or portfolio have to be examined more closely and therefore soft capital could be a definite wave of the future.

30:13 As well as when we look at the capital, we have rating agency, we have regulatory. When companies come to us for large deals, they look at our balance sheet, and the size of that balance sheet also gives them the confidence to write a $2,000,000,000 deal, a $2,500,000,000 deal. So we need to maintain certain size of asset as well or certain size of balance sheet to make sure that the issuer has full confidence in our ability to execute on the transaction and obviously provide the value that we expect in terms of the loss cost, liquidity, protection for the open investor. So I think we were going to look at all aspects of the capital and say, are we still a capital management company? Absolutely. Are we still gonna use buybacks as a capital management tool? Absolutely. As we look to the composition of capital, we gonna change the composition? Absolutely. Do we think we have a tremendous amount of growth opportunities? Absolutely. So we're trying to balance all those balls in the air. And I think we're doing a pretty good job, and you'll see it by the end of the year whether we've been able to meet the promise or not. I think it's important, Jeff, that, you know, the large deals are where we really get paid. We get paid both on an absolute premium dollar basis typically, and we get paid in a high return basis. And those are the deals we really need to capture to really grow our ROEs. We you know, Rob ticked off.

31:25 You know, we had a bunch of deals in the first quarter. They were over 100,000,000 apart. These are the deals we're obviously going after. We need big deals, and we need and those are the ones that are really gonna drive the higher returns that we're looking forward to. And and don't forget, Jeff, those those significantly large fund finance deals earn very, very quickly. So that PDP that comes in, in structured finance, will earn over the next year to two. And it also releases the capital over the next year. The release exactly. We've got a lot of things to consider, Jeff. As you can appreciate, there's kind of a new wave of opportunity, new wave of businesses that we are looking at, and all that needs some capital. And as I said, we've gotta look at the mix of our capital and move to more soft facilities as opposed to hard cash equity in terms of how we meet some of these requirements and still provide ourselves the ability and the capability to do capital management through share repurchase.

32:17 The magic number has been $500,000,000 for buyback. When you think about the business plan for this year, do you anticipate deploying $500 plus million into non FG, whether it be buyback or annuity re or anything like that? I'm just curious in terms of the excess capital deployment. Is it just where it's going changes, your your target amounts don't? Well, we we have the balances. What's running off in the portfolio from the standpoint of capital requirements? What are we putting on in terms of new business? And that delta can go anywhere from flat to maybe plus $200,000,000 depending on the type of business and the way you write the business. So you got that issue. But then we also make money, so that increases the capital. So we look at the balance of the two and then look at the new business I talked about in the life business, we think and we're pretty optimistic in terms of what we see in in activity that that could also require us to put up maybe anywhere between fifty and hundred million of capital for that growth for the next two years. Again, I think, know, we we told you, you know, we told you guys we join the life business. If we're looking at, you know, the life business, we think, you know, roughly, you know, two, three years.

33:22 You know, we'll get to some kind of steady state equilibrium. We could, you know, probably be printing a 10 to 12% returns. And, we are very focused, as Dominic mentioned earlier, on ROE. This is an area we're a 100% focused on. We know we we can do better. We are doing better, we're seeing that. But we do need the capital to use to grow that ROE. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. This concludes the question and answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to our host, Robert Tucker, for closing remarks. Thank you, operator. I'd like to thank everyone for joining today's call. If you have additional questions, please feel free to give us a call. Thank you very much.

34:11 This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.