American Financial Group, Inc. (NYSE:AFG) Q2 2024 Results Conference Call August 7, 2024 11:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Diane Weidner - Vice President of Investor Relations
Carl Lindner - Co-CEO
Craig Lindner - Co-CEO
Brian Hertzman - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Michael Zaremski - BMO Capital Markets
Gregory Peters - Raymond James
Charlie Lederer - Citigroup
Paul Newsome - Piper Sandler
Andrew Andersen - Jefferies
Meyer Shields - Keefe, Bruyette, & Woods
Bob Farnam - Janney Montgomery Scott
Charlie Lederer - Citigroup

[Call Started Abruptly] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Diane Weidner, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Diane Weidner

Thank you. Good morning. And welcome to American Financial Group's Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Results Conference Call. We released our 2024 second quarter results yesterday afternoon. Our press release, investor supplement and webcast presentation are posted on AFG's Web site under the Investor Relations section. These materials will be referenced during portions of today's call. I'm joined this morning by Carl Lindner III and Craig Lindner, Co-CEOs of American Financial Group; and Brian Hertzman, AFG's CFO. Before I turn the discussion over to Carl, I would like to draw your attention to the notes on Slide 2 of our webcast. Some of the matters to be discussed today are forward-looking. These forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results and/or financial condition to differ materially from these statements. A detailed description of these risks and uncertainties can be found in AFG's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are also available on our Web site. We may include references to core net operating earnings, a non-GAAP financial measure in our remarks or responses to questions. A reconciliation of net earnings to core net operating earnings is included in our earnings release. And finally, if you are reading a transcript of this call, please note that it may not be authorized or reviewed for accuracy. And as a result, it may contain factual or transcription errors that could materially alter the intent or meaning of our statements. Now I'm pleased to turn the call over to Carl Lindner III to discuss our results.

Carl Lindner

Well, good morning. I'll begin my remarks by sharing a few highlights of AFG's 2024 second quarter, after which Craig and I will walk through some more details. We'll then open it up for Q&A where Craig, Brian and I will respond to your questions. I'm pleased to report an annualized second quarter core operating return on equity of 18.5%. Underwriting margins in our Specialty Property and Casualty insurance businesses were strong and higher rates increased Property and Casualty net investment income, excluding alternatives by 15% year-over-year. Growth in the quarter was impacted by a few things, including the timing of premium recognition in our crop business and some underwriting actions we've taken to proactively manage exposures in our most social inflation exposed businesses, and I will talk a little bit more about that later. Our strong operating results, coupled with effective capital management and our entrepreneurial opportunistic culture and disciplined operating philosophy, enable us to continue to create value for our shareholders. Craig and I thank God, our talented management team and our great employees for helping us to achieve these results. I'll now turn the discussion over to Craig to walk us through some of the details.