Good morning and welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2019 AXIS Capital Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded.I would now like to turn the conference over to Matt Rohrmann, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Andrew. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. I'm happy to welcome you to our conference call to discuss our financial results for AXIS Capital for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31st, 2019. Our earnings press release and financial supplement were issued yesterday evening after the market closed. If you'd like copies, please visit the information section of our website.We set aside an hour for today's call which is also available as an audio webcast through the Investor information section of our website. With me today are Albert Benchimol, our President and CEO; and Peter Vogt, our CFO.Before I turn the call over to Albert, I'll remind everyone that the statements made during this call, including the question-and-answer session, which are not historical facts may be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks uncertainties and assumptions.Actual events or results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors including risk factors set forth in AXIS' most recent report on Form 10-K as well as the additional risks identified in the cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements in our earnings press release issued yesterday evening. We undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements.In addition this presentation may contain non-GAAP financial measures. For the purposes of this call, we believe the best way to discuss our operating results is on ex-PGAAP basis which is a better representation of the run rate performance of our business. Reconciliations are included in our earnings press release and financial supplement.With that I'd like to turn the call over to Albert.

Thank you, Matt. Good morning and thank you for joining our fourth quarter earnings call. Getting right down to it, we did not deliver the financial results that we planned for this year. But at the same time, we remain confident that the extensive repositioning of our portfolios and investments in our talent, organization, and digital capabilities will shortly deliver the performance and value creation our team and our shareholders expect of us.In a few minutes, Pete will speak about the quarter, but my opening comments will focus on our full year performance and year-over-year trends. Our performance this year suffered from a busy Japanese typhoon season and poor crop conditions in the United States. We also received increased loss notices from prior period catastrophes throughout the year from both Typhoon Jebi as well as the Florida hurricanes.Additionally, we saw higher than planned losses in our aviation and property lines. The various loss events were entirely consistent with normal industry volatility for these lines and our market shares, although we recognize that the growth of our business in Japan while a good decision for the long term came at a bad time, just before the beginning of a record Japanese typhoon season.Nevertheless, even with all of these headwinds, our portfolio actions have still delivered meaningful progress with a reduction of 1.1 points to our current year ex-cat loss ratio including one and a half point reduction in insurance and a bit below a point in reinsurance.This brings the reduction in our consolidated ex-cat loss ratio to more than three points over a two-year period. We've also continued to grow our highly attractive fee business with our strategic capital partners generating more than $80 million in fees this year, a 65% increase over the $48 million that we collected in 2018.Our…

Thank you, Albert and good morning everyone. During the quarter, we incurred a net loss attributable to common shareholders of $10 million for an annualized ROE of a negative 0.8%. On an ex-PGAAP basis our operating income was $7 million generating an ex-PGAAP annualized operating ROE of 0.6 point.Our results this quarter were adversely impacted by a number of items including, pre-tax cat and weather losses, net of reinstatement premiums of $140 million. As we recently announced these losses were driven by Japanese Typhoon Hagibis, Australian wildfires and regional weather events in the United States.An increase in the current accident year loss ratio ex-cat and weather in the reinsurance segment due to loss experienced in agriculture predominantly related to poor weather conditions that impacted our U.S. book of business.Also negatively impacting us was a decrease in net favorable prior year reserve development in the reinsurance segment attributable to elevated loss experience in the 2017 and 2018 accident years for property and cat lines including loss creep associated with Hurricane Irma consistent with industry trends.And lastly, diluted book value per share decreased by 0.8 point in the quarter to $55.79. This was principally driven by the small operating gain being offset by investment losses and common dividends.Some positive highlights for the quarter include a significant improvement in the current accident year loss ratio ex-cat and weather in the insurance segment, largely due to a decrease in loss experience associated with almost every line of business. Net investment income of $118 million for the quarter also helped.With respect to the Novae transaction, in the quarter, the net drag on operating income from PGAAP VOBA DAC adjustments was $3 million after tax approximately $0.03 per share. As we have previously disclosed, we expect the VOBA DAC impact to be minimal from this point…

Thank you Pete. Let's do a quick overview of market conditions and we'll then open the call for questions. In short, we're seeing pricing momentum accelerates across substantially all of our markets.Let's begin with insurance. The average rate increase on renewed business across our insurance portfolio was 11% in the fourth quarter. This compares to 8% in the third, 7% in the second, and 5% in the first quarter. For the full year, our consolidated insurance business averaged rate increases of more than 7% on a gross basis.In the quarter, our U.S. division was our strongest market with average rate increases of 14%. Excess casualty achieved a 24% increase and primary casualty was up 11%. In both lines we had strong premium growth on a gross basis, but cautiously maintained our high quota share sessions in the year.E&S property rates were up 16%. Notwithstanding, these strong increases, we actually shrank the book over the year as we looked to rightsize our property exposures and manage our volatility.Our U.S. program business, which focuses on homogeneous books of smaller accounts, achieved a 6% increase. Overall, rates in our U.S. division were up more than 10% on average for the year.Within our North American professional lines division, rate increases continued to accelerate to an average of 7% in the quarter. Rates were strongest in our commercial management solutions unit with average increases of 17%. In addition, our Bermuda AXIS and the Canadian specialty insurance businesses both achieved double-digit rate increases.Our E&O and cyber lines saw much more modest pricing action averaging about 1%. Overall, our North American professional lines division achieved average rate increases in excess of 4% for the year.In our London-based international insurance division, rates were up more than 12% on average in the quarter. And just as in recent past,…

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Amit Kumar of Buckingham Research. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Thanks, and good morning.

Good morning.

I've got a few questions. Just starting with the insurance segment. I know you talked about overall underlying XX improvement. How should we think about insurance segment underlying XX? And maybe also talk about the discussion on kind of the medium-sized losses as well as drag on non-renewed business?

That's fair. Peter, do you want to take us through that?

Yes. So Amit, your question was specifically around insurance. And if I think about insurance, one of the best ways to look at it might be just to look at the full year. In the full year 2019 for insurance, the ex-cat loss ratio was at 57 and that full year has what I would consider to be a pretty good result of midsized losses. I know we've talked about that in the past. And to me those are losses that are in the book and they'll be there on a go forward. So if I started that 57, one of the things that we know is hitting that is the amount of remediation we did in the insurance book that that 57 includes about two points of hit from the exited lines of business. So if I look just year -- if I look at the year without the exited businesses, it actually ran at a 55.We do think the exited businesses will still hurt us by 0.5 point as we go into 2020. So if I'm starting at a 57 for insurance, I think that can come down by 1.5 points just from the exited businesses. And then if I look at the positive impact of rate and trend which we got for the full year there last year and we're continuing to see as we enter 2020, I think that is at least another one point to 1.5 points. And then, we look at underwriting actions that we've taken where we've canceled business, especially in our facilities book that will help the ex-cat loss ratio as well as the acquisition ratio. And so I can see us really getting to the insurance group running in that mid-50s type ex-cat loss ratio.

Got it. That's actually very helpful. But the second question I had was Albert you talked about the opportunities. And I guess you're faced with an interesting conundrum where pricing is going to go up materially at 4.1 and 6.1, but you're trying to bring down PMLs. How should we -- I know its early days. How should we think about 4.1 and 6.1 PMLs versus 1.1 and even 2019 PMLs?

I want to be clear Amit. There's no conundrum here. It's all about managing our exposures down. And the business that we're going to keep being more balanced and more profitable. And that's exactly what we're working towards. I think with regard to the Japanese market, I think it's less of reducing PMLs there, and just making sure that we're in the right layers of the towers and making sure that we're adequately priced.I think in Florida, my expectation is that the Florida market will be highly disrupted in the mid years. As you know, there's a lot of M&A. There's a lot of change. There's a lot of concern. I expect there will be opportunities. And again, it will be important for us to support the best accounts. I expect that, there will be some business that we will get off from. But at the end of the day, what I can be sure of is that, the July 1, portfolio will be much more balanced and a much better price than it was before.

Okay. Last question and I'll stop. Q1 to-date any thoughts on aviation losses coronavirus disruption or any other losses out there which could potentially impact Q1 numbers? Thanks.

Amit, I'm going to give you my entire risk section of the 10-K. I think that, we don't have anything unusual in terms of losses that wouldn't be reasonably expected within our assumed attritional loss ratios. I know that, there are a lot of questions around the coronavirus. And let me address that right now. We certainly in our A&H book write, a range of business and within that range of business, most of it would not be exposed to the coronavirus. There are two places where that might be.One is, we do write a book across the world of excess mortality. Those are generally for life companies. Those are generally based on the entire population and require a meaningful increase above the annual average expectations and those attachment points are relatively remote.So we do not believe that certainly at this point in time with the data that we're seeing the – this would be an effective portfolio. We do have one exposure, which we acquired as part of our corporate citizenship. We own a $10 million World Health Organization Pandemic Response Bond and that's $10 million. We bought it in 2017. It starts to pay out at a 250 fatalities and runs out at 2,500 fatalities. So that's a bond that we've identified. There are currently about 130 fatalities. So, clearly, you're getting close to starting to have a loss on that bond. But at the end of the day, it's $10 million and it's a limited amount in the context of our overall portfolio.As of now, we are not aware of any other exposures or any other losses in our portfolio that would not be reasonably expected in our attritional loss ratios.

Got it. That's very helpful. I’ll stop here. Thanks for that.

One more comment, one comment, Amit. I've got my lawyer in my room, so I want to be clear. We will not update this on a weekly or daily basis. I'm just giving you that information now.

Okay. Thanks so much.

The next question comes from Brian Meredith of UBS. Please go ahead.

Yes. Thanks. So, a couple of quick ones here for you all. But I'm just curious, property lines obviously you've been tricking a lot. Will that continue to shrink in 2020 your property exposures? You continue to try to mitigate volatility? Or will you see opportunities there at some point?

So the first that, I want to do is I want to give a shout out to our teams, because they did an incredible job over the last two years of changing the book. There is some change, but it's a change that we've already identified. So for example at the one, one renewals there were a handful of facilities which we notified cancellation and we've already pre-advised that there are some facilities that are renewing through the first half of the year where we've already told people that we would not be renewing them. So it's already anticipated, but it's not fully captured in the 2019 numbers that we've given you.So I would say that, there is still some top line reduction to be seen in the property book. But the good news from our perspective is we've identified all of those. We've already taken action. So we've gotten clear visibility of how we're moving forward on property.

Great. And then Albert, with respect to your Lloyd's business, I guess maybe a couple of questions on that. One, what is your capacity going to look like for 2020? And what do you expect out of that business? And then also, just your perspective on the Lloyd's market, I know there's been some additional stamp capacity that was given out. Do we expect the same type of rate and price discipline there through 2020 and maybe to 2021?

Right. So let me address our numbers. So we expect modest growth, not much growth because that Lloyd's book is where we've had some of the largest corrections. But no issue there. I think the interesting thing is with regard to the market, the market and the leadership of the Lloyd's market is very clear that it is going to continue to push for more improvement in the market.I don't have to list for you. You know it better than I do. The number of companies that have shut down exited facilities, reduced limits. So, this is not one or two people in the market saying we want to improve our book. This is a uniform approach to improvement in the market. I expect that will continue. Certainly everything that I hear in the Lloyd's market is that it will continue.There were a handful of syndicates absolutely that were granted increased limits. But to be fair, those were the markets that you would want to see growing, markets that have historically demonstrated a top quartile performance strong discipline. So to your point Brian, I don't believe that the increased capacity granted to those syndicates should be viewed as troubling development in the market.

Great. And then just one last one for you. I'm just curious. Given all the changes that we made, et cetera, et cetera, what do you think the kind of run rate underlying kind of return on equity of your company is now given current interest rates?

Well, we have been targeting for a couple of years now minimum double-digit returns in the 10% 11% plus range. Admittedly, we haven't reached it. But we think that everything that we've done still gives us more confidence today more than ever that we can reach those low double-digit returns.

Yeah. But I guess I guess given the pricing environment that we've got right now, which two years ago I don't think it was anticipated. Wouldn't have been maybe better than that 10%, 11%?

Yes. I was giving you actually more. I was giving you more calendar year estimates. I think if you look at what pricing is, I would say that the pricing right now. And again, some lines are good, some lines are great, some lines are not good enough. But I would say, on average it's in the low teens return on capital from a pricing perspective.

Great. Thank you.

You’re welcome. Thank you.

The next Question comes from Meyer Shields of KBW. Please go ahead.

Thanks. One I guess small ball question. It looks like on a sequential basis the Japanese PMLs rose. And I guess I was a little surprised with that because the primary cat renewals are 401s. I was hoping you could talk about what was going on underneath there?

Very simple. It's the year-end covers. We changed the reinsurance and retro numbers that we acquired, so this is just new book based on the new cat reinsurance and retro covers that we have in place.

Okay. That's helpful. One quick question with regard to your first quarter capacities, is there still exposure to Australian losses the wildfire losses? Or is that all captured in the fourth quarter assuming no new fires?

Our read of those treaties are that many of them are -- include hours clauses. So, there are new hours periods that are going to be coming in in the first quarter. So, it's very possible that the market will experience some bush fire losses in the first quarter, but I think it's too early to tell.

Okay. And then, I think this was an accounting question. But we've seen rate increases accelerate over the course of 2019. When we look at the quarterly progression in 2020, should we assume that the rate trend gap would similarly expand over the course of the year as those accelerating rate increases are earned in?

Hey, Meyer. This is Peter. Yeah, every time Albert talks about the rate environment, he's really talking about gross written premium in that particular quarter. So, it takes the following four quarters to see that earn in. So, we should see acceleration through 2020 when we think about that.

Okay. Perfect. That all sounds great. Thanks so much.

The next question comes from Yaron Kinar of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everybody. My first question goes back to the cat losses for the year. Can you maybe tell us how much in excess of normalized or expectations they were?

First I'd say -- it's a good question. We really don't give guidance. And so -- and we've really never shot out what our cat load would be. But the one thing that I would say, even though I'm not giving guidance, as we look at the portfolio that we have today, especially with all the changes that we've made even going into this 1.1 and especially when I look at the net PML reductions especially in the 105 part of the curve, we actually look at our mean modeled expected cat loss ratio really improving from what we've seen over the last couple of years and where it's been. And you can see that in the net PML. So I would take what we saw in 2019 and -- as something that we should see come down as we go forward.

Okay. Beyond the 1.1 to 2 points that Albert had called out in the prepared remarks?

Well, as I look at the cat loss ratio over the last seven years, it was about nine points. If I look over a longer period 7.5 obviously last year. But I do think that as I look into 2020, we should be coming down from that 7.5 by a good one to two points, which would actually be down materially from the nine points that I see over the last seven years as an average.

So, Yaron you'll understand our reticence to project cat. I mean it's the most unpredictable of all line. What we can tell you is that when we look at the cat curves and we report to you a lot on the PMLs but when we're thinking about a year where we're thinking more about the aggregate annual loss curves.And when we look at those, we've taken them down several points over the last three years. And we've taken it down just this year alone, the AAL curve around the mean in the one in five, one to two points alone just this year. And so I think using the five-year average in my own mind is overstating it because on the one hand 2017 and 2018 were horrendous years and they were with very different cat curves.So I would argue that we're optimistic that we can see meaningful improvement in our cat results. And I would point you to the insurance book this year with a smaller property book and frankly different manage. You're already starting to see some evidence of a lower cat loss experience in the insurance book. But again it's impossible to talk about cat on an annual basis. We're really talking about modeled losses and averages over the year.

Yeah. And again looking at our PMLs, you can look at the one and two [ph] 50 PML from the third quarter to the fourth quarter is down about 30%. And that wasn't just a one and two [ph] 50 move. It was through the curve.

Right, okay. And then my next question goes to the reinsurance segments underlying your accident year loss ratio. So I think it was what 69%. You called out about five points of crop losses there. So if I compare to 4Q 2018, I think you called out like eight points of extraordinary items back then and that was kind of a 69% as well. So I'm just trying to figure out what the other three to four points of maybe headwinds were this quarter. Or how should I think of the attritional loss rate at -- in the reinsurance segment?

Yeah that's a good question. And as Albert said we're -- especially given our business we really don't give guidance. And I would note that Matt mentioned at the outset, we take no obligation to update or revise publicly these forward-looking statements. And these statements involve risks and uncertainties and assumptions that could be affected by a bunch of factors.Having said that, if I look at the full year reinsurance, which is probably the best way to look at it. That's running at a 64. And when I look at that 64 ex-cat loss ratio, the agriculture contributed almost 1.5 points to that. And I'm not going to do a let's exclude midsize losses. So we'll keep all the loss midsized losses in there. But that was really an extraordinary event on our U.S. crop business.So if I adjust a little bit for that and then I know we also expect to see the benefit from a number of underwriter actions taken in 2019 as Steve Arora came in brought in a new team and they really reshaped the book during 2019. And that actually fall onto one, one as we saw the -- as we're going to see a decrease in that GWP. We do think that that 64 should be able to come down to a low 60s type ex-cat loss ratio on a run rate basis.

Great. That’s very helpful. Thank you.

The next question comes from Josh Shanker of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Good morning everybody. So I listened to the prepared commentary, I think Albert you said that the new book of business should help to lower the loss ratio by maybe 200 to 300 basis points next year. I don't think that was a forecast. You were just, sort of, giving some sense of proportion. But when I listened to the price increase you spoke about there were plenty of double-digit rate increases and certainly high single-digit rate increases. It leads me to be concerned about the back book to some extent. Can you talk a little bit when we see the 10-K what the development is going to look like for years 2015 through 2018 particularly excluding the cat elements of the losses?

So let me refer to the increases. I think that in many cases we're making assumptions. So two things. One, the pricing is on a gross basis not a net basis. And as I mentioned earlier some of those lines we have a high quota shares. So our average rate increase on a net basis is a little lower not much but a little lower than the gross basis.But more importantly in those lines of business where we are seeing the biggest increases in terms of property, in terms of liability and some of the D&O lines we're pricing in and reserving in substantial increases in loss trends not because we are concerned about our back book, but because we recognize like a lot of people in the industry that there is more uncertainty around a number of these loss trends and we would rather be more prudent in booking a number in 2020 or 2019.And if it turns out that we -- that it's better we will be very happy to release reserves as we have in the past. We just don't believe that we should be overly aggressive or optimistic in setting these loss estimates as we go forward. But if your answer is given that your loss -- that your pricing increases appear so strong and that your projected improvement in loss ratio is more modest does that mean that you're taking a cautious approach to reserving going forward? The answer is yes we're absolutely taking a cautious approach going forward just as we have in the past.

And can you give any descriptors around how the 2015 to 2018 liability reserves will look when we see the triangles?

Look we give you some information on a quarterly basis. I hope you'll understand that that -- the first triangle will be in the 10-K. There will be other triangles more detailed in 2018. We have a process whereby the 10-K gets reviewed and gets approved that has not happened yet. And I'm reticent to provide guidance on what the 10-K will say prior to having it reviewed through our normal processes, but that should come out shortly and you'll have the information.

And given where the stock currently trades can you talk a little bit about the balance between market opportunity and putting capital to work in growth versus repurchasing your own stock?

Hey, Josh, this is Peter. I'll take that. First thing I'd say is our capital position at the end of the year is very strong. We feel very confident about our capital position. I know there's been some questions. We come out of 2017 with HIMM the purchase of Novae. And where we sit at year-end 2019 we feel really good about where our capital position is.Having said that where we're seeing the market today and where we're seeing opportunity? We really are looking at putting most of our capital right now towards organic growth for good opportunity. If that doesn't materialize and we don't see good market opportunities obviously we'll look at the other aspects we can do for capital management. But right now we feel a very solid balance sheet at year-end and we're looking forward to growing in some good markets as we head into 2020.

Thank you for the answers and good luck in the New Year.

Thanks, Josh.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Elyse Greenspan of Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning.

Hi, Elyse.

My first question -- thanks. Hi, Albert -- is going back to Albert some of your commentary. When you were talking about some of your insurance line you said that you did not fully reflect price exceeding trends for some of your liability lines. Can you just give us a sense of where you're booking trend to? And where you see it? And I guess it goes back to Josh's question. When you're thinking about the two to three points of improvement how you kind of see loss trend developing for some of those longer tail liability lines like what you booked that in the fourth quarter and kind of an outlook for 2020?

No. When you look at our longer tail lines, I mean, the trends can be anywhere from 4% to 7% and so that's generally it. But again I think from a reserving perspective I don't think that we would be reflecting the net price increase versus the loss trends. I think that no I don't think I know that we will be booking more of an uncertainty factor in the loss ratios as we go forward. And then with a little bit more visibility. Obviously, our actuaries will have more comfort. But you are hearing everything that we're hearing. And we think it's inappropriate to assume the most optimistic assumptions. But back to your earlier question, our long tail lines are -- trends are anywhere from 4% to 7%.

Okay. And then, you mentioned some good pricing momentum in the reinsurance market at January 1 and seems like you also think that will continue as we go to mid-year. In terms of Axis' own outbound reinsurance purchasing, have you guys changed any -- how you're purchasing your reinsurance in 2020 in response to higher pricing that you would have to pay on that coverage?

Yes. That's a fair question. Do you want to start with here? So, I think that we have a number of contracts that we renew across the entire year. Obviously, you -- we spoke earlier in this call about some of our regional PMLs being affected by differences in contract structures that we did in our retro book. So, for example, we found aggregate coverage to be much more expensive this year. So we decided to change the structure to include more regional structures, more top and drops, other things, so that we could be more efficient in the purchase of our reinsurance.As we go through each of our major renewals, we have a big property insurance, property, property cat buy in May. We are currently reviewing all of that. And what I will say is, in the last couple of years, I've been incredibly impressed with our risk funding and ceded re people. They've been -- the analytics that they've brought to the game, the visit, the transparency, the engagement with the actuaries with the underwriters. We will be watching this literally to the last minute evaluating all options and then making sure that we select and execute on the best option for the company.So, all I can tell you is, we're very open-minded about making changes as we go at every renewal to make sure that we optimize the book at every point in time. I will say that, there are going to have to be some changes because the book is different. And I think that, as we reflect a different book, our needs are going to be different. And so, we fully expect to keep our ceded re people very busy, but we're very optimistic that we will get great terms or at least as good a term as we could get in the market in the upcoming renewals.

Okay. That's helpful. And one just quick numbers question. Relative to the $100 million of saves, where do you guys stand at the end of 2019, so we can think about what's left for 2020?

Yes. So Elyse, we're well tasked to get that. So we actually had $73 million in run rate by the end of 2019. However, I would say that my commentary where I talked about, where we think we have to guide our G&A ratio over the next couple of years is really important. I think, when we set out even our target of saving the $100 million two years ago, we were not anticipating as much remediation in our books as we did do. So, our premiums are a bit lower than we thought at that time, yet, we're still committed to those G&A ratios. So, while I don't anticipate any major programs or anything, we continue to look at every way we can to bring down our cost through other efficiencies that we're getting throughout the organization.

Okay. That's helpful. Thanks for the color.

You’re welcome.

Thanks, Elyse

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Albert Benchimol for any closing remarks.

Thank you. And thank you all for your time this morning. And again, if I could just repeat the key message, we believe, we're starting 2020 with a very different book of business than the one we wrote in '18. Moreover, on a daily basis, our team is working hard to continuously improve our book and I do want to thank them for their significant efforts. You have our commitment that we will do everything in our power to deliver on our goals in 2020. Thank you.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.