Good morning. My name is Casey, and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Crawford & Company First Quarter 2021 Earnings Release Conference Call. In conjunction with this call, a supplementary financial presentation is available on our website at www.crawco.com under the Investor Relations section. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this conference is being recorded today, Thursday, May 6, 2021. Some of the matters to be discussed in this conference call and in the supplementary financial presentation may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements may relate to, among other things, the impact of COVID-19, our expected future operating results and financial condition; our ability to grow our revenues and reduce our operating expenses; expectations regarding our anticipated contributions to our underfunded defined benefit pension plans; collectability of our billed and unbilled accounts receivable; financial results from our recently completed acquisitions; our continued compliance with the financial and other covenants contained in our financing agreements; our long-term capital resource and liquidity requirements; and our ability to pay dividends in the future. The company's actual results achieved in future quarters could differ materially from results that may be implied by such forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly release revisions to any forward-looking statements made in this conference call to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of the call, or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. In addition, you are reminded that operating results for any historical period are not necessarily indicative of results to be expected for any future period. For a complete discussion regarding factors which could affect the company's financial performance, please refer to the company's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2021, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly the information under the headings Risk Factors and management's discussion, analysis of financial condition and results of operations as well as subsequent company filings with the SEC. This presentation also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under SEC rules. As required, a reconciliation is provided for those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. I would now like to introduce Mr. Rohit Verma, Chief Executive Officer of Crawford & Company. Rohit, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Casey. Good morning, and welcome to our first quarter 2021 earnings call. Joining me today is Bruce Swain, our Chief Financial Officer; Joseph Blanco, our President; and Tami Stevenson, our General Counsel. As Casey mentioned, after our prepared remarks, we will open the call for your questions. Like most of you, we entered 2021 with optimism, and our first quarter's performance only strengthen our confidence for the future. Revenue increased nearly 7%, and operating earnings increased 86% year-over-year despite the many challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the unwavering commitment of our global workforce and the support and confidence of our clients. Despite adversity, our leaders and employees continue to demonstrate tremendous resilience allowing us to deliver on our client commitments. This underscores our resolve to service excellence despite the pandemic and positions us well for continued solid performance. Additionally, in this quarter, we realigned our business structure to better enable our growth plans and envision future and further position the business for continued cash generation. Turning to our first quarter results. Crawford delivered a strong performance that was facilitated by weather-related activity in what tends to be a seasonally lower quarter. Our balance sheet remains strong with net debt of almost $77 million for the first quarter of 2021, our leverage ratio under our credit agreement closed at approximately 1x EBITDA, one of the lowest on record, and our pension liability reduced to $51 million, the lowest since Great Recession. For the 3 months ended March 31, 2021, we reported better-than-expected GAAP revenues before reimbursement of $253.2 million, net income attributable to shareholders of $6.1 million and EPS of $0.11 for both CRD-A and CRD-B. Our revenues were benefited by a weaker U.S. dollar and included a…

Thank you, Rohit. As much of our global workforce continues to combat challenges presented by COVID-19, the health and well-being of our employees remains our top priority. Our country presidents have been and will continue to actively connect with our employees to foster a strong sense of community and morale. To further promote a sense of belonging and help guide our employees wellbeing, our global workforce receives benefit programs that support financial, physical and mental wellness, including free membership to the meditation app Headspace. We are committed to cultivating a safe, inclusive environment. To acquire and retain the best talent, build employee engagement and improved business performance, we are taking new steps to acknowledge our differences while valuing the abilities and the ideals we share. As part of our envisioned future, we believe our investments in the development of our people will continue to make us a coveted career choice with state of the art training programs that reinforce our position as a respected industry educator around the world. We continue to monitor employee satisfaction engagement through our employee poll surveys twice per year, and the feedback we have received remains positive. Most recently, over 90% of our global workforce indicated they trust leadership to effectively respond to business challenges arising from the pandemic. A clear indication of the strength of our leaders and a testament to their unwavering focus on both our employees and customers. As a key pillar to our strong culture, we are proud of our diverse workforce, which creates a space where innovation, collaboration and new ideas can thrive. Our office of inclusion and diversity, employee advisory council and employee resource groups allow us to cultivate an environment where employees' unique perspectives and experiences are heard and valued. Beyond our enterprise, Crawford is a proud member of the Business Insurance Diversity and Inclusion Institute, an organization dedicated to promoting and advancing diversity and inclusion in every aspect of the commercial industry -- commercial insurance industry. Additionally, we have formed a global inclusion and diversity council to further promote inclusion and diversity in all of our communities. I will now turn the call over to Bruce to review our first quarter results in more detail.

Thank you, Joseph. Company-wide revenues, before reimbursements in the 2021 first quarter, were $253.2 million, up 6.6% over the $237.5 million in the prior year's first quarter. Presented on a constant dollar basis to the prior year, revenues before reimbursements totaled $247.9 million. GAAP diluted EPS in the 2021 first quarter was $0.11 for both CRD-A and CRD-B compared to a loss per share of $0.21 for CRD-A and $0.23 for CRD-B in the 2020 period. On a non-GAAP basis, first quarter 2021 diluted EPS was $0.15 for both CRD-A and CRD-B as compared to $0.07 for CRD-A and $0.05 for CRD-B in the 2020 period. The company's non-GAAP operating earnings totaled $13 million in the 2021 first quarter or 5.1% of revenues, increasing 86% over the $7 million or 3% of revenues in the prior year period. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $22.2 million in the 2021 first quarter or 8.8% of revenues, up 33% over the $16.7 million or 7% of revenues in the 2020 quarter. I will now review the first quarter performance of each of our segments. Crawford Loss Adjusting revenues totaled $112.5 million, increasing 5.1% from $107.1 million reported in last year's quarter. Foreign exchange rate benefits totaled approximately $3.7 million in the first quarter of 2021. The segment reported operating earnings of $4.9 million in the 2021 first quarter or 4.3% of revenues, increasing from $700,000 or 0.6% of revenues in the prior year quarter. We anticipate the first quarter storm activity will benefit our second quarter results for the segment as we continue to work through pending inventories. Revenues for Crawford Platform Solutions were $42.4 million in the 2021 first quarter, up 30.7% from $32.4 million in the prior year quarter. Foreign exchange rate benefits totaled $300,000 for the quarter. Operating earnings in Crawford…

Thank you so much, Bruce. 2021 marks a momentous year for Crawford as we will celebrate our 80th anniversary of restoring and enhancing lives, businesses and communities. We are pleased with our strong first quarter performance, which positions us well for continued success during this milestone year. Our top priority remains the health and safety of our global workforce, which has allowed us to deliver best-in-class service to our clients regardless of the global environment. We aim to further strengthen our industry leadership through our innovation and market leading solutions. Additionally, we believe the recent realignment of our business will enable us to confidently execute on our growth plans and envisioned future, supported by the right group of experts and leaders to achieve our long-term strategy. As we look at the road ahead, we are confident in our financial position and look forward to continuing to deliver value to our shareholders while fulfilling our purpose. Thank you for your time today. Casey, let's open the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And your first question here comes from Mark Hughes from Truist.

In the Platform business, you talked about the large U.S. clients driving revenue. And you've obviously had very strong growth there. What's the trajectory of that? Kind of refresh me on the -- are those initiatives that you're going to get a bump for a while? Do those build over time? Could you just give me a sense of how that plays out, at least based on what you know at this point?

Sure. Mark, as you know, the Platform's business is composed of our Contractor Connection business, our U.S. Catastrophe business, our WeGoLook business and then our most recently launched Crawford Inspection Services. In all of these businesses, we're continuing to add new clients and ramp up clients. There is a very heavy weather dependence on these businesses, but we believe that with the power of the innovation and solutions that we're driving in this space, we should continue to see growth in this business.

But with respect to the weather, you had mentioned, I think, a $26 million contribution this quarter. What was the comparable last year on that same basis?

It's kind of hard to do a comparative to last year. In fact, we had the team debate that to look into it. But the issues you've got, claims that are coming in from clients that we already had. So you can make a comparative there. But then we've added new clients, right, where we didn't have claims last year. So that's why the comparison becomes a little bit difficult to do between this year and last year. But I would say that significantly lesser than this.

Last year was significantly less?

Significantly less. But probably $10 million to $12 million lower than this number. But it's not apples-to-apples comparison.

Great. How about the -- in the TPA business, anything you can do on the margins in the meantime? Or is that going to be just very dependent on the top line trends?

Well, it has got a significant dependence on top line trend. As you know, we've got largely a North America TPA business. And within that, we've got the U.S. component, which is the largest, which has significantly been impacted by comp claims being lower. But we are seeing a recovery of claims. When we compare our claims volume just this quarter to what it was last year around this time, we're only about 1% below that volume. But I think the biggest challenge that we see through the numbers is coming from the medical management piece, where you're still not having patients go and take the -- do the rehab programs or go back for their physical therapy or sort of other nonessential medical procedures, which is an important part of recovery for a work comp injured employee. So that's probably the bigger factor. We are continuing to take steps to improve margins. And candidly speaking, if we wouldn't have taken those steps, then our margin wouldn't have been within range of last year.

Right. And then you mentioned WeGoLook getting momentum. Is that -- is that getting to the point where it's making a little more of a financial contribution? Or is that the good kind of a headline service to entice new relationships? Can you talk about that?

Yes. It is making a contribution on the top line for sure. It is an essential element of our innovation within platforms. The Crawford Inspection Services has been added on to the WeGoLook infrastructure itself. So it's giving us the ability to really scale that platform further. And look, WeGoLook still has very attractive economics at the individual transaction level. So our goal is to continue to grow transactions because as the transactions grow, it starts to become a meaningful contributor. So we feel very good about the business actually that it is on. We also believe that as the normality returns from the pandemic, and you're going to see more auto activity on the roads, the biggest contributor in WeGoLook still tends to be auto claims. And I believe as the miles driven continue to increase and the auto claims activity continue to increase, we should see a lift in WeGoLook. Because the client base is there and the activity that we're seeing from the client base has room to scale up.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Alex Bolton from Raymond James.

I'm calling in on behalf of Greg Peters. Maybe circling back to a comp claim. Just kind of curious what you're seeing year-to-date if you're seeing improvements as you go from month to month?

Yes. We are seeing an improvement. We are seeing the claim volume picked up. Now what happened in January was we saw a pretty significant chunk of COVID claims, which came from the November, December time frame. But as those claims have tapered down, we're starting to see month-over-month increase of your regular workers' comp claims that come from the retail sector, the manufacturing sector. Still hospitality sector continues to be slow, but we're seeing that uptick. That's why I was mentioning that when I compare Q1 claims this year to Q1 claims last year, we're only about a 1% dip and we consider Q1 of last year as pre-pandemic levels.

And then I guess maybe just going forward, as I think about recovering economy, maybe easier comparables, is it right to expect maybe some growth there? I know you don't want to give guidance, but maybe I'm not thinking about that in the right way, maybe some easier comparables in the next quarter?

Yes. I would say you're thinking about it the right way. And really, the biggest correlation of claim activity on the Broadspire side we see is to the unemployment rate, right? As the unemployment rate dips, we start to see the claim activity pickup. We do think that as we head into sort of post pandemic world, the type of injuries may be different. But we expect that as unemployment rate dips, the claims activity should continue to rise.

And then maybe just lastly, on Crawford Inspector Services, maybe you can touch on a little deeper into that? And then broadly, just innovation initiatives to keep up with competition or keep competition away?

Yes. Look, when we think about innovation and technology, right, we look at it through 2 different lenses. The underlying aspect of all of that is making sure that we're using data and we're using analytics for better decision making and better experience. And then we break that down into what are the customer-facing things that we're doing and what are the sort of adjuster-facing things that we're doing. The customer-facing things are all about creating simplicity, rematching their ecosystem, and creating efficiencies for our customers. And those are things that we truly believe are differentiators that are helping us create separation between us and the rest of the competitor path. And then when we look at what we're doing internally, a lot of that is focused on making our adjuster performance better. And I would say probably some things there are more competitor parity, but then there are other things where there is true competitors separation. The Crawford Inspection Services. The service itself, you can say, yes, that service does exist in the marketplace today. So we're not the first ones to come up with it. But how we're delivering it and the platform that we're delivering it and the user experience that comes with it is unique and second to none in the industry. So we feel very good about the traction that we're building there and the strong customer interest that we've created there. We are already launched in a number of states and literally every week, that number of states and the density of service in those states is increasing.

Okay. And maybe just one more. I guess you mentioned the claims volume will lag into Q2 and you're still kind of working through that. Just kind of curious, is that both in the U.S. and in Australia?

Yes. We've got some events that happened in Australia that we're still working through. So we will see tailwinds of that in Q2. And then we've already mentioned the winter storm in the U.S., will have some tailwinds for us in Q2.

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Steinke from Barrington Research.

So obviously, you talked about benefiting from weather surge revenue in the first quarter here. But do you think you're maybe taking a greater share of those weather-related claims over time to just based on your value proposition and the various investments you made in technology and et cetera?

Kevin, this is Rohit. First of all, great to connect with you and really glad that you are listening into the call. Yes. So to answer your question, we do believe that at the end of the day, this is a market share gain and the quality of your brand, the quality of your relationships and ultimately, the differentiation that you create from your solutions is the key to taking market share. We do believe that we are taking a greater share this year than we were last year. Just by the nature of relationships that we've built, new clients that we've added, and we feel very good about the innovations and solutions that we have put together, where we will continue to attract new clients. We're expanding our relationships. We had over 1,900, I think, close to 2,000 meetings in the last quarter with our clients, new and existing clients. And the key aspect of those meetings is to make sure that they get a better understanding of what we're delivering, how we're delivering and why is it differentiated from our competition. Look, there is no insurance carrier in the world that we don't have some kind of relationship at some point of our 80-year old journey. So a lot of this is going into those relationships, making sure they understand the differentiation we're providing and taking a greater market share. So we feel very good about our trajectory on that.

Okay. Great. And then sorry if I missed it, but any update on your efforts to penetrate the small and midsized carrier market with your fully outsourced solution for claims management. Any update or progress on that front?

Yes. We are making a lot of progress in that space. Both our Broadspire business as well as our Loss Adjusting business is working with a number of small to midsized carriers on a full outsourced basis. What we are getting most success with is newer MGAs that are being formed. As you know, a lot of these new MGAs eventually turn into carriers. We're partnering with a number of them. Our sort of digital approach to claims is really appealing to their value proposition because that's what they're presenting to their clients. So that is going well. And again, as these -- the advantage for us is that it's a very -- it gives us great growth to leverage, right? So as these companies grow and activity in these organizations grow, it bodes well for our growth as well.

And there are no further questions. So I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Verma for closing remarks.

Thank you, Casey, and thank you all for your steadfast commitment to Crawford & Company. Our great start to 2021 provides strong momentum for the rest of the year. As always, we wish you well and look forward to talking to you along the journey with us. Thank you and God bless.

Thank you for participating in today's Crawford & Company conference call. This call will be available for replay beginning at 11:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time today through 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on June 5, 2021. The conference ID number for the replay is 2219718. The number to dial for the replay is (800) 585-8367 or (416) 621-4642. Thank you. You may now disconnect.