Earnings Labs

Greenlight Capital Re, Ltd. (GLRE)

Q3 2025 Earnings Call· Tue, Nov 4, 2025

$18.77

-0.50%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Thank you for joining the Greenlight Capital Re Limited Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to David Sigmon, Greenlight Re's General Counsel. You may begin.

David Sigmon

Analyst

Thank you, Kevin, and good morning. I would like to remind you that this conference call is being recorded and will be available for replay following the conclusion of the event. An audio replay will also be available under the Investors section of the company's website at www.greenlightre.com. Joining us on the call today will be our Chief Executive Officer, Greg Richardson; Chairman of the Board, David Einhorn; and Chief Financial Officer, Faramarz Romer. On behalf of the company, I'd like to remind you that forward-looking statements may be made during this call and are intended to be covered by the safe harbor provisions of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements reflect the company's current expectations, estimates and predictions regarding future results and are subject to risks and uncertainties. As a result, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. For more information on the risks and other factors that may impact future performance, investors should review the periodic reports that are filed by the company with the SEC from time to time. Additionally, management may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliations to these measures can be found in the company's filings with the SEC, including the company's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. With that, it is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Greg.

Greg Richardson

Analyst

Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Q3 2025 was a mixed quarter with an exceptional underwriting result, offset by investment losses. Overall, we reported a net loss of $4.4 million in Q3 2025, which brings our year-to-date net income to $25.6 million. Fully diluted book value per share decreased 0.4% in the quarter to $18.90 and increased 5.3% for the first 9 months of the year. We reported our best quarterly combined ratio of 86.6%, translating to a record $22.3 million of underwriting income. This result was driven by a combination of the strong underlying profitability of the book assisted by a benign cat quarter. We would be remiss not to comment on Hurricane Melissa. There are strong historical ties between the Cayman Islands and Jamaica, and our hearts are with all those who have been affected by this incredibly powerful storm. As a reinsurance professional that has closely monitored hurricanes for nearly 30 years, I was impressed by and grateful for the forecasters and their models in predicting both the erratic track and extreme intensity of Melissa. While property is fixed in place, people can get out of the way of the path of the storm with this information. The forecasters certainly saved many lives as a result. From a financial perspective, Melissa is a fourth quarter event. It is early days, but we do not expect a significant loss to Greenlight Re given positioning in the cat space and the fact that it missed the Southeastern United States. We have been confident that our underwriting portfolio is positioned to deliver a strong underwriting return. So it is encouraging to see that reflected in our results in Q3. Our open market book delivered an 84.5% combined ratio, while our innovations book delivered a…

David Einhorn

Analyst

Thanks, Greg, and good morning, everyone. The Solasglas fund returned negative 3.2% in the third quarter. The long portfolio and macro contributed 1.7% and 3.3%, respectively, and the short portfolio detracted 8.1%. During the quarter, the S&P 500 Index advanced 8.1%. The largest positive contributors were long investments in Gold, Green Brick Partners and Core Natural Resources. The largest detractors included a short position in a profitless financial services company, a short basket of homebuilder stocks and our long position in Kyndryl Holdings. Gold is the largest positive contributor as its price rose 17% over the quarter. Green Brick Partners shares also advanced 17% during the quarter as the market's expectation for lower rates lifted homebuilder stocks. While the company continues to execute well on its regionally focused strategy, we remain cautious on the broader housing market and have maintained a nearly fully hedged position by shorting a basket of national homebuilders. This hedge basket offset most of Green Brick's positive contribution during the quarter. Core Natural Resources shares advanced 20% during the quarter, recouping some of its decline from the first half of the year. The company announced significantly improved quarterly results, including an increase in free cash flow. Core used the majority of this cash flow to repurchase shares under the $1 billion share buyback program it announced earlier in the year after successfully completing its merger with Arch Resources. In addition to the homebuilder hedge basket, the largest detractors for the quarter included a short position in a profitless financial services company that transitioned from a near-term bankruptcy candidate to immune stock and our long position in Kyndryl Holdings. Kyndryl shares declined 28% during the quarter, giving back some gains after the company posted a less exciting quarterly update than its previously recent couple of quarterly results.…

Faramarz Romer

Analyst

Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone. During the third quarter of 2025, Greenlight Re reported a net loss of $4.4 million or negative $0.13 per diluted share compared to a net income of $35.2 million or $1.01 per diluted share during the third quarter of 2024. The total underwriting income was $22.3 million, resulting in a combined ratio of 86.6%, which was 9.3 points better than the same period last year. This included 8 points of improvement due to lack of cat losses in the quarter and 6 points of improvement related to underlying current year attritional loss ratio. We had 50 basis points of reserve development during the quarter compared to 3.7 points of reserve releases in the third quarter of last year. Our net investment loss was $17.4 million compared to $30.3 million of investment income in the third quarter of 2024. As Greg mentioned, most of the investment losses related to Solasglas and innovations. However, these losses were partially offset by other investment and interest income of $8.9 million. I will now break down the third quarter results by segment, starting with the Open Market segment. The Open Market segment reported a pretax income of $27.9 million, composed of underwriting income of $22.2 million and investment income of $5.6 million. For the quarter, the Open Market segment grew net written premiums by 9.5% to $140.4 million, while net earned premiums grew by 14.1%. The increase was driven primarily from growth in the funds at Lloyd's business and the Financial, Property and Specialty lines from a combination of new programs and growth in underlying premium volume on renewing programs. These were offset by the casualty premiums decreasing during the quarter as a result of our decision earlier this year to nonrenew most of the open market casualty book.…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] our first question is coming from Ben Olesh from WA Capital.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

This is a question to David. Could you please provide an update on the macro part of the Solasglas fund? What is your view and your position regarding to U.S. dollar, gold and short-term interest?

David Einhorn

Analyst

Sure. Thanks for the question. We've maintained a core position in gold that now goes back pretty much to the near the inception of the company, certainly since the IPO of the company. The gold is structured in 2 different components. One is physical gold, which we consider to just sort of be the core position that we occasionally trade around. Additionally, we buy binary digital options that are call options on rapid appreciation in gold. And those actually proved to be successful in the third quarter and also in our October results. We -- from an interest rate perspective, our position is that we are long SOFR futures out into 2026, which is essentially a view that the Fed will reduce interest rates more than the market currently expects. And finally, we maintain inflation swaps, which are a view that reported inflation over the next 2, 5 and 10 years will be larger than the amount that the market has priced in.

Operator

Operator

Our next question today is coming from Daniel De Jong, a private investor.

Daniel De Jong

Analyst

This is more of a long-term question for David. I believe a few years ago, you evaluated the future of the company and one of the options considered given the discount to book value was closing the company. With all the work put to the company since and 7 years in a row of positive investment performance, at least year-to-date, do you see a long-term future for the company? Also, investors like Howard Marks and Warren Buffett work well past regular retirement age, could you see yourself doing that?

David Einhorn

Analyst

Yes. Look, I think that the company -- and we expressed this at last year's investor presentation. I actually think that the company has made enough structural improvement that we should be earning a return on equity that is greater than our cost of equity. And I believe that the shares should actually justifiably trade at or above book value as a result. It's been frustrating to us and everybody around that the shares continue to trade at a discount. But I don't believe that the solution is to liquidate the company. Were we to liquidate the company, there also would be substantial expenses that I could not quantify for you because we haven't done the exercise, but it would be unlikely that we would recognize like the full book value in the liquidation were we to go through with that. Regarding my longevity, I'm presently 56 years old, and I expect to be doing this for a substantial additional amount of time.

Operator

Operator

We reached the end of our question-and-answer session, and that does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.