Good morning and welcome to the Markel Corporation First Quarter 2018 Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. During the call today, we may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. They are based on current assumptions and opinions concerning a variety of known and unknown risks. Actual results may differ materially from those contained in, or suggested by, such forward-looking statements. Additional information about factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements is included under the captions Risk Factors and Safe Harbor and Cautionary Statement in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. We may also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures in the call today. You may find a reconciliation to GAAP of these measures in the Form 10-Q which can be found on our website at www.markelcorp.com in the Investor Information section. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tom Gayner, Co-Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Denise. Good morning. My name is Tom Gayner and it is my pleasure to welcome you to the Markel first quarter conference call. I'm joined this morning by my colleagues Anne Waleski, our CFO; and Richie Whitt, our Co-CEO, and we're all glad that you've joined us today. To jump right in, Joseph had a coat of many colors. At Markel, I would say, this is our quarter of many numbers and we'll spend a lot of time this morning talking about many numbers. In the midst of this constellation of digits that we discussed today, I'd like to highlight and emphasize three main categories that correspond to our three engines of Insurance, investments and Markel Ventures. We had excellent results in two out of these three engines and the short-term investment results reflect normal short-term volatility. As Scotty might report to the bridge, engine number one, Insurance, systems go, captain; in the first quarter, we reported a 90% combined ratio and premium growth. These are excellent results and Richie will expand on our Insurance operations in his comments. Engine number two, investments, don't worry, captain, systems go. In the first quarter, we reported a decline in the market value of our publicly traded equity and fixed income securities totaling 0.6%. This amount corresponds with the overall market volatility and increasing interest rates. I'll expand on our results in a few moments. Engine number three, Markel Ventures, systems go, captain. During the first quarter, Markel Ventures revenues increased from $286 million to $392 million, an increase of 37%. EBITDA increased from $45 million to $46 million, an increase of 2%, both of those numbers are heavily affected by both the acquisition of Costa Farms during 2017, as well as seasonality and the lingering effects of the aftermath of Hurricane Irma such as insurance recoveries, growing times for plants and reconstruction efforts. All of those factors should diminish as 2018 progresses. With that, as a prelude, I'll turn it over to Anne to begin to walk you through our financials and some of the accounting changes and tax laws changes, effects and implications, while all of these accounting changes in tax circumstances and other items alter a good deal of the formatting and how our financial statements look, rest assured, none of these presentation changes affect how we run the business. We continue to maintain a singular focus on building the long term economic value of Markel. With that, Anne?

Thank you, Tom and good morning everyone. 2018 is off to a solid start. As Tom said, our Insurance operations produced strong underwriting profits and delivered top line growth driven in part by recent acquisitions. Contributions from our Markel Ventures operations reflected both organic growth and the recent acquisition of Costa Farms. Within the investment portfolio, our returns were impacted by unfavorable market movements during the period. These results may be a bit harder to decipher than in prior periods, as a result of four accounting changes impacting our reporting for the quarter. Before I delve into the results, I want to provide a little bit of background on those changes. I'll start with the changes in our reportable segments. As a result of continued growth and acquisitions within both our Insurance and Markel Ventures operations, management changed the way it reviews and reports our operating results. Effective for the first quarter of 2018, we are reporting our ongoing underwriting results on a global basis in two segments, Insurance and Reinsurance rather than the three underwriting segments we've been reporting since the Alterra acquisition. This was a relatively straightforward change with the Insurance segment simply being the combination of the results previously reported in our U.S. and International Insurance segments. Additionally, our Markel Ventures operations are now considered a segment. The second change relates to reporting the results for our investment portfolio. We've discussed previously the change that was coming in the accounting for equity securities. Effective January 1, 2018, all changes in fair value of equity securities are reflected in net income rather than other comprehensive income. For the quarter ended March 31, 2018, we recognized a pre-tax loss on the change in the value of equity securities of $122 million within net income. As a result of this…

Thanks, Anne, and good morning, everyone. Compared to slugging through all the accounting changes that Anne had to do, the underwriting results this quarter are pretty darn straightforward and very solid. I'm going to focus my comments on our underwriting operations and I'll also provide a brief update on State National operations, as well as our Markel CATCo operations. Starting with the Insurance segment, as Anne said and as a reminder starting in the first quarter of this year, we have consolidated the operating results of our previously reported U.S. Insurance and International Insurance segments into a new single Insurance segment. All results from prior periods from the two separate segments have been combined for comparative purposes. Gross written premiums for the quarter are up $180 million or 20% compared to the first quarter of 2017. Our 2017 acquisitions of Markel surety and the State National collateral protection line, added $21 million and $54 million of premium in the quarter respectively. Premium growth excluding these newly acquired product lines was driven by growth in our general liability, professional liability, and marine and energy product lines. Earned premiums for the segment are up 19% for the quarter due to similar reasons as gross written premium increase. The combined ratio for the Insurance segment was 89% for the first quarter of 2018, compared to 92% for the same period a year ago. The 3-point decrease in the combined ratio was due to a lower current accident year loss ratio and an increase in favorable development on prior year loss reserves. The lower current accident year loss ratio was primarily due to the favorable impact of the newly acquired surety and lender services businesses, which carry a lower attritional loss ratio than our other insurance products. The increase in favorable development on prior…

Thank you, Richie. Investment results during the first quarter reflected a normal pattern of short-term volatility. In our equity portfolio, we were down 1.3% during the quarter. Over the last five and a quarter years, we're up 216% cumulatively. Over that timeframe, we've been up as much as 33% in a single year and down as much as 2.5% in a year. I would happily sign-up for those results for the next five years. And we continue to invest each day with the same discipline that has produced such outstanding long-term results. Publicly traded equities stood at 63% of shareholders' equity at March 31, compared to 62% at year end. We continue to modestly and steadily add to our equity portfolio and we think the recent volatility allows us the chance to purchase wonderful long-term businesses at attractive prices. That is exactly what we are doing. In our fixed income operation, we were down 0.8% during the quarter. In the last five and a quarter years, we're up 13.7% cumulatively. The best year in those five was up 6.5%. And the worst was 0.0%. I think this longer-term comparison highlights why we allocate so much of our investment portfolio to equities. I would also sign up right now for these types of fixed income results over the next five and a quarter years since they reflect the underlying actions of buying the highest credit quality securities that we can find roughly matching the duration of our bonds to that of our insurance liabilities and minimizing frictional costs along the way. I'll also point out that the net investment income from interest income and dividends totaled $108 million during the quarter, compared to a $100 million a year ago, an increase of 8%. This higher recurring portion of our total return…

Thank you, Mr. Gayner. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. And your first question this morning will come from Mark Hughes of SunTrust. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

The current accident year, loss pick in the Insurance business looked like it was helped by some mix shift in the M&A. Is this a good number? You think we ought to think about for subsequent quarters or is this particularly good or perhaps it could be better?

That's a little hard to say, Mark. You're absolutely right. There's a bit of a mix shift. Both Markel surety, as well as the collateral protection business tend to be low loss ratio, high expense ratio businesses, both with combined ratios below a 100, which is what we're looking for, but they do tend to have that mix effect on reducing loss ratio, increasing actually the expense ratio. We had a pretty good quarter in terms of caps. It was pretty much within our attritional expectations. So it's going to take a little bit to know when, how the current accident year settles out in terms of the mix issues, but I would say it was a fairly normal kind of quarter for us.

And then any comment on inflation, either frequency or severity in any of the businesses? Interest rates are obviously picking up here. Is that impacting your loss profile at all?

I think we've said in the past, at least for past few quarters, there appears to be more claims cost inflation out there, just like there appears to be a bit more general inflation in the economy. The two go together. So yes, I mean clearly we're seeing a little bit of tick-up in in the claims trend and that's why we believe it's appropriate to seek rate.

Then I think professional liability was a growth area for you. Any comment on any kind of loss dynamic or pricing dynamic in that line?

It's tough. But the place where people are able to get the most price obviously is property, U.S. property primarily. I think a lot of people would tell you they've been disappointed with the amount of rate increase. I don't know if I'm disappointed. I expected some rate increase. I didn't think it would be astronomical and so we're getting some rate increase and we're going to continue to push for rate increase on property. We hoped that that would have some spillover into casualty and professional, and I think it has had some. I think it's still early as well and we'll see what kind of results people put up as we move through 2018. I think that could also put more pressure on rates and lead to hopefully people pushing for a bit more rate in the casualty and professional lines.

Thank you.

The next question will come from Jeff Schmitt of William Blair. Please go ahead. Jeff Schmitt - William Blair & Co. LLC: Hi. Good morning, everyone. Were there any cats in the Insurance segment in the quarter?

Yeah, we certainly, well, we mentioned there was some prior year favorable development in the Insurance segment as a result of the 2017 cats, mostly the hurricanes and the fires. In the first quarter, so for current accident year, we would call it pretty much an attritional quarter. We don't need to – we don't call out cat losses if they're kind of of the attritional nature, so we certainly had losses from the countless winter storms and things of that sort. But they fell within what we would consider sort of the attritional bucket. Jeff Schmitt - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay. And then touching on that underlying loss ratio then, it looks like it was down about 200 basis points, a lot driven by that shift in business mix. But could you quantify that more? I mean is half of that driven by the surety lender businesses or 100% or more than 100%?

Boy, I wouldn't have the numbers available for that right now. It's certainly a portion of it. Like I said, I think we had a pretty normal first quarter. So, I would say our accident year combined on the other lines were sort – we have over 100 lines of business and they're moving one direction or the other each quarter. But it felt like a fairly normal quarter. So, I think most of that change is going to be mix. Jeff Schmitt - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay. And then could you speak, I know you can't talk about deals specifically, but could you talk about the pipeline maybe? Are you seeing more deals? And did you mention valuations, are they going up or?

Tom I think touched on this from the Markel Ventures side. I think it's the same in no matter what, where the property is for sale, things are pretty expensive. And there's plenty of deals out there and I think a lot of it is just people seeing the recent prices that have been paid and said, hey, let's see what the interest might be. So, plenty of deals floating around. I think the two issues from my standpoint are pretty high price expectations and in some cases relatively low quality. So, it's going to take the right one for us to see something we want to do. Jeff Schmitt - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay. Thank you.

The next question will be from Mark Dwelle of RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Good morning. Most of my questions are really just clarifications. Did I hear right that within Insurance, you had favorable 2017 cat development of $17 million and then in Reinsurance, it was unfavorable cat development of $12 million?

Yes.

Yes. That is right.

Okay. So on balance, it was really generally right, just not necessarily (35:13)

Yeah, on balance, it was pretty much flat. And you know what, that's not a particularly surprising development, you would expect you'd be more precise on your Insurance risk and often you have to wait a while to get the reports in on the Reinsurance side. So in total, we were about flat in terms of the cat losses in 2017 and we were down on Insurance, up a little bit on Reinsurance.

Okay. The second question I have relates to some of the segment and particularly the Other segment, the much unloved Other segment. I guess the two things that are the main two things that are in that segment then are going to be the program services business recently acquired and then the CATCo business. Is there anything else that's within what you define, I guess, as the products and services or the services and investment management revenues?

We have a couple small things, a couple small MGA operations...

Right.

And then we had the runoff of the old Alterra life and annuity business.

Got it. Okay. All right, then on – okay, those are my questions there. Then on Markel Ventures, Tom, I think you partly answered my question in your opening remarks with respect to the Costa Farms seasonality or how that interacts with the revenue and earnings expectations? So I just want to make sure I've gathered what you said, which is I guess what I'm hearing is is that first quarter is a seasonally low revenue quarter for Costa Farms, but the other quarters are of relatively similar run rate such that the balance of 2018 you know should not have an adverse seasonality?

Right. And to provide some clarity on that as best I can. Well, yes, the first quarter is typically the lowest seasonal quarter for Costa. That would be accentuated this particular quarter because you had the hurricane during 2017, and with the time it takes to buy plants. I mean, A, not as many plants are sold during the first quarter. And B, it takes a while to grow a crop that's available for sale. So it'll be a catch up effect, some plants grow quickly, some take three months, six months, nine months so on and so forth. So that's why I think during the course of the year, you'll see that diminish. And then by the time we get into 2019, you're looking at quarter-over-quarter, apples-to-apples, that would not have any distortions to it.

I see, so the natural seasonality was a little bit accentuated just by let's call it the lack of inventory available for sale because of – because of loss.

Exactly.

Okay. And then in your remarks, you commented on kind of normalized EBITDA margin. When I go to do that math, I usually get a range somewhere between 12% and 15%. Is that the right ballpark?

Yeah, I think so. I think it's in Pittsburgh somewhere.

Obviously, I'm just making sure. I don't have any other questions. I think that's all I had. Thank you.

Thanks, Mark.

Thank you.

And ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude our question-and-answer session. I would like to hand the conference back over to Tom Gayner for his closing remarks.

Thank you very much. We look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you. Bye-bye.