Good day and welcome to the Q4 2022 Enact Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Daniel Kohl, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. Welcome to our fourth quarter earnings call. Joining me today are Rohit Gupta, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Dean Mitchell, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Rohit will provide an overview of our business, our performance, and progress against our strategy. Dean will then discuss the details of our fourth quarter results before turning the call back to Rohit for closing remarks, and then we will take your questions. The earnings materials we issued after market closed yesterday contained our financial results for the fourth quarter of 2022 along with a comprehensive set of financial and operational metrics. These are available on the Investor Relations section of the company's website at www.ir.enactmi.com under the section marked Quarterly Results. Today's call is being recorded and will include the use of forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current assumptions, estimates, expectations, and projections as of today's date and are subject to risks and uncertainties which may cause actual results to be materially different. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any such statements as a result of new information. For a discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please review the cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements in today's press release as well as in our filings with the SEC which will be available on our website. Please keep in mind the earnings materials and management's prepared remarks today include certain non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations of these measures to the most relevant GAAP metrics can be found in the press release, our earnings presentation, and our upcoming SEC filings on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Rohit.

Thank you, Daniel. Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss our fourth quarter and full year results. 2022 was an exceptional year for Enact in which we delivered record performance, achieved several new milestones, and generated a total shareholder return well ahead of the market. We ended the year with record insurance in-force of $248 billion, driven by rising persistency that reached 86% in the fourth quarter and new insurance written of $66 million for the full year. Net income for the full year was a record $704 million or $4.31 per diluted share, up 28% from a year ago and return on equity was 14%. These results are the product of the continued execution of our cycle-tested growth and risk management strategy and reflect the commitment hard work and talent of Enact's employees. I'd like to thank all of them for their continued focus and dedication. As I mentioned, we achieved several significant milestones in 2022, reflecting progress against all aspects of our strategy. We strengthened our value proposition and ability to compete and win new business. Our investments in innovative technology-driven tools and solutions have further differentiated our platform, while also driving efficiency and enhancing decision-making. We've seen several benefits from these investments across our business including improved underwriting efficiency and deepened understanding of layered risk. One of our stated goals at our IPO was to expand and deepen our customer relationships and I'm pleased to say that we made meaningful progress. Supported by our investments in the business and our enhanced financial flexibility, we have either activated or increased our new business share with 80% of our target customers since our IPO and the team is committed to building on this momentum in the new year. We continue to take actions to maintain our…

Thanks Rohit. Good morning, everyone. We delivered another solid quarter and an exceptional year performance. GAAP net income was $144 million or $0.88 per diluted share as compared to $0.94 per diluted share in the same period last year, and $1.17 per diluted share in the third quarter of 2022. Return on equity was approximately 14%. Adjusted operating income was $147 million, or $0.90 per diluted share as compared to $0.94 per diluted share in the same period last year and $1.17 per diluted share in the third quarter of 2022. Adjusted operating return on equity was approximately 14.4%. For the full year, GAAP net income was $704 million, or $4.31 per diluted share, compared to $547 million, or $3.36 per diluted share in 2021. Adjusted operating income for 2022 totaled $708 million, or $4.34 per diluted share, compared to $551 million, or $3.38 per diluted share in 2021. Turning to key revenue drivers. New insurance written was $15 billion in the fourth quarter, compared to $15 billion in the third quarter as well and $21 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021. NIW in the quarter included a one-time seasoned transaction totaling $620 million. Excluding this opportunistic transaction, NIW decreased 4% sequentially and 32% versus the prior year driven primarily by lower mortgage originations resulting from the recent increase in interest rates. New insurance written for purchase transactions made up 97% of our total NIW in the quarter flat to last quarter. In addition monthly payment policies made up 91% of our quarterly new insurance written down from 94% last quarter primarily driven by the one-time transaction. The overall credit risk profile of our new insurance written remains strong with loans that are underwritten to prudent market standards. Rohit discussed the natural hedge that persistency provides in our business…

Thanks, Dean. We are pleased with the performance we delivered in 2022 and are proud of the value we created for all our stakeholders. As we enter the first quarter of 2023, we remain confident in our business. With a more resilient portfolio, a strong balance sheet and significant credit risk protection, we are well positioned for both the near and long term. In an uncertain time, we and the MI industry more broadly continue to play a critical part in supporting families and the many other stakeholders in the housing sector. We are incredibly proud of this and will continue to seek opportunities to contribute to the safety and soundness of the industry going forward. Operator, we are now ready for Q&A.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And today's first question will come from the line of Doug Harter with Credit Suisse. Your line is open.

Thanks. Hoping you could talk a little bit more about the relief from the PMIERs extra charge that you have been paying. Does that change the way you think about capital return in 2023 or going forward?

Yes, Doug, thanks for the question. Like we said in our prepared remarks, we believe we -- both Genworth and Enact believe we've fully met the conditions necessary to lift those restrictions. They do need to be validated by the GSEs, as well as FHFA. But once that happens, those -- we expect those restrictions to be lifted. I think we talked about those restrictions largely being redundant to our PMIERs sufficiency levels, when they went in place. So, from our perspective, they were below any PMIERs sufficiency levels that we were going to hold just naturally in managing the business from a prudent balance sheet perspective. I think that same approach or same perspective also exists in the elimination of the restrictions. They're certainly not transformational in that they're not going to provide some windfall of release of capital that we would otherwise hold. They are useful in creating additional financial flexibility. We would say that flexibility is probably enhanced in times of heightened economic uncertainty and certainly in times of economic stress. So that's how we're thinking about it. And I think that's the appropriate approach.

Yeah. That's the only thing I'll add to that, I think Dean covered it pretty well. From a competitive perspective it also puts us on a level playing field in terms of how other stakeholders look at us. So, this is a very good milestone for us and glad to be at this point.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Mihir Bhatia with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Hi. Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. I wanted to start by asking about the seasoned NIW that you mentioned this quarter. Can you provide any more detail on it? Like, I think you mentioned, it was like a one-time opportunistic deal, but like any more background or any color you can provide on it? Was this a competitive process? Was – how did it come about? Did you already know the NIW that you were taking over?

Yeah. Good morning, Mihir. Thanks for the question. So I would say that, NIW deal that we talked about the one-time deal was a portfolio transaction with the lender, and this lender had been holding these loans on their portfolio for a period of time. So two-thirds of the deal was more than one-year seasoned, and we disclosed the magnitude of the deal in our disclosures. And essentially, they were looking for loss coverage and capital coverage. And to the best of our knowledge there were several MI companies that were involved in the process. And at the end of the day, our relationships our value proposition as well as our capital strength made us win the deal. We do expect that to be a one-time deal. These are not very frequent transactions in this current environment. Most portfolio lenders actually ensure their high LTV mortgages on a regular flow basis. But we thought from a transparency perspective, it was worthwhile to spike that out.

Right. Sorry, just one follow-up. So these were still high LTV loans that they were looking to ensure?

That's right. These are high LTV loans at origination, and we found attractive return and the portfolio itself basically was within our credit policy. So everything aligned for us.

Okay. And if I can just ask one follow-up, you're at a 14% ROE, right? Is that around where we should expect? Like, what are you underwriting to? Are you underwriting generally to higher lower? What I'm trying to, I guess, get at is was this like a typical quarter understanding that you're going to have quarter-to-quarter variability going forward, and a lot of it depends on the economic environment, et cetera? But like, as we think about just the returns from the business is this quarter more or less typical? Like you had some reserve release, you had some results strengthening, some parts moving around, but more or less run of the mill this is what Enact should be doing consistently, or are there some additional puts and takes we should consider?

Yes, Mihir. Very good question. So let me start with the kind of a macro perspective and then have Dean chime-in. I would say, there are a lot of things going on in this quarter, including our reserve release, obviously impact of interest rates on our investment portfolio that flows through when it comes to that ROE. But I would say, the way we think about running the business in this environment is much more aligned with what we see in market conditions. So we have seen market conditions being more uncertain. And as a result of that, we have been talking about increasing our price for the last three quarters. So you have seen us increase and stabilize our price from second quarter, third quarter and this quarter. And I mentioned in my remarks that, we saw a higher frequency and a higher magnitude of those price increases. So I think when it comes to the new insurance written that we are adding, we are making sure that we are building a resilient portfolio for different economic scenarios and that drove our action. So when you think about our pricing returns, we are not providing any specific guidance but we do believe that we are writing business to create returns that are accretive to shareholder value. Now, from a balance sheet ROE perspective, I'll have Dean chime-in terms of whether this was normal or has some sense up abnormality in it.

Yeah. The only thing, I'd say Mihir is, you pointed out the loss reserves. I think any time we're booking loss reserves at the end of a period it represents our best estimate of ultimate claims on those existing delinquencies. So I would say, that's – our expectation isn't that we're releasing reserves through time. Now, if cure activity continues to perform at elevated levels relative to those embedded in our -- in the establishment of our expectations that certainly could happen prospectively. But I think just our mindset when we set reserves in a very prudent and measured way is thinking about how we expect those to develop over an ultimate time period on a best estimate basis.

Got it. Thank you for taking my questions. I will get back in queue.

Thank you. One moment for our next question, will come from the line of Bose George with KBW. Your line is open.

Hi, everyone. Good morning. Can you discuss the, sort of, the cadence of dividends this year? Will it be, kind of, similar to last year with normal dividends and kind of a special at the end?

Yes. Thanks for the question. So I think thinking about dividends in terms of tools that we have at our disposal may be the most appropriate place to start. So we've obviously initiated the quarterly dividend. Our expectation is to continue prospectively. We also initiated the share repurchase program. That gives us a tool that's very opportunistic both opportunistic based on valuation as well as opportunistic through time to return capital to shareholders. And then we'll continue to evaluate special dividends at the end of years based on a combination of business performance as well as the prevailing macroeconomic environment. So I think the cadence we have is probably the cadence you'll see subject to those dynamics playing out.

Okay. Great. Thanks. And then the new notices in the FEMA disaster areas. Can you remind us how that would be reserving for those works?

Sure. So Bose is your question in the context of PMIERs, or is your context in the -- question in the context of reserves?

In the context of reserves actually, yes.

Yes. So we apply our best estimate of ultimate claim on FEMA-designated delinquencies in the same manner same approach that we do with any other delinquency. We do rely on our storm-related experience. Think about Harvey, Irma, Superstorm Sandy those types of storm-related activity and how delinquencies have performed historically based on our experience. Our experience suggests that those will cure at elevated rates. And so our claim rates reflect that.

Okay. Great. Thanks.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Eric Hagen with BTIG. Your line is open.

Hi. Thanks. Good morning. Just one on new delinquencies, which are so low to begin with. But would you say that there's any trends that you're spotting within those loans and that bucket of delinquencies? Like is it unemployment? Is it some homeowners that could be underwater in some cases? And how do you see that maybe developing from here?

Yes, Eric. Thanks for the question. I think consistent with our prepared remarks credit performance remains strong. There's a lot of factors I think that support good credit performance everything from the quality to underwrite the strong credit quality of our insured loans and then even the macroeconomic landscape that despite the risk that Rohit referenced remains pretty balanced in its current form with strong employment cumulative home price appreciation and then meaningful household savings all of that kind of goes into a mosaic that has been supportive of strong credit performance. I do think the one thing that we have our eye on is we do have large new books that are aging through their normal loss development pattern and that could increase new delinquencies heading into 2023. But at the end of the day I think 2023 credit performance is going to largely be driven by the macroeconomic environment. So we have a keen eye towards that. And maybe more specifically, Eric to your question, we believe that future credit performance is going to be more highly correlated with unemployment during this part of the cycle and employment has remained strong to date. So what we're going to look at is the macro, look at unemployment and if recessionary pressures emerge that have more significantly affect employment, we'd expect some deterioration in the credit. That would be ultimately impacted. How those -- if delinquencies increase, as a result of those recessionary pressures, then we'd see how they ultimately progress the claim being impacted by cumulative home price appreciation and other loss mitigation activities that we employ during times of financial challenges.

Eric, the only thing I'd add to Dean's question -- or Dean's answer is, when you just think about the environment we are operating in from a macro perspective housing and consumer, I think we are in a very different place than where we used to be pre-global financial crisis. So the impact of home price appreciation, home price decline on consumers is much lower. We are in an environment where the credit quality as Dean said is much higher. The cumulative equity accumulation for these consumers is pretty significant. And then you think about our portfolio being primarily -- primary occupant and also a lower housing supply in the market. And while home prices will fluctuate in this market as we saw recently, we don't think that that's the primary driver for new delinquencies.

Yeah. Yeah. That's helpful. Thanks for that detail. And I want to follow-up on the dividend too. I mean, how is your appetite to paying a dividend change, or maybe how would you run the business any differently, if your PMIERs ratio were either higher or lower than it is today?

Yeah. Eric, I think we're comfortable with our PMIERs sufficiency levels where they are today. We've talked about certainly under more economic uncertainty maintaining PMIERs levels above 150%. I think really our return of capital for 2023 is going to be driven by the macroeconomic uncertainty itself and how that ultimately -- those economic headwinds tailwinds ultimately resolve are going to influence kind of our perspective on the most appropriate amount of capital to return shareholders -- to shareholders in 2023. I think we're going to follow the same capital prioritization framework that we've talked about in the past. And one of the key aspects of that is returning capital to shareholders. So we're going to be thoughtful about that. And I think we've provided a little bit of a road map, at least to part of our capital return story in 2023 with our quarterly dividends that we expect to continue prospectively in our share repurchase program. I think if you put those together, you can see your way to $160 million $170 million of planned capital return in 2023, and then we'll continue to evaluate that the economic landscape as well as business performance through the remainder of the year to figure out if there's incremental to that.

Yeah. And I think Eric just from a cycle perspective, in normal times and good times in the economy, PMIERs target might be something that is kind of -- we've talked about a range of PMIERs target for our business. But as we head into an uncertain environment, I think PMIERs might be more of an outcome. So if we want to buy more loss coverage on any part of our portfolio, it might drive a higher PMIERs ratio. That doesn't imply that we are trying to drive an explicit capital return out of that ratio. It's more of an outcome in that scenario. So I think that links very nicely with what Dean said.

That's very helpful. Thank you guys very much.

Thank you.

Thanks, Eric.

Thank you all for participating in today's question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the call back to Mr. Rohit Gupta for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Sheri. Thank you all. We appreciate your interest in Enact and look forward to sharing our story in future conversations. I also look forward to seeing many of you next week at the Bank of America Securities Insurance Conference. Thanks everybody.

Thank you for participating. This concludes today's program. You may now disconnect.