Donegal Group Inc. Class B Aktie

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. This morning, Donegal Group issued its first quarter 2026 earnings release outlining its results.

The release and a supplemental investor presentation are available in the Investor Relations section of Donegal's website at www.donegalgroup.com.

Please be advised that today's conference is prerecorded. [Operator Instructions]

Speaking today will be President and Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Burke; Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Miller; Chief Underwriting Officer, Jeff Hay; Chief Operating Officer, Dan DeLamater; and Chief Investment Officer, Tony Viozzi. Please be aware that statements made during this call that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements and necessarily involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary materially. These factors can be found in Donegal Group's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q.

The company disclaims any obligation to update or publicly announce the results of any revisions that they may make to any forward-looking statements to reflect the occurrence of anticipated or unanticipated events or circumstances after the date of such statements. With that, it is my pleasure to turn it over to Mr. Kevin Burke. Kevin?

Thank you, and welcome, everyone. We are pleased to provide an update today on our quarterly results and areas of focus for 2026.

Our underwriting results for the first quarter of 2026 lagged the unusually favorable results for the first quarter of 2025, largely due to higher-than-average weather-related losses and the impact of several large fire and casualty losses during the quarter. In spite of the unusual loss activity, we are pleased that our core loss ratios reflected solid underlying performance within both the commercial and personal lines segments. We are navigating through a softening insurance market conditions, maintaining underwriting and pricing discipline while also pursuing new business at adequate pricing levels.

We have developed specific action plans and assigned clear ownership and accountabilities as we strive to generate new business and retain quality accounts. We have tools in place to monitor progress at a very granular level while executing a renewed engagement strategy with our independent agents to strengthen alignment and solicit increased opportunities for us to gain market share within our clearly defined geographic and class of business appetite.

We mentioned in our last call that the successful modernization of our policy systems has provided a solid foundation for the next phase in our technology transformation, which is the migration of our on-premises Guidewire claims, billing and policy administration systems to the Guidewire Cloud platform. Moving these core systems to the cloud platform will increase our agility and speed to market and provide enhanced tools and capabilities to empower our business users and enable future growth.

We began the first phase of the migration program in February, in which our claims and billing applications will move to the cloud platform in early 2027. We are excited about the opportunity and ability to co-develop and launch new Gen AI solutions to production as part of our claims systems cloud migration, leveraging the significant investments Guidewire and other strategic partners are making to deliver Gen AI tools that will be integrated within our core business systems to drive enhanced insights and operational efficiencies.

We expect to further leverage the successful outcomes we achieved in this first phase to expedite the implementation of Gen AI solutions that will further enhance our underwriting, pricing and risk selection capabilities when we move into the next phase of the program in 2027. At this point, I'll turn the call over to Jeff Miller for a review of our financial results for the quarter.

Thanks, Kevin. Starting with premium revenues for the first quarter of 2026. Net premiums earned decreased 4.9% to $221.4 million. Net premiums written decreased by 3.2% with lower premium rate increases and retention levels offset partially by an increase in new business volume. A 13.1% decrease in personal lines net premiums written was offset partially by 2.2% growth in commercial lines.

Rate increases achieved during the first quarter of 2026 averaged 5.6% in total and 6.4% when excluding workers' compensation. The combined ratio was 99.8% for the first quarter of 2026 compared to 91.6% for the prior year quarter, reflecting higher impacts from weather and large fires and lesser benefit of net favorable development of reserves for losses incurred in prior accident years.

Excluding the effect of the specific loss ratio components, the core loss ratio improved to 53.4% compared to 54.2% for the prior year quarter, reflecting a continuation of solid underlying underwriting performance. Compared to the prior year quarter, we achieved a 0.7 percentage point decrease in the commercial lines core loss ratio and a 2.2 percentage point decrease in the personal lines core loss ratio. A continuation of excellent personal lines segment performance with an 85.7% statutory combined ratio was largely offset by an underwriting loss in our commercial lines segment that resulted in a statutory combined ratio of 104.6% for that segment.

Drilling down into the loss ratio components, weather-related losses of $17.2 million or 7.8 percentage points of the loss ratio for the first quarter of 2026 were double the $8.6 million or 3.7 percentage points for the first quarter of 2025. Extremely low temperatures for extended periods during the quarter throughout the majority of our operating regions resulted in water damage losses from frozen plumbing lines and severe windstorm activity also contributed to the elevated claim volume.

Commercial property losses from severe weather totaled $7.6 million and contributed 13.9 percentage points to the quarterly commercial multi-peril loss ratio compared to 5.4 percentage points of the loss ratio for that line of business in the first quarter of 2025. The weather impact to the homeowners line was $8 million or 25.6 percentage points of the homeowners loss ratio, which was also substantially higher than the 13.7 percentage points in the prior year quarter. In total, the quarterly weather claim impact was well above the previous 5-year average for the first quarter of 4.5 percentage points.

Despite the elevated weather losses, our insurance subsidiaries did not incur losses from any single event during the first quarter of 2026 or 2025 that exceeded their individual $3 million catastrophe reinsurance retention with Donegal Mutual. Large fire losses, which we define as over $50,000 in damages contributed 5.5 percentage points to the loss ratio for the first quarter of 2026, which was higher than the 3.3 percentage points for the prior year quarter and reflected increases in both commercial and homeowners fire losses.

Our insurance subsidiaries experienced $5.7 million of net favorable development of reserves for losses incurred in prior accident years, representing a 2.6 percentage point reduction in the loss ratio for the first quarter of 2026 compared to $10.5 million or a 4.5 percentage point reduction in the loss ratio for the prior year quarter.

Specific line of business detail for the first quarter of 2026 included favorable development of $3.5 million for commercial auto, $3.4 million for personal auto, $800,000 for homeowners, $600,000 for workers' compensation and $500,000 for other personal lines, offset partially by unfavorable development of $1.7 million for commercial multi-peril and $1.4 million for other commercial lines, which was primarily umbrella liability.

The expense ratio of 35.4% for the first quarter of 2026 increased modestly compared to 34.6% for the prior year quarter. The increase primarily reflected the impact of lower net premiums earned for the current quarter. In summary, the modest underwriting income for the first quarter of 2026, combined with $14.3 million of net investment income resulted in after-tax net income of $11.5 million compared to $25.2 million for the first quarter of 2025.

To provide more details about our commercial and personal lines segment results and related initiatives, I will turn the call over to Jeff Hay.

Thank you, Jeff. As Jeff mentioned, higher-than-average weather-related losses and large fire losses had an outsized impact on both commercial and personal lines results for the first quarter of 2026. Through the diligence of our underwriting teams and the intentional strategies we put into place, we were pleased to achieve new business growth in both segments of our business in alignment with our 2026 business plan and a continuation of strong underlying performance.

Within commercial lines, net premiums written increased by 2.2 percentage points for the first quarter of 2026. As market competition for new business has intensified, we have continued to stand firm, maintaining underwriting and pricing discipline and executing on targeted geographic and class strategies.

I'm pleased to report that in the first quarter, despite the soft market conditions, we experienced continued success in both new business writings and retention versus our goals. Commercial lines new business remained consistent with targeted geographic and class strategies that I've mentioned in previous calls, with the majority of new business written in our highly targeted classes with higher expected profitability.

Additionally, we achieved a real retention rate of 82.3% for the first quarter of 2026 as we continue to work with our independent agents to retain quality accounts. Our overall commercial rate and exposure increase, excluding workers' compensation, remained steady at 9% for the first quarter. While we're generally rate adequate across our lines of business, we continue to emphasize driving rate in areas where the intersections of class, line of business and geography present challenges.

Shifting now to first quarter commercial lines loss trends, As previously shared, 3 trends impacted our first quarter 2026 versus first quarter 2025 results. Higher-than-average weather impacts, large fires and continued excess liability development on losses for prior accident years.

First quarter weather-related losses increased our commercial lines loss ratio by 3.8 percentage points when compared to the same quarter in 2025 and 3 percentage points compared to our long-term average. These losses were primarily driven by the previously mentioned winter storms in January and February that brought heavy snow and subzero temperatures across our footprint and significant wind, hail and tornado events that impacted several states across the Central and Eastern U.S. in March.

First quarter 2026 impact from large fires resulted in a 4.2 percentage point increase to the commercial multi-peril loss ratio when compared to the same quarter in 2025. This can be attributed to an increase in the frequency of fires in the quarter, including one fire that exceeded our external property per risk reinsurance retention and resulted in a $3.2 million net impact to our commercial lines underwriting results.

Commercial lines prior year reserve development was favorable overall for the first quarter of 2026, decreasing the loss ratio by 0.7 percentage points, driven by favorable commercial auto and workers' compensation development that was largely offset by unfavorable umbrella liability claim development in accident years 2022 and 2024. In response to increasing severity trends in umbrella liability claims over the past few years, we've implemented an initiative to reduce net retained umbrella limits in our book of business. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, we reduced exposure limits by over $150 million.

We expect this number to climb throughout the remainder of 2026. Our commercial lines core loss ratio, which excludes the impact of large fires, weather and prior year reserve development remained relatively stable, decreasing slightly by 0.7 percentage points for the first quarter of 2026 compared to the same quarter in 2025.

From an overall commercial loss trend perspective, we continue to experience upward pressure on liability severity within both commercial auto and commercial multi-peril liability coverages, increases consistently in the double digits, slightly offset by a continued decreasing frequency. Property frequency increased in the quarter due to the weather activity, but overall severity remains in check. Additionally, frequency trend lines across all other coverages remain in check and favorable.

Now turning to our personal lines segment, the decline in personal lines net premiums written remained steady at minus 13.1% for the first quarter of 2026. New business written totaled $1.6 million, representing an increase of nearly 25% over the fourth quarter of 2025 and a nearly 70% increase over the first quarter of 2025.

Additionally, I'm pleased to report that our real retention rate for the first quarter was a very healthy 88.7% Rate and exposure slowed to 2.4% for the first quarter, which was a direct result of the achievement of rate adequacy across all lines. We continue to build momentum with deliberate strategies that we put into place to slow the decline in our personal lines premiums. We are pleased with the excellent profitability that continued in the first quarter of 2026, fueled by the results of our personal auto line of business, which saw a 3.6 percentage point decrease in loss ratio from the same quarter in 2025.

This decrease was driven by a 0.8 percentage point improvement in the core loss ratio as well as 3.1 percentage points of more favorable prior year reserve development. Our homeowners loss ratio saw a deterioration of 14.6 percentage points from the first quarter of 2025. This can be attributed to 11.9 percentage points more severe weather activity mentioned previously and 7.8 percentage points of higher large fire impact, offset somewhat by 3.9 percentage points of improvement in the core loss ratio.

In summary, homeowners frequency trends for the first quarter were in line with longer-term trends with lower-than-average severity due to the higher volume of weather claims in the quarter. Frequency trends in personal auto remain in check as physical damage severity showing signs of improving, while bodily injury severity continues to show a gradual increase. I'll now turn the call over to Dan DeLamater for an update on our operational strategies and developments. Dan?

Thank you, Jeff. I'll share a brief update on operational initiatives and how we're navigating the current competitive marketplace. Despite the challenges we faced in the first quarter, I'm pleased to report that we continue to make progress toward many of our business plan objectives due to the deliberate actions of our marketing and underwriting teams in collaboration with our independent agents.

As we look to the remainder of 2026, we remain focused on several initiatives that will support our achievement of premium growth goals, expense targets and profitability expectations. Among them, our collaborative state strategy planning process, internal alignment between marketing, underwriting and product teams, enhanced pricing sophistication and continued company-wide expense optimization. These intentional efforts were among the key drivers of our new business achievements that Jeff Hay touched upon in his remarks.

Our product team continues to work closely with their underwriting and marketing colleagues to strategically manage regional product portfolios. This internal alignment includes our technical data team, which provides robust and consumable data, while our analytics team delivers valuable insights that ensure each of our teams are equipped with quick and easy access to key metrics across regional, state, territory and agency levels. Together, their collaboration enables our business units to make intelligent, data-driven business decisions. And this alignment is essential as we look to grow confidently while holding firm on profitability expectations.

Despite a softening marketplace, we remain focused on our intentionally defined appetite, which we work to be selectively aggressive in our new and renewal pricing. Selectivity will be critical as we remain vigilant for any signs of economic inflation as a persistent industry-specific challenge. To achieve our goals, we will continue to work diligently with our independent agents to drive sustainable, profitable premium growth. We've segmented efforts in middle market commercial, small business and personal lines.

At present, construction represents the largest industry within our current in-force book of business with the vast majority of accounts in specialty trades. Recently, we optimized our agency-facing quoting portal for targeted classes of contractors through the release of our new WriteBiz Express functionality. Soon, we will launch the same agency experience enhancement for our processing and services classes.

WriteBiz Express greatly streamlines the quoting and policy issuance process for these strong performing classes and is just the latest way we are leveraging and refining our modernized platform to meet the evolving needs of our agents. Finally, leaders and team members across Donegal continue to embrace our expense management efforts. We have further refined our comprehensive and sustainable budgeting process and expense monitoring tools, and we continue to emphasize expense optimization and accountability.

Our 2026 business plan projects a slight increase in our expense ratio as we invest in the migration of our systems to the Guidewire Cloud platform that Kevin mentioned earlier. We're confident in the capabilities the Guidewire Cloud platform will unlock for both our agents and our team members and look forward to the operational efficiencies we'll realize from these investments in the years ahead. In closing, we believe we are well positioned to face the challenges in today's competitive insurance landscape, and we continue to invest in our long-term success. With that, I'll turn it over to Tony Viozzi for an investment update.

Thanks, Dan. With the 10-year U.S. treasury consistently trading above 4% for the last 3 years and forecast anticipating little change in interest rates for the near future, we continue to experience favorable investment income results as bonds purchased at the bottom of the rate cycle continue to run off the books and are reinvested at higher market rates.

On the equity side of the market, there continues to be volatility, mostly associated with recent geopolitical events. Our long-term strategy remains focused on achieving predictable, steadily increasing investment income, coupled with modest equity exposure for long-term capital appreciation. Our approach has delivered proven results and we believe positions us well to grow investment income in the future.

In 2025, we took intentional actions to enhance the composition of our bond portfolio with strategic bond swaps and asset allocation shifts, boosting both credit quality and yield. Our first quarter of 2026 investment results reflected the benefits of those actions. We are pleased to achieve $14.3 million in net investment income for the first quarter of 2026, which was a 19% improvement over the $12 million for the first quarter of 2025.

Additionally, the average tax equivalent yield for the first quarter of 2026 increased to 3.94% compared to 3.50% for the first quarter of 2025. We received $44 million of incoming portfolio cash flow that was yielding 4.67% during the quarter. Adding that cash to other investable funds, we invested $63 million during the quarter at a yield of 5.39%.

The 72 basis point improvement in yield will boost annual investment income for the foreseeable future.

We are currently projecting $135 million in bond cash flow over the next 12 months with a current average yield of 4.45%. We expect to benefit from a continuation of higher reinvestment yields that will further increase our portfolio yield. Our relatively modest equity portfolio is positioned defensively with exposure to value and high dividend stocks, which has typically performed well in a declining equity market. Net investment losses for both the first quarters of 2026 and 2025 reflected modest decreases in the value of our equity securities held at the end of each respective period.

As of March 31, 2026, our book value per share increased to $17.54, which was a 1.2% improvement over $17.33 at December 31, 2025. In closing, we are confident that our fixed income strategy will continue to generate investment income growth in 2026, and we will continue to watch for compelling bond swap opportunities as they may arise. Our portfolio is well positioned with highly rated bonds and a laddered cash-flowing portfolio that will allow us to continue to take advantage of higher reinvestment rates in the near term.

We are currently focused on attractive opportunities to acquire high-quality, tax-exempt corporate and mortgage-backed securities and on locking in longer duration bonds at current rates. With that, I will now turn it back to Kevin for closing remarks.

Thanks, Tony. While our first quarter results did not meet our expectations, we've never been in a better position to achieve our short- and long-term goals than we are right now. We have clear strategies and excellent leadership alignment on what we need to do to execute them.

We recently announced an increase in our quarterly cash dividend last week, further demonstrating our confidence in our ability to achieve excellent financial performance. We look forward to providing an update on our progress in future calls. I'll now turn the call back to Becca. Thank you.

Thank you, Kevin. While we requested and received questions in advance of today's call, we have worked answers to these questions into our prepared remarks. If there are any additional questions, please feel free to reach out to us. This now concludes the Donegal Group First Quarter 2026 Earnings Webcast. You may now

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. This morning, Donegal Group issued its fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings release outlining its results.

The release and a supplemental investor presentation are available in the Investor Relations section of Donegal's website at www.donegalgroup.com.

Please be advised that today's conference was prerecorded.

[Operator Instructions]

Speaking today will be President and Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Burke; Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Miller; Chief Underwriting Officer, Jeff Hay; Chief Operating Officer, Dan DeLamater; and Chief Investment Officer, Tony Viozzi. Please be aware that statements made during this call that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements and necessarily involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary materially. These factors can be found in Donegal Group's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q.

The company disclaims any obligation to update or publicly announce the results of any revisions that they may make to any forward-looking statements to reflect the occurrence of anticipated or unanticipated events or circumstances after the date of such statements.

With that, it is my pleasure to turn it over to Mr. Kevin Burke. Kevin?

Thank you, and welcome, everyone, to our fourth quarter earnings webcast. We are pleased to provide an update today on our quarterly and full year operating results, along with key accomplishments in 2025 and areas of focus for 2026.

We ended 2025 with a solid fourth quarter. The combined ratio of 96.3%, reflected excellent underwriting profitability despite the impact of lower net premiums earned and a few large claims that prevented us from matching the record quarterly net income we achieved in the fourth quarter of 2024.

We enjoyed a continuation of relatively favorable weather in our operating regions for the fourth quarter, resulting in a weather loss ratio that was lower than the fourth quarter average for the past 5 years.

Similar to the first 9 months of 2025, our core loss ratio for the fourth quarter remained below our target level, driven by excellent underlying results within our Personal Lines segment.

For the full year of 2025, net income of $79.3 million represents the highest amount we've achieved. While we celebrate these results, we also recognize the need for quality premium growth in order to achieve economies of scale and sustain excellent financial performance over the long term.

Jeff Hay and Dan DeLamater will provide further details about our plans to generate increased levels of premium growth. Our 2026 business plan includes strategies for engagement with our independent agents and several initiatives that we expect will generate higher levels of new business submissions, particularly in commercial lines, where we are actively pursuing quality mid-market and small business accounts that meet our underwriting criteria.

As we shared last quarter, we completed all of the development efforts for the multiyear systems transformation project that we started back in 2018 to replace our legacy systems.

We are continuing to follow a phased schedule for the automated conversion of all remaining legacy policies that will be fully completed by mid-2027. That process is on track and progressing well with minimal disruption to our customers or the impact of policy retention levels to date.

The next step in our technology transformation is the migration of our Guidewire claims, billing and policy administration applications from on-premise systems to cloud-based versions of those applications.

We performed a detailed assessment that identified numerous benefits of migrating these applications to the cloud, and we've developed a very comprehensive plan to migrate our claims and billing applications in early 2027. Migrating to Guidewire cloud will allow us to leverage the substantial investments of Guidewire and other vendors in the development and seamless deployment of GenAI tools and applications within our core business applications.

Upon completion of this initiative, the technology modernization journey that we've been on since 2018 will be fully complete, and we will have access to the evolving operating platform that will support our current and future needs.

We are excited to move forward and thank all of the Donegal team members and our vendor partners who have labored tirelessly for many years to put us in this very favorable position. At this point, I'll turn the call over to Jeff Miller for a review of our financial results for the quarter.

Thanks, Kevin. I will begin my comments with a discussion of the fourth quarter results compared to the fourth quarter of 2024 and then provide highlights of the results for the full year compared to 2024.

For the fourth quarter of 2025, net premiums earned of $226.9 million decreased 4.1%. Net premiums written decreased by 3.4%, following similar trend lines we described throughout 2025 as lower new business volume was offset partially by premium rate increases and solid retention levels.

A 12.7% decrease in personal lines net premiums written was offset partially by 3.2% growth in commercial lines. Rate increases achieved during the fourth quarter of 2025 averaged 5.9% in total and 6.6% when excluding workers' compensation.

The combined ratio was 96.3% for the fourth quarter of 2025, compared to 92.9% for the prior year quarter. The increase reflected a 1.3 percentage point increase in the loss ratio and a 2.1 percentage point increase in the expense ratio.

We monitor the loss ratio impact of several components, starting with the core loss ratio, which excludes the impact of weather-related losses, large fire losses and net development of reserves for losses incurred in prior accident years, we experienced a 2 percentage point improvement in the core loss ratio.

There was a 2.7 percentage point decrease in the commercial lines core loss ratio and a 1.6 percentage point decrease in the personal lines core loss ratio. Weather-related losses totaled $8.2 million or 3.6 percentage points of the loss ratio for the fourth quarter of 2025, increasing modestly from $7.7 million or 3.3 percentage points for the prior year quarter.

The quarterly weather claim impact was lower than the previous 5-year average for the fourth quarter of 5.2 percentage points. Our insurance subsidiaries did not incur losses from any catastrophic weather events in the fourth quarter of 2025 or 2024.

In terms of weather impact by segment, commercial property losses from severe weather totaled $2.4 million and contributed 4.4 percentage points to the quarterly loss ratio for the commercial multi-peril line of business.

For personal lines, the weather impact to the homeowners line was $4.6 million or 14.6 percentage points of the homeowners loss ratio. Large fire losses, which we define as over $50,000 in damages, contributed 6.2 percentage points to the loss ratio for the fourth quarter of 2025, compared to 4 percentage points for the prior year quarter.

We experienced increases in the severity of both commercial and homeowners fire losses during the quarter. Our insurance subsidiaries experienced $2.2 million of net development of reserves for losses incurred in prior accident years, adding 1 percentage point to the loss ratio for the fourth quarter of 2025, compared to virtually no impact in the prior year quarter.

Line of business detail for the fourth quarter of 2025 primarily included unfavorable development of $3.9 million for other commercial, which is primarily umbrella liability and $2.3 million for commercial auto, primarily in accident years 2022 and 2024.

That was largely offset by favorable development of $1.6 million for personal auto, $1.4 million for commercial multi-peril and $1.2 million for workers' compensation.

The expense ratio of 34.9% for the fourth quarter of 2025 increased, compared to 32.8% for the prior year quarter. The increase was primarily related to the direction of year-end adjustments to our estimates for underwriting-based agency incentive costs as well as the impact of the decline in net premiums earned upon which the expense ratio is based.

Dan DeLamater will provide more details about our ongoing focus on expense management later in the call. Net investment income increased 17.5% to $14.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2025 due primarily to higher average invested assets and an increase in average investment yield.

Tony will provide further details about our favorable investment performance later in the call. We achieved net income of $17.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2025, compared to $24 million for the fourth quarter of 2024.

The decrease was primarily due to lower net premiums earned and higher expenses incurred. Turning to the full year of 2025 results, the loss ratio of 61.3%, compared favorably to 64.5% for 2024, with a 2.6 percentage point improvement in the core loss ratio.

That improvement primarily reflected a 7.2 percentage point decrease in the personal lines core loss ratio as the commercial lines core loss ratio for 2025 was in line with 2024. Weather-related losses for the full year of 2025 were $56.9 million or 6.2 percentage points of the loss ratio, comparing favorably to $67.7 million or 7.2 percentage points of the loss ratio for the full year of 2024.

Weather impact for 2025 was 1 percentage point lower than the previous 5-year average of 7.2 percentage points of the full year loss ratio. Large fire losses contributed 4.8 percentage points to the 2025 loss ratio, in line with 4.9 percentage points for 2024.

Net favorable development of reserves for losses incurred in prior accident years reduced the 2025 loss ratio by 1.1 percentage points, slightly lower than the 1.6 percentage point reduction in 2024. Details by line of business include favorable development of $7.9 million in commercial multi-peril, $4.3 million in personal auto, $2.2 million for commercial auto, $1.5 million for homeowners, $1.2 million for personal umbrella and $1 million for workers' comp.

That favorable development was partially offset by $7.9 million of unfavorable development in commercial umbrella, netting to a favorable development in total of $10.3 million.

The favorable development related primarily to accident years 2021, 2023 and 2024 with unfavorable development for reserves in accident years 2020 and 2022 that resulted from higher-than-expected severity for a relatively small number of casualty claims.

The expense ratio was 33.8% for the full year of 2025, nearly unchanged from 33.7% for the full year of 2024. The combined ratio was 95.4% for 2025, comparing favorably to 98.6% for 2024.

As Kevin highlighted earlier, the favorable underwriting results, coupled with a 17.2% increase in net investment income, contributed to a record $79.3 million in net income for 2025, increasing 56%, compared to net income of $50.9 million for 2024.

Before I close, I'll provide a brief summary of the renewal of our reinsurance program for 2026. We made no changes to the coverage limits or retention levels in place for 2025 under our third-party reinsurance program or the intercompany reinsurance agreements between our insurance subsidiaries and Donegal Mutual.

Due primarily to a decrease in property exposures during 2025 and lower property reinsurance rates, we project a $3 million decrease in reinsurance costs for 2026, compared to 2025. With that, I will now turn the call over to Jeff Hay to provide more details about our Commercial and Personal Lines segment results.

Thank you, Jeff. We are pleased to report favorable bottom line results this quarter and for the full year of 2025. And I continue to be confident that this improvement is not the product of random volatility in our results, but a direct outcome of the strategies and diligent action plans we have put in place over several years to transform our underwriting discipline.

Within our commercial lines of business, net premiums written increased modestly by 3.2 percentage points for the fourth quarter of 2025 and by 2.9 percentage points for the full year.

As the market has selectively softened for new business, we continue to stand firm, maintaining underwriting and pricing discipline and executing on targeted geographic and class strategies. With that, I'm pleased to report that in the fourth quarter, we experienced continued success in new business writings and strong retention on desired business. The commercial lines new business aligns with our targeted geographic and class strategies that I have mentioned in previous calls, with the majority of new business written in our highly targeted classes with higher expected profitability.

Our overall commercial rate and exposure increase, excluding workers' compensation, remained steady at 9.7% for the fourth quarter and at 10.6% for the full year. We are generally rate adequate across our lines of business. As we strive to retain quality accounts, we also continue to emphasize driving rate in areas where the intersections of class, line of business and geography continue to present challenges.

Now shifting to commercial lines loss trends in the fourth quarter. We continue to experience upward pressure on liability severity for both commercial auto liability and general liability coverages within our commercial multi-peril line of business.

Overall, property severity and frequency trend lines across all coverages remain relatively favorable. Fourth quarter 2025 impact from large fires increased nearly 6 percentage points on the commercial multi-peril loss ratio when compared to the same quarter in 2024.

This increase was driven by a large increase in the severity of large fires, partially offset by a slight decrease in frequency. For the full year of 2025, large commercial fire losses decreased by $3.5 million for a 2.5 percentage point decrease in the commercial multi-peril loss ratio.

We experienced relative consistency in the impact of weather-related losses with the change representing less than a percentage point of the commercial lines loss ratio in the fourth quarter and full year, compared to the respective periods in 2024.

Commercial lines prior year reserve development was modestly adverse overall, increasing the loss ratio by 2.6 percentage points for the fourth quarter, driven by umbrella liability claim development in accident years 2022 and 2024.

Reserve development was modestly favorable overall for the full year of 2025, reducing the commercial lines loss ratio by 0.6 percentage points. We're pleased to report that our commercial lines core loss ratio, which excludes the impact of large fires, weather and prior year reserve development, decreased by 2.7 percentage points in the fourth quarter of 2025, compared to the same quarter in 2024.

Now turning to our Personal Lines segment. For the fourth quarter, the decline in personal lines net premiums written, improved slightly to minus 12.7% from minus 15.9% for the third quarter of 2025 and minus 13.6% for the full year of 2025.

New business written in the fourth quarter totaled $1.3 million, an increase of 10.2 percentage points over the third quarter. New business written for the month of December was up 11.3 percentage points from December of 2024. We continue to remove new business restrictions to stabilize premiums in this segment, exercising caution to maintain the rate adequacy we have generally achieved across our footprint.

I'm pleased to report that our real retention rate for fourth quarter 2025 increased to a very healthy 88.7% with the intentional nonrenewal of less profitable business, which I've mentioned in prior calls, now essentially complete. Rate and exposure slowed to plus 2.9% in the fourth quarter, driven by the achievement of rate adequacy across all lines and came in at plus 3.6% for the full year of 2025.

Moving to personal lines loss trends. Within the personal auto line of business, the loss ratio decreased in the fourth quarter by 7.6 percentage points from the fourth quarter of 2024.

This decrease was driven by a 2-point improvement in the core loss ratio, coupled with 3.1 percentage points of favorable prior year development in the quarter, compared to 2.7 points of unfavorable prior year development in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Frequency trends in personal auto remained in check and physical damage severity continued to show signs of improvement, while bodily injury severity continued to trend moderately upward.

The homeowners loss ratio saw a deterioration of 12.1 percentage points for the fourth quarter of 2025, compared to fourth quarter 2024.

This increase was attributable to 4.1 percentage points of higher weather loss impact and 5.3 points of higher large fire experience with relatively consistent core loss ratio experience.

Overall, homeowners frequency trends in the fourth quarter were favorable in property with some pressure on non-weather severity driven by large fire experience. For the Personal Lines segment in total, we are pleased with the excellent profitability we achieved in 2025 as reflected by the statutory combined ratio of 88.5% for the fourth quarter and 89.3% for the full year.

In summary, we've made significant progress during 2025 in the execution of our state-specific strategies, and we're pleased with the substantial improvement in our underwriting results. I will now turn the call over to Dan DeLamater for an update on our operational strategies and developments and more details about our positive outlook for 2026.

Thank you, Jeff. I'll start my discussion of our operational performance for 2025 by providing an update on the expense management initiatives we've discussed in previous calls. I'll then touch briefly on the high-level results of our business planning process for 2026 and our alignment on several tangible focus areas for the year ahead. We operated at an expense ratio of 34.9% for the fourth quarter of 2025, compared to our expense ratio of 32.8% for the fourth quarter of 2024, the increase was a break from the downward trajectory we achieved over the past 5 quarters.

This increase in expense ratio was not related to spending beyond our budget. In fact, our team achieved targeted spending reductions for 2025. One of the primary factors that elevated our expense ratio for the fourth quarter was a $3.1 million increase in performance-based incentives for our agents, mostly related to higher amounts incurred for agency profit sharing.

While this might seem counterintuitive considering that our loss ratio was less favorable for the fourth quarter of 2025, compared to the prior year period, agency profit sharing compensation is determined by individual agency experience, which resulted in a disproportionate comparative outcome for the quarter.

Another primary driver of the increase in our fourth quarter expense ratio was lower premium volume that resulted from writing less new business and needing lower overall rate increases to achieve rate adequacy than originally planned for the year. Despite that top line miss versus plan, we remain pleased with our organizational focus on budget discipline and our ongoing commitment to realizing efficiencies from our recent systems and process modernization efforts.

For the full year of 2025, we performed at a 33.8% expense ratio, compared to 33.7% for the full year of 2024, with the reduction in net earned premiums, representing the overriding factor behind the slight uptick in that annual expense metric.

As we look forward to 2026, we are operating from a position of strength and that the efforts of our team have generated outstanding results through rate achievement, underwriting focus, expense discipline and investment portfolio optimization.

We are pleased to report 6 consecutive quarters of underwriting profitability, combined with investment strategies to increase our returns that were opportunistic, yet consistent with our conservative philosophy.

These results will allow us to be selectively aggressive in our pursuit of profitable growth in the year ahead while being careful not to undermine the hard work of our team that led us to this favorable position.

We've entered 2026 intentionally focused on our strategic plan and priorities. Our regional teams have worked closely with independent agents across the country to build tangible and actionable new business and policy retention plans for 2026. This focus on product mix, rate strategy, marketing strategy and growth objectives in every state and line of business has our teams aligned and ready to achieve our bottom line and top line objectives in the year ahead.

We have excellent insight into our performance versus plan at a granular level, thanks to our technical data and enterprise analytics teams. These teams distill and disseminate vast amounts of data to our business units, keeping them informed and positioning them to efficiently analyze results and take responsive action when required.

These data-driven insights empower us to deepen our relationship and engagement with our independent agency partners.

As a reminder, we distribute our products exclusively through independent agency channel, and we consider the relationship with our 2,000 independent agents across our 21-state footprint to be a core strength.

As I close my remarks, I'll reiterate, we are proud to operate from a position of bottom line strength. Jeff shared that we are pleased to achieve rate adequacy in 2025. Ongoing rate achievement remains vitally important to ensure that we maintain pace with loss cost trends.

We continue to engage our marketing teams, our independent agents and our analytics and underwriting teams to emphasize pricing discipline as we seek to identify profitable new business opportunities in states and classes that match our objectives.

With that, I'll turn it over to Tony Viozzi for an investment update. Tony?

Thanks, Dan. Throughout 2025, our investing approach focused on strategically increasing our bond portfolio yield and optimizing our portfolio mix. We were able to take advantage of higher market rates and move into more favorable asset classes that we expect will continue to perform well in the future.

We had a strong fourth quarter of 2025 as net investment income was up 17.5%, resulting in $14.2 million versus $12.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2024.

The strong quarterly performance, coupled with actions taken in the prior quarters of 2025 allowed us to achieve a 17.2% increase to full year 2025, net investment income of $52.6 million, compared to $44.9 million for 2024.

The average tax equivalent yield for the fourth quarter of 2025 increased to 3.95%, compared to 3.58% for the fourth quarter of 2024.

In addition to actively managing the bond portfolio during the first 9 months of 2025, we accelerated yield enhancement through strategic bond swaps in the fourth quarter. Proceeds from bonds that matured were called or were sold as part of swap strategies during the quarter totaled $155 million, yielding an average of 3.74%.

Those funds were reinvested at an average yield of 5.17% with the 143 basis point improvement projected to boost annual investment income by $2.2 million going forward. We intentionally extended duration to 5.5 years to lock in what we view to be attractive yields for a longer-term horizon.

We are now investing new money at yields north of 5%, and we anticipate the ongoing favorable market environment will provide modest additional bond swap opportunities in the near term.

The net investment loss of $1.7 million for the fourth quarter of 2025, reflected the losses we intentionally realized on bond sales, offset partially by a gain in the market value of our equity portfolio during the quarter. For the full year of 2025, we realized a net investment gain of $600,000, compared to $5 million for the full year of 2024.

We attribute the year-over-year decrease to the losses we realized on strategic bond sales in 2025 in order to boost investment income in future periods by amounts that will far exceed the onetime realized losses.

At December 31, 2025, our book value increased to $17.33, which was a 12.8% improvement over $15.36 as of December 31, 2024. The increase was driven primarily by net income and an increase in our market value of our available-for-sale bond portfolio, partially offset by cash dividends declared during the year.

In closing, we are projecting about $100 million in portfolio cash flow over the next 12 months with a current average yield of 4.40%. Our current reinvestment rate is around 5.25%, providing opportunity for further enhancement in investment income.

We continue to optimize our portfolio mix as market opportunities arise. To that end, we are currently emphasizing tax-exempt bonds, mortgage-backed securities and non-agency structured notes where we find rates most attractive.

With that, I will now turn it back to Kevin for closing remarks.

Thank you, Tony. As we reflect on our accomplishments in 2025 and consider the challenges ahead in 2026, I want to express my appreciation for the devoted team of Donegal professionals, who are fully engaged in executing our strategies and fulfilling our mission.

I also want to recognize the dedication of our independent agency partners, who reciprocate our loyal commitment to them by submitting quality new business to us and entrusting us to serve the insurance needs of their customers.

We look forward to continuing to enhance those relationships through increased engagement in the year ahead. And finally, I am grateful for the ongoing support of our stockholders, and we look forward to providing further updates to you in future calls. Thank you.

Thank you, Kevin. While we requested and received questions in advance of today's call, we have worked answers to these questions into our prepared remarks. If there are any additional questions, please feel free to reach out to us.

This now concludes the Donegal Group Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Webcast. You may now disconnect.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. This morning, Donegal Group issued its third quarter 2025 earnings release outlining its results. The release and a supplemental investor presentation are available in the Investor Relations section of Donegal's website at www.donegalgroup.com. Please be advised that today's conference was prerecorded. [Operator Instructions]

Speaking today will be President and Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Burke; Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Miller; Chief Underwriting Officer, Jeff Hay; Chief Operating Officer, Dan DeLamater; and Chief Investment Officer, Tony Viozzi.

Please be aware that statements made during this call that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements and necessarily involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary materially. These factors can be found in Donegal Group's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The company disclaims any obligation to update or publicly announce the results of any revisions that they may make to any forward-looking statements to reflect the occurrence of anticipated or unanticipated events or circumstances after the date of such statements.

With that, it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Kevin Burke. Kevin?

Thank you, Karin, and welcome, everyone, to our earnings webcast. We are pleased to provide an update today on our quarterly operating results and recent progress on our strategies and initiatives. We are pleased with our profitability for the third quarter and for the first 9 months of 2025, with a combined ratio of 95.9% for the third quarter and 95.1% for year-to-date, with solid underwriting and investment income contributing to net income of $20.1 million for the third quarter and $62.2 million for the first 9 months of 2025.

We enjoyed relatively favorable weather in our operating regions for the third quarter, resulting in a weather loss ratio that was the lowest of any third quarter in the past 20 years. Our core loss ratio for the third quarter remained below our target level with Personal Lines continuing to outperform as we've reached rate adequacy in that business segment. As in prior webcast, Jeff Hay and Dan DeLamater will provide further details about the ongoing factors that impacted our net premiums written growth as well as highlight initiatives that we have planned to improve premium growth.

Our 2026 business plan will include numerous strategies and action plans to enhance agency engagement and optimize our staff's utilization of systems and business intelligence enhancements that we expect will generate higher levels of new business. Our primary focus remains on delivering sustained excellent financial results while also achieving profitable control Commercial Lines growth by writing quality mid-market and small business accounts.

Following the successful deployment of our final major commercial line systems release I reported in the second quarter, I'm very pleased to report that this past weekend, we successfully deployed the final Personal Lines release to facilitate conversion of all legacy personal auto and umbrella policy renewals to the new Guidewire platform. We continue to strive for stability in our Personal Lines segment, seeking to write enough new business to offset natural attrition in order to maintain a stable, profitable book of Personal Lines business.

Completion of the conversion of our legacy business to the new platform will allow our Personal Lines teams to focus their efforts on optimizing our Personal Lines portfolio. With this final release now in production, all development and testing efforts have been completed for this multiyear systems modernization project that we began 8 years ago. I extend my sincere appreciation and congratulations to all the Donegal team members who have worked tirelessly to ensure the successful project completion.

Although all the software code has been deployed, we are continuing to follow a phased schedule for the conversion of all remaining legacy Commercial and Personal Lines policies that will continue through mid-2026. Our business teams will be closely monitoring that conversion activity over the next several months. Our technology teams will be shifting their attention to several exciting initiatives made possible by the successful systems transformation and the completion of our comprehensive cloud-based data repository and infrastructure.

We are already working with industry-leading vendor partners on several generative AI projects that we expect will help us improve operational efficiencies and more importantly, provide enhanced data-driven insights to our claims and underwriting staff. We are also preparing to migrate our primary on-premises Guidewire applications to the cloud-based versions over the next few years. We plan to migrate our billing and claims applications followed by our policy administration application after the completion of our legacy policy conversion activities.

Migrating to the cloud version of the Guidewire applications will ensure that our future technology platform is scalable and remains current and that we are able to take advantage of the emerging innovations and product enhancements on a continuous basis. We look forward to the many competitive and operational benefits our successful systems transformation and ongoing technology initiatives will yield in the years ahead.

At this point, I'll turn the call over to Jeff Miller for a review of our financial results for the quarter.

Thanks, Kevin. For the third quarter of 2025, net premiums earned of $229.8 million decreased 3.4% compared to the third quarter of 2024. Net premiums written decreased by 5.4% with similar drivers to those we experienced in the first half of 2025 as lower new business volume and planned attrition were offset partially by premium rate increases and solid retention levels. A 15.9% decrease in Personal Lines net premiums written was offset partially by 3.4% growth in Commercial Lines.

Rate increases achieved during the third quarter of 2025 averaged 6.4% in total and 7.1% when excluding workers' compensation. The combined ratio was 95.9% for the third quarter of 2025, reflecting modest improvement compared to 96.4% for the prior year quarter. We experienced a slight 1 percentage point increase in the core loss ratio compared to the prior year quarter. Core loss ratio excludes the impact of weather-related losses, large fire losses and net development of reserves for losses incurred in prior accident years.

Compared to the prior year quarter, we had a 5.5 percentage point increase in the Commercial Lines core loss ratio, offset partially by a 5.9 percentage point decrease in the Personal Lines core loss ratio. Weather-related losses of $14.3 million or 6.2 percentage points of the loss ratio for the third quarter of 2025 decreased substantially from $24.4 million or 10.3 percentage points for the prior year quarter. Commercial property losses from severe weather totaled $3.6 million and contributed 6.6 percentage points to the quarterly commercial multi-peril loss ratio, down compared to 10 percentage points of the loss ratio for that line of business in the third quarter of 2024.

The weather impact to the Homeowners line was $8.3 million or 25.3 percentage points of the Homeowners loss ratio, which was much lower than the 45.2 points of weather loss impact in the prior year quarter, which reflected significant impact from Hurricane Helene. In total, the quarterly weather claim impact was well below the previous 5-year average for the third quarter of 10 percentage points. Our insurance subsidiaries did not incur losses from any catastrophic weather events in the third quarter of 2025 compared to $6 million in net losses from Hurricane Helene in the prior year quarter.

As we highlighted in the earnings release, the weather loss impact of 6.2 percentage points of the loss ratio for the quarter was the lowest of any third quarter in the past 20 years. Large fire losses, which we define as over $50,000 in damages contributed 4.4 percentage points to the loss ratio for the third quarter of 2025 compared to 3.7 percentage points for the prior year quarter. A moderate increase in homeowners fire losses during the quarter was partially offset by a slight decrease in commercial fire losses.

Our insurance subsidiaries experienced minimal net development of reserves for losses incurred in prior accident years for the third quarter of 2025 compared to $6.2 million of net favorable reserve development for the prior year quarter. Specific line of business detail for the third quarter of 2025 primarily included unfavorable development of $2 million for Personal Auto and $1.4 million for Other Commercial, which is primarily umbrella liability in accident years 2022 through 2024, offset partially by favorable development of $1.6 million for Commercial Multi-Peril and $818,000 for workers' compensation.

The expense ratio of 33.5% for the third quarter of 2025 decreased compared to 34.5% for the prior year quarter. The modest decrease primarily related to ongoing impacts of expense reduction initiatives and lower underwriting-based incentive costs for agents and employees. Incentive costs for the prior year quarter were somewhat elevated due to the improvement in underwriting results for that period compared to the first half of 2024. Net investment income increased 28.8% to $13.9 million for the third quarter of 2025 compared to the prior year quarter due primarily to an increase in average investment yield.

Tony will provide further details about our investment income later in the call. Combining the favorable impacts of underwriting and investment performance, we achieved net income of $20.1 million for the third quarter of 2025, an increase of approximately 20% compared to the third quarter of 2024. For the first 9 months of 2025, net income of $62.2 million increased by approximately 131% compared to $26.9 million for the first 9 months of 2024. As we generate capital through consistent profitability, we will continue to invest in our people and operations to steadily grow premiums and increase scale, which we believe will create sustainable value for our stockholders over time.

We are also committed to our long-standing practice of returning a portion of our profits to stockholders in the form of cash dividends. We recently declared quarterly cash dividends of $0.1825 per share of our Class A common stock and $0.165 per share of our Class B common stock payable on November 17 to stockholders of record as of November 3.

With that, I will turn the call over to Jeff Hay to provide more details about our Commercial and Personal Lines segment results.

Thank you, Jeff. Our favorable underwriting results drove bottom line improvement this quarter, and I'm confident that this was a direct outcome of the strategies and diligent action plans we've put into place in recent years to transform our systems, data analytics and operational processes. Within our Commercial Lines of business, net premiums written for the third quarter of 2025 saw a modest increase of 3.4%. While the market selectively softens for new business, we continue to stand firm on underwriting and pricing discipline to execute on targeted geographic and class strategies.

Of the Commercial Lines new business we wrote in the third quarter, 68.7% was within highly targeted classes where we achieved levels of profitability that exceeded our expectations. Our overall commercial rate and exposure increase remained steady at 11%, excluding workers' compensation during the quarter. As we strive to retain quality accounts, we also continue to emphasize driving the most rate in areas where the intersections of class, line of business and geography are the most challenged.

Turning now to loss trends that we observed for Commercial Lines in the third quarter, we experienced similar frequency and severity trends as in the first half of 2025. When compared to the prior year third quarter, the Commercial Multi-Peril line of business loss ratio impact from large fires decreased by nearly 2 percentage points, driven by lower severity of large fire losses, offset partially by a modest increase in their frequency.

We enjoyed historically favorable weather conditions during the quarter with below average storm activity across our operating regions that resulted in commercial weather-related losses decreasing significantly, down 24% compared to the prior year quarter. Commercial Lines prior year reserve development was modestly favorable overall, contributing a 0.5 percentage point decrease in the loss ratio for the third quarter. We were pleased that our Commercial Lines core loss ratio, which excludes the impact of large fires, weather and prior year reserve development remained lower than our target for the third quarter of 2025.

However, the core loss ratio increased by 5.5 percentage points over the prior year quarter, driven primarily by higher frequency of workers' compensation losses. The market introduction of our new and greatly improved commercial package product was the culmination of the most significant investment in middle market capabilities in our company history. We're confident that the enhanced product coverages, increased service capabilities and the future innovations these modernized systems will enable will set Donegal apart in the marketplace and fuel profitable growth in the years ahead.

Now turning to our Personal Lines segment. For the third quarter, Personal Lines net premiums written decreased 15.9% compared to the third quarter of 2024. The shrinking of our Personal Lines book is a direct result of 2 deliberate actions: one, the significant slowing of new business; and two, the targeted cancellation of certain segments of our portfolio for underwriting or operational reasons. Both actions were intentional and necessary to improve portfolio quality, reduce property concentrations and to stabilize loss ratios.

As an example of the targeted cancellation of certain segments, we completed the exit of a legacy Maryland book of business at the end of the third quarter. This action had a meaningful impact on the Personal Lines retention rate over the past year. However, excluding that impact, our real retention rate was a very healthy 88.7% for the third quarter. Intentional new business controls continued to limit new business to approximately $1 million in the quarter, which was similar to the second quarter of 2025 and remained well below historical levels.

Having achieved rate adequacy in Personal Lines across our footprint, we have now strategically and intentionally released some of those new business controls in order to become more competitive for accounts that meet our underwriting criteria.

Moving to Personal Lines loss trends. Within the Personal Auto line of business, the loss ratio decreased by 4.5 percentage points for the third quarter of 2025 compared to the third quarter of 2024. This decrease was driven by a 9.3 point improvement in the core loss ratio, partially offset by adverse prior year reserve development related to a handful of liability claim reserve increases in the quarter. The Homeowners loss ratio saw an improvement of 11.6 percentage points for the third quarter of 2025 compared to the third quarter of 2024.

Driving that improvement were 19.9 points of lower weather-related loss impacts, which was attributable to a substantial 49% decrease in weather losses compared to the third quarter of 2024 when Hurricane Helene inflicted substantial damage to homes we insured within the state of Georgia. That weather loss ratio improvement was partially offset by a 3.3-point increase in the core loss ratio and 6 points from additional large fire losses.

Compared to the prior year quarter, we experienced a 33% increase in large fire losses in our Homeowners line due primarily to an increase in the severity of large fires. In summary, we were pleased with the overall profitability of our Commercial and Personal Lines segments for the first 9 months of 2025, and we're excited to be able to shift our strategic emphasis from profit improvement to capitalizing on opportunities to grow profitably.

I will now turn the call over to Dan DeLamater for an update on our operational strategies and developments. Dan?

Thank you, Jeff. I'll start my commentary by providing an update on our efficiency initiatives and the expense reduction efforts we've discussed in previous calls. For the third quarter of 2025, we operated an expense ratio of 33.5%, which continued to follow an excellent trajectory. By comparison, that represented a 100 basis point improvement from the comparable period last year. We're pleased that we continue to realize significant improvement from our investments in automation and various ongoing expense management initiatives.

Together, these efforts have allowed us to operate at an expense ratio of 33.4% through the first 9 months of 2025. Despite the impact of higher projected incentive payments for agents and employees based on our strong underwriting performance this year, this compares favorably to our expense ratio of 34.0% through the first 9 months of 2024 and 34.9% through the first 9 months of 2023. We're coming down off of the 2024 peak expense impact of our multi-year systems modernization project. And with the substantial expenditures related to software development tapering off by the end of 2025, we expect to achieve gradual reductions in this project's impact to our operating expense metrics as allocated depreciation costs subside over the next few years.

Additionally, we're pleased with the alignment and clarity of focus that was evident in our recently completed state strategy workshop. This annual multi-day planning summit brings together a cross-departmental mix of several dozen Donegal professionals, including executive, departmental and regional leadership, along with important contributors from our business units. Together, this group refines our product mix, rate strategy, marketing strategy and growth objectives for every line of business and every state in which we write.

This strategic session in August marked the fifth consecutive year for the event, and I believe it was our best to date. As we work to complete our 2026 business plan, increasing new business and total growth will be a top priority for next year. We're proud to operate from a place of bottom line strength, but we also recognize the need to increase new business volume, particularly in small and middle market commercial. Rate adequacy is clearly important, and we're not interested in chasing underpriced new business. We continue to proactively engage our marketing teams, our independent agents and our analytics and underwriting teams to identify profitable new business opportunities in states and classes that match our objectives.

We continue to respond to shifting dynamics within the independent agency system due to mergers and acquisitions that have been fueled in part by private equity investments. Many of our independent agents have found value in joining a network group for various reasons. On the other hand, there is a significant segment of our agents who remain committed to operating independently. We have a dedicated National Accounts team that interacts with the leadership of national and regional agency groups and serves as a valuable resource for our regional marketing teams as they work with our agents at street level where business is transacted.

Regardless of an agency's ownership or group affiliation, we are committed to providing a distinctive business experience and creating unique value for each independent agency relationship. As we further refine our focus on our core lines and classes of business and our well-established geographic footprint, we decided to exit the farm line of business and have recently entered a renewal rights agreement with a farm-focused Pennsylvania-based mutual insurance company to provide a continuation option for our existing policyholders.

We determined that the costs required to modernize our legacy farm product and systems were higher than the projected return on investment for a noncore line of business that we report in other Commercial Lines. We will non-renew approximately $6 million of premiums upon farm policy expirations beginning in the second quarter of 2026. In closing, we're very pleased to have achieved 5 consecutive quarters of underwriting profitability. Coupled with our organizational alignment, we are confident that this profitability sets a solid foundation for our performance in the remaining months of 2025 and into 2026.

I'll now turn it over to Tony Viozzi for an investment update. Tony?

Thanks, Dan. During the third quarter of 2025, we saw a significant rise in net investment income, driven primarily by increased reinvestment cash flow and active bond swaps that allowed us to lock in higher-yielding bonds at longer durations. Our net investment income for the third quarter rose to $13.9 million, an increase of 29% from $10.8 million in the third quarter of 2024. Year-to-date net investment income totaled $38.5 million for the first 9 months of 2025, up 17% from $32.9 million for the first 9 months of 2024.

The average tax equivalent yield for the quarter was 3.90% from 3.64% for the second quarter of 2025 and 3.28% from the prior year quarter. The improvement in yield during the third quarter of 2025 was driven by the investment of $185 million derived from portfolio cash flow and excess operating funds that was yielding 3.97% and is now earning 5.25%. The 128 basis point improvement on those funds is projected to boost annual investment income by $2.4 million.

Net investment gains for the third quarter of 2025 totaled $1.3 million compared to $1.9 million for the prior year quarter. Equity gains of $2.6 million on stocks held as of September 30 were offset partially by realized losses from strategic bond swaps during the quarter that will improve future investment income by approximately $1.6 million annually. For the first 9 months of 2025, our net investment gains were $2.3 million compared to $4.7 million for the first 9 months of 2024.

Our available-for-sale bond portfolio market value improved by $6.8 million in the third quarter of 2025 as a result of bond swaps, declining market rates and the tightening of corporate bond spreads. As of September 30, 2025, our book value increased to $17.14, a $1.78 improvement over $15.36 on December 31, 2024. This improvement was primarily driven by strong underwriting results and growing investment income as well as gains in the value of our equities and available-for-sale bond portfolio.

In closing, we are projecting about $115 million in portfolio cash flow over the next 12 months with an average yield of 3.95%. We will continue to focus on shifting into non-agency structured notes, mortgage-backed securities and tax-exempt bonds.

With that, I will now turn it back over to Kevin for closing remarks.

Thank you, Tony. As we conclude today's call, I want to express my appreciation for the commitment and engagement I see throughout the Donegal organization. We recently held all employee meetings to reemphasize our key business strategies and to celebrate our accomplishments over the past few years that has led to our improved financial results. We highlighted our confidence as we are now operating from a position of strength and challenge our team to build upon the solid foundation by intentionally engaging with our independent agents to generate profitable growth and by leveraging technology innovations to further improve our workflows, service offerings and operational efficiencies. I look forward to reporting on our progress in future calls. Thank you.

Thank you, Kevin. While we requested and received questions in advance of today's call, we have worked answers to these questions into our prepared remarks. If there are any additional questions, please feel free to reach out to us. This now concludes the Donegal Group Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Webcast. You may now disconnect.