What I said was they saved the best for last. Hi, my name is Meryl Golden. I'm the President and CEO of Kingstone Companies. Thank you for being here today. I have no slides. It's doing something different. What I'm going to do is I'm going to tell you who we are, where we've been, where we're going, and why we'd be a good investment for you. Let me start with who we are. Kingstone is a regional Property and Casualty insurer, and we're focused on catastrophe-exposed properties. Believe it or not, we've been in business for 140 years. We've been on NASDAQ since 2009. Today, almost all of our business is in downstate New York. When I say catastrophe exposed, what I mean is we insure homes that are in areas that are subject to hurricanes or wildfires. The Top 10 writers of homeowners insurance in the country, companies like State Farm and Allstate that you've heard of, they write 70% of the homeowner insurance in the country, and they are not interested in growing their footprint in catastrophe-exposed property. What that means is that Kingstone has fewer competitors and smaller competitors, and because there are fewer competitors, we have the opportunity to write at higher margins. We have completely reinvented Kingstone since I joined seven years ago, and I'm going to talk a little bit about that today. 2025 was our most profitable year in the history of the company. We ended almost doubling our earnings per share to $2.88. We had a 43% return on equity, and our book value per share increased 75% to $8.28. We closed 2025 with nine consecutive profitable quarters. We did have a blip in the first quarter of this year that I'll talk about. Now we are on a path to grow the company. We're looking to double the size of the company to $500 million by the end of 2029. We're going to do that by continuing to grow in downstate New York, as well as expanding geographically. I will talk about that today as well. Let me tell you where we've been. When I joined the company, we were an underperforming business. We had an underwriting loss for five years, from 2019 to 2023. 2022 was really the worst year in our history, where we lost over $2 per share, and it was also a year where we had $30 million of debt that matured in one of the worst credit markets in history. We made it through. There was very little investment in the company before I joined. What we did is we've rebuilt every aspect of the company, the leadership team, the product, the systems, the claims organization, risk management protocols, you name it. We're a completely different company today than we were when I joined. Let me cover some of the most important things that three of the most important things that we did that contributed to Kingstone's turnaround. The first is the biggest game changer for the company was developing what we call our Select product. Basically what this product is, it's built using an abundance of data and modern data science techniques in order to properly match rate to risk. For those that are not familiar with insurance, one of the key things is price segmentation and making sure that you're charging the right amount for the underlying exposure. One of the keys was producing this new product, what it's done is it's changed our mix to we're writing more responsible, more financially responsible policyholders who maintain their home, higher value homes, higher deductibles. The result is that our frequency of loss or the number of claims we have for every policy that we write has declined by 30% over the product we used to sell in the state of New York. It's really been a game changer for the company. A second aspect of this reinvention of Kingstone was reducing our expenses. We're very efficient today. At the end of 2021, we had an expense ratio of $0.41 on every dollar of insurance that we write. At the end of 2025, that was down to 30 points. We've taken 25% out of our expenses. That allows us to be either more competitive or have higher margins. It's been a great thing. The last point about our turnaround is that we had grown, and we had expanded to four additional Northeast states. To say that we did it in a smart way would be a gross overstatement. We lost a lot of money in those states. They never were more than 20% of our total volume, but it almost brought the company down, honestly. We worked with regulators to reduce our footprint in those states, and today they represent only 2% of our policies in force, and actually making more money than we are in New York. Those are three of the key things that resulted in our turnaround. The timing of the turnaround was fortuitous because our first profitable quarter was the fourth quarter of 2023, and two very large writers in downstate New York. received regulatory approval to withdraw from the state in the second half of 2024. We were sitting there with correct price. We were priced right, we had capacity, and these companies withdrew from the state, and we ended up writing $29 million of business that was previously insured with those companies. It was just fortuitous timing for us. Really what sets Kingstone apart? Couple things. The first is we are master executors. We had nine consecutive quarters of profitability. We have a multi-year track record of disciplined growth and profit. Second is pricing sophistication. I mentioned that price segmentation is very important in the insurance industry. You need to match rate to risk, our Select product does a great job matching rate to risk, it's only 60% of our policies in force today. As Select continues to grow, there's certainly more upside for the company. I already mentioned operating efficiency, we have very low expenses relative to the competition. Distribution, we are committed to the agency channel. We have very deep and broad relationships with our producers. Our claims organization, listen, that's where the money is paid. You cannot under-invest in your claims organization. We did a complete rebuild, hired some very experienced claims managers and adjusters, and they have a philosophy to pay what the contract requires, not a penny more, not a penny less, and to provide excellent customer service. I really think we have an advantage in terms of our claims organization. Last, our very healthy balance sheet. We have no debt. We paid off that $30 million of debt that I mentioned, and we also have very conservative reinsurance. For perspective, we have first event retention for any catastrophe event of $5 million pre-tax. If Hurricane Sandy, Superstorm Sandy were to hit Long Island today, with our current footprint, in total, it would cost $100 million. $95 million would be paid by our reinsurance partners, and $5 million pre-tax would be paid by Kingstone. That's $0.27 per diluted share. A hurricane or a catastrophe event is an earnings event, not a capital event for the company. Where are we going? Now that we're in this position, we're really looking to grow. As I said, we have a plan to grow to $500 million, doubling the size of the company, by the end of 2029. We're going to do that in three ways. The first is to continue growing organically in downstate New York. We continue to improve our product and add new producers. In the first quarter, for perspective, our organic growth in downstate New York was 16%. We're also going to grow in downstate New York inorganically, and there is a third company that withdrew from the homeowners market nationally, and we were able to sign a renewal rights agreement with them. As they renew policies, we provide a quote to the producer. That business, we're writing about $800,000 a month, and ultimately over the three-year non-renewal period, we think we'll write $25 million-$35 million of business. In the first quarter, that inorganic growth was 4%. In the first quarter, we grew 20% in downstate New York. We're also expanding geographically. We announced recently we're going to start writing in California, is our first expansion state, and we're going to start writing business. It's imminent on June 29th. We're going to be writing on what's called an excess and surplus lines basis, which means we're not subject to the rate regulation in the state of California. Just for perspective, California is, I think it's the third largest homeowners market in the country. It's $15 billion in homeowners insurance premium. New York is $8 billion. Double the size of New York. California is one of the most capacity-constrained markets in the country. There's a great need for new insurance companies to be writing there. The primary issue, most people think about California and they think wildfire. Wildfire is certainly an issue, but the primary issue in California is regulation. The regulation in California does not allow companies to properly match rate to risk. Starting a couple years ago, the largest writers in California, like State Farm, Allstate, Mercury, stopped writing new business in the state. The January wildfires happened. That only added to the capacity constraints in the marketplace. We are entering as an E&S writer, which I said allows us to match rate to risk. We're not subject to rate regulation in the state, and our plan for California is to capitalize on the same things that we do well in New York and bring that to the California market. One of those things is to have a very sophisticated product. We've spent a lot of time building Select for California. It, unlike a lot of other carriers entering the state that are just copying admitted products and raising the base rates, we built a product specific for California, and we use three different wildfire models. We use the models to decline risks if their wildfire risk is too high to price the risks, and also for which wildfire deductible will be required on that business. We also have a real-time system where we manage our risk concentration in California. The last thing you want to do is write a lot of business in any given area. We're managing our concentration of risk in real time, and that's a key thing for the company. We put out guidance again this year, but we changed the way we put out guidance, and we separated catastrophe losses from what we're calling the underlying combined ratio or the underlying business, because we want investors to understand the health of the underlying business, even if there was some catastrophe event. In Q1, as I mentioned, for those that know the Northeast, it was a bad winter. Kingstone, all of our businesses in downstate New York, if you look historically at Kingstone's results, the first quarter is typically the least profitable quarter for the company because of winter storm. We were fortunate in 2024 and 2025, catastrophe losses were very low. When we put out guidance for this year, we planned for average catastrophe losses. Even though first quarter was unprofitable for the company because there were 11 catastrophe events, we were still able to reaffirm every aspect of our guidance. The bigger story is that even though we had a large catastrophe loss in the first quarter, the underlying business improved in every dimension. Our underwriting profit improved. Again, ex cat underwriting profit improved. Our investment income was up by 60%, and we grew 20%. Other than cats it was a really excellent quarter for the company. Our guidance for this year is the average of the range of guidance for this year, the midpoint is $2.55. Cat losses cost us about $0.13 for every EPS, for every dollar of cat loss. If you take our 2026 results and you assume a benign cat year like 2025 was, then our earnings would be $3.50. A 20+% increase over 2025, which was our best year in history. You really do need to separate the cat losses from the underlying health of the business. Just to wrap up, what I can tell you is that our capital story now is as good as our operating story. As I mentioned, we have no debt at the holding company, and we reinstated our dividend of $0.05 a share. We've now paid a dividend for four quarters, and we do hope to grow the dividend. In May, the board authorized a 1 million-share buyback over the next two years. Since I have been CEO, the stock is up eightfold. We still think the stock is undervalued, and the share buyback by the board underscores their conviction of that as well. We have a really compelling story. The turnaround is complete. The results of the business are structural. The balance sheet is pristine. Our growth potential is unlimited. Our stock is currently at a 6.2 price-earnings ratio, when the average of personal lines, our peers, is over 10. There's clearly some upside. I have never been more optimistic about the trajectory of our business, and am confident that we can continue put up strong and consistent results. Over time, we believe that as we do that and continue to have great performance, that we'll build shareholder value. Thank you for your interest in Kingstone, and I'm happy to answer any of your questions. Yes. How did you get hired to turn around? How did I get hired to turn around Kingstone? I knew the former CEO of the company. When I was at Progressive, my last job, I managed the Northeast, and the former CEO at that time was the CEO of a large chain of insurance agencies. We used to sit on opposite ends of the table. He was my largest producer. He would always ask me for more commission, and I would say no. After I left Progressive, we stayed in touch. When Kingstone ran into trouble, he reached out to me for advice, and I ended up joining as the COO. I executed the turnaround, and he was the CEO at the time and supported all of the changes I was making in the business. Scott? Can you talk about the Select product? Who's the brains behind it? Why is it so special? Again, there's a lot of the turnaround of Kingstone is what I believe from my time at Progressive. It's all about price segmentation. The Select product is just a very finely segmented product to properly price homeowners coverage and make sure that the rate matches the underlying exposure. When I joined Kingstone, we didn't have a data science organization and a very small actuarial team. We worked with an outside actuarial firm, Milliman, and we gave them years of data, and they helped us build the Select product. Since then, our Chief Actuary and Head of Product, Sarah, has built out a data science organization and actuarial organization. We now refine the product ourselves. Relative to our competition, it's just a much more sophisticated product. I would say the most important element is your credit score, so how financially responsible are you? We do have competitors that it is the most important predictor of loss, and we have competitors that don't use that today. Sorry, go ahead. I was going to say for territory, many of our competitors will use county as an example. We rate on the census block level. It's just very fine segmentation. You know the New York market, because it's been in it for so long. You're going to take the Select product to California, which you have no experience in. What gave you confidence in its success? Well, Scott, we used that same actuarial consulting firm, Milliman. They're in California, and they have a lot of California experience, and they helped us redesign the Select product to be specific for California. To be honest with you, we don't know the market. We're taking our best shot. The greatest thing about being E&S is that we can change on a dime. We can change our rates every day if we want to. Will we get some things wrong? I'm sure we will. Will we be able to change them quickly? Absolutely. As I said, we are master executors. We will do whatever it takes to be successful in California, and I'm confident that we will be. Yes. What makes you sure of a situation? You mentioned 60% of bookings in force are Select. Policies in force. Policies. What's the? Yeah. Our legacy product, so the non-Select product, is profitable. The book is grandfathered, and we're going to let the business run off. As we grow and write new business and as the policies run off, it will naturally increase. At some point, we might move the remaining business to Select, since the book is profitable, we want to retain those customers. I don't know offhand the difference in loss ratio. I think they're comparable because they're different. They're priced. Our legacy book is all very tenured renewal business, our Select book is a mix of new and renewal. Even though our frequency of loss is much lower in Select, I think the loss ratios are comparable. Yes. Yeah. I would say we're not having any challenges on the distribution side in New York. Kingstone has been there a long time, and we are probably the largest writer of coastal homeowners in the state. Agents want to have Kingstone in their office. At the end of the day, it is about price. We do not really incent producers to write with-- We have relationships with them. We pay a fair commission. We listen to them. I know every one of our producers who writes more than $1 million. I have visited their office. I have talked to them. We make changes based on their input. We are a very agent-friendly company. But at the end of the day, their obligation to the consumer is to write the best coverage at the best price, and that is what they do. In California, since we are new, we have not announced this yet, but we did hire someone to be the head of our California business. She has been operating in California for a long time. She was at Mercury, which is one of the largest carriers in California. She was the head of sales there. She has great, deep relationships, and we will certainly benefit from that in our California entry. For Kingstone? Yes. For Kingstone. Yes. When we introduced the Select product, we introduced a different commission structure that is on average lower than the legacy product. Yes. How is the price soft on the property? I would not call the property market soft. Certainly, we've heard about different markets being soft, like commercial insurance is soft, auto insurance is soft. At least in downstate New York, I can tell you that our rates are still going up. They're just going up at a slower pace than they had been in the past. There's really two reasons. First is inflation. Replacement costs for homes continuing to go up. Labor costs are high, material costs are high, and the tariffs added to that. Second is because of global warming. Catastrophe events are more frequent and more costly, and homeowners insurers need to take both of those things into consideration in their pricing. I would not say the homeowners market is soft, I'd just say the rate of increase has slowed. Anyone else? Yes. We have very few lawsuits. We do have some slip and falls, things like that. I think the issue with social inflation is more in commercial insurance than in homeowners insurance. Yes. More of a reinsurance program. Sure. We are in market right now. Our catastrophe reinsurance is July 1st, and the market is definitely soft. We do expect that we will be able to buy more coverage at a lower price. It's a great thing. We have three different types of reinsurance. We have CAT that I just described. We also have a per-risk reinsurance. What is the maximum that we'll be on for any home? That's $825,000. We have coverage up to $11 million. If $11 million, God forbid, house burnt down, we'd be on $825,000. We also have quota share. In New York, it's 5%. In California, it's 30%. We give premium and losses to a reinsurer, and they pay us a ceding commission. Scott. Announced the share buyback recently. Have you been actively I'm not going to answer that question, but when we file the 10-Q, you'll be able to see purchases and the average price. Yes. Now working on the data science organization, how Sorry, say that again. What kind of talent? What kind of talent? We're a completely remote company. We can hire people from all over the country. Our data science organization, we've hired all experienced data scientists from other insurance companies. Mostly what they're working on is building the generalized linear model that underlies the Select product and improving that. That's primarily what they do. They're also, they build models for which inspections should we order, what's our conversion rate. They're doing a lot in the organization. We have four people in that group. Yes. Do you see In general or Kingstone? In general. Yeah. Brand loyalty. I think most people just don't want to deal with insurance because they don't understand it. Most people don't shop unless they have a bad claims experience or they get a large rate increase. I think that's just the way it is. When they're shopping, I think brand is really important. I think Progressive's spending billions, State Farm, Progressive, GEICO, spending billions on advertising. I think that is to become part of the consideration set when customers are shopping. In general, I don't think customers are brand loyal. I think it's all about price. I could be wrong. That's just my opinion. Last question, because we're out of time. Yes. I don't know if this is correct, I'm pretty sure North Bergen talked about flood insurance going to the 80s and later we lost the Camp Mystic with a flood. Do you ensure that you won't insure people like the Mystic cabin that's in a flood zone because children could die? First of all, that is a horrible tragedy. We don't write commercial insurance, and homeowners doesn't cover flood. It's not really relevant for Kingstone. Anyway, we're out of time. Thank you so much.