Mount Logan Capital Inc. ($MLCI)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Mount Logan Capital's First Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call. Before we begin, I would like to remind listeners that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements. These statements discuss our current expectations and projections relating to our financial position, results of operations, plans, objectives, future performance and business. These statements and other comments are not guarantees of future performance, but rather are subject to risks and uncertainty, some of which are beyond our control. These forward-looking statements apply as of today, and you should not rely on them as representing our views in the future. We undertake no obligation to update these statements after this call. For a description of the risks associated with Mount Logan Capital's business, please see our most recent filings with the SEC. In addition, we will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures during this call. Additional details and reconciliations of the GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures are in today's earnings release. This morning's conference call is hosted by Mount Logan's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ted Goldthorpe; President, Henry Wang; Chief Financial Officer, Brandon Satoran; Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Jordan Mangum; and Head of Investor Relations, Scott Chan. As a reminder, all references to dollar amounts on this call are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Goldthorpe. You may begin.

' Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. On our fourth quarter call in March, I described 2025 as the foundational year for Mount Logan. We completed the combination of 180 Degree Capital, transitioned to U.S. GAAP reporting and listed our shares on the NASDAQ. For 2026, our focus is on execution and converting that foundation into recurring revenue growth and improved profitability across the platform. This first quarter financial performance represents small but important early validation of that strategy. Notably, segment income increased 41% year-over-year to $3.3 million. Spread-related earnings returned to a positive $2 million contribution and fee-related earnings of $1.2 million reflect a meaningful improvement in underlying earnings quality as onetime items in the prior period roll off and incremental assets begin to contribute. We expect the accelerated momentum in earnings during the second half of 2026 and as we progress into 2027. We are also pleased to announce that we are paying our 27th consecutive quarterly dividend as a listed company, which consists of $0.03 per share distribution for shareholders of record as of May 26, 2026. Before we move to the business update, we felt it was very important to first address performance across our core managed portfolios, which provides the foundation for our growth narrative. We built our private credit franchise with the goal of being able to invest across all market cycles and environments and believe performance within the vehicles we manage reflect that. On the insurance investment portfolio, we generated a 6.8% yield in the first quarter or 7.5%, excluding funds withheld, a significant improvement quarter-over-quarter, reflecting full deployment and ongoing portfolio rotation into higher-yielding assets, which contributed to the positive swing in SRE of $3.1 million quarter-over-quarter. The Opportunistic Credit Interval Fund, or SOFIX, generated a return of 10.1% over the trailing 12 months ended March 31, 2026, and 1.1% year-to-date. SOFIX remains a differentiated interval fund and the vehicle's diversification and unique investment orientation position it well to absorb market volatility we observed late in the quarter. At BCP Investment Corporation, managed by Sierra Crest Investment Management, in which Mount Logan owns a 24.9% economic interest, nonaccruals improved to 6.2% of the portfolio at amortized cost, down from 7.1% in the prior quarter. The debt portfolio remains highly diversified across 72 portfolio companies and 33 industries with 81% in first lien loans and a weighted average yield of 12.8%, excluding nonaccruals and CLO income. Like our peers in private credit, we observed pressure in software-related credit valuations in the first quarter, driven primarily by liquid market volatility and AI-related uncertainty rather than fundamental credit deterioration. Our managed portfolios have limited exposure to large, broadly syndicated software credits. The exposure we do hold is concentrated in mission-critical, vertically specialized businesses, generally lower middle market originated with first lien seniority and meaningful equity cushions. Underlying revenue and cash flows across these positions remain healthy. We view any further dislocation in the sector as a source of opportunity for our opportunistic credit strategies, not a structural risk to our managed book. With that context, I will use the balance of my remarks to provide updates on several strategic actions announced during the quarter. As we announced in March, one of our core asset management vehicles, SOFIX, entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the assets of the Yield Street Alternative Income Fund managed by Willow Well. The transaction is expected to nearly double SOFIX net assets, adding over $100 million to the fund. It also has the potential to contribute an incremental $2.8 million of FRE annually to Mount Logan, which represents approximately 30% growth over our 2025 FRE. The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive to our earnings per share once closed. We currently expect the transaction to close in the third quarter of 2026, subject to regulatory and Yield Street AF shareholder approvals. We believe this is an important step in scaling our asset management platform and increasing our recurring fee-related earnings. We also believe the current environment in private credit may create additional opportunities for disciplined, well-capitalized companies like Mount Logan to acquire strategic assets at attractive valuations. The second item I want to highlight is the addition of approximately $120 million of managed assets from an existing relationship, which became effective during March. We expect these additional assets to contribute approximately $500,000 of incremental fee-related earnings in 2026 with the potential to contribute more than $1 million of incremental FRE in 2027. This addition reflects the depth of trust with an existing partner, the strength of our investment capabilities and our ability to expand mandates with limited incremental infrastructure, a pattern we expect to replicate as the platform scales. Together with the Yeild FRE transaction, these actions are expected to add approximately $20 million of incremental managed assets to our platform this year. We believe these additions will expand recurring FRE, strengthen the earnings base of the company and contribute to improved profitability as we move through 2026 and into 2027. Along similar lines, we remain highly focused on growing our insurance segment and its permanent capital base. We view controlled liability origination and product innovation as core to building durable spread-related earnings. We made meaningful investments in Ability's team, infrastructure and balance sheet to progress towards our goal of becoming a direct insurer of retirement solutions, and we hope to provide updates on this initiative in the coming months. We believe this transition could drive a meaningful step-up in long-term earnings power of the insurance segment as well as drive an increase in fees earned by Mount Logan management for its effort in managing Ability's investment portfolio. Lastly, we wanted to quickly touch on our capital markets activity during the first quarter. In January, we took advantage of favorable market conditions and completed a $49 million senior unsecured notes offering. extended our maturity profile at what we believe is an attractive fixed rate of 8%, reduced secured indebtedness and provides additional and future flexibility as we access a new source of capital. Consistent with our stated capital allocation framework, we closed a $15 million tender offer during the quarter. Subsequent to the tender, our Board authorized a new $10 million share repurchase program through December 2027. This authorization gives us continued flexibility to return capital opportunistically when we believe our shares do not reflect intrinsic value of the business. We are actively evaluating the most efficient manner to execute on the announced program, which may include affiliate or insider participation, and we look forward to updating investors on this initiative in the coming weeks. Taken together, each of these initiatives are designed to expand recurring revenue, strengthen earnings quality, improve profitability and increase investment in our business. With that, I will turn the call over to Brandon to review the financial results in more detail.

Thanks, Ted. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm excited to join Mount Logan as Chief Financial Officer, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak with investors on my first earnings call in this role. While I am new to the Mount Logan CFO position, I have been closely connected to the Mount Logan platform and its strategy through my role as CFO of our retail credit platform, which includes all of the public vehicles on the DC Partners and Mount Logan management credit platforms. That experience, coupled with more than 15 years working with and managing public companies, I believe, positions me well to help grow and scale this business over time. Importantly, it's very clear to me that Mount Logan has created a truly differentiated business model for an entity of its size that combines an asset-light alternative asset management platform with an integrated insurance solutions and permanent capital vehicles. With that in mind, I look forward to engaging directly with Mount Logan shareholders and the investment community as we work hard to enhance our financial performance and build long-term value. With that, I want to review our first quarter financial results in more detail. For the first quarter of 2026, total revenue was $10.6 million, up approximately 7% quarter-over-quarter. We reported a post-tax net loss of $6 million for the quarter or an 85% improvement from last quarter. The significant decrease in the net loss was a result of a large nonrecurring noncash goodwill impairment charge the company incurred during the prior quarter, which is now behind us. Looking at our segment results. Asset management revenue for the first quarter of 2026 was $2.5 million compared to $3.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. However, the company's earnings quality improved significantly as the decline from the prior quarter was primarily driven by an outsized nonrecurring transaction fee of $0.8 million earned in the prior quarter. Near term, we expect core management fees to continue to increase. However, these increases will likely be partially offset by the wind down of certain noncore legacy vehicles, including the AIF funds and CLOs. With that in mind, we are beginning to replace legacy revenues with new more scalable and predictable fee streams. This includes our profit-sharing arrangement with the majority owner of Sierra Crest Investment Management, the addition of over $100 million of assets from the Yield Street Alternative Income Fund and the benefit of the $120 million of managed assets from an existing relationship as well as higher transaction and advisory fees. We are beginning to see the contributions from these initiatives in 2026 and expect them to become more visible in our financial performance as the year progresses. Turning to Insurance Solutions. Net investment income, including investment income from our consolidated variable interest entities was $20.2 million in the first quarter of 2026 or an increase of $1.7 million or 9% from the fourth quarter of 2025. Excluding funds withheld and including the intercompany elimination of management fees, net investment income for the first quarter of 2026 increased 8% to $14.6 million compared to the prior quarter. The investment portfolio generated a 6.8% yield or 7.5%, excluding funds withheld and our insurance AUM increased to almost $1 billion, benefiting from the Vista IMA agreement announced during the first quarter of 2026 to manage an additional $120 million of assets. This represents an increase in yield of approximately 50 basis points on the investment portfolio quarter-over-quarter and approximately 20 basis points when excluding funds withheld. Ability's total managed assets Ability's total assets managed by Mount Logan, excluding funds withheld, were $699.4 million as of March 31, 2026, an increase of $38.7 million from the fourth quarter of 2025. During the quarter, we continued to focus on optimizing and high-grading the insurance portfolio via prudent and thoughtful portfolio rotation and deployment as well as ensuring the portfolio was fully deployed to drive spread earnings for our shareholders. Finally, I couldn't be more excited about the potential for Mount Logan to begin direct underwriting Ability Insurance products, as mentioned in his prepared remarks. This initiative has the potential to have a transformative impact on the economics of both our Insurance and Asset Management segments and the earnings power of our balance sheet via the organic growth engine it will provide. Looking at core earnings, fee-related earnings or FRE were $1.2 million for the first quarter of 2026 compared to $1.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. Again, as I noted previously, while the headline number decreased marginally, the earnings quality improved dramatically as the prior quarter's FRE included the benefit of that nonrecurring transaction fee of $0.8 million. Management fees, incentive fees, equity investment earnings and other fee income increased by $0.4 million. This was primarily driven by the increase in fees from insurance solutions as well as our exposure to BCP Investment Corporation. Looking ahead, we expect FRE will continue to improve as we execute on the strategic initiatives Ted laid out in his remarks. Spread-related earnings or SRE was $2 million for the fourth quarter -- first quarter of 2026 compared to a spread-related loss of $1.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2025. The significant quarter-over-quarter improvement in SRE was primarily driven by higher net investment income, from deployment of cash into higher-yielding assets and repositioning from nonperforming assets to performing assets as well as a lower cost of funds that was impacted by small favorable in-force updates within the long-term care block of $0.3 million compared to the prior quarter, which observed a $1.9 million unfavorable experience adjustments. As Mount Logan continues to scale, its insurance investment assets and earnings base management expects the long-term care runoff block to represent a progressively smaller contributor to overall insurance earnings volatility. Finally, moving on to our balance sheet. Mt. Logan's capital position as of March 31, 2026, remained strong with approximately $72.8 million of cash restricted cash and cash equivalents on hand. -- with virtually no near-term debt maturities. Further, as Ted noted, we successfully closed an investment-grade $40 million public bond issuance and which was largely used to refinance existing more expensive legacy secured debt. This transaction not only significantly termed out our debt capital structure and meaningfully lowered the company's cost of financing, it also provides meaningful incremental financial flexibility as a result of replacing the legacy secured debt, which at owners financial covenants with unsecured investment-grade public debt. Finally, as Ted mentioned earlier, the Board approved a dividend of $0.03 per share for the quarter, continuing our 27th consecutive quarter of dividends. Looking ahead, expense discipline and operational efficiency remain priorities across the platform. Recurring revenue streams are building several onetime headwinds are largely behind us, and our pipeline of growth initiatives is accelerating. While we are still in a period of active repositioning, the directional picture for both FRE and SRE has clearly improved from where we exited 2025. We -- we believe the actions we are taking today position Mt. Logan for stronger recurring earnings, improved profitability and greater shareholder value creation over time. With that, I will turn the call back over to Ted.

Thank you, Brandon. Before we open the call for questions, I just want to reemphasize the durability of the model that we are building. Mt. Logan operates as an integrated platform across scalable asset management business with a disciplined private credit franchise and a permanent insurance platform in Catalyst. The business is designed to compound recurring earnings across market cycles. -- as scale within the platform and as our newly contracted fee streams begin to convert into reported earnings, we believe we have a meaningful runway for profitability improvement and long-term shareholder value reach. That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, if you can please open the call for questions. .

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from George Tree with BMO Wealth.

A couple of quick questions for you. On the last call, I believe you mentioned the potential for some additional mortgage related activities in Q1 and throughout the year. What are you seeing on that front?

Yes. Good question. So we inherited a large legacy book of mortgages and real estate assets, and we've done a really big cleanup in the first quarter. So we've repositioned a lot of our legacy mortgage exposure and has the impact -- a couple of different impacts. One is we're replacing nonyielding REO with yielding assets. So there's less drag on portfolio yields. It reduces our earnings volatility and again, will really, really help normalize our SRE over time. So it's actually a really good transaction from Mount Logan, and it's something you'll see in our earnings in the next couple of quarters.

In your prepared remarks, you talked about the spreads in the software space and overall private credit, obviously, there's been some charges in it. Can you talk about the potential or the -- given how the strong balance sheet you talked about earlier, what's the opportunity for SOFIX and managed portfolio -- are you seeing good opportunity to deploy cash? Or are you still on the sidelines on that front?

Yes, I'd say, I mean we're being relatively prudent, but I'd say it's a really interesting environment because if you look at liquid credit markets, which are impacted by the same credit-related factors as private markets. Spreads are all type of types. So high yield is trading tighter today than before the ran were and leveraged loan spreads are at near-term types. . In the private markets, mostly driven by the fear that's being created by headlines, there's been elevated redemptions and slowdowns in fundraising. So we actually have seen some spread widening in our core business, and that is very, very good for new originations. I would say our pipeline is mediocre. Like it's not -- I think deal activity feels like it slowed down a little bit. But the deals we are doing tend to be higher, like better risk-adjusted return than what we've been doing 6 to 12 months ago. So it's definitely good for sowing.

Our next question comes from Greg Chan with Empire Life Investments.

I have 2. The first one, just on the direct MY-GA direct writing strategic priority. The multiyear and guarantee annuity market has become increasingly competitive as more platforms enter the space -- can you help us understand what differentiates ability and what potential distribution strategy would look like?

Yes, a really good question. That business has definitely become more challenged over time as people have come to the playbook of some of the original alternative asset management strategies. Again, like we've been reinsuring other people's liabilities, and we think the path to success for us is in writing our own policies. So we're not pursuing a highest rate strategy. If you price the highest, you'll get more flow. So we are very focused on matching our origination with our investment capabilities. So we expect this to kind of -- when we start direct writing, which will probably be sometime in the third quarter, we think this will lead to lower cost of capital. So we'll get higher ROEs and a little bit more control over originations. So we could match investment deployment with our litigation. Great.

And then my next 1 is just for Brandon. As you settle into the CFO role, what areas are your initial priorities then focus points?

Sure. So First and foremost, I think the -- my #1 priority during these early days of my tenure, is getting my arms around the capital management and our expense profile. Disciplined expense and capital management, I think, are critical for the future viability and success of working capital. . Second would be improving earnings quality, stability and scalability. So very much focused on continuing to grow our insurance invested assets and optimizing our balance sheet, driving more stable and recurring spread-related earnings over time and then further aligning logans earning profile with a broader insurance integrated alternative asset management peers that our comp to. And then I would say the third leg is really strategic growth execution. Notably, because I wear both hats now as CFO of MollevanCapital as well as CFO of our a number of our core products, pursuing opportunities across resolution, retail credit products and opportunistic M&A is a critical initiative for myself. And I'm fortunate to be able to shepherd both the vehicles as well as Mt Logan capital through these potential strategic M&A growth opportunities. So I would say those are my top 3 initial priorities

Our next question comes from Charles Burns with CIBC WG.

Ted, how are you? Pretty good. Very good. Just a couple of questions. It looks like the interest rate backdrop has definitely changed from lower rates to static rates to potentially higher rates. I just wondered what higher rates would the impact on Mt. Logan's business, both the asset management and the insurance segments.

Yes, a really good question. So we've been kind of warning for a long time that the biggest risk in the market that no one's factored in was higher rates. So everybody was wondering how fast rates are going to get cut and how much does it get cut? And no one is talking about higher rates. And obviously, a lot of the -- even pre the Iran situation, 1 of the things that we've been doing as a country are inflationary, whether that's deficit spending or other tariffs and other things, these are all inflationary. So what it means for us is our platform is very well set up for this. Most of our assets -- almost all of our assets are floating rate risk. So in all of our vehicles, higher short-term rates definitely flow right through to income. And part of our liability structure is fixed. So higher rates are definitely good for most of our vehicles. And insurance technically, we're hedged, we're asset liability matched. So there's soon to be a huge impact on insurance. So absent a huge default cycle, which obviously could happen if rates go higher, it's definitely positive for ourself.

Okay. The second 1 is the buyback that you announced. Have you executed anything on the buyback? And are you looking at other I think you had mentioned in your opening comments other things that you can consider to kind of narrow the gap between what the underlying business is worth and what the market seems to be valuing the business currently?

Yes. I mean we got caught a little bit in that air pocket post tender -- and obviously, there a lot of headwinds given all the headlines around private credit for the large alternative asset managers. What I'd say is this is the weird time of year. The short answer we have not started executing our buyback program because this is the weird time of the year where were black out basically for the first couple of months of the year because our annual stamens, which are March 31 -- like -- our annual statements don't come out until like about a month ago, and then now we're out again. So we've been kind of blacked out. Listen, we are very, very focused on where our stock price is -- and I think there's a lot of things we can do away from just execution to enhance shareholder value. And I'd say you've seen us do in the past, whether it's insider buying, whether it's tenders, whether it's other people buying our stock I think we're focused on everything right now in order to take advantage of our stock price trends.

Okay. And the final 1 is the earnings variability switching to U.S. GAAP I thought that was going to kind of limit the variability, but it doesn't seem to be in the reported earnings still seems to be some significant swings. So that gets back to how is the company analyst valuing the company with these earnings subject to so much variability.

Yes. Good question. I mean I'll go first and then Brandon and Scott can jump in as well. But what I'd say is, I mean, the variability historically has been around our insurance company. So under IFRS, there's big swings in the way our insurance company reports earning and obviously, under GAAP, a lot of that's mitigated. So for example, interest rate changes, we just have to mark on our entire balance sheet. Now it largely flows through the balance sheet and not the income statement. So the insurance companies' results are going to be a lot more stable. The volatility that you're seeing actually a lot of it has to do with Eusyncratic issues. So like, for example, last quarter, we booked a onetime gain that flowed through FRE this quarter, we didn't have the onetime gain. So our FRE quality is way higher this quarter despite what looks like volatility. And then the same thing about SRE. -- our SRE is up pretty dramatically, driven by our insurance team kind of doing a bunch of things internally. So again, it looks like there's earnings volatility, but it's really related to a couple of kind of key things, mostly portfolio rotation. We spent a lot of time, like Brandon mentioned earlier, there we've identified a lot of cost takeouts we can do. So we're hoping our earnings volatility will not be as pronounced as they've been historically. And then from the analyst perspective, again, I think we spent a lot of time with the analysts walking them through what's true core operating results versus accounting volatility.

Yes. And I would just add on to that. So you still are seeing some of the tail end of our listing in the U.S. transition to U.S. GAAP, et cetera, some of those costs flowing through the financials. It's also important to keep in mind, we did a large bond offering and a tender offer, which came with one-off expenses and an extinguishment loss on our the debt we retired. So all in, I would say that contributed to about $2 million worth of incremental volatility outside of the sort of ordinary course run rate, OpEx and operating performance during the quarter.

Chuck, Scott here. Maybe I'll have 1 more thing. If you take into. Sorry, just Sorry, if you take into consideration the portfolio right now as of Q1, it was 51% MYGA, and 49% in U.S. long-term care. So that proportion continues to favor MYGA. And as we continue to grow that portfolio, we'll see less volatility in the -- on the LTC side as we move ahead.

Okay. And look forward to the back half of this year and the improvement and growth, right?

Thanks, Chuck. .

There are currently -- there are currently no questions in queue. [Operator Instructions] And there are no further questions, so I will hand you back to your host to conclude today's conference.

Thank you all for your time today. As always, please feel free to reach out to us with any questions. We're always happy to discuss. We look forward to speaking to you again in August when we announce our second quarter 2026 results. . Thank you so much, and have a good weekend.

Thank you. This concludes the conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.