Good morning, and thank you for joining us on our conference call. I'm Andreas Ruben Madsen, the CEO of Alm.

Brand Group since March 1st this year. As usual, I have with me our Head of IR, Mads Thinggaard.

This morning, we published our interim report for the first quarter of '26, and I will now walk you through the presentation of our results. Let's now look at the highlights for my first quarter as CEO.

Please turn to slide two for some of the headlines regarding our business in the first months of the year. I'm pleased with the overall financial performance in a very satisfactory Q1 with strong underlying improvement in the claims ratio.

Growth in personal lines faded somewhat in Q1 '26 from a double-digit level in Q4 '25. This was as expected due to the year-on-year effects from last year's repricing fading out.

Growth of over 6% during Q1 in private line does, however, indicate that we are continuing to take market shares in this market. In commercial lines, we experience a decline in the top line revenue as a result of our efforts to improve profitability and reduce volatility in an increasingly soft market for workers' compensation.

Adjusted for the areas we work on in this respect, which is workers' compensation and industrial customers, the commercial portfolio reflected a premium growth of 2% year-on-year. We succeeded with an improvement in the undiscounted underlying claims ratio in commercial lines of 2.6 percentage points year-on-year, while personal lines are more impacted by icy roads conditions in Q1, but still delivering an improvement of 1.3 percentage points in underlying claims.

Now, I would like to turn to slide three for our financial highlights. Insurance revenue grew to above 2.9 billion in the quarter.

The insurance service result was 496 million compared to 337 million in Q1 last year. We view this as a good start to the year, especially considering the strong underlying development.

Weather-related claims were much lower than we would normally expect for Q1, while I would characterize large claims as being on a normal level in Q1. Investment income in Q1 was a loss of 43 million, which related to geopolitical turmoil impacting equities as well as bond returns in a negative direction.

It's worth remembering that we, as a company, are set to benefit from increasing interest rates looking ahead. Other income and expenses are significantly lower compared to last year, primarily due to the absence of integration costs related to Codan, reflecting the completion of the integration process.

Now, let's move on to slide five. The group made a technical result of 496 million in the quarter, up from 337 million last year.

The significant improvement was driven by underlying improvements as well as higher run-off gains. In personal lines, year-on-year, we had an improvement in insurance service result of 55 million to now 246 million.

This was due to underlying improvements, lower ratios for weather and large claims, as well as continued growth. Insurance service result for commercial lines was 250 million against 146 million last year, driven by a combination of significant underlying improvements and much higher run-off gains than Q1 last year.

Please turn to slide six. Insurance revenue grew 2.5% in the quarter compared to 4.6% last quarter as a result of fading effects from last year's repricing and an increasingly soft market for workers' compensation.

In personal lines, we're still taking market share while the effects of repricing are fading as expected. Therefore, I'm quite pleased with a growth in personal lines of 6.4 percentage points year-on-year.

In commercial lines, we are seeing a decline in premiums of 1.8% due to our work with improving profitability and reducing volatility in an increasingly soft market for workers' comp. Adjusted for workers' compensation and industrial customers, commercial portfolio reflected a premium growth of 2%, which is acceptable.

Now, moving on to slide seven with the claims ratio. Q1 claims ratio was down 480 basis points year-on-year in a quarter with lower weather claims than a normal Q1, a higher level of run-off gains, and a strong underlying improvement.

The underlying claims ratio was 160 basis points lower year-on-year, driven by profitability initiatives, 170 basis points on an undiscounted basis. The underlying improvement especially visible in commercial lines with a 260 basis point improvement in underlying claims year-on-year, while personal lines, still positive, were impacted more negatively by icy road conditions.

Personal lines showed an improvement in undiscounted underlying claims of 120 basis points year-on-year. Now, please turn to slide eight.

The combined ratio in personal lines improved to 84.5 from 87.1 last year due to lower underlying claims, a decline in the cost ratio, and lower weather and large claims. Premium growth is still on a high level of 6.4% despite fading effects from repricing.

Please turn to slide nine for commercial lines. In commercial lines, we observed a significant reduction in the combined ratio to 81.3 in Q1 '26, down from 89.3 in Q1 '25.

This improvement was supported by higher run-off gains of around 600 basis points year-on-year, largely driven by cargo and property-related claims. Additionally, lower underlying claims contributed to a further 240 basis point reduction year-on-year.

The cost ratio was also decreased by 50 basis points year-on-year in commercial lines, providing additional support, although large claims rose to 11.3 percentage points in Q1, slightly above the normal level of 10% typically expected for commercial lines. Now, move on to slide 11 for the investment result.

You may notice that we, as of this quarter, have begun disclosing returns on our free portfolio in response to requests from many of you. Investment result in Q1 showed a loss of 43 million in Q1 with 35 million of this loss stemming from the free portfolio, which was adversely affected by a decline in share prices.

Additionally, our bond portfolio was impacted by rising interest rates and widening credit spreads. As you'll be aware, this was driven by the geopolitical turmoil experienced during Q1.

I'd also like to take a moment to address our fixed income line, which amounts to 0.9 billion DKK, with approximately half that number placed in private debt, an asset class which has received some attention recently. I'd like to highlight that this exposure is limited to a well-diversified portfolio of loans to European companies.

Now, finally, please turn to slide 13. We are revising our guidance for the insurance service result in '26 upwards by 150 million to 1.8 to 2.0 billion, excluding run-off gains for Q2 to Q4 of 2026.

This follows a strong underlying development in Q1 as well as a high level of run-off gains. We continue to expect around 2% in run-off gains looking ahead.

The cost ratio is still expected to be at around 17% for 2026, while the combined ratio, excluding the run-off result in Q2 to Q4, is expected to be 83.5 to 85.5, an improvement of 100 basis points. Our guidance for the investment result is lowered by 50 million to 150 million in '26 following the loss in Q1.

This adjustment also reflects a nice rebound in Q2 so far. Consequently, guidance for profit before other income and expenses is upgraded by 100 million to 1.95 to 2.15 billion.

Other income and expenses remain unchanged and guided at an expense of half a billion for 2026. With this, I conclude our presentation and hand over the word to our moderator.

Thank you.

Yes. Good morning.

Thanks for taking my questions. A first question would be on something that is not part of the report, but the Supreme Court ruling that we will get in an hour.

Just wondering, since you don't mention it as a contingent liability in your report, you did mention in the annual report the dispute you had with Gard. Just wondering why you don't mention this as a contingent liability.

You don't see it as a contingent liability, or you don't see it as a material impact on your reserves? How should we look at sort of the potential outcome here versus the 7 billion of claims reserves you have in workers' compensation?

Since we will get the ruling after this call, most likely it would be good to get a bit of flavor at this stage. Thank you.

Thank you, Asbjørn. To answer your question, we see nothing new in this regard compared to the situation when we did our annual report not that many months ago.

We have a general statement in our annual report regarding a general exposure we will always have as a group to these types of lawsuits or disputes, and we don't see no reason to sort of that going into as we approach the ruling today. Then to round off on that, I would say, as we also say, I think let us now just wait.

I think we will get clarity very soon. Obviously, we will aim to provide clarity as soon as we can and are following it closely up to the ruling coming here at 12:00.

Okay. Fair enough.

If I then may, you paid a dividend a little more than two weeks ago, and I guess we're still waiting for you to initiate the buyback. Is there any sort of link between first of all, the postponed buyback, but secondly, your dividend payment, your decision to pay a dividend and what you see as sort of scenario and potential outcomes of this case?

No,

in general, I would say, but I think you're aware we we have a very comfortable solvency situation. We have a robust solvency situation.

We we we're not postponing any any buyback. We communicated that we're expecting to start it in Q2.

We are now only one month into that. That being said, I think there's there's some good reason to We first of all had a a Q1, a general Q1 yeah, financial statements we'd like to have provide clarity for, and then we also have the Supreme Court ruling coming very soon.

We we're still on within the overall time frame that we communicated being sometime during Q2.

Okay. Fair enough.

Then if I may, on your actual numbers and the underlying claims ratio improvement in Q1 to 170 basis points, somewhat above the guidance that you've given for the full year and your communication on the improvement being back-end loaded during the year, how much of this also given that you raise your guidance by 150, which to a large extent seems to be, you could say, low-quality driven in Q1, how recurring do you see this underlying improvement? How much has been stochastic and basically luck in Q1?

Yeah. I think, first of all, just I would confirm that you are right that most of our upgrade comes from weather and run-offs this time around, but does, however, provide a good solid bottom line in Q1 nonetheless.

I think to give you some flavor of it, I think something just above percentage points, maybe slightly above there, is probably more what I would consider a structural level for now. We did have some tailwind within certain segments seeing both a favorable development in private lines and also in commercial lines, especially in commercial lines, but I would say probably you shouldn't expect quite as much on a going basis for now.

For the full year, is it fair to assume that we'll be above the 100 basis points given the good start of the year?

Slightly above would be our sort of what we're aiming for.

Okay. Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Just following up on the questions in regards to the underlying improvements coming through.

I guess ahead of the quarter, you communicated them to be back-end loaded, and now they are suddenly front-end loaded. What has happened, and why is this only just above the 100 basis points for the full year?

I think, as I think we've commented on also previously, that you will see some fluctuations from quarter to quarter, and most of the improvements you're seeing are definitely structural, created by some of the effects we've been mentioning previously being to highlight them, I would say, a bit of tailwind from synergy overhang here in Q1. We also have a favorable impact from reinsurance, maybe around let's say 50 basis points for the group, most of that being in commercial lines.

Then I also think it's fair to say that we have some support also in Q1 coming from our overall profitability initiatives within commercial lines where, as you may have noticed, also we did see some workers' comp and industrial customers leave. Those kind of effects playing in, but we also had, to be fair, some stochastic tailwind on average, which we would not expect to see every quarter from now on.

Martin, if I may, it's Mads here. What we actually said ahead of Q1 was that the effect from the strategy initiatives will be back-end loaded.

In the start of the year, we would have support from still delta from the synergies we implemented last year from the integration of or related to Codan that have a bit of effect still here in the start of the year as well as the effects from the massive repricing last year kicking in mostly in the start of the year. We were actually pointing to kind of a 1% improvement in the year, but from different sources.

Okay. All righty.

Just a final question from my side. In terms of the customer dividend, I guess you have shed some more light on it over the course of Q1.

What has the response been so far? What kind of feedback do you get on it?

What are sort of the ambitions with this customer dividend or this loyalty scheme?

Thank you, Martin. I think we're we're happy to see that we're getting the type of feedback mostly that that many of our customers sees this sees this as definitely positive.

We feel it's a It may not be unique for us compared to to some of the other market players, but but we feel that it is definitely new for us that we have the ability now because our our main owner has has has gotten the financial strength to support us in this meaningful way, and we feel this is a good way to to also for to benefit especially our loyal customers which have been for us with us for many years and which have a number of products with us, also the customers we would be aiming most to to actually retain. We we're looking very much forward to to seeing the effects of this as as

we move on. Thanks.

Thanks a lot, and thanks for taking my questions as well. The first one I have is a bit on the revenue growth, especially for the personal lines.

The year-on-year growth we see in Q1, do you see that as a good indication of where we should expect growth to be in the coming quarters? Or do we still expect some headwind from pricing or other items that could indicate that growth could come down through the year?

How should we think about that if you could give a bit of guidance on that as the first question? That would be super nice.

Thanks, Mathias. I think we're very happy to see a continued growth in personal lines.

Sort of rough indications we would consider half of the growth, around 3 percentage points, coming from actual new customers being brought continuously to the group, much of that from our strong partnerships with the banks. Then now we are in the beginning of Q1, as Mads also mentioned, might see a slight sort of tailwind in the beginning still from the remaining parts of the repricing fading, even though we are starting to come down now as you've seen compared to last quarter.

I think an indication for the full year could be something for personal lines around And we have the indexation and around 2%, and then maybe let's say 2% or 3% coming from market shares on top of that.

Perfect. That was very clear.

Then if you move to the workers' compensation segment where you now say you lose out on a few customers, maybe you could say a bit more about the profitability of those lost contracts, were they on par with the group combined ratio or the return on capital allocated? Maybe you could say something there on what's going on in that segment at the moment.

Happy to do that. I think many of you will recall that also from previous discussions that workers' compensation, both for us and for our peers, has historically been a product which from time to time, and recently so, has struggled a bit in terms of overall profitability.

We've had a sort of a conviction that we've been for some time quite skeptical around especially stand-alone workers' compensation. We feel it typically creates a better balance for us if we can do it in combination with other products where we typically, on average, would have a higher margin and earnings.

What's happened this time, I would say, is that we have seen a development where, for reasons not completely known to us, we have certain players being willing to underwrite workers' compensation at levels that we would see as not profitable. We have not been willing to do so this way around either.

Most of the reduction would be from stand-alone customers and leaning towards the larger segments where we've been the most skeptical. This is not a new theme for us, as I mentioned.

I think you would recall that I have mentioned this in the past, but we see the effect now in Q1 also because as you also may recall, we do have a large part of our commercial portfolio turning on 1/1. Sure,

sure. Just to clarify a bit on that, it's fair to assume that the combined ratio and the return on capital has not been fantastic on those people that is leaving Alm.

Brand at the moment? Quite the contrary, it's improving the profitability despite that the revenue goes a bit down?

That is right. That's the way we see it, or else we, in general, wouldn't have that approach.

We do not see this as something that's really adding meaningful margins to us, and also from a capital standpoint, this is not the best segment to be in.

Perfect. If I may do this last third question, then I'll jump back in the queue.

On inflation, what are you seeing out there at the moment? There's a lot of stories out there on oil prices and what else.

What are you seeing, and have you already started to adjust some prices, or how long can you wait before you start to adjust prices? Maybe you have something you could say there, and then I'll jump back in the queue.

Sure. Of course, we're following the situation closely.

Also, I think you might be pointing at especially the development we're seeing in energy prices after the situation with the war in the Middle East, which may also start to translate into certain material prices. I think as we see it for now, we do not see this as something that puts us in a position where we need to do repricing on any meaningful large scale.

We don't see that for now. That being said, obviously, we're following it closely, and if this turns into be something that is very prolonged, then we'll have to re-evaluate continuously to see where we go.

For now, we don't see that impact there.

Thanks a lot. That was really clear.

Yes, thank you, guys. Just a quick question and basically a follow-up on some of Mathias' question on the commercial lines.

Just in terms of the premium growth, how should we think of this? I appreciate that you write in the report that there's an ongoing initiative in workers' comp.

Does that apply to industrial as well, meaning that this is a continued sort of pruning process that will continue to impact the commercial premium growth through the year? Or should that turn sort of positive on a quarter-on-quarter basis anytime soon?

Thank you.

I can start by maybe giving some rough indications of a decomposition. We have 1.8 percentage points overall reduction.

I would put indexation at around 2%. Then we also would have a slight tailwind from some of the repricing fading out last year that could come to, let's say, around 0.5%.

Then the initiatives or at least the effects of our renewal within especially workers' compensation and certain industrial clients would account for 3.5% in reduction of premiums. If you look at that effect, the last one, is something that we would see continue through the year.

Mechanically, we would probably see a slight fade towards the end if you look at it on a relative basis due to last year, but I think in an overall statement, it is something that will impact the group growth for the entire year. If you go in very high sort of numbers, you might argue that if you look at personal lines, we still see some positive market intake of 3% to 4% on top of indexation and repricing.

On the other hand, on commercial lines, we have the opposite effect coming from the effects of this pruning, to say.

Super helpful. Thank you.

Thanks for taking my question. My first question is actually a clarification on your comments of commercial lines.

Judging that you started this repricing and portfolio pruning action recently, is that going to be a multiyear adjustment process or is that just an impact we should consider just for this year? That's my first question.

Go ahead, please.

No, it's okay. Maybe start with that, and I'm happy to take a second one following.

I think, Youdish, if you go back in a slightly longer perspective than just recent quarters, I think this has been sort of a core part of our strategy and narrative for a long time. If you go back to the CMD, you'd also see our voice-over of what segments we sort of are most focused on growth.

Within commercial lines, that would be agriculture and the sort of larger part of SME, the small to medium-sized. We've always stated that we don't guide growth and that we need to be able to walk away from unprofitable business.

I don't think this is a new thing for us, but I would say that, to be fair, I think we couldn't have fully sort of foreseen what the market would be like in workers' compensation, and it's definitely not become better during the last year. It's gone worse.

It's become even, I'd say, even more soft. We wouldn't maybe fully have predicted this.

How it will be next renewal or for the major parts turning in the end of the year, we'll have to see. That's sort of the situation.

Now we are where we are.

All right, all right. Thank you very much.

My second question unfortunately is on the on the upcoming ruling on on workers' comp. Look, in the in the event of an adverse ruling, we only have some official estimates from the Ministry of Employment.

I was wondering, you must have already reviewed your own book, past cases, etc. How swiftly would you be able to come out and and give us your best estimate of what the cost is likely to be?

Is that going to be like, like very like within a day, or is that going to take weeks, weeks or months?

I think just to restate it, now we will have to see what the Supreme Court ruling will be. As you alluded to, obviously, we've prepared for what may come.

Depending on how clear the ruling is, we'll have to see, but I can promise you guys that we will do our utmost to provide clarity as soon as possible.

All right, fair. Thank you very much.

Thanks for joining today, and have a good day.