Hannover Ruck SE (HVRRY) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our earnings call on our results for the first quarter of 2026. Today's speakers are Clemens Jungkirchel, our CEO, and Tristan Hamelin-Majadis, CEO of Hanovery. For the Q&A, they will be joined by George Hever and Sven Althoff. With that, I'll hand over to you, Clemens. Thank you, Axel, and good morning from Hanover. So, let's dive into it. I think it's fair to say that we had a strong start into the year 2026. We've seen a continuation of the positive trends from recent quarters. Underlying profitability was very pleasing in both business groups, and the balance sheet and the resilience of Hanna-Marie have clearly been further strengthened. This will support sustainable earnings growth and will help to manage volatility going forward. We are operating in an unstable geopolitical environment. The Iran war, with its severe implications for people across the region, as well as for global economies, is contributing to elevated uncertainty. The impact on insurance and reinsurance from these ongoing events also remains uncertain. As it is not yet possible to come up with reliable estimates, we have not yet booked any precise amounts as a large loss estimate. So far, we have received only, I would say, a minimal number of claims notifications from our clients. We do expect to have some exposure. However, we feel comfortable that any losses that may potentially have occurred will be more than covered by the unused part of our large loss budget in the first quarter. So let me come back to Hanover East's overall performance in the first quarter, 2026, with a group net income of 711 million euros. We had a very good start to the year. In P&C reinsurance, The combined ratio of 83.6% is well below our target of 87%. And in line with our usual a...