Douglas K. Howell
Thanks, Pat, and hello, everyone. Today, I'll walk you through our earnings release and provide some comments on organic growth and margins by segment, including how we are seeing the rest of the year shape up. Next, I'll move to the CFO commentary document that we post on our IR website and walk you through our typical modeling helpers. And then I'll conclude my prepared remarks with my usual comments on cash, M&A and capital management. All right. Let's flip to Page 3 of the earnings release. Brokerage segment organic growth of 5.3% was right in line with our June IR Day guidance. With our first quarter organic at 9.5%, year-to-date, we are at 7.6%. Looking forward to the second half of '25, we see third and fourth quarter organic each around 5% plus, which will put full year organic in the 6.5% to 7.5% range. Let me give you 4 call-outs on that. First, recall from our first quarter earnings call and our June IR Day, our 9.5% first quarter organic growth had some positive timing that is now flipping to a headwind in the second half. Second, as we discuss every quarter, organic can be dependent on those large and lumpy live cases. Given the current interest rate outlook uncertainty, clients may accelerate or even delay when to buy policies. Third is property rates further decreases or on the other hand, a large CAT here in wind season, causing a quick shift higher would also influence our organic and fourth, our casualty rate. We are seeing some lines perhaps bottoming out and other lines continuing to steadily march higher. Looking to Page 5 of the earnings release to the Brokerage segment adjusted EBITDAC table. Second quarter adjusted EBITDAC margin was 36.4%, up 334 basis points year-over-year and above our June IR Day expectations. Let me walk you through our typical bridge from last year. First, if you pull out last year's 2024 second quarter earnings release, you'd see we reported back then adjusted EBITDAC margin of 33.1%. Now adjust that using current FX rates, which for this quarter is next to nothing. So just assume adjusted EBITDAC margin levelized for FX would remain at 33.1%. Then organic growth of 5.3% gave us about 60 basis points of expansion this quarter. The roll-in impact of M&A used about 40 basis points. The impact of lower rates on fiduciary interest income used about 30 basis points. And then interest income on the cash we're holding for Assured Partners added about 340 basis points of margin this quarter. Follow that bridge, and it will get you to second quarter 2025 margin of 36.4%. That's great discipline by the team. As for the second half of the year, we don't see anything that causes us to change how we view underlying margin expansion potential. We call it organic greater than 4%. We should see some underlying margin expansion, then say at 6.5% organic, perhaps around 70 basis points of expansion and at 7.5% organic, around 90 basis points of expansion. I would say the same thing looking out towards '26. We have a long list that will continue to benefit our productivity and quality, including a more stable labor environment, increased returns from our technology spends on client-facing sales and service tools, our proven early AI successes, further centralization of back-office services, all on top of an industrial strength core operating system that can handle significantly more revenue with marginal costs. So in a sound bite, in any organic environment, we still see significant opportunities to get better, faster and more productive and thereby provide higher quality offerings to our clients at lower cost. Sticking on Page 5. Risk Management segment organic at 6.2%. As Pat said, that's a bit better than our expectations due to strong new business revenues from contracts that incepted in Q2. And for the year, we continue to see organic in that 6% to 8% range. Adjusted EBITDAC margin of 21% was better than our June IR Day expectations. And looking forward, we still see full year margins closer to 20.5%. Turning now to Page 7 of the earnings release and the corporate segment shortcut table. Compared to our June IR day expectations, the adjusted interest in banking line and the clean energy line, both were very close to our expectations. The adjusted acquisition cost line related to our typical tuck-in acquisitions came in a penny better and the adjusted corporate line was $0.04 below. That's solely due to a larger noncash unrealized FX remeasurement loss because of the dollar weakened in June. That has already mostly reversed here in July. So it just shows the noise that this can create in our corporate segment results. So let's move now from the earnings release to the CFO commentary document that we posted on our website. As a general statement, please read the headers and the footers on each page carefully on how numbers in this document include or exclude the impact of Assured Partners. Flipping to Page 3 and our typical modeling helpers, most of the second quarter '25 actual numbers were close to what we provided back in June. One call out here, a small flip from amortization to depreciation that cost us about a penny of adjusted EPS. That's simply because we updated opening balance sheet numbers related to our recent acquisition. Finally, on this page, please look at the FX disclosures for the Brokerage and Risk Management segments as you refine your models. Turning now to Page 4 and the corporate segment outlook for the second half of '25. There's not much change here from what we provided 8 weeks ago. So you can flip to Page 5 to our tax credit carryovers. As of June 30, about $685 million, which we get over the next few years. And recall that those -- that benefit flows through our cash flow statement, not through the P&L. Also, no change to the value of these credits from the recent U.S. OB3 tax bill. So that's good news. And while I'm at it, there isn't anything concerning to us in the other provisions of the new bill either. So that's good news, too. Turning to Page 6, the investment income table. We've updated our forecast to reflect current FX rates and changes in fiduciary cash balances. These numbers assume two future 25 basis point rate cuts, one in September and one in December. You also see that the interest income associated with Assured Partners financing runs through the third quarter in this table. If we close before that, obviously, that number would come down. Shifting down the page is the rollover revenue table. Only a small change from our June CFO commentary, and that was due to a refinement in the seasonality of revenues from our second quarter '25 acquisitions, which are more heavily weighted towards first quarter versus second, third and fourth. And then looking forward, you'll see in the pinkish columns to the right, they included estimated revenues for brokerage M&A closed through yesterday. So there's a standard reminder, you'll need to make a pick for future M&A. And also, you'll need to make a pick for when AP might close. The purple section on that page should help with that. All right. Moving to cash, capital management and M&A funding. Available cash on hand at June 30 was about $14 billion and no outstanding borrowings on our line of credit. With our strong second half cash flows, we are in a great position to fund another $2 billion of M&A here in '25 and is looking like we would have about $5 billion in '26 before using any stock, all while maintaining a solid investment-grade debt rating. Think about that for a minute, another $7 billion over the next 17 months. That should allow us to add another $600 million to $700 million of EBITDAC at a really nice arbitrage. And I'm bullish about this because for 20 years, we've invested in building the chassis that can support billions and billions more of revenue, provide world-class service and enable thousands and thousands of talented producers to win at the point of sale. So our M&A strategy has a fantastic outlook. So a great quarter and first half in the books, and we have an exciting future with AP, organic growth, margin expansion, M&A opportunities, all driven by a talented team with a bedrock culture. Those are my comments. Back to you, Pat.