Earnings call transcript: Assured Guaranty beats Q3 2025 expectations

Assured Guaranty Ltd (AGO) reported impressive third-quarter 2025 earnings, significantly surpassing analysts’ expectations. The company posted an earnings per share (EPS) of $2.57, a remarkable 71.33% above the forecasted $1.50. Revenue reached $206 million, exceeding projections of $198.34 million. Despite these positive results, the company’s stock saw a slight decline of 0.44% in after-hours trading, closing at $81.56.

Key Takeaways

• Assured Guaranty reported a significant EPS surprise of 71.33% for Q3 2025.
• Revenue exceeded expectations, marking a positive financial performance.
• The stock experienced a minor decline of 0.44% in after-hours trading.
• The company achieved record highs in adjusted book value and shareholders’ equity per share.
• Strong market position with 63% share in the insured U.S. municipal market.

Company Performance

Assured Guaranty’s performance in Q3 2025 was marked by substantial growth and strategic advancements. The company reported an adjusted operating income of $124 million, translating to $2.57 per share. Year-to-date adjusted operating income increased by 17% to $6.77 per share. The firm’s adjusted book value per share reached a record high of $181.37, and adjusted operating shareholders’ equity per share also hit a record of $123.10. Assured Guaranty continues to lead in the municipal bond insurance market, insuring 14 transactions over $100 million in the quarter.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $206 million, up from a forecast of $198.34 million
• Earnings per share: $2.57, significantly above the forecast of $1.50
• Net investment income increased by $11 million in Q3 2025
• Deferred premium revenue stands at $3.9 billion

Earnings vs. Forecast

Assured Guaranty’s actual EPS of $2.57 was a significant 71.33% above the forecasted $1.50, marking a substantial earnings surprise. The revenue of $206 million also exceeded expectations of $198.34 million, reflecting a 3.86% surprise. This performance highlights the company’s strong financial management and strategic initiatives.

Market Reaction

Despite the positive earnings report, Assured Guaranty’s stock experienced a modest decline of 0.44% in after-hours trading, closing at $81.56. This movement contrasts with the company’s strong financial results and may reflect broader market trends or investor profit-taking. The stock remains within its 52-week range, with a high of $96.5 and a low of $74.09.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Assured Guaranty remains optimistic about growth opportunities in various sectors, including the secondary municipal market, global structured finance, and infrastructure investments. The company is targeting shorter-term, higher-return transactions and plans to expand its global market presence, particularly in Europe and Australia.

Executive Commentary

CEO Dominic Frederico expressed confidence in the company’s future, stating, "We are very bullish on the ability of the company to produce and what production is going to look like going forward." COO Rob Bailenson added, "We see great opportunities with all three of our financial guarantee lines of business."

Risks and Challenges

• Economic Uncertainty: Potential impacts from global economic fluctuations.
• Regulatory Changes: Possible changes in financial regulations affecting operations.
• Market Competition: Intense competition in the financial guarantee sector.
• Interest Rate Fluctuations: Potential effects on investment income and financial performance.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the company’s investment portfolio strategy, focusing on yield optimization and safety. Other questions addressed the ongoing Puerto Rico legal strategy and potential opportunities in data center capital expenditures. Executives emphasized their commitment to exploring new revenue sources and maintaining a strong market position.

Full transcript - Assured Guaranty Ltd (AGO) Q3 2025:

Operator: Good morning and welcome to the Assured Guaranty Limited third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. My name is Becky, and I’ll be your operator for today’s call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing Star, then Zero on your telephone. After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press Star, then One on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press Star, then Two. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Robert Tucker, Senior Managing Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.

Robert Tucker, Senior Managing Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications, Assured Guaranty: Thank you, Operator, and thank you all for joining Assured Guaranty for our third quarter 2025 financial results conference call. Today’s presentation is made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The presentation may contain forward-looking statements about our new business and credit outlook, market conditions, credit spreads, financial ratings, loss reserves, financial results, or other items that may affect our future results. These statements are subject to change due to new information or future events. Therefore, you should not place undue reliance on them, as we do not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise them except as required by law. If you’re listening to a replay of this call, or if you’re reading the transcript of the call, please note that our statements made today may have been updated since this call.

Please refer to the investor information section of our website for our most recent presentations and SEC filings, most current financial filings, and for the risk factors. This presentation also includes references to non-GAAP financial measures. We present the GAAP financial measures most directly comparable to the non-GAAP financial measures referenced in this presentation, along with a reconciliation between such GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures in our current financial supplement and equity investor presentation, which are on our website at assuredguaranty.com. Turning to the presentation, our speakers today are Dominic Frederico, President and Chief Executive Officer of Assured Guaranty Limited, Rob Bailenson, our Chief Operating Officer, and Ben Rosenblum, our Chief Financial Officer. After their remarks, we will open the call to your questions. As the webcast is not enabled for Q&A, please dial into the call if you’d like to ask a question.

I will now turn the call over to Dominic.

Dominic Frederico, President and Chief Executive Officer, Assured Guaranty Limited: Thank you, Robert, and welcome to everyone joining today’s call. We continue to build value for Assured Guaranty shareholders and policyholders during the third quarter and first nine months of 2025. Adjusted book value per share of $181.37 and adjusted operating shareholders’ equity per share of $123.10 both reached record highs at the end of the third quarter. Year-to-date, Assured Guaranty has earned adjusted operating income of $6.77 per share. This is an increase of approximately 17% compared with the same period last year. Third quarter financial guarantee production was strong. We produced $91 million of PVP in the quarter, 44% more than the third quarter last year and 42% more than in the second quarter of 2025, as transactions coming to market returned to a more typical business mix for Assured Guaranty. Rob will provide more details on this later in the call.

For the first nine months, we generated a total of $194 million of PVP, of which U.S. public finance business produced $152 million. We benefited from record U.S. municipal bond issuance and strong investor demand for our municipal bond insurance, including both from institutional investors on some very large infrastructure transactions. Additionally, our U.S. public finance secondary market business flourished with $1.5 billion of insured par, representing two and a half times the amount of secondary business we insured in all of 2024. Non-U.S. public finance and global structured finance contributed $42 million of PVP collectively during the first nine months. Production in these business lines tends to be more episodic than in U.S. public finance because their transactions are fewer, generally larger, and typically have longer lead times. In structured finance, we’ve been building our subscription finance business, which is characterized by many smaller, shorter duration and renewable transactions.

Rob will provide more details on this. Our investment portfolio performance has been enhanced by the greater use of alternative investments in recent years. We continue to see excellent performance from our alternative investments, whose inception-to-date annualized internal rate of return, including from funds managed by Sound Point and Assured Healthcare Partners, was approximately 13% through September. In terms of our share repurchase program, on November the 5th, the Board of Directors authorized the repurchase of an additional $100 million of our common shares, bringing our current authorization to just over $330 million. I’m looking forward to a successful fourth quarter, in which we have already booked some sizable transactions. We continue to look for strategic opportunities to expand our current insurance businesses into new sectors and new markets and to diversify our revenue sources further to support prudent, sustainable growth. I will now turn the call over to Rob.

Rob Bailenson, Chief Operating Officer, Assured Guaranty: Thank you, Dominic. In the third quarter, the PVP across our three insurance business lines was $91 million. This result was led by our core business, U.S. public finance. We closed U.S. public finance transactions totaling $7.9 billion of par in the third quarter, compared with $5.4 billion in the third quarter of 2024. The third quarter of this year saw a marked change from the previous two quarters in the business mix of U.S. municipal bonds that came to market. Many triple-B issuers held back from coming to market during the first six months of the year. This resulted in a skew toward higher rated transactions in the available market for our insurance during the first half of the year.

However, in the third quarter, issuance by triple-B credits came back from its temporarily lower levels in the mix of sectors and of underlying credit ratings in the municipal bonds we insured came more in line with our typical production mix, which contributed to strong third quarter results. For the first three quarters of the year, U.S. municipal bond issuance increased by more than $50 billion over what was already a record issuance during the first nine months of 2024, and total primary market insured par volume rose 18%. We continue to lead the industry, insuring 63% of the total insured U.S. municipal market par sold in nine months 2025, compared with 57% in nine months 2024, insuring approximately $21 billion of primary market par through September 30th.

Also, year-to-date, Assured Guaranty insured some of the largest transactions that came to the municipal market, reflecting the continued institutional demand for our guarantee and the increased price stability and market liquidity our insurance can provide. For example, on a sold basis, we insured 14 transactions of $100 million or more in the third quarter. Year-to-date, we insured over 40 transactions of $100 million or more. For the third quarter, this included approximately $650 million for the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency, $600 million for the New York Transportation Development Corp, new Terminal 1 at JFK Airport, $422 million for the City of Orlando, and $372 million for the Illinois Municipal Electric Agency. Additionally, AA issuers and investors have continued to derive value from our guarantee.

In aggregate, during the first nine months of 2025, we issued 132 policies on bonds with AA underlying ratings across the primary and secondary municipal markets, totaling $5.8 billion of par. Further, our secondary market U.S. public finance strategy continues to produce strong results. We generated $32 million of PVP in the first nine months of 2025, compared with $5 million in the first nine months of 2024. The company’s $1.5 billion of par written in the secondary market represented 7% of our U.S. public finance par written in the first nine months of 2025, compared with 2.4% in the first nine months of 2024. With $4 trillion of municipal bonds outstanding, this business has plenty of room to grow. Non-U.S. public finance added $5 million in PVP for the quarter and has contributed $19 million in PVP year-to-date.

Year-to-date contributions were from several primary infrastructure finance and regulated utility transactions throughout the U.K. and the European Union, as well as secondary market transactions for U.K. sub-sovereign credits. Global structured finance contributed $8 million in PVP for the quarter and $23 million in PVP year-to-date. Global structured finance’s year-to-date PVP contribution came primarily from subscription finance and the upsize of a transaction in Australia that provided production on a core lending portfolio for an Australian bank. As Dominic mentioned, our global structured finance business has increasingly moved towards repeatable business, which generates future premiums as we see with subscription finance. Since these are shorter duration transactions, we also benefit because we earn the premiums more rapidly and can recycle that capital.

For example, the new business we insured in the first nine months of this year will mature within five years, and we will earn all the premiums during that period. This timeframe is two to three times faster than the structured finance business we were insuring just five years ago. We are looking forward to a solid finish for the year. I’ll now turn the call over to Ben for more details on our financial results.

Ben Rosenblum, Chief Financial Officer, Assured Guaranty: Thank you, Dominic and Rob, and good morning. Adjusted operating income in the third quarter of 2025 was $124 million or $2.57 per share, which compares with adjusted operating income in the third quarter of last year of $130 million or $2.42 per share. In comparing third quarter 2025 to third quarter 2024, it’s important to note that the investment income portfolio and the scheduled premiums from the financial guarantee insured portfolio both contributed more to adjusted operating income in the third quarter of this year than the comparable period of last year. As of September 30, 2025, our deferred premium revenue was $3.9 billion, consistent with last quarter. Large premium transactions, as well as supplemental premiums on certain existing transactions, contributed to the stable warehouse of earnings that offset amortization on the existing insured portfolio and demonstrate the strength of our underwriting and new business development efforts.

Earnings from the investment portfolio come in several forms with different earnings recognition methods. The majority of our investments are available for sale, fixed maturity, and short-term securities that are net investment income. This portfolio earned $11 million more in the third quarter of 2025 than it earned in the third quarter of 2024 due to several factors. First, certain CLO equity tranche investments that were previously in a CLO fund were reclassified to the available for sale, fixed maturity portfolio. Net investment income in the third quarter 2025 included $9 million related to these CLO equity tranches, whereas in the prior year, the change in the NAV of the CLO fund was $8 million and was reported in equity and earnings of investees.

Net investment income on the externally managed fixed maturity portfolio increased by $4 million as our managers reinvested into some corporate securities that were higher yielding. Offsetting these increases was a reduction in earnings of $7 million from the short-term investment portfolio as interest rates and our average balances declined. In addition to the CLO equity tranches, we have other alternative investments whose changes in NAV are reported in adjusted operating income. Earnings from this portfolio tend to be more volatile than earnings from the fixed maturity portfolio. In the third quarter of 2025, the change in NAV from these alternative investments was a $25 million gain compared with a $28 million gain in the third quarter of 2024.

On an inception-to-date basis, as of September 30, 2025, our aggregate alternative investments have generated an annualized internal rate of return of 13%, substantially greater than the returns on the fixed maturity portfolio. While adjusted operating income in the third quarter of 2025 reflects a modest decline compared with the third quarter of 2024, this was primarily attributable to the amount of benefit related to improvements in U.S. RMBS recoveries. In both periods, we increased our recovery assumptions on second-line charged-off balances, which resulted in a $26 million benefit in the third quarter of this year and a $29 million benefit in the third quarter of last year. These assumption updates are based on observed trends over the past several years. Last year, we also updated recovery assumptions on first-line transactions. However, these assumptions remained static this year.

Overall, we saw positive results in our third quarter loss development with a total net economic benefit of $38 million, primarily related to legacy RMBS exposures and a non-U.S. public finance exposure. As I mentioned last quarter, the largest below investment grade exposure in the investment portfolio, which was obtained as part of a loss mitigation strategy, was paid down in the third quarter. While there was no significant impact on income associated with this final resolution, on an inception-to-date basis, we received over $100 million more than we paid out. In October, a commercially leased building that was part of a loss mitigation strategy for a troubled insured exposure was sold. We expect to realize an after-tax gain associated with the sale and final resolution of this exposure in the fourth quarter of approximately $10-$15 million more than we paid out.

These outcomes showcase our multifaceted approach to loss mitigation, combining vigorous legal defenses, enforcement of our rights under financial guarantee insurance contracts, and financial flexibility, as well as our ability to extract value from the underlying collateral of our workout credits. Turning to capital management, in the third quarter of 2025, we repurchased 1.4 million shares for $118 million at an average price of $83.06 per share and also returned $16 million in dividends to our shareholders. Including our board’s approval earlier this week of an additional $100 million in share repurchases, our remaining authorization is $332 million. In terms of our current holding company liquidity position, we have cash and investments of $272 million, of which $35 million resides in AGL. These liquidity balances reflect the $213 million cash component of the $250 million stock redemption approved by the Maryland Insurance Administration that was implemented in August.

Share repurchases, along with adjusted operating income and new business production, collectively contributed to new records for adjusted operating shareholders’ equity per share of over $123 and adjusted book value per share of over $181. While adjusted operating income varies from period to period, the consistent quarterly increases in these book value metrics reflect the value of our key strategic initiatives, which build shareholder value over the long term. I’ll now turn the call over to our operator to give you the instructions for the Q&A period.

Operator: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press Star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press Star, then 2. If you’re using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. At this time, we’ll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Marissa Lobo from UBS Group. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Marissa Lobo, Analyst, UBS Group: Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First, on the changes to the investment portfolio you outlined, including higher-yielding corporates and CLO equity, how are you thinking about the ongoing allocation to these higher-yielding sectors in light of current macro trends?

Ben Rosenblum, Chief Financial Officer, Assured Guaranty: Yeah. We always work with our outside investment managers, and we have an internal group that looks at our investments as well, both our treasury function and alternative investments. And our idea is to obviously both optimize the yield on our investments as well as maintain a safe portfolio with adequate liquidity in the event we have a loss.

Marissa Lobo, Analyst, UBS Group: Okay. Thank you. Just looking at the listing of below investment grades, could you talk a little bit about the issues with the Brightline transportation exposure and what’s causing some of the pressure on those deals?

Dominic Frederico, President and Chief Executive Officer, Assured Guaranty Limited: Brightline, as you know, is a new operation. They’re having the typical growing pains of a startup. They had a problem with both the choice of the lines and the number of the cars they were able to put on the availability for service. We’re very comfortable with the structure, with our exposure. Remember, we’re in the senior most section of the capital stack. Significant equity and subordinated debt is beneath us. In terms of our view of it, they’re having the typical growing pains as they get better at their management of both availability and route structure. It’ll basically work itself out.

Marissa Lobo, Analyst, UBS Group: Thank you for that. Finally, just looking at the opportunity set, I was curious if there’s a place for AGO to get involved in the current data center CapEx cycle.

Dominic Frederico, President and Chief Executive Officer, Assured Guaranty Limited: That would help you absolutely. Yeah, we are actually evaluating the data center, and we look at that opportunity every quarter, as well as other opportunities. We have executed in new areas like liquid natural gas. We are actively looking at data centers as well.

Marissa Lobo, Analyst, UBS Group: Great. Thank you. Thank you.

Dominic Frederico, President and Chief Executive Officer, Assured Guaranty Limited: Just an asset to let you know the structure. I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Operator: Sorry. As a reminder to ask a question, please press Star, followed by 1 on your telephone keypads. Our next question comes from Tommy McJoynt from KBW. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Tommy McJoynt, Analyst, KBW: Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking our questions. Along the same line of that previous question, but more broadly speaking, I guess, what do you guys view as the pipeline to grow written premium into 2026? How do you guys look about the various opportunities for increased infrastructure spending and the other structured credit pieces? If you could just talk about the pipeline into 2026.

Rob Bailenson, Chief Operating Officer, Assured Guaranty: We see great opportunities with all three of our financial guarantee lines of business. In U.S. public finance, as you’ve seen, we’ve made a big investment in secondary market, both internal resources as well as monetizing our systems where we can interact much more quickly with our asset managers and investors that are looking for secondary market opportunities. As you can see, we’ve had great success this year, and we continue to see that as an opportunity going forward and a growth opportunity given that the market is 90% uninsured. There are a lot of credits that we can actually provide value on. It also demonstrates the trading benefit and trading value that we see in the market, and it helps us on the primary execution. Those primary executions help us in the secondary market as well.

In global structured finance, we’re looking at core lending portfolios of banks and also regulatory capital that’s needed for most of the European Union and Australian banks. As you can see, we’ve executed significantly in the fund finance sector. We see continued growth opportunities there. In Australia, we’re looking at infrastructure as well, like airports and other utilities. We feel very strongly going forward in the sector.

Dominic Frederico, President and Chief Executive Officer, Assured Guaranty Limited: Yeah, I think we’re very bullish on the ability of the company to produce and what production is going to look like going forward. As you look in the current quarter, it kind of reinforces our view of the domestic public finance market that we were getting hurt by a mix of business for the early quarters, and this quarter kind of returned to normal and showed the activity that we were able to book through that case. If you look internationally, as Rob says, we’ve got tremendous opportunities kind of across the globe where we have the law in our favor or the rule of law, and those markets are expanding in terms of both asset classes, as you, somebody mentioned, in terms of data centers. That’s an opportunity that we’ve seen coming strongly.

Obviously, we’re concerned about the power sources for some of those things, but that’s part of the underwriting equation. As Rob said, we shifted to a different type of structured finance that is shorter term, earns quickly, releases capital for recycling, will provide a better ROE to the bottom line of the company. Those opportunities are more counterparties we identify and are able to get an agreement with. We’ll continue to expand that market and become a significant part of a repeatable business. We look for good revenue sources that meet our underwriting criteria, and we think that there’s a great opportunity globally to the type of businesses we write and the success we’ve had. As I said, the quarter, I think, kind of verifies that or gives some validation to that premise.

Rob Bailenson, Chief Operating Officer, Assured Guaranty: I also want to just reiterate, we’ve been actively opening up new counterparties in both Europe and Australia that want to trade with us for their core lending portfolios and risk-weighted assets. As we open up these lines to these banks and trading with these banks, we help them in many areas, not just in fund finance, but other parts of the balance sheet that they need risk-weighted asset protection.

Tommy McJoynt, Analyst, KBW: Got it. Thanks for all that, Tyler. Switching over to the Puerto Rico side, there were some positive developments during the quarter with the oversight board and some consolidation in the creditor groups. What’s the onus for you guys to get more positive on where you’d have to book a favorable reserve development, particularly around that PREPA exposure? What type of events would you need to see?

Dominic Frederico, President and Chief Executive Officer, Assured Guaranty Limited: Tommy, two things. One, you just cost me money because I bet the room we would not get a PREPA question, so now I’m down some bucks. Thank you very much for that. What’s going to really get recognition of the value that we placed on the reserve and the claim is a deal. Obviously, we’ve had three deals that have been rescinded on us by the government. We think we’re in a very preferred position relative to being a creditor based on the appellate decision recently in terms of the perfection of our lien and the size of the claim. Now, this administrative expense for the might has been disappearing. We’ve been steadfast in our direction, our view that we’re going to defend our legal rights.

A great example is if you look at the current year, there are three transactions that reflect the full recovery of any paid losses or paid losses of any, as well as an additional return on the fact that we held to our legal rights and litigated or negotiated ultimate settlements in our favor. If you go back to RMBS, I look at it, we’re four for four. I don’t expect to go four for five.

Tommy McJoynt, Analyst, KBW: Great. Thanks. Sorry about that, Dominic. I’ll shoot you a Venmo and make you whole. Thanks.

Dominic Frederico, President and Chief Executive Officer, Assured Guaranty Limited: I appreciate it.

Operator: Thank you. This concludes the question and answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to our host, Robert Tucker, for closing remarks.

Rob Bailenson, Chief Operating Officer, Assured Guaranty: Thank you, operator. I’d like to thank everyone for joining us on today’s call. If you have additional questions, please feel free to give us a call. Thank you very much.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines. Have a great day.

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