Validus Holdings Ltd. leader Ed Noonan said he is happy with the company's current business model and not even considering the prospect of merging with another reinsurer.

The comments came Friday as Pembroke, Bermuda-based Validus reported $173.4 million in net income for the first quarter ended March 31, a 6.8% increase over the comparable period a year ago.

Net premiums written increased 19.6% to $577.8 million. The 2015 first-quarter combined ratio was 75.1%, reflecting $83.6 million in favorable loss reserve development on prior accident years, compared with a 68.3% combined ratio a year earlier, which included $39.4 million of favorable loss reserve development.

“This was another excellent quarter for Validus Group,” Mr. Noonan, the reinsurer's chairman and CEO, said Friday during a conference call with analysts.

Key drivers for the quarter were strong underwriting returns, the absence of significant catastrophes and “the ongoing effect of our conservative reserving practices,” he said.

Mr. Noonan said although Validus' results have “an element of fortuity,” referring to low cat activity, the results also reflect its emphasis on underwriting profit rather than revenue.

“We spend relatively little time talking about top line revenue,” Mr. Noonan said.

In response to a question about the prospect of a megamerger involving the company, Mr. Noonan said, “We're not looking at anything. We're not conspiring. We're not biding our time, waiting to jump somebody or something like that.”

Validus is “obviously an attractive platform, but we're not putting out veiled feelers to anybody at this point in time,” Mr. Noonan said. “At this moment in time, we like our business model and we're not sure we see somebody who's such a great fit that it would cause us to want to either dilute our ownership of our own business, or go through the complexity and collateral damage of integration,” he said.

“But you can never say never,” he added. “Things do happen, and I would hate to be on the call saying it's pretty remote and a week from now get a call from somebody who makes some great sense to us and act on it, so that's part of a bit of a wild card.”