Principal Financial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:PFG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Chris Littlefield: No, I think you captured it well. I mean we certainly are seeing, I think the thing to step back is we do look at RIS as a single business fee and spread together, particularly post IRT and the lines of blurring between fee and spread. And so we get the diversification benefit by managing those businesses together. The resilience of the spread businesses when with really compelling returns and the lift they get from short-term interest rates helps offset the pressure that we see from down equity markets. So, we definitely saw some rising short-term rates in fee. We saw rising rates, we saw growth in our retained business and higher investment yields in spread. And some of the net revenue beat was really largely macro driven, which is really strong equity performance during the quarter. The open to close was up about 7%, which helped drive overall separate account returns. So, I think that’s an explanation for the quarter.

Dan Houston: Very helpful. Alex follow-up?

Alex Scott: Yes, that was very helpful, thank you. Follow-up, I had, just to go back to variable annuities for a second to make sure I understand. So, when you all took a portion of the fees, and move it below the line, and considering that the cost associated with some of those riders and hedging, could you unpack, how you did that in terms of, is it relative to attributed fees that under LDTIs so you’re sort of included enough fees below the line to cover the attributed fees at this point or? Is there anything about that dynamic that’ll be below the line that I should be thinking about particularly, as it relates to the attributed fees and how they’ll compare to the actual fees that are being put below one?

Deanna Strable: Yes, Alex, that’s exactly what you talked about is, we went through the process of LDTI, it actually allowed us to attribute the fees to how much is coming relative to the hedging cost of those €“ of how we manage that business and how much of the fees are other fees more relative to the non-hedging aspects of that product. And so again, that dollar amounts that we charge our customers for those hedging costs, we’ll move down below the line. Those are pretty stable quarter-to-quarter and they will then more offset the hedging gains and losses that always have shown up below the line in our realized capital gains and losses. So it’s exactly what you talked about. It had nothing to do with market value adjustments or any of those types of things that also could have arisen out of LDTI really, ours was really just that geography and attributive fees.

Alex Scott: Got it. Okay. Thank you.

Dan Houston: Thanks for the questions, Alex.

Operator: Our next question comes from Ryan Krueger with KBW. Please proceed with your question.

Ryan Krueger: Hi, good morning. I have a question on more on consolidated G&A expenses, given that you took action, and didn’t have the normal higher seasonal 4Q expenses. I guess my question is like, as we look forward into 2023 like should we actually expect expenses to come down from the fourth quarter run rate given that there are, I assume still some seasonal things that impacted the fourth quarter? Or is that kind of a decent level to just think about going forward?

Pat Halter: Yes, Dan will handle it, but I would just simply say this, we are going to continue, as I said earlier, to liner expenses with our revenues and we don’t have a crystal ball on what a full 2023 looks like except to say we’re going to be incredibly disciplined and always look to be opportunistic about taking out expenses while at the same time making sure we don’t starve the businesses and invest for growth. Maybe Deanna would like to add some additional color.

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