Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated (NYSE:RGA) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated (NYSE:RGA) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript November 3, 2023

Operator: Good day and welcome to the Reinsurance Group of America Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Todd Larson, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Todd Larson: Thank you. Welcome to RGA’s Third Quarter 2023 Conference Call. I’m joined on the call this morning with Anna Manning, RGA’s Chief Executive Officer; Tony Cheng, President; Leslie Barbi, Chief Investment Officer; and Jonathan Porter, Chief Risk Officer. A quick reminder before we get started regarding forward-looking information and non-GAAP financial measures. Some of our comments or answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from expected results. Please refer to the earnings release we issued yesterday for a list of important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expected results. Additionally, during the course of this call, the information we provide may include non-GAAP financial measures.

Please see our earnings release, earnings presentation, and quarterly financial supplement, all of which are posted on our website for discussion of these terms and reconciliations to GAAP measures. And now I’ll turn the call over to Anna for her comments.

Anna Manning: Thank you, Todd. Good morning. Thank you for joining our call today. Last night, we reported third quarter adjusted operating earnings of $5.57 per share and the trailing 12-month adjusted operating ROE of 14.7% or 14% excluding notable items. This quarter’s results included very good performance in many of our regions and business lines, continuing to show the strength of the large underlying earnings engine in our business as well as the ongoing success of our growth strategy that is adding meaningful long-term value to that engine. Let me touch on a few of the many highlights in the quarter, which include a continuation of new business momentum in our organic flow business with a measurable pickup in Asia. Underwriting results were favorable overall and in particular, we saw very favorable mortality experience in our US individual business as well as favorable experience in our US group and individual health businesses.

In Asia, the traditional business also delivered favorable underwriting results. Our Global Financial Solutions business had another strong quarter with contributions from both investment spreads and favorable longevity experience. This story is a familiar one as the GFS business has consistently produced excellent results over a number of quarters and years. Investment performance in the quarter was good as new money rates continue to rise and are at levels well above our portfolio yield. Variable investment income was in line with our expectations, while impairments were low. We believe our investment portfolio is well positioned to withstand ongoing economic uncertainties. We deployed $203 million of capital into in-force and other transactions in the quarter, bringing the year-to-date total to $587 million.

This means that in just the first three quarters, we have already exceeded the total amount of capital deployed in each of the last two years, which were of themselves at impressive levels. On the capital management side, we repurchased $50 million of shares, bringing the year-to-date total to $150 million in share repurchases. And our new business pipelines are very healthy and we are expecting a strong finish to the year. Putting it all together, business momentum is strong for both our organic flow and in-force block businesses. Higher interest rates are very good tailwinds for our business, and they are also a contributing driver of new in-force opportunities. Our earnings power and capital levels position us extremely well allowing us to pursue attractive growth opportunities with balancing returning excess capital to shareholders over time.

Industry dynamics are favorable. We are well positioned with the capabilities and proven track record to continue to benefit from all those dynamics. We believe many, many things are coming together for us and we are optimistic about our future and our ability to continue to deliver attractive returns for our shareholders. As you know, this is my last quarterly earnings call and I have just a few comments to end my prepared remarks. It has been a privilege and an honor to lead RGA for the past seven years. RGA is a great company. We are a global leader with a proven, resilient and highly valuable franchise. The depth of talent here is second to none. I leave knowing that RGA will be in excellent hands with Tony and the leadership team and with the future that is very bright for RGA.

And I will close my remarks by thanking our investors for their trust and support over the years. Thank you. With that, I will hand it over to Tony.

Tony Cheng: Good morning, everyone. Let me start by thanking Anna for her leadership and immense contributions to RGA. There is no question in my mind that Anna leads behind a company that is stronger than ever. Our excitement and optimistic future are very much due to her leadership over the past seven years. Turning to this quarter’s performance. I am enthusiastic to share these excellent results. Yes, the industry dynamics are very favorable, but this is just part of the picture. RGA has a very strong franchise and an incredibly talented team to capitalize on this environment. We provide innovative solutions that help solve some of the life and health industry’s biggest challenges. These challenges become our clients’ greatest opportunities and we have always been very focused on helping them succeed and growing alongside them.

Thus, there are many opportunities for RGA to grow our business and support our clients all around the world. This is another excellent. This is another quarter in which we have demonstrated our ability to execute on the growth strategy, deliver attractive returns for shareholders and built upon our future earnings power. As previously shared, we have highlighted four areas of notable growth, global PRT and longevity, Asia traditional, US traditional and the Asia asset-intensive business. Based upon another strong quarter of new business wins and the deployment of capital into transaction, there is little doubt that we are firing on all cylinders. Our internal measure of new business and better value shows we are well ahead of our targets in the year ago period.

As important as the quantity of new businesses, so is the breadth and the quality. We see the breadth by virtue of the fact that all our businesses across the company are contributing strongly to our success. In terms of the quality, one measure we use is the amount of business coming from exclusive arrangements with clients. On this measure, we are achieving performance well ahead of our goal. In order to obtain exclusive, these transactions usually involve innovative initiatives that create greater value for our clients and RGA. Let me share a few specific highlights in terms of our new business activity in the quarter. To start, US Traditional had a very strong quarter for new business. This was driven by a number of wins across the platform and the pipelines remain strong.

We continue to see strong demand for our broad range of underwriting programs. One transaction to note is an exclusive opportunity where we recently worked as one of the largest term writers in the market. We partnered with them to fully understand and help them accomplish their goals and objectives. In return, they rewarded this partnership with a sizable quota share reinsurance transaction. In global PRT longevity, we were very active and successful in Q3. I am happy to report that we completed our second PRT transaction in the US for over $800 million in premium. In line with our previously communicated strategy, we have entered into arrangements with established PRT insurers to jointly bid on certain transactions, and this transaction was won with a second partner.

Our US PRT business continues to gain momentum. The market is very active and we remain highly confident of our prospects in this sizable and growing market. In addition, our longevity business remains very strong, and we completed a couple of significant transactions in Europe adding to the very active first half of the year. We continue to see a strong pipeline of business in the region and remain optimistic. In Asia, we continue to see increasing demand for the new products we have launched with our partners, some of the leading life insurers in the region. Successful new products were launched in Japan, Korea, China and Hong Kong during the quarter. In Hong Kong, the industry continues to see strong momentum from the additional tailwinds that have followed the reopening of the Hong Kong China border.

As you know, visitors from China are a material source of business for the Hong Kong insurance market. One particular success to note was an exclusive solution we provided to a major client that was a combined product development, underwriting and a capital management solution. As previously mentioned, we are world-class in each of these areas. And when we combine all three into one transaction, it results in RGA winning exclusive reinsurance. As a final recognition of our success, I am pleased to announce RGA has been successful in winning a number of awards in Asia over the past quarter. The most significant wins were the Asia Life Reinsurer of the Year and the Asian Insurance Review Innovation of the Year Award. We are excited with the success that we are having not only in Asia but very much across the globe.

Thus, I have a tremendous amount of confidence in RGA’s future and in our ability to continue to deliver growth and attractive returns to our shareholders over many years to come. We see many attractive growth opportunities and RGA will pursue these with vigor and creativity, but as always, with strong risk discipline and with the long-term focus that has positioned us so well for future success. Thank you for your interest in RGA. I will now turn it over to Todd to discuss the financial results.

Todd Larson: Thanks, Tony. RGA reported pre-tax adjusted operating income of $481 million for the quarter and adjusted operating earnings per share of $5.57, which includes a foreign currency tailwind of $0.01 per share. Trailing 12-month adjusted operating return on equity was 14.7%. Excluding the assumption changes under LDTI, referred to as notable items, trailing 12-month adjusted operating return on equity was 14%. We are pleased with the strong quarterly results as well as new business volumes, capital deployment and investment results. I did want to make a few comments on the assumption changes that occurred in the quarter. Our annual review of reserve assumptions resulted in a net positive financial impact of $3 million pre-tax to consolidated results.

In the specific geographic segments and various business lines, the net impacts were modest with many natural offsets. Thinking about this from a high level, this shouldn’t be a surprise given our diversified platform, both geographically and by products, with mortality and longevity the most obvious. The UK is a good example, where we reflected our expectation of some level of continued excess mortality that we have been seeing in the population and in our results. This has had an unfavorable impact to the traditional line and a favorable impact on our longevity business. Turning to financial results. Reported premiums were up 31% for the quarter. This quarter’s increase includes more than $800 million in premium from our second US PRT transaction this year that Tony mentioned earlier.

Also, as Tony and Anna mentioned, we have strong momentum in new business activity and expect to continue to see attractive premium growth over time. As we move to the quarterly segment results, starting on slide six of the earnings presentation, I would like to note that we are discussing results that exclude the impact of assumption changes discussed earlier. US and Latin America traditional segment reflected favorable mortality in our individual mortality business and good results in group and individual health. In individual mortality, we saw very favorable experience that was widespread, primarily driven by lower frequency. This experience occurred in both our capped and uncapped cohorts. As we’ve previously discussed under LDTI, a portion of the underlying mortality experience for uncapped cohorts is reported in the current period earnings and the remaining experience is spread into future periods.

And that is what we saw this quarter, where about half of the favorable mortality results were spread into the future. The US asset-intensive business results were strong, reflecting improved investment spreads primarily due to higher yields on floating rate securities. And our US Capital Solutions business continues to perform in line with our expectations. Canada traditional results reflected unfavorable group experience while individual mortality experience was favorable, but a large part of this experience will be spread into the future for LDTI. The Financial Solutions business reflected favorable longevity experience. In the Europe, Middle East and Africa segment, the traditional business results reflected unfavorable mortality experience, most of which was recognized in the current quarter.

EMEA’s Financial Solutions business results reflected favorable longevity experience. Turning to our Asia Pacific traditional business. Results reflected favorable claims experience, much of which was recognized in the current period. Additionally, we have put a fair amount of attractive new business on the books in recent periods, and that is having a beneficial impact. Finally, there is a modest favorable effect from a onetime item. The Asia Pacific Financial Solutions business results were in line with our expectations. The Corporate and Other segment reported pre-tax adjusted operating loss of $25 million less than the expected quarterly range, primarily due to higher investment income. Moving on to investments on slides nine through 12 in our earnings presentation.

The Non-Spread portfolio yield for the quarter was 4.72%, reflecting higher yields. For Non-Spread business, our new money rate rose to 6.31%, reflecting higher available market yields with select opportunities in private assets and structured securities. Credit impairments were low, and we believe the portfolio is well positioned as we move to ongoing economic uncertainties. Related to capital management, as shown on slides 13 and 14 of our earnings presentation, our capital and liquidity position remains strong and we ended the quarter with excess capital of approximately $1.1 billion. In the quarter, we deployed $203 million of capital in the in-force and other transactions bringing the year-to-date total to $587 million. We also returned a total of $106 million of capital to shareholders through $50 million of share repurchases and $56 million in dividends.

We expect to remain active in deploying capital into attractive growth opportunities in our organic flow and in-force block transactions and returning excess capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. We continued our long track record of increasing book value per share. As shown on slide 15, our book value per share, excluding AOCI, increased to $142.63, which represents a compounded annual growth rate of 10.8% since the beginning of 2021. The first three quarters of 2023 have been particularly strong with each quarter coming in ahead of consensus estimates and expectations. So I thought it would be helpful to go through the main drivers from our perspective. First, very strong organic new business and in-force transactions.

Anna and Tony have already reflected on the fact that both of these drivers have been very strong and above our expectations for the year. In some cases, revenues from these sources have an immediate benefit to current profits, while in other cases, profits initially emerge in an increasing pattern. But in another case, we have been building current and future earnings power through capital deployment in the quality new business and in-force transactions over the past two years. Second, underwriting results. Across the organization, we have generally had very good underwriting results this year. The particular areas of strength include Asia traditional, US traditional and our longevity business across the various geographies. Under LDTI, some of this underwriting experience is recognized in the current period whereas the rest is spread out into the future.

Third, interest rates. We have been explicit in the past that the low interest rate environment in place for a number of years was a headwind for us. Now that we are in a higher interest rate environment, we have had and should continue to have a nice tailwind to our investment yields and earnings. While we incorporated an expectation of higher rates into our 2023 plans, short-term and long-term rates are higher than we assumed and are providing some incremental benefit. Going forward, as long as new money rates stay higher than our portfolio yield, we should pick up additional benefit on a gradual basis. Fourth, in-force management. In-force Management has always been a lever for us. The actions taken have had and will have a positive effect on our results over time.

Given these dynamics, we are running ahead of our intermediate-term financial targets and current run rates provided at our June Investor Day. As we look forward with these drivers in mind, we would expect to provide relevant updates. To summarize, we are very pleased with our third quarter performance, which follows a strong first half of the year. Our business is resilient with substantial underlying earnings power. Momentum is strong, and we see good opportunities across our geographies and business lines. Looking forward, we are well positioned for the future and expect to deliver attractive returns to shareholders over time. This concludes our prepared remarks. We would now like to open it up for questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] The first question today comes from Ryan Krueger with KBW. Please go ahead.

Ryan Krueger: Hi. Good morning. Todd, in the things you just went over in terms of the drivers of the strong year-to-date results, it seems like the new business growth, interest rates and in-force management would all have ongoing recurring benefits and the one that might not be as recurring would just be the favorable underwriting experience. So I was hoping that you could — are you able to give us any color on quantification of just how favorable the year-to-date results have been from an underwriting perspective relative to your expectations?

Todd Larson: So I can give you I have it in my hand the current — I was going to size just from an underwriting perspective, for the current quarter, I’d size it at around what went through the income statement around $60 million roughly. Now remember under LDTI, that’s the portion that was recognized currently. Overall, underwriting for the quarter was probably closer to $150 million or so.

Ryan Krueger: Perfect. Okay. So $60 million came through the actual income statement though?

Todd Larson: In the quarter.

Ryan Krueger: Yes, in the quarter. Okay. Got it. And then separately, you had done the second PRT transaction, I think it’s with a different partner than the first one. Are you able to tell us who the partner is? And then, I guess, on a go-forward basis, are there built-in arrangements in terms of jointly bidding? Or is it deal specific?

Tony Cheng: Yes, Ryan, let me take that. To start with on the PRT business, as we’ve shared, look, we think there’s great opportunities in this market. And we are very excited with our successes to date. As we’ve previously shared, we feel we’re one of the natural homes for longevity risk, given we have such a big book of mortality business as well as our capabilities and our data that we’ve built up over many, many years on the mortality side as well as the longevity side in Europe. To answer your question, yes, I can’t share the second partner and that partner is prudential. And to answer your other question, the different partnerships have clear guidelines on the type of pension funds we will consider with each partner. We price the transactions obviously independently but coordinate closely on the presentations of our offer as a combined package.

Operator: The next question comes from Wes Carmichael with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Wesley Carmichael: Hey, good morning, and first, I just wanted to say congrats Anna and best wishes for your retirement. I think, Todd, you mentioned a onetime favorable item in Asia. Would you be able to give us some additional color on that?

Todd Larson: Yes, the size, it was around $10 million in the quarter. And it’s $10 million to $12 million, if I remember correctly. And related to just some way we classified as underlying treaty in the way that the financial reporting work for that. So sort of a reserve adjustment true-up but then going forward, it will be more of a normal pattern. So it really was sort of an isolated onetime item for the quarter.

Wesley Carmichael: Got it. Thanks. And maybe a higher-level question. But have you guys given any thought to the advancement of the GLP-1 drug? And could that have an impact on RGA’s results over the longer term as the cost issues are dealt with and adoption becomes more widespread?

Jonathan Porter: Hi, Wes, this is Jonathan. Yes, so you’re referring to drugs that are used to manage obesity. I think it’s probably too early to tell what the long-term impact is. But certainly, we’re encouraged by the potential benefits to both mortality and morbidity and as you mentioned specifically, as the cost comes down and they become more widespread, I think it’s something that we’re keenly following.

Operator: The next question comes from John Barnidge from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

John Barnidge: Good morning and thank you very much. You had talked about the main drivers of better earnings kind of walk through. When you talk about in-force management, can you maybe talk about how much of that in-force has been re-pricing actions and the pipeline for more of that prospectively? Thank you.

Tony Cheng: Thanks, John. Let me take that one. Look, our stands on in-force management hasn’t changed. I mean we do not hesitate to exercise our rights in the treaty. But we’ve been very focused as with pretty much everything we do on a partnership approach. So that involves, obviously, being very holistic and considering the whole relationship across the world consider with that client considering future opportunities for partnership in new business and so on and so forth. So I would say — we’ve sort of covered a lot of the low-hanging fruit, for lack of a better word. But we continue very focused on this strategy to find any ways where, once again, from a partnership perspective, there’s opportunities for win-win situations between ourselves and our partners.

John Barnidge: Thank you for that. My follow-up question. You hear more and more carriers talking about automating your underwriting. And you have the data to power that. When you think about from a primary perspective within the US life insurance market, how much of that is automated. And what’s the hurdle there and opportunity? Thank you.