Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE:VOYA) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Erik Bass: Maybe first to stay on Wealth. The Wealth margins came in above your 34% to 36% target range last year and it seems like there’s a nice tailwind in the business still from higher interest rates, but you’re guiding for margins to return to the target range in 2023. So I was just wondering is there any reason the margin can’t remain elevated in the near term, given the rate uplift in a special way of kind of equity markets recover as well?

Heather Lavallee: Yes, good morning, Erik. Thanks for your question. Rob will take it.

Rob Grubka: Yes, sure. So when we think about margin and just call it out, I think it’s in the material and the modeling assumptions that we expect from LDTI, also to have a benefit to your specifics around rates and fees in the macro environment again, I won’t be overly repetitive in my answer, at least. We’re going to make good balanced decisions about growing the business, doing it in a disciplined way from a pricing perspective that includes being smart on expenses and all those factors come into play. But yes, we would think about our margin guide that we’ve given of the 34 to 36, we’re going to be at the high end of that or potentially over depending on how the market plays itself out. Does that help, Erik?

Erik Bass: Yes. And then maybe a somewhat similar question for Investment Management as we think about the margin trajectory. I don’t think you gave a specific target for 2023, but I believe Don indicated the goals to be up 100 basis points or more, which should be a little bit below the 29% to 31% range you talked about previously. So I’m assuming that’s just market factors. So maybe if you could talk about how you’re viewing the margin trajectory for Investment Management going forward?

Christine Hurtsellers: Yes, Erik. As you say, markets will definitely have an influence, right? But this is sort of near term when you think strategically, though, we continue to see great opportunity to grow the operating margin. And as Don said, based on our disclosed market assumptions as far as what drives a lot of our modeling, we fully expect that there’s going to be a 1%-plus margin expansion in the year ahead. So it all goes back to the fundamental strength of the pipeline as well as, listen, we’ve seen good operating leverage and scale as far as what we’ve been able to do on expense synergies with the acquired teams. And as any good operator and we’ve demonstrated we’re going to continue to be very focused on expense management as well and making sure that we’re feeding and growing our strategic initiatives, but again, being very disciplined.

So I see a lot of path, a lot of levers to deliver operating margin expansion despite potentially some market challenges.

Operator: Our next questions come from the line of Tom Gallagher with Evercore.

Tom Gallagher: Just a first question on — I don’t want to be too shortsighted, but just understand how you’re thinking about the accretion of Benefitfocus versus share repo? Based on the numbers you’re giving out, the GAAP PE is something like 15x. But I recognize, I think, that was a cash flow accretion number. And — but even looking at your EBIT number, assuming that’s an approximation of cash flow, it looks like you paid over 10x when your stock is stil high single-digit multiple. So just curious how you would reconcile that?

Heather Lavallee: Thanks, Tom. Don will take your question.

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