Don Templin: Yes. So Tom, I think what’s really important to sort of reflect back on was the guiding principle that we were focused on at the time that we were considering the Benefitfocus acquisition was, one, that it needed to make strategic — it had to be of strategic importance and have to be impactful from a strategy perspective, but it also had to be accretive, and we were assessing that accretion compared to our base plan. So our base plan at the time, if you recall, there were some fairly significant macro headwinds and some uncertainty about the future. The base plan was conservative, given that macro environment, and I think it was particularly conservative in relation to share repurchase and debt extinguishment. So the deal model that we had at the time contemplated an EBITDA number that was very similar to the one that we’ve guided to.
It contemplated a pretax operating earnings number that’s very similar to the one that we guided to. And as a result, we believe that the deal economics are consistent with sort of that original base plan.
Tom Gallagher: Okay. Don, just a follow-up for you. Can you talk a little bit about any lessons learned from your years spent at Marathon that you think can be applied to the new Voya role from a shareholder value creation perspective?
Don Templin: Yes, Tom, I really appreciate that question. So when I came to Voya, there was probably three things that got me really excited about Voya. One was the people. Secondly was the courage that the company had exhibited in trying to evolve the company. So you think about what it was at the time of the IPO and what the company looks like now, that’s a significant change and took a lot of leadership and a lot of courage to undertake. And then I was very optimistic about sort of the upside of Voya, so both from a cash generation capability and an EPS perspective. When I look now 80-plus days into my role here at Voya, I’m actually more excited about it than I was at the time that I came on board. The chemistry and the nimbleness of the management team.
And I think from my prior Marathon Petroleum days, you need to be nimble, you need to have great chemistry among the leadership team in order to operate in an environment where the macro can change very dynamically and very quickly. And I think the team has really demonstrated in 2022, as an example, that they are really, really good at that. The plan that was delivered was above what was guided to and what we talked about at Investor Day, and you could never have predicted what 2022 would have been like at the beginning of the year. The second thing that I’ve noted, and I’m really excited about and was also something that was really important to me at MPC, was the execution muscle, the leadership team has here, it is not easy to divest yourself of businesses, but they’ve done that effectively.
It is not easy to take significant costs out of the business, but they’ve done that effectively. And so I’m really excited about that. It’s not easy to integrate companies. I saw that in my days at MPC as well. And I’m really heartened by the really positive momentum we have at AGI after owning those assets or having that relationship for just over six months, and I’m really excited about the opportunities that present themselves with Benefitfocus. And then what I also learned at MPC, that I think is an appropriate carryover here, is that in a world that is dynamic, investors expect a management team that is committed to discipline and a management team that is committed to returning capital to shareholders. We returned billions of dollars to shareholders at MPC and the management team here has returned, I believe, over $8 billion, $8.5 billion to shareholders since the time of the IPO.
