AFLAC Incorporated

Good day, and welcome to the AFLAC Incorporated third quarter 2024 earnings call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's remarks, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to David Young, Vice President of Capital Markets, Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome. Thank you for joining us for Aflac Incorporated's third quarter earnings call. I hope you will also join us for our financial analyst briefing on December 3rd at the New York Stock Exchange. Registration reminders for this event will go out over the next few weeks. This morning, Dan Amos, Chairman and CEO of Aflac Incorporated, will provide an overview of our results and operations in Japan and the United States. Then, Max Brodin, Executive Vice President and CFO of Aflac Incorporated, will provide an update on our financial results and current capital and liquidity. These topics are also addressed in the materials we posted with our earnings release and financial supplement on investors.aflac.com. In addition, Max provided his quarterly video update, which also includes information about the outlook for 2024. We also posted under financials on the same site updated slides of investment details related to our commercial real estate and middle market loans. For Q&A today, we are joined by Virgil Miller, President of Aflac US, Charles Lake, Chairman and Representative Director, President of Aflac International, Masatoshi Kuide, President and Representative Director, Aflac Life Insurance Japan, and Brad Dislin, Global Chief Investment Officer, President of Aflac Global Investments. Before we begin, some statements in this teleconference are forward-looking within the meaning of federal securities laws. Although we believe these statements are reasonable, we can give no assurance that they will prove to be accurate because they are perspective in nature. Actual results could differ materially from those we discussed today. We encourage you to look at our annual report on Form 10-K for some of the various risk factors that could materially impact our results. As I mentioned earlier, the earnings release is available on investors.aflac.com and includes reconciliations of certain non-U.S. GAAP measures. I'll now hand the call over to Dan. Dan?

Thank you, David, and good morning. We're glad you joined us. As you saw, Aflac Incorporated reported a loss of 17 cents per diluted share on a U.S. GAAP basis for the quarter, primarily due to increased foreign exchange-related losses from the yen and the strengthening of 12.9% during the quarter. However, adjusted earnings per diluted share for the quarter increased 17.4% to $2.16. Year to date, earnings per diluted share were $6.23 and adjusted earnings per share on the diluted basis rose 13.5% to $5.64. Beginning with Japan, we drove a 12.3% year-over-year increase in sales in the third quarter, maintaining the initial momentum from the June launch of Sumitaz. As you'll recall, Sumitaz combines asset formation with a nursing care option. It is part of our strategy to attract new and younger customers while also introducing them to our third sector policies. Sumitas also played an important role in the sales growth at the agencies. I'm also very pleased with the continued improvement in cancer insurance sales through Japan Post Channel, especially considering that WINGS has been in the market for over two years. On November the 15th, we'll be celebrating 50 years in Japan. Our marketing efforts will focus on creating additional touch points with customers around their needs and our products. Overall, Koide-san and his team have done a great job of driving sales in Japan and even more so of delivering record profit margins for the quarter, turning to the U.S., we achieved 5.5% sales growth for the quarter. These sales results reflect strong growth in group life absent management and disability, which is encouraging as we continue to scale up that platform. In addition, it's good to see a continued increase in cancer insurance sales given our efforts to enhance the value proposition to our cancer policyholders. As we enter the fourth quarter and what tends to be our heaviest enrollment period, we will continue to focus on profitable growth, disciplined expense management, and optimizing our dental and vision platform. Overall, Virgil and his team are doing a good job balancing profitable growth, enhancing the value proposition of our policyholders, and curving the expense ratios. Their efforts contributed to the strong 20.8% pre-tax profit margin for the quarter. Max has done a great job leading the team to proactively defend our cash flows and deployable capital against a weakening yen, as well as establish our reinsurance platform in Bermuda. Over the course of this year, Virgil and Max, as well as Audrey Tillman, have taken on additional responsibilities. The Board and I are thrilled to recognize the tremendous contributions these executive leaders have made with their promotion announcements yesterday. You've probably heard me say many times that in conjunction with the Board, one of my key responsibilities is succession planning for key roles, and I look forward to continuing to work with them and prepare them for the future. Turning to investments, we have been very pleased with our investment portfolio's performance as it continues to produce strong net investment income with minimal losses and impairments. As an insurance company, our primary responsibility is to fulfill the promises we make to our policyholders while being responsive to the needs of our shareholders. Our solid portfolio supports our promise to our policyholders, as does our commitment to maintaining strong capital ratios. We balance this financial strength with tactical capital deployment. We intend to continue prudently managing our liquidity and capital to preserve the strength of our capital and cash flows. This supports both our dividend track record and tactical share repurchase. We treasure our track record of what is now 42 consecutive years of dividend growth with the board of directors declaration of the fourth quarter dividend of 50 cents. We repurchased $500 million in shares during the quarter and intend to continue our balanced tactical approach of investing in growth and driving long-term operating efficiencies. Our management team, employees, and sales distribution continue to be dedicated stewards of our business, being there for the policyholders when they need us most, just as we promised. This exemplifies our goal of providing customers with the best value in the supplemental insurance products in the United States and Japan. We believe in the underlying strengths of our business and our potential for continued growth in Japan and the United States, two of the largest life insurance markets in the world. APLAC is well positioned as we work toward achieving long-term growth while also ensuring we deliver on our promise to our policyholders. I'll now turn the program over to Max to cover more details of the financial results.