AFLAC Incorporated

Good day and welcome to the ASLAC Incorporated first quarter 2026 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 presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to David Young, Senior Vice President of Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome. Thank you for joining us for Aflac Incorporated's first quarter 2026 earnings call. This morning, Dan Amos, Chairman, CEO of Aflac Incorporated, will provide an overview of our results and operations in Japan and the United States. Then, Max Brodin, Senior Executive Vice President and CFO of Aflac Incorporated, will provide more detail on this quarter's financial results, including our capital and liquidity. These topics are also addressed in the materials we posted with our earnings release, financial supplement, and quarterly CFO video update on investors.aflac.com. For Q&A today, we are also joined by Virgil Miller, President of Aflac Incorporated and Aflac U.S., 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 give no assurance that they will prove to be accurate because they are prospective 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 can materially impact our results. As I mentioned earlier, the earnings released with reconciliations of certain non-U.S. GAAP measures and related earnings materials are available on investors.aflac.com. I'll now hand the call over to Dan.

Dan? Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. We're glad you've joined us. Although we have just one quarter under our belt, the first quarter marked a good start to the year. Aflac Incorporated reported net earnings per diluted share of $1.98 and adjusted earnings per diluted share of $1.75. These results reflect our focused execution of our strategy, thus creating long-term value for our shareholders. Starting with Japan, as you will recall last year, Aflac Japan implemented a marketing and sales transformation which helped deliver the strong results and sales momentum we saw in 2025, and again in this quarter. This transformation was a major strategic initiative driven by Athlete Japan's corporate strategy and marketing and sales team. I would highlight the leadership of Deputy President Shinsuke Morimoto, First Senior Vice President Michihiro Ito, and Chief Marketing Officer Yumi Saito, working together with Executive Vice President Yoshizumi to make it happen. As a cohesive management team, they delivered strong results. I'm excited about the value and innovation that they have produced and will continue to bring to the organization moving forward. With this in mind, I'm pleased with Athlete Japan's sales increase of a 25.5 percent increase for the first quarter. These strong sales results were driven largely by our newest medical product, Anshin Pallet and Morito, our latest cancer insurance product. As part of our ongoing strategy, we continue to emphasize and promote the importance of third sector protection to new and younger customers with our innovative first sector product, Sumitatsu. The value of our policies resonates with millions of policyholders, and this reinforces how Aflac's overall strategy is effective and reputation is important. By maintaining strong persistency while adding new premium through sales, we seek to offset the impact of lapses and reissue, as well as policies reaching paid up status in the future. Maintaining strong persistency continues to be important to the future of Aflac Japan. Our broad network of distribution channels, including agencies, alliance partners, and banks, continually leverage opportunities to help provide financial protection to Japanese consumers. For the quarter, all of our distribution channels generated increases in sales, which is significant. considering that we prioritize being where the customer wants to buy insurance. We will continue to evaluate the needs of each channel and support those needs as we work together to provide Japanese citizens with financial protection. Turning to Aflac US, I am encouraged by the 2.9% year-over-year increase in sales and the momentum we are seeing within all areas of our group business, especially our group voluntary products. More importantly, we maintain strong premium persistency of 79.3% and increased net earned premium of 3.5% for the quarter. We continue to focus on driving our profitable growth with strong underwriting discipline and maintaining strong premium persistency. We believe This will continue to drive net earned premium growth. At the same time, Aflac US has continued its prudent approach to expense management and maintaining a strong pre-tax margin, as Max will expand upon shortly. Across Japan and the United States, consumers are feeling the increasing burden of out-of-pocket medical expenses. That's where we step in. Our management teams, employees, and sales distribution partners are united to be there for the policyholders when they need us most. As the pioneer in cancer insurance and a leader in the industry, our team and sales partners show up every day to help ease the burden, providing financial protection with genuine compassion and care. As an insurance company, our primary responsibility is to fulfill the promises we make to the policyholders while being responsive to the needs of shareholders. We generated strong capital and cash flows on an ongoing basis while maintaining our commitment to prudent liquidity and capital management. We continue to be pleased with our investments, producing solid investment incomes, Our financial strength is the foundation that backs up our promise to our policyholders, balanced with the financial flexibility and tactical capital deployment. I am very pleased with the company's financial strength, which supports our capital deployment. We treasure our 43 consecutive years of dividend increases and remain committed to extending this record. Combining share repurchase and dividends, we delivered $1.3 billion back to the shareholders in the first quarter. In doing so, we have maintained our position among companies with the highest return on capital and the lowest cost of capital in the industry. In today's complex healthcare environment, Aflac stands out as a trusted partner, combining relevant products financial strength, a powerful brand and broad distribution to help consumers manage the financial strain of out-of-pocket medical expenses. The ongoing foundational strengths of our business and our capacity for continued growth in Japan and the United States, two of the largest life insurance markets in the world, support our leading position and build on our momentum. I will now turn the program over to Max to cover more details of the financial results.