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Operator
Good morning and thank you for holding. Welcome to ANC's third quarter 2019 earnings conference call. At this time, all parties will be on a listen-only mode until the question and answer session of today's call. I would also like to remind all parties that this call is being recorded. If anyone has an objection, you may disconnect your line at this time. It is important to note that some of the comments in today's call may constitute certain statements that are forward looking in nature as defined by Private Securities Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that would cause actual results to differ materially from historical results or those anticipated. Information concerning risk factors that could cause such differences are described in the press release covering our third quarter 2019 as well as having been posted on our website. Now it is my pleasure to call over to Greg Case, CEO of ANC. Please go ahead.
Greg Case
Thanks very much and good morning everyone. Welcome to our third quarter 2019 conference call. Joining me today is our CFO Krista Davies. In addition, we have our two co-presidents, Eric Anderson and Mike O'Connor, joining the discussion to help lead our Q&A session with their frontline perspective of client impact that illustrates the result we're achieving with clients through our Aon United Growth Strategy. Like previous quarters, we posted a detailed financial presentation on our website so that we can focus our time on these quarterly calls to provide you more insight into the longer term view for the firm. First, let me start by recognizing the remarkable dedication of my Aon colleagues around the world. Their collective efforts continue to strengthen the firm and create long term momentum reflected through strong performance in the third quarter. We delivered positive results across each of our key financial metrics including 5% organic revenue growth and I'd highlight organic revenue growth on the year to date and trailing 12 months basis of 6% reflecting continued acceleration of our historical trend. Substantial operating margin expansion of 350 basis points and 11% EPS growth, overcoming FX headwinds in the quarter. We're driving the continued progress through this year with momentum heading into the last quarter of 2019 and this is a direct reflection of the certain investments and actions we continue to take to achieve our potential operating as one united global professional services firm. Last quarter, we touched on valuable insights from our global risk management survey highlighting how clients face growing volatility and complexity in today's evolving world. Nearly every organization, industry and economy are confronting greater challenges than ever before and most of these risks are underserved if addressed at all because they're not well understood with less historical experience and use of available data to predict, measure or manage these challenges. More concerning is that these challenges are very likely to grow in intensity over the next few years as emerging risks become even more prominent threatening the ability of our clients to continue driving growth, protecting their assets and developing talent. Against that backdrop, we are responding with actions that bring the full force of our firm to clients by developing innovative solutions and applying data analytics to better inform and advise them for their future. This approach is at the core of our A and United growth strategy and establishes the commercial foundation upon which we drive innovation, deliver expanded client value and accelerate the growth of our firm. Beginning in 2017 with the outsourcing business, we've taken a series of important steps designed to remix our portfolio to achieve a faster growing higher margin set of offerings that better reflect the expanding needs of our clients. This approach is best evidenced by the 4.8 billion dollar disposition of our outsourcing business and the subsequent 1.5 billion dollar reinvestment over the last two years and middle market and back office service innovation. That reinvestment included the business services, an important step toward modernizing infrastructure and creating a common technology platform that simplifies repeatable elements of client service and allows colleagues to spend more time on the highest value aspects of their client relationships while supporting sustainable margin expansion for the firm. In parallel, we took steps to reduce structural barriers that prevented colleagues from delivering the best of the firm to clients, which in 2018 included the shift to a single global brand and the creation of a single global operating committee. Creating a forum for and united decision making that has accelerated growth in our core business. Last year, we also created the New Ventures Group, which is driven by a team of global leaders that command the capital and supporting infrastructure necessary to function of the growth stage development platform. This group is developing a portfolio of cutting edge client solutions on topics like intellectual property and public sector partnerships, which further accelerate net new innovation on behalf of clients and expands our addressable market. The United Actions we have taken at the global level have unified our firm and further strengthen our capabilities, which is proven out by our performance through 2019. With this momentum, we announced the next phase of our United Growth Strategy earlier this month, outlining two key components that translate our progress at the global level into how we go to market locally, allowing us to more effectively bring the full force of our global firm to clients. We describe the first component as delivering and united because it includes a series of steps that will improve sales effectiveness, strengthen our segmentation strategy and further increase collaboration across solution lines. All of which means more value creation for clients and further acceleration of organic growth. The second component is about the expansion of our leading Aon Business Services platform. Aon Business Services has already proven that it helps capitalize on the benefits of our global scale to deliver world-class client service and provide colleagues additional capacity to deliver more value to clients, which is why we're expanding our Aon Business Services footprint and establishing client service hubs, leveraging technology platforms and new capabilities to accelerate our ability to deliver the best of the firm to clients while driving further operational excellence in our back and middle office services, which will drive greater productivity in our operations and contribute to sustainable margin expansion. These moves create a common baseline for Aon United and the experience of Aon United in our local geographies, including how the firm articulates our value proposition to clients, delivers repeatable elements of client service, develops our colleagues and measures return on invested capital. At the end of the day, all of these steps come back to how we can most effectively bring the best of our firm to clients so that we can help them improve their operational performance, reduce volatility or strengthen their capital position, which is why we will continue to take steps to connect our firm, leverage our global scale and strategically invest in industry-defining content to amplify the value we can provide on their behalf and increase our relevance in today's evolving landscape. For your reference, I'd like to highlight one example of how our colleagues came together with a real business partner approach to address a client's unique need to give you an idea of how our Aon United efforts translate into value at the front line. A global agricultural firm was facing operational losses due to casual volatility throughout the year based on seasonal crop yield that could be impacted at any given time by weather-related events or other variables outside their control. We believed we could help this insight game through data analytics that would guide a strategic choice. Our team brought together commercial risk, reinsurance and data analytics capabilities. Then we analyzed satellite gathered weather data, applied our proprietary catastrophic impact forecasting model and overlay trends with the client's revenue. Our team was able to correlate patterns that enabled the design of a parametric trigger solution unique to this client's operational risk. The result was an innovative, tailor-made crop risk management program that pays out automatically once a pre-determined trigger is reached. This is a more efficient and timely approach, supporting our clients' competitive advantage in maintaining their prices regardless of harvest quality. They also benefit from cash flow reliability, operational and capital stability and improved long-term business planning. And that's just one recent success story of how you're responding to unique client with action. Truly made possible by greater colleague collaboration and through commercializing our proprietary content and data into an opportunity to deliver client value. But the application is happening across the portfolio as we scale our AM United efforts, translated into improved growth profile for the firm as we drive new business generation and create greater retention and share of existing clients. Our trend of organic growth has already improved from 3% in 2014 and 2015 to 4% in 2016 and 2017 to 5% in 2018. And now in 2019, we delivered 6% year to date. Further, we expect strong performance in the fourth quarter, resulting in continued progress for the whole year against our goal of mid-single digit organic revenue growth or greater over the long term. In summary, our clients are demanding that they be better informed and better advised to navigate and address the complex and evolving challenges they face. We continue to build momentum as we strengthen our ability to create value on behalf of clients through investments in industry defining content and capability combined with greater alignment across our firm while also achieving strong financial results and increased value to our shareholders. With that overview, I'd like to turn the call over to Krista for her thoughts on our financial progress year to date and long-term outlook for continued shareholder integration. Krista?
Krista
Thanks so much, Greg, and good morning everyone. As Greg highlighted, we continue to take steps to deliver Aon United, which is amplifying our ability to serve clients distinctively and deliver improved financial performance. We delivered positive performance across each of our key metrics for both the quarter and year to date. Through the first nine months of the year, strong organic revenue growth and increased operating leverage have contributed to substantial operational improvement, which is translating into double digit free cash flow growth. We're delivering on restructuring initiatives and funding significant investments across the firm that will deliver improved financial performance long term. As I further reflect on our performance here today, first the growth profile of our firm is improving with 6% organic revenue growth year to date and for the trailing 12 months. I would highlight year to date organic revenue growth accelerated 200 basis points from 4% in 2018 to 6% in 2019 as we deliver on our goal of mid single digits or greater organic revenue growth over the long term. Reported revenue has been pressured throughout 2019 by an unfavorable impact from changes in FX. Our disciplined focus on maximizing return on invested capital continues to help shape the portfolio towards our highest growth and return opportunities as highlighted by the divestiture of certain businesses and retirement solutions at the end of the second quarter. Second, we continued another quarter of substantial operational improvement which has contributed to strong year to date performance of 12% operating income growth and operating margin expansion of 250 basis points. Both operating income growth and operating margin expansion have improved on a nine month basis compared to results of six months, while the impact from restructuring savings has remained similar, reflecting increased operating leverage across our portfolio. We are also translating strong operational performance into double digit EPS growth of 10% year to date overcoming continued headwinds from FX translation. FX rates continue to have an unfavorable impact on results in the third quarter due primarily to a stronger US dollar resulting in a significant net unfavorable impact of approximately 20 cents year to date or a 58 million dollar impact on operating income. If currency remains stable at today's rates we anticipate an unfavorable impact of four cents or approximately 12 million dollars reduction of operating income in the fourth quarter. We continue to successfully execute against our restructuring initiatives with 32 million incremental savings in the third quarter. Our ongoing restructuring initiatives are driving expense savings near term but more importantly they're enabling growth of the firm as we unlock additional operating leverage through our Aon Business Services operating model. Aon Business Services is helping us modernize our infrastructure and create common technology platforms. When we simplify and standardize repeatable elements of back and middle office processes we're finding that our colleagues have more time to spend with clients, strengthening our relationships and identifying expanded opportunities for our firm. Looking beyond near term restructuring savings we expect to drive sustainable operating performance and long-term core margin expansion annually similar to the 70 to 80 basis points of operating margin improvement achieved annually over the last decade net of continued reinvestment in growth opportunities. This is driven by organic growth, portfolio mix shift and ongoing productivity improvements. Lastly free cash flow increased by 200 million or 25 percent to 996 million. Substantial growth through the first nine months primarily reflects strong operational performance. I would note both the prior and current periods include impacts that largely offset each other in total for a neutral impact to -over-year growth. As we think about cash flow generation going forward we're focused on maximizing the translation of accelerating revenue growth into the highest level of free cash flow in three years in three ways. Operating income growth, continued progress on working capital initiatives and structural uses of cash winding down. 2018 was the peak year for cash usage as shown in our presentation on slide 26. Declining uses of cash restructuring capex and pension continue are expected to free up over 585 million of free cash flow by the end of 2020. We continue to have significant upside to a 2018 prior to any operating income growth or working capital improvements. Together these inputs give us confidence in our ability to deliver on our goal of double digit growth in free cash flow over the long term. Further we have the opportunity for incremental debt while maintaining current investment grade ratings as EBITDA grows restructuring costs wind down and pension liability improves providing significant financial flexibility over the next few years to further invest in value creation or return of capital to shareholders. We're diligent about maximizing return on capital and make capital allocations decisions through this discipline. Share repurchase remains the highest return on capital investment today given our free cash flow valuation and outlook highlighted by the 1.5 billion of share repurchase year to date. In summary strong top and bottom line performance for both the quarter and year to date continue to reinforce our air united initiatives and strategic decisions building momentum as we enter the last quarter of the year but more importantly strengthen the long-term growth profile for our firms. In addition our disciplined approach to return on capital combined with our expected significant free cash flow growth and increased debt opportunity over the next few years provides financial flexibility to unlock significant shareholder value creation over the long term. With that I'll turn the call back over to the operator and we'd be happy to take your questions.
Operator
Thank you we will now begin the question and answer session if you would like to ask a question please press star follow beta number one on your phone unmute your phone and record your name and company clearly when prompted. Your name is required to introduce your question to cancel your request press star follow beta number two one moment please for
Mike
incoming questions. We have nine questions in queue on
Operator
or for Q&A. Our first question comes from David Stiebel from Jeffries
Mike
your line is now open. David is it you there? Operator why don't we go to the next question and we'll pick David up. Okay one moment please sorry. One moment please. Sorry for that David Stiebel sorry that
Operator
is a Mike Zaremski credits please your line is now open.
Mike Zaremski
Great thanks good morning. First questions on the commercial insurance pricing environment a number of large corporations have been talking about a fairly significant increases in pricing and or changes in capacity kind of existing into 4Q maybe you can comment on what you guys are seeing and if it's helping drive revenues and margins right now.
Greg Case
Yeah from our standpoint we've talked about this you know on the call frequently so I really appreciate the question again for us remember pricing really translates into market impact so that's encompassing both rate and insured values and as we've highlighted market impact for us let's say it had a modestly positive impact to our results you know just maybe three observations when you think about A&O overall you know something around half of our world is operates completely independent of any insurance pricing cycle and even within our risk business a third of it you know is fee based and when you think about our overall approach and what we do you know our our world is really you know centered around using data analytics capability to really help clients at an individual level focus on their circumstances and to get you know to get the best results so you'll see us modify programs individual covers based on market conditions they will fundamentally we will help them change behavior based on market reaction or more market position so for us overall you know modestly positive impact results and our view is the highly client-centric approach is one of the reasons we've got you know new business generation and retention levels that are all-time high.
Mike Zaremski
And a follow-up to that is just the is for the one third that's fee based historically is that grown at a low single digit pace or how should investors think about how the the fee based business or revenues sensitivity?
Greg Case
You know so Mike we don't break out literally sort of growth at that level our view as we come back there's really not a difference this is about how we add value to clients and consistent with what you know as we describe what we mean by you know A on United behavior this is you know how we bring global capability to our clients in their backyard and we do it how we describe the value so literally the work we're doing includes how we describe the value to clients if we create value we should we should we should get paid for the value if we don't we should highlight that as well so we're incredibly transparent and in our view is we are increasing our capability to both deliver value articulate value and get paid for value.
Mike Zaremski
Okay great and lastly probably for Krista you know interest rates have declined fairly measurably a year to date and stock market in the U.S. has said well any early views on if things don't change much from here will any the pension expenses or free cash flows be materially impacted for next year?
Krista
Yeah I mean it's a great question Mike what I would say is as we think about our pension unfunded liability we do an annual measurement at $12.31 each year the balance sheet in terms of unfunded pension liability at Q3 doesn't reflect changes in interest rates or asset valuations and we've certainly done a lot of work on our pensions over the last 10 years to freeze the plans and close them and de-risk them to massively reduce volatility so our results in pension cash contributions in 2020 you can see as shown on the chart on page 26 it shows it decreasing substantially and we feel really good about that look in terms of other impacts from interest rates our debt is fixed and so we don't see material impacts from interest rates.
Mike
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you our next question comes from David from Jeffers your line is now open.
David
Hi there can you guys hear me this time?
Greg Case
We can David welcome back what's on your mind?
David
Good like a mulligan okay um I give maybe I give Mike and Eric a chance to chime in on this but I'm curious as you guys are going to market with your clients and and it sounds like you're increasingly doing more customized solutions to help them with their specific set of risks I'd imagine that probably takes more effort in capital resources and so forth I'm wondering to what extent or how do you get compensated for that does that wind up being a higher margin sell for you guys ultimately because you are providing a customized solution set for that client that they could maybe not otherwise find in the market maybe just what does that look like going through the sales cycle?
Greg Case
Yeah when you step back David and think about sort of what really happens when we bring the best of our firm in essence we've got the beauty of this is we have the capability we have the capacity our colleagues have the expertise and our clients have increasing need the question is how do you connect the dots and actually make that happen and so we have more and found situations where you know we're spending time with a client understanding broad-based needs our colleagues have greater awareness of Aon and what they're trying to get accomplished and what we're trying to get accomplished and so they they actually then bring these these other colleagues in that they address these issues in ways we haven't addressed before and the beauty of this is it not only creates net new areas but it also very much sort of addresses retention on existing business and what we're doing from an existing client standpoint so the approach we're taking very much sort of leverages assets and capabilities that we've got and clients respond very very positively to it.
David
David, it's Mike maybe I'd give you an example of how we helped decrease the perception of volatility from climate change that was impacting a client's real estate portfolio so really really I find a very interesting example of how we're growing and expanding relationships with clients so in this situation a large real estate client who is an investor and the team is doing a terrific job around commercial risk but the team in this case just stepped back and said what is the real issue challenging this client's business and one of the issues they were facing was an overhang of how climate change and other catastrophic risk over the long term would impact the real estate portfolio and our team would have done this in the past you know they brought together colleagues from around the world they brought together colleagues from commercial risk reinsurance our data and analytics team and said could we actually come together with the experiences the capabilities we have the data analytics and could we actually put together a risk portfolio diagnostic to basically identify and quantify the impact that climate change and other risks would have on this portfolio real estate over the long term we were able to share that insight with the client they were able to take it back to their investors and actually show facts and scenarios and thereby reduce the perception of risk and for us you know this was a whole new relationship with the client it grew our relationship with them and also solidified us as a real partner to help their business for the long term so you know that's just an example for us that we get really excited about in terms of what we can do for clients
spk09
and like maybe david eric maybe just pick up on another one because you asked about how we bring the teams together there's and we use an integrated client planning process but maybe i'll just use another example to run through we had a financial institution client that had been a long-term client but during that process uncovered that they were dissatisfied with a product that they were selling through their own distribution agents and we're looking to find ways to either revamp either the pricing the underwriting the distribution the claims process the whole sort of process of offering the product and they asked us for our thoughts and we were able to bring our insurance consulting capability our data and analytics as well as our experience and knowledge of the marketplace they had also asked some other advisory firms for their opinion but our ability to tie all of it together sort of enabled us to proceed with the client and ultimately for the client the outcome is you know pretty straightforward right they end up with a revamped process that drives more revenue for them reduces the volatility of the product itself but for us it actually gives us a much deeper insight into the client it was already a great client so really it was bringing a new capability into an existing market as opposed to going out to cyber or government de-risking or other areas that we've talked about this is about expanding capabilities within an existing relationship using that integrated client planning process that i referred to earlier
Greg Case
and david one real important point here too this is your point your question about the sales cycle this doesn't elongate the sales cycle at all in fact it's very different we're bringing existing capability and matching it to client need we're in fact we're creating new sales cycles so it's the same sales cycle on the traditional products our traditional areas and then new sales cycles that you know we serve on other clients but not that client so the example eric described sort of was literally an expansion so the sales cycle and what we expanded into was no longer than ever before and it just creates you know frankly tremendous effort even if a new client is a new client it creates a new conversation which changes their perception of who we are and how we think about them that actually impacts retention in our court in what we're currently doing with them in addition to sort of open up new vistas and new opportunities
David
got it thanks for the color on that two quick questions for krista heard your fx comments about the fourth quarter i'm wondering can you provide us some perspective to help out with modeling for how the fx looks to impact the pnl in 2020 and then free cash flow obviously rebounded really nicely up 25 year to date was there anything unusual in the third quarter that helps provide maybe a one-time benefit or pull forward and then looking to the fourth quarter expect free cash flow to be up year over year are there any other factors there timing or whatnot that might cause it to to decline great
Krista
okay so on fx i guess what i would say is we we did give guidance for q4 it's minus four cents it's really due to a stronger us dollar in general we prefer a weaker us dollar across our global portfolio because we're translating local revenue and local expenses into us dollars and so if the stronger us dollar continues you know we would expect some fx headwind in 2020 but we haven't given data oh and then on your effect on your free cash flow question sorry so free cash flow it's very strong year to date 25 percent up the estate over last year we have given guidance on free cash flow to expect double digits for the foreseeable future and so you know we would expect very strong free cash flow growth for the full year 2019 there were some you know restructuring cash charges that timed out a q3 into q4 if you think about the whole program we'll finish restructuring in 2019 and so you'll see those cash charges come through in the fourth quarter but we're really excited about free cash flow for the full year 2019 and most excited about free cash flow 2020 instead the double digit free cash flow growth plus the declining use of cash
Mike
so i think
Krista
that adds to
Mike
the question yep thanks much
Operator
thank you very much and our next question comes from elise spence welts fargo your line is now open
spk12
thank you good morning my first question earlier this week you guys announced the regional insurer group initiative just trying to get a little bit of additional color there just in terms of how you would kind of size your business in that regional kind of space today and kind of term growth aspirations there and that is expanding that type of regional size account offering depended upon you know any mna activity within the u.s.
Greg Case
at least it's just another example as we look across sort of the you know the global portfolio and it's back to kind of as we connect the dots on opportunities we saw this is a great opportunity to help a sector that we know very very well and it really isn't about the size it's really about what we can bring to the table so if you think about walking into you know this client and helping them with their you know a lot of the things on protecting their balance sheet which we know very very well think about how we can help them on retirement on health on the broader base set of things to you know candidly help them improve their operating performance strengthen the balance sheet reduce volatility and we bring all all a on to bear on that mission we just love that approach in that sector and and frankly we've seen it happen around the world this is another example we've seen the movie before how do we translate what we've seen sort of in the client impact in an effective way and this is just another example of that we're very excited about it our leaders are rallied around the world to do it and it really is a a set of leaders across solution lines who are going to sort of bring the full force of a onto this to this sector and we're really excited about it
spk12
okay thanks and then my second question just in terms of margin so you know 350 basis points on this quarter you still get around on you know 210 or so if we you know assume you know kind of adjust for the savings in the quarter i guess what i'm trying to get a sense of is you know what's kind of the sustainable level of margin improvement here and you know i know you guys kind of continuously point to that 70 to 80 that you've historically seen but it seems that what you're doing with a on business services should lead to greater operating leverage so we think about the third quarter level being more sustainable relative to the margin improvement you've seen in the past
Krista
it's a great question elise and what we would say is -to-date margin expansion is 250 basis points of which 110 basis points is core margin expansion if you take out the restructuring savings you're absolutely right that a on business services is providing us with incremental operating leverage is thriving sustained productivity improvements well beyond restructuring savings into 2020 and beyond and one simple example of that is the fact that we've actually automated over 500 000 hours this year through automation which drives ongoing productivity so you can kind of see the you know improved operating leverage before we reinvest in additional growth opportunities we do think the the right guidance going forward in terms of you know in line with our 10-year historical average so we feel really good about that
spk12
okay thanks and then my last question in terms of reinsurance growth still pretty good but we did see a little bit of a slowdown sequentially was there anything in terms of maybe that could the new business flow i guess did you see any kind of change in trends within your reinsurance book from the second to the third quarter in either new business or retention that might have impacted the sequential slowdown in organics
spk09
hi lisa it's eric and maybe i'll take a stab at it the reality is no we have not seen a slowdown on it the composition of the book is different in the second half of the year the first half is pretty heavily loaded towards the treaty business the second half is much more facultative and and capital markets and you know that business is is a little bit a little lumpy based on how and when the clients need the cover and so i would say we we are continuing to be pretty strong in that space it's a double-digit growth business for us especially the fact business and we continue to see that going forward
Greg Case
and like everything at least we look at these things year over year when you think about -to-date progress against year to date last year continuing momentum and building the business absolutely fantastic nine percent -to-date so you know continued progress momentum okay thank
Operator
you thank you our next question comes from paul neeson of sander o'neill your line is open
spk01
um the only thing i had was i was wondering about the divestitures that you've been doing and how we should think about the impact on revenue and margins perspective in fourth quarter maybe 2020 from the divestiture piece that you're doing
Krista
yep it's a great question paul and what i would say is as we think about managing the portfolio we're doing it on a return on capital basis and maximizing you know our investment in high revenue growth high margin businesses and then obviously divesting lower revenue growth lower margin businesses as we think about modeling going forward you should see a similar impact in retirement due to the divestiture of that business in q2 for the next three quarters so that'll sort of flow through over the course of the year similar to what you saw in retirement this quarter
Mike
great that's all you thank you very much
Operator
thank
Mike
you
Operator
our next question comes from chan haggardy of atlantic equities your line is now open
spk08
thanks a couple of questions if i could firstly on the data and analytics division it looks a little bit like the revenues the organic revenue growth is decelerating over the past four quarters so i was wondering if we should read it like that or whether it's just that it has much more of a skew towards q4 and that's likely to come through again this year
Greg Case
yeah i step back john as you think about sort of growth overall i just it lessens for all the solution lines really it really isn't about any single quarter even you know in solution line we look at growth across the board so we're really looking at sort of a on results overall and perspective how that that progresses year to year so the lots of things happen within individual solutions lines and if you sort of look at that perspective that that bucket together you see really tremendous progress five percent in 18 six percent -to-date in 2019 by the way that's versus four percent in -to-date in 2018 so up 200 basis points and really across the portfolio all solution lines including data analytics are sort of up year to date including data analytics i might say when you think about year to date so for us we wouldn't focus on any one or particular quarter or the other it really is about -to-date progress or -over-year progress and we feel very good about where we are against that
spk08
okay thanks and then just on the divested revenues following up on paul's question just it looks like the amount in terms of revenue divested so this year's just under 100 million dollars but in terms of cash flow generated from the divestment it looks like it's only about 43 million so what do we can you give a bit more detail on what those businesses were and what sort of margin they were generating yeah
Krista
i mean what we can say john is that their lower revenue growth lower margin businesses so it fits with our focus on improving growth and improving margins and focus on return on capital we haven't given specifics on the amount of cash we received we feel really good about the overall management of the portfolio including those divestments
Greg Case
just very fine as you think about sort of where we are this is probably one that's not even year over year it really is over multiple years as you think about where we are and think about our acquisition investor strategy over the last number of years we are absolutely you know maniacally focused on improving return on capital so it's not surprising the cash flow characteristics of the business we divest aren't nearly as good as the ones we have nor ones we buy and so we're going to be lumpy year over you know year as we think about the right acquisitions we're going to bring in content and capability we can scale and that will drive you know top line growth over time but it really in this case is even more over a period of years it will drive top line growth as you've seen you know over the last decade so hopefully that's helpful we'll continue to think about the divestitures when they are helpful to the ric and the overall portfolio and we'll continue to make acquisitions with great capacity to do so when they make sense
Mike
as well okay thanks
Operator
thank you our next question comes from Jared Kinner of Goldman Sachs your line is now open
spk10
morning uh first question is just following up on Elise's margin question so the just over 200 basis points of core margin improvement in the quarter 100 or so basis points of improvement year to date is the above run rate improvement also a function of timing and magnitude investments in the platform it's
Krista
really about the operating leverage we're getting through a on business services which is accelerating our overall margin expansion year to date if you look at the nine months operating margin expansion versus the six months we've accelerated and the restructuring savings has remained about the same proportion of that and the core margin expansion expanded and so we're getting real operating leverage in the platform from growth from uh yeah from leverage in abs and we expect that to continue through calendar year 2019 and into 2020 one of the other things i'd say is this operating leverage is allowing us to fund greater investment in some whole new markets and capacity graze you might want to talk a bit about that
Greg Case
well i just about our margin expanding margin our capability to do so you've seen us over a 10-year period do the 70 to 80 basis points has been described already you ask yourself the question what's the probability we can continue to do that uh we would we would suggest that this quarter and this year today's performance says that probability is going up not going down and that's because of the operational leverage krista described in addition to that it's really important for for us to convey how much we are investing in future growth for our business uh and this is a number of areas you think about what we've done in intellectual property what we've done in the entire area of kind of public partnerships what we've done in small client what we've done in you know in the retirement business and health business all these things are sort of net new things we've never done before you've seen examples we talked about the world bank cap on last time there's a whole series of things we've done to create net new truly not just expanding share what's already out there but net new things that have never been looked at before same in cyber so there's a level of investment that is quite high we're very excited about it in terms of future long-term growth but we're also very committed to making sure we can continue to improve margins year over year and as krista described a on business services is a way to do that but it also you know has lots of different attributes in terms of what we're doing the muscle is really really powerful and we're going to keep working on
David
it hey greg maybe i'd share it's mike maybe i'd share an example of how a on business service is changing what we do and these are health care center of excellence that's doing that's delivering better outcomes as well as getting efficiency and productivity gains and the short description of this is you know we've basically moved our 600 actuaries into a center of excellence model we're leveraging best practices we're bringing common tools to bear and we're driving productivity gains and you know we mentioned in the past we built an analytical suite of tools and architect and this group of actuaries is using that as well we talked about how our colleagues in the field are using our actuaries are using as well but we're going from manual calculations using assumptions to you know ai driven suite of tools where we can do hundreds of assumptions simultaneously and generate a half a million scenarios for our client so we can actually work with the client to pick the best outcome in addition you bring the group together in center of excellence and we've improved peer reviews through automated workflows so we get all the productivity gains that you'd expect in a center of excellence but we're most excited about the impact we're having with clients
Greg Case
i really appreciate that example Mike so again Ron the reason we mentioned it sort of here this is you take a step back to your question fundamentally our ability to improve margin the reason we're so excited about AI on business services is it creates operator leverage operating leverage in the business it's meaningful and real but no kidding Mike said 600 actuaries we had them all around the firm we now bringing them together they're doing things we didn't hadn't done before and instead of giving a client three or four options on the health side we're giving them you know a continuum of 500 sort of iterations five you know 500 000 i'm sorry i'd be correct about my colleague 500 000 iterations of what we can do all better than three by the way and and and it changes fundamentally our ability to serve clients so you know it builds operating leverage and improves service and that's you know that's the that's the equation we're pulling together when we describe AI United that's one big aspect
spk10
of it that's very helpful i appreciate that my second question's around intellectual property so Greg you've talked in the past even just mentioned it now that there's an underserved potential for or underserved client needs that that have create a significant potential for for the market can you and the team maybe help us try and size this market opportunity in IP and then also discuss the specific actions particularly your date that Aon has taken to position itself to capitalize on this opportunity so
Greg Case
you start with literally the fundamental opportunity that you know potential demand and it's you know any way you look at it it's incredibly compelling um you know just step back kick the estimate 2018 how much of the value of the s&p 500 was attributable to intangible assets and you know it's 80 to 85 percent you know think about that that needs 20 trillion plus it's an amazingly huge number sort of attributable intangible assets that was probably in the low 20s in the 70s it's now in the you know 80s mid 80s and so you essentially say if that's where the value is coming from this is back to the idea of net new what are we doing that makes a difference for clients net new that doesn't exist and the protection of intellectual property is something we've never done before and it's why again we brought in tremendous amount of capability some with tross reverb and 601 west tremendous capability which we've added to over time and we've got 100 plus colleagues who are who are focused on how you think about valuing intellectual property and how you provide cover on it how you protect clients from liabilities that come with it or the you know ip theft and so you ask yourself you know how big could that market be candidly this would be this is a market that should be much bigger than cyber you know this is a you know this is a hundred billion dollar plus market over time if we help clients understand how to address and protect intellectual property trade secrets all the things that come with that our view is this is a you know this is a tremendous opportunity for the industry and candidly a tremendous opportunity for our clients and the other piece and i'm sorry to get off on the go off on the ip but i can't help it one of the things about ip that's so so cool is a lot of what we do is protecting the house and that's in cyber something bad happens how do you protect you know something happens in a plant or equipment or something happens in a portfolio on the retirement side these are protecting downside intellectual property is about creating upside you can actually help clients create net new value that they already have but didn't really know it when you can actually help a client value a portfolio by the way the valuation comes from the fact that the insurance markets actually back it so that creates the implicit value all of a sudden you're creating opportunities so we're pretty bullish on this as you can tell and really you know in again in terms of sort of the idea of net new high margin high margin because it's high value to clients we're providing this kind of value to clients we're doing things that no one else has you know been able to do and the opportunity if we think it's substantial and you see us investing heavily behind it back to the question around maintaining 70 to 80 basis point improvement and investing this heavily how do you do it again the hundred plus colleagues how do you do it you do it on business services and other means to sort of create operating leverage in the business and that's the equation we've got
spk10
thank you for the comprehensive
Mike
answers
Operator
thank you our next question comes from wire shield of keith bright and woods your line is open
spk03
great thanks good morning
Operator
um
spk03
greg i was helping you to walk us through the opportunities and challenges of lois blueprint one on i guess reviews and margins there
Greg Case
yeah listen we spend a lot of time uh you know with uh with our our partner in lois john meal and bruce and team uh trying to offer thoughts and views and perspectives uh we are absolutely you know focused on and delighted to be supportive knowing we can because it's important to our clients uh and you know our our guidance has largely been around sort of the following types of things uh whatever blueprint it comes out to be whatever incarnation comes out to be you ask yourself the question has it helped our clients uh has it done things for our clients that you know they don't get elsewhere in the world is there more innovation uh in a way that sort of benefits our clients so for us it's all about that and that you know that's the test of relevance for all of us uh and it's a test of relevance for for for lois as well and so everything we've done around it is sort of you know how do we how do we help them see what has to be true from the add value you know in a distinctive way and then we come back to if you're adding value in a distinctive way that has real beneficial aspects for margin if you're adding value in a way that's much more uh commoditized then it's you know it should have much less attractive margin characteristics so for us um we don't this isn't about us it's really about our clients and sort of how we can how we can help lois understand sort of what has to be true to help our clients and you know we're very hopeful uh john and bruce and team have worked very hard to sort of uh to take some steps to sort of really drive this market forward and um uh we're excited about the possibilities and want to support anywhere we can to support our clients
spk03
okay that's very helpful is there any validity to the idea that this could be sort of a revenue headwind but improve the bottom line by the more
Greg Case
no i don't think that really at the end of the day we haven't really thought about it in that way at all really this is lois is a source of uh of of capital and capability for our clients we want to apply it any way we can uh you know john and bruce are very well aware there are other options out there as well and we have access to all of them so we're in essence essentially saying we still always come back mire to the question is what's the client need and how are we supporting and serving it if we do that distinctively you know our margins and themselves and you know we love that nice edge by the way that means we have to continue to improve and if we don't you know we suffer the consequences as does everyone else our view is the opportunity is great there's lots of capital choices out there to support our clients to the extent that's helpful and necessary and that's how we're going to pursue it so we don't really see we're really not sort of seeing it sort of any any short-term long-term sort of implications that be driven by the by the by the lois blueprint
spk03
okay uh fantastic and then one small question for krista um the press release uh notes that uh dgraph distribution of earnings impacted the tax rate does sx itself have a tax rate impact
Krista
no it doesn't um
spk03
okay no
Krista
it doesn't sorry go ahead
Mike
no it doesn't my okay great thanks so much
Operator
thank you our next question comes from brian meredith of ubs your line is open
spk05
yeah thanks most of the answer but this this one here greg i noticed in your survey the number one um challenge that i think corporations talk about is economic slowdown slow recovery um could you give us some insights or kind of what you're seeing right now and also is that at all a concern for you guys as far as your organic revenue growth you know going forward here if we do get some economic slowdown
Greg Case
yeah yeah right first i would say i appreciate your referencing the risk survey we uh we find a lot of insight into that as it's as we're asking clients around the world what's most important to you what's on your mind most most failing of which is when you look at sort of the top 10 risks most of them are don't actually have an insurance related answer uh actually five have none uh if you have partial and then if you have a you know have something so our view is that's massive opportunity to sort of help clients and to the extent slowdown becomes number one how do we help clients do that by the way eric and mike both gave examples that would sort of lean into the headwinds of what would be a recession as it relates to aeon listen we just say we feel fairly fortunate uh you know if you think about sort of what's happened to us you go back to the you know the recession of uh eight and nine and what happened in essence you know you know the story well we were we were largely flat in terms of sort of where that was what you've seen us do you know in the first nine months of this year as everyone has talked about sort of issues and concerns is growth six percent year to date versus four percent last year so we're up 200 basis points versus uh you know year to date versus last year uh you know incredibly positive remember a lot of the revenue uh is non-discretionary so you know 85 is renewed business um and retention rates 90 plus on average and so it's a very unique kind of demand characteristic by the way that demand characteristic is true in commercial risk it's true in reinsurance it's true in retirement it's true in health incredibly powerful in terms of where we are and then if you think about you know where we were in eight and nine which is basically flat to the world and improved margins at the same time during the last recession uh we're a very very different and stronger firm now than we were then now you actually have all the things that we had back then plus all the net new so you know we didn't have ip we didn't have cyber we didn't have some of the health advancements that mike's talked about some of the things we've done on the retirement side so it's a much stronger firm in which we're creating new addressable demand that didn't exist before and in many respects we hope creating markets in which and will benefit and certainly others will too competitors everyone will we open up 100 billion dollar you know ip market that'll benefit everyone same on cyber we cyber is uh you know is anemic it's small compared to what it should be on behalf of clients huge opportunity against that so for us you know we're always going to be vigilant but we feel very good about our ability to support clients and in many respects the demand grows you know in times of volatility or in times of stress for them and you know to the extent we help them improve performance or strengthen their balance sheet or reduce their volatility you know that in and of itself is actually going to create an interesting play and then the final thing i would say is that in recession there's a a bit of a flight to quality in terms of sort of making sure you can deliver on behalf of clients and and we would we believe we'd benefit from that
spk05
great and then one of the quick ones once been looking at the survey responses once political risk and i think you may have commented about this a couple quarters ago but just maybe remind us if indeed you know we do see medicare for all what impact would that have on your health solutions business
Greg Case
well as we described by the way this is again you kind of kind of come back to fundamental what we're talking about here on sort of the health world overall you know this is an incredibly you know dysfunctional part of the global economy as we all know and you know the population around the world is becoming less healthy and per unit cost health care is going up so net net we think there's going to be massive demand in the context of this remember if you look at how far health business in the u.s. half outside the u.s. and that outside the u.s. is actually more akin to the single-payer world and we've done exceptionally well we're growing faster and margins are going up there's a lot of opportunity on just beyond the core but also on what you do from an elective standpoint on top of this so as we look at economies around the world you know we would say the demand is real our ability to to address it is real and we any political commentary on whether that's a good solution or not let's assume you actually went to that solution the transition to that solution would create huge turmoil with our clients and our ability to sort of support them and the transition would also be a source of opportunity but net net long term we love the health space i think there's tremendous opportunity to help clients in what is a you know really stressful world and you know one of the things you look about it it's not just the health side it's health and retirement because you know our clients employees are overspending on health on average and underspending on retirement and imagine brian if we could actually help them tweak that one or two percent for their employees you know our companies would have done a huge service to the families of the employees who work for them so you know we're pretty we're pretty bullish on sort of what's out there and the stresses for our clients our ability to address it
spk03
great thank
Greg Case
you
Operator
thank you our last question comes from josh shanker of the uh news bank your light is on open
spk14
all right good morning uh just a couple numbers questions really the first one and david sidelow kind of asked some questions about it i'm wondering if you can talk to a little bit what the uh normalized free cash flow would have been in the first nine months of 2018 or maybe how you think about what is the normalized growth that you've enjoyed uh here in the first time once in 2019 or maybe the first year i know you're thinking about 2020 but we talk about where normalized free cash flow growth has gone over the past 12 months
Krista
so the way we think about it josh is really our free cash flow growth for the first nine months a year of 25 percent we are on track for strong free cash flow growth for full year 2019 we've given long-term guidance of double digit free cash flow growth for the foreseeable future and we feel like we are on track for that and we're particularly excited about 2020 where we'll have underlying free cash flow growth of double digits plus a declining use of cash as you see on page 26 of the materials through decreased cash usage on pension capex and restructuring
spk14
but you can't say normalizing for restructuring spend and whatnot what the uh 2019 versus 2018 free cash flow trend has been
Krista
i mean you can see the restructuring cash yourself but we're getting double digit free cash flow growth
spk14
normalized that you think that's normalized
Krista
Dave uh josh i mean what we would say is we feel like we have double digit free cash flow growth -to-date and long term
spk14
okay okay and the other question also numbers-based in the uh healthcare solution sector can you talk about the dollar value of non-recurring uh headwinds the quarter on revenues and how much uh revenue has been moved from three q into four q
Krista
here's what we'd say on on health solutions we feel really good about where we are in terms of health solutions we've delivered five percent growth -to-date it's accelerated from four percent growth -to-date in 2018 and we have you know all lines contributing all solution lines contributing to mid-single digit growth or greater for the full year 2019 and we're we're looking forward to a strong q4
spk14
and there's but there's no there's no guidance around those two items you cited in the press release
Krista
no
spk14
okay thank you very much
Krista
thanks josh
Operator
thank you i would now like to turn the call back over to greg case for closing remarks
Greg Case
just want to say to everyone thank you very much for joining and we look forward to the conversation
Mike
next quarter thanks so much that concludes today's conference and thank you for your participation you may now disconnect
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