Brookfield Corporation Class A Limited Voting Shares

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Brookfield Corporation's fourth quarter 2022 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand has been raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Managing Partner, Suzanne Fleming.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning. Welcome to Brookfield Corporation's fourth quarter and full year 2022 conference call. On the call today are Bruce Flatt, our Chief Executive Officer, and Nick Goodman, President and Chief Financial Officer of Brookfield Corporation. Bruce will start off by giving a business update, followed by Nick, who will discuss our financial and operating results for the quarter and the year. After our formal comments, we'll turn the call over to the operator and take analyst questions. I'd like to remind you that in today's comments, including in responding to questions and in discussing new initiatives and our financial and operating performance, we may make forward-looking statements, including forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. securities laws. These statements reflect predictions of future events and trends and do not relate to historic events. They are subject to known and unknown risks, and future events may differ materially from such statements. For further information on these risks and their potential impacts on our company, please see our filings with the securities regulators in Canada and the US and the information available on our website. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Bruce.

Thank you, Suzanne, and welcome everyone on the call. 2022 was a strong year for Brookfield, even though at times market conditions were more challenging than some years. Our manager had a record year for fundraising and is now separately listed. Our operating businesses posted strong underlying results, and our insurance solutions business is beginning to meaningfully ramp up its earnings. We returned a record amount of capital to our shareholders in 22, approximately $15 billion between our regular dividend, share repurchases, and the special distribution of the BAM shares in December. Despite the market volatility in 2022 and the fact that a recession is likely taking place in many parts of the world, real assets are demonstrating their resiliency and are benefiting from the higher levels of inflation than we have seen for many decades. With approximately $125 billion of capital to deploy, our large perpetual capital structure and our global scale and expertise in value investing, now more than ever, the corporation is well positioned in the current environment to grow and widen its reach. While our underlying performance was excellent this past year, like everything in the markets, the performance of Brookfield Corporation's stock was not. General market conditions and the distribution of shares of our manager caused some short-term pressure on our share price. This has started to dissipate, and most importantly, the underlying value of the business continues to compound. Our share performance has been strong on a longer-term basis, and we believe this will carry on. And with a net asset value per share that we estimate to be far higher than our current share trading price, we expect to continue to use our vast liquidity to repurchase shares in the market. And if the discount persists, we will consider other options, including tender offers, while balancing the addition of new businesses to increase returns and strategically position us for the future. As we look forward, our objective remains the same, to deliver compound annual returns of 15% over the longer term. Each of our businesses, our manager, our insurance solutions business, and our operating businesses on their own generate very attractive returns. But when we leverage the synergies that exist between the broader Brookfield, the earnings potential becomes even greater. Starting with our asset manager, we have a number of tailwinds that are accelerating for a highly differentiated asset management business, and we are set to continue to deliver strong earnings in 23 and beyond. Our asset manager security now provides direct access to this business and provides us with optionality for strategic acquisitions, positioning this business to execute on its next phase of growth. Our insurance solutions business continues to grow in scale and strategic importance to the organization. Financial results are strong, as is our return on invested capital, and we continue to redeploy assets across the board. We have high goals for this business and are actively pursuing a number of investment opportunities to add further scale and diversity in line with our objectives laid out to you in past of surpassing $200 billion of insurance float in the next five years. To that end, yesterday we announced the acquisition through Brookfield Reinsurance of Argo Group, a well-established specialty P&C business in the U.S., adding another platform and pool of assets to the franchise. Nick will speak to this later in more detail, but as a reminder, part of the capital of the corporation is also invested in a highly diversified, very high-quality portfolio of real estate assets in many of the best locations in the world. This business has proven to be a great compounder of capital across economic cycles, delivering strong returns over the long term. We are seeing this today with demand for our assets continuing to be very strong, supporting valuations and our outlook for growth. As an aside, much of the high quality real estate which we own today will eventually find its way into our insurance business due to its long duration nature, which will further support the growth of our insurance business. Lastly, our remaining operating businesses continue to perform well and have a proven track record of delivering excellent long-term returns. The organic growth levers within each of these operating businesses, combined with the continued allocation of capital to funds from our asset management business, should support growth at or above our targeted levels. With such strong and visible growth ahead for each of our businesses, the bar for new investments is very high. Since it is hard to look past the opportunity to invest more capital into each of these businesses, or our repurchase of shares as they are undervalued. That being said, we continue to look at investment opportunities to further accelerate growth, which likely will fit into one of the following categories. First, investing excess capital into our insurance solutions business to continue to grow it. Second, potentially a strategic acquisition that may be too large for any of our funds or in partnership with some of our funds. Third, investing into new businesses that are adjacent to what we do. And last, investing in sectors where we do not yet have full-scale teams, and in turn, these could lead to new businesses for us down the road. In summary, holding Brookfield Corporation shares offers a unique opportunity to own a stake in our asset management franchise, our insurance solutions business, and all of our operating businesses, benefiting from the earnings growth of each businesses, the resulting synergies between them, and the ability to participate in the next chapter of what we are building. We believe the corporation is a very attractive proposition and is poised to deliver excellent returns over the long term. As always, thank you for your continued support and interest in Brookfield. I will now turn the call over to Nick.