F&G Annuities & Life, Inc.

Greetings, and welcome to the F&G Annuities in Life third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Lisa Foxworthy-Parker. Senior Vice President, Investor, and External Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Great. Thanks, Operator. And welcome, everyone, to F&G's third quarter 2023 earnings call. Joining me today are Chris Blunt, Chief Executive Officer, and Wendy Young, Chief Financial Officer. We look forward to addressing your questions following our prepared remarks. Today's earnings call may include four looking statements and projections under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, which do not guarantee future events or performance. We do not undertake any duty to revise or update such statements to reflect new information, subsequent events, or changes in strategy. Please refer to our most recent SEC filings for a discussion of the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. This morning's discussion also includes non-GAAP financial measures that we believe may be meaningful to investors. Non-GAAP measures have been reconciled to GAAP where required in accordance with SEC rules within our earnings release, financial supplement, and investor presentation, all of which are available on the company's website. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for webcast replay at fglife.com. It will also be available through telephone replay beginning today at 1 p.m. Eastern Time through November 22, 2023. And now I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Chris Blunt.

Good morning. Thanks for joining us today. I'm pleased to announce another set of strong results for the third quarter as we continue to execute on our diversified growth strategy while maintaining a disciplined and balanced capital management process. I'd like to recognize and thank our team for all that they have done to deliver record growth sales in the first nine months of this year. which have in turn generated record assets under management and an adjusted return on assets excluding significant items that is well above our expectations. All of this while pursuing opportunities to further grow assets, expand our future profitability, and deliver long-term value for our shareholders. Starting with year-to-date results, we have generated record gross sales while maintaining pricing discipline and executing on our flow reinsurance strategy. Gross sales were $9.1 billion for the nine months ended September 30, up 7% over $8.5 billion in the prior year. Year-to-date retail gross sales were $7 billion, up 17% over the prior year period. Institutional sales were $2.1 billion, comprised of $1.2 billion of pension risk transfer and $900 million of funding agreements. We are on track to deliver 2023 annual gross sales of between $12 and $13 billion in line with our stated goal of growing at a double-digit clip. Our net sales were $6.7 billion in the first nine months of the year. On an annualized basis, this places us well above our stated goal of managing net sales retained above the $6 to $7 billion annual level that continues to grow our retained AUM. Next, looking at third quarter results more closely. Coming off record sales in the first half of the year, retail sales were intentionally lower in the quarter as we finalized our reinsurance agreements and enhanced product features to position us to finish strong in 2023 and create momentum for 2024. Within this market environment, we've seen a sharp uptick in submitted annuity premium in September and October, which positions us for a strong growth in annuity sales in the fourth quarter. Growth sales were 2.8 billion in the third quarter, a decrease of 3% from the prior year quarter, and down 7% from the sequential second quarter. Retail channel sales were 1.9 billion in the third quarter, a decrease of 17% from 2.3 billion in both the third quarter 22 and sequential quarter. Institutional market sales were $900 million in the third quarter, comprised of $500 million of pension risk transfers and $400 million of funding agreements. F&G's net sales retained were over $2 billion in the third quarter, in line with the prior year and sequential quarters. In addition, and as expected, we have increased flow reinsurance to 90% of MIGA sales in September. Stepping back, we feel confident about finishing 2023 strong and being well-positioned as we move into 2024. The industry continues to report record annuity sales as consumers find annuities to be attractive solutions given their relatively higher rates, guaranteed growth, principal protection, and tax-advantaged accumulation and annuitization options. And we were very proud to be ranked number one in customer satisfaction in this year's J.D. Power individual annuity study. We attribute this recognition to our deep distribution relationships and commitment to operational excellence in prioritizing improvements that matter most to customers and have the biggest impact on their experience. Also, we're excited to launch our new registered index-linked annuity, or RILA product, through key broker-dealer partners in the first quarter of 2024. Ryle is one of the fastest-growing markets in recent years, and we believe this further enhances our retail product suite, offering customers another way to gain access to market returns with downside protection. These factors, together with the fourth quarter typically providing a healthy pipeline for pension risk transfer sales, sets us up well for another record year of gross sales in 2023, and to continue growing gross sales at a double-digit pace in 2024. F&G has profitably grown its retained assets under management to a record $47 billion at September 30. Assets under management before flow reinsurance were $53 billion, adjusting for the approximately $6 billion of cumulative new business seeded. Our investment portfolio continues to perform well and is well-matched to our clean and stable liability profile. The portfolio is high quality with 95% of fixed maturities being investment grade. Credit-related impairments have averaged five basis points over the past three years, well below our pricing assumption, and remain below that level in the third quarter. We continually evaluate opportunities for upside risk-adjusted returns and downside protection in our investment portfolio through our portfolio asset allocation, yield enhancement opportunities to maintain competitive positioning, and floating rate portfolio interest rate hedge. About 9.5 billion or 20% of the portfolio is investing in floating rate assets, of which 8 billion are linked to the secured overnight financing rate or SOFR and are easily hedgeable. Notably, we have now hedged approximately 2.7 billion of floating rate assets locking in about 213 basis points of incremental yield versus what was originally priced in. This translates to approximately 12 basis points of annual incremental investment margin above our pricing over the next three to five years. We expect to continue to evaluate hedging additional floating rate assets where beneficial and possible. Next, turning to F&G's recent investor day, which was held on October 3rd, and included a deep dive into our proven track record of profitable and diversified growth. We are pleased to see investor recognition of F&G's success as our market capitalization has increased from 2.4 billion at the time of the partial spinoff last December to approximately $4 billion today, and we feel our prospects are bright. During our investor day, we highlighted the strategic levers that the team is employing to create value for our stakeholders and which will benefit F&F as our majority shareholder. To recap, F&G sees future potential upside from the following areas. First, sustainable asset growth from our retail and pension risk transfer growth strategies. Next, margin expansion from three sources, enhanced investment margin opportunities, effectively managing operating expenses for operational scale benefit over time, and incremental fee-based earnings from accretive flow reinsurance and enhanced earnings power from owned distribution. And finally, we believe there is potential for F&G share price to more fully reflect its core business performance and the accretive nature of its flow reinsurance and owned distribution strategies as they scale over time. Wendy and I look forward to providing updates and progress on these strategic initiatives and priorities in future quarterly earnings calls. Let me now turn the call over to Wendy Young to provide further details on F&G's third quarter financial highlights.

Thanks, Chris. We are very pleased with F&G's financial performance in the third quarter, and we continue to maintain strong capitalization and financial flexibility to successfully execute our growth strategy, starting with our year-over-year increase. Adjusted net earnings were 120 million or 96 cents per share for the third quarter of 2023 and included 114 million or 91 cents per share of investment income from alternative investments. Alternative investments investment income based on management's long-term expected return of approximately 10% was 142 million or $1.13 per share. Last year, we reported an adjusted net loss of 12 million or 10 cents per share for the third quarter of 2022. That included 11 million or 9 cents per share of investment loss from alternative investments and 11 million or 9 cents per share of other net expense items. Alternative investments investment income based on management's long-term expected return of approximately 10% was 106 million or 85 cents per share. For comparison, adjusting for these significant items in both periods, adjusted net earnings were 148 million, up 28% from 116 million in the third quarter of 2022, and adjusted return on assets was 119 basis points as compared to 111 basis points in the prior year quarter. This 32 million increase in adjusted net earnings and eight basis points increase in ROA was generated by 56 million or 24 basis points from higher product margin over the prior year driven by asset growth, floating rate asset uplift, and disciplined pricing. And 14 million or seven basis points increased from accreted flow reinsurance, which includes expense allowance reimbursement, partially offset by 34 million or 21 basis points decreased from higher expenses related to higher interest expense in line with our capital markets activity and higher operating costs in line with our growth in sales and assets and continued investments in our operating platform and 4 million or two basis points decrease from our annual actuarial assumption updates and other. Excluding significant items, adjusted return on equity, excluding AOCI with 10.5% in the third quarter as compared to approximately 9% in the third quarter of 2022. To recap, This quarter's performance not only builds on our proven track record, but also demonstrates progress toward our targeted value creation levers of asset growth, margin expansion, and enhanced earnings from flow reinsurance. Next, turning to own distribution. As we said at our investor day, F&G is uniquely positioned to be a distribution consolidator. In the third quarter, F&G signed an agreement to acquire a majority ownership stake in an annuity IMO for approximately 270 million, which is expected to close in early 2024. This is our largest transaction to date and brings our cumulative deployed capital above 500 million. Looking forward, we see an opportunity to deploy another roughly 500 million in the next few years. Own distribution generates a dividend stream from our ownership stake, providing for higher margins at a lower marginal cost of capital and which is expected to be accretive to ROE and drive multiple re-ratings for our FNG share price over time. Now turning to our balance sheet. We ended the third quarter with a GAAP book value excluding a OCI of $5.4 billion or $43.30 per share with 125 million common shares outstanding as of September 30th. This reflects a 6% increase over the sequential quarter. There is a page in our investor presentation providing an analysis of book value per share. F&G's debt to capitalization ratio, excluding AOCI, was 22% as of September 30th, below our long-term target of 25%. Our interest expense has increased to 71 million or 21 basis points of ROA in the nine months of 2023 as compared to 23 million or eight basis points of ROA in the nine months of 2022, as expected and in line with our capital markets activity over the last 12 months. Our annual interest expense remains approximately 95 million or roughly a 6% blended yield on the 1.6 billion of total debt outstanding. We continue to target holding company cash and invested assets at two times six charge coverage. Our strong capitalization supports growth and distributable cash. During the third quarter, we returned $27 million of capital to shareholders, including $25 million of common dividends and $2 million of share repurchase. In the third quarter, F&G repurchased approximately 82,000 shares for $1.9 million at an average price of $23.77 per share. F&G is well-positioned to fund its continued growth with positive and growing in-force capital generation, available debt capacity as our balance sheet delevers with fixed value growth over time, and ample opportunity for future reinsurance programs. This concludes our prepared remarks, and let me now turn the call back to our operator for questions.

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of John Campbell with Stevens. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, guys. Good morning, and nice work on the continuation of really great results. Thanks, John. Sure. On the normalized ROAs, if we factor in the long-term alternative investment yield, we normalize that. I mean, that's been creeping higher, I think, 120 bits or so this quarter. You know, at your investor day, Chris, I think you talked to, you know, expected a degree of upwards pressure over time, nothing, you know, meaningful, but maybe just some kind of upwards momentum. Are you still feeling confident about that? And then maybe moving forward, call it near to medium term, do you think you can hold near this mark or possibly keep moving it modestly higher?

Yeah, I think it was a particularly good quarter, but it's the same drivers, right? So we've seen an uptick in short-term interest rates. That's helped the floaters in the portfolio. We're getting a little bit of expense scale we would expect to get over time. And then as we've said before, we think it's quite accretive, some of the flow reinsurance deals that we've put in place. And then the last thing is, Wendy mentioned some of the hedging we've done on the floaters trying to lock in some outperformance there. So, yeah, we still feel good about, you know, upside in terms of margin from here.

Okay. Very helpful. And then, Chris, just maybe two more here. On the annual gross sales, you mentioned 12 to 13 billion. As we start doing the modeling for 4Q, I'm thinking PRT is probably the answer here, but what else should we consider for kind of the key swing factors from the low to high end of that range?

Yeah, I think it's across the board. We're having a good fourth quarter in retail. Pipeline and PRT is usually quite strong in the fourth quarter, and that's the case here. So, you know, I would quite frankly say we're probably going to be at the higher end of the range that we gave for annual sales.

Okay, that's great to hear. And then on the dividend, it was nice to see the 5% raise you guys announced yesterday. It looks like you've got a lot of wiggle room. I mean, if I go off the last 12 months of the kind of normalized earnings I was talking to earlier, That 21-cent dividend is implying like a 19% payout ratio. I could probably get this later, but I'm hoping you guys might be able to shortcut it. What are your peers paying out typically from a payout ratio standpoint? And then thinking about it longer term, what do you guys feel comfortable as far as, you know, a payout ratio might be concerned?

Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know that we necessarily think about it that way because one thing is just different. from us, from our peers is, you know, one, you know, we don't really have a legacy block that's running off. You know, it's frankly all new business, and we're earning terrific returns right now on that new business. So, you know, primary source of capital return for us is going to be the dividend. We've said we believe it's sustainable. We believe it's something we can grow at a healthy clip going forward. So I don't think anything changes with respect to that. We did also up the share buyback. authorization, but that's more just because, you know, some of the limited float, we've seen some volatility in our stock, and we wanted to make sure we had that lever available. I don't know, Wendy, if there's anything you want to add to that.

Nope. You hit all the key factors. A lot of the competitors' payout ratios also include larger repurchase programs, so ours won't be as high.

Yeah, I think part of that, again, to be clear, we hear this directly from investors is, you know, hey, if you're generating the types of return you're generating for effectively taking, you know, investment grade fixed income risk, which is how we think about the business, then, you know, we want you to continue to invest in the business. I think the point on the dividend is just, you know, it opens up a set of investors that obviously like a steady and growing dividend stream.

Yeah, I agree with that. Makes a lot of sense.

Thanks, guys. Awesome. Thank you.

Thank you. We have reached the end of the question and answer session. Mr. Blunt, I would like to turn the floor back over to you for closing comments.

Thank you. So we're pleased, obviously, with our overall results, despite the uncertainty and volatility in the current macro environment. F&G remains poised to benefit from this higher rate environment and is well positioned as we enter the fourth quarter and move into 2024. As we outlined in our recent investor day, we have clear levers to deliver enhanced results with a focus on asset growth and margin expansion, which we believe will drive multiple expansion and deliver value to shareholders. Thanks for your time this morning. We appreciate your interest in F&G, and we look forward to updating you on our fourth quarter earnings call.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day.