Globe Life Inc.

Hello, and welcome to Globe Life fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. My name is Melissa, and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note, this conference is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be listened only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions towards the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star 0, and you'll be connected to an operator. I will now hand the call over to your host, Steven Moda, Senior Director of Customer Relations, to begin today's conference. Thank you. Steven, you may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Joining the call today are Frank Svoboda and Matt Darden, our Co-Chief Executive Officers, Tom Kambach, our Chief Financial Officer, Mike Majors, our Chief Strategy Officer, and Brian Mitchell, our General Counsel. Some of our comments or answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements that are provided for general guidance purposes only. Accordingly, please refer to our earnings release and 2022 10-K on file with the SEC. Some of our comments may also contain non-GAAP measures. Please see our earnings release and website for discussion of these terms and reconciliations to GAAP measures. I will now turn the call over to Frank.

Thank you, Stephen, and good morning, everyone. I would note here that our reported results for the first quarter of 2023 and 2022 are reflect the adoption on January 1st, 2023 of the new LDTI accounting guidance. First, I want to thank the many members of our accounting, actuarial, investment, and technology teams for getting us ready to adopt this new accounting guidance this quarter. It was a substantial project and they did a fantastic job. Tom will discuss the new guidance in more detail in his comments. In the first quarter, net income was $224 million or $2.28 per share compared to $237 million or $2.37 per share a year ago. Net operating income for the quarter was $248 million or $2.53 per share, an increase of 4% from a year ago. On a GAAP-reported basis, return on equity was 22.9% and book value per share is $39.74. Excluding Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income, or AOCI, return on equity was 14.6% and book value per share is $70.34, up 10% from a year ago. In life insurance operations, Premium revenue for the first quarter increased 3% from the year-ago quarter to $773 million. For the year, we expect life premium revenue to go around 4%. Life underwriting margin was $291 million, up 1% from a year ago. At the midpoint of our guidance, we expect life underwriting margin as a percent of premium to be in the range of 37% to 39%. As we've discussed on prior calls, underwriting margin is different under the new LVTI accounting rules. In health insurance, premium grew 2% to $322 million and health underwriting margin was up 4% to $91 million. For the year, we expect health premium revenue to grow around 3%. At the midpoint of our guidance, we expect health underwriting margin as a percent of premium to be in the range of 28% to 30%. Administrative expenses were $74 million for the quarter, up 2% from a year ago. As a percentage of premium, administrative expenses were 6.7% compared to 6.8% a year ago. For the full year, we expect administrative expenses to be up between 2% and 3% and be around 6.9% of premium due primarily to higher IT and information security costs. Higher labor and other costs are expected to be offset by a decline in pension-related employee benefit costs. I will now turn the call over to Matt for his comments on the first quarter marketing operations.