Equitable Holdings, Inc. (EQH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. So we'll get going. Before we get -- before we start, let me just touch on the disclosures. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley research disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. So with that, it is my pleasure to introduce the management team of Equitable. Mark, I think you'd like to start off with some introductory comments and then we can touch with -- on some of the financial details before we open as well.

Well, thanks, Nigel, and thank you for hosting us today. It's good to be back in person with everybody. I guess, looking at the industry firstly, longer term, it's an industry we believe does tremendous good in helping protect the assets and well-being of Americans and helping them retire with dignity. We have this virtuous circle where we invest back in the economy for jobs and wealth creation, $8 trillion or so across the industry. Short term, of course, some headwinds. We saw that in spades yesterday with the Fed looking to tackle inflation. We see that inverse relationship now between interest rates and the financial markets. And I guess, secondly for our industry in terms of a challenge, is with so much latitude on the regulations -- the insurance company regulations, there's a widespread range of risk positions out there, and the accounting to date is not that clear, not that transparent. And I think that harms us a bit, Nigel, in that it means not many general investors come into the market. It takes too long to understand what's going on. But wherever the challenges, there, of course, are opportunities. What we're seeing inside our commercial lines with this amount of volatility is an increased demand for financial advice. We're seeing that translate into record sales, particularly in our retirement businesses, as people seek advice and seek solutions for their retirement side. And I think secondly, on the accounting and the capital adequacy side, the industry, as you know, will be going through some very, very significant moves, which we, as Equitable, fully support, because it will lead to better transparency, better comparability, and we think more trust in the numbers that the industry is putting out, and that's got to be a good thing. Now obviously, in these markets, the financial policy and philosophy of any insurer is paramount. And that's simply because our liabilities are illiquid and pretty stable. So how we position the balance sheet in these times is crucial. The point Robin and I really want to get over, in looking at Equitable, is our fair value approach to managing risk and managing the balance sheet. What does that mean? Well, firstly, on our reserving, it means that we take rates, we take equity markets, we take credit spreads, and we take policy holder behavior, as it is as the markets are showing us, not as we would want them to be. And this leads to a resilience, which we're proud of. If you look back through the COVID period, we were one of the few companies that continued to generate capital and continued with our buyback program, and that is down to our reserving and our hedging. And in particular on the hedging, we are protecting first dollar on equities and interest rates for our big VA portfolio. That's how we have positioned the company. Looking forward, we remain very confident. I think one thing really going for Equitable is our business model. We have affiliated distribution. We pair that with the leading retirement businesses. And of course, our 65% stake in AllianceBernstein, means we can develop better solutions for clients, and we participate in the full value chain. And I think this is a good time for our industry, if we look out over the medium to long term. This ability we have to do social good, to help people retire with dignity for ever-growing retirement gap, is something that we are very passionate about and we think gives good opportunities for investors going forward. So thank you.

So I guess, why don't we start off on the capital side? Whenever you have a market conditions the way they are, you've got 2 alternatives, either you hold back, you'd be a little more conservative, you preserve your capital, given the escalation and uncertainty, or you potentially take advantage of the market. With your own stock price having come down, it provides you a unique opportunity to buy back at an accelerated pace and get the benefits of some very high accretion on the back of that. So how are you growing those 2 alternatives? And how you're thinking about capital overall?

Sure. I'll take that, Nigel. So it starts with protecting the balance sheet in these volatile times, and that's what enables us to continue to return capital to shareholders. If I take a step back, how do we protect the balance sheet? Well, at IPO, we were funded with a $3 billion capital injection from AXA. That enabled us to capitalize the company at CTE98. That's important, because that means it allowed us to fully hedge first dollar to VA portfolio from all equity and all interest rate risk. If we weren't capitalized appropriately at IPO, we would have had to take on some risk into VA hedging in order to build a capital buffer. We didn't have to do that. So the hedging program that we have is designed, one, is to first dynamically hedged first dollar, the equity and interest rate risk and the VA guarantees, that protects the balance sheet in terms of movements of equity and interest rates. On top of that, we add a statutory hedge program, which combines futures and options, which protects our capital targets for RBC. Those 2 programs have worked consistently since our IPO. That's the proof point. You've seen it through different volatile times, have an effectiveness ratio of over 95%. And two, Equitable has been one of the few companies that's never shut off its share return program. During the pandemic, Equitable maintained its capital return program. And as we sit here today, we remain committed to keeping our capital program in place, because of that hedging program protects the balance sheet from a fair value approach.

I guess sticking on the capital side, Reg 213. You've been confident that you'll have a solution in place by the end of the year, perhaps an update as to the different things that you're looking at there and what the potential solutions potentially could be.

Sure. So just to remind if everybody Reg 213 is a specific reserving method that applies only to New York companies. It doesn't apply to companies that are -- have entities outside of New York. They operate under VM-21, which is the NAIC framework. Reg 213 meant that with Equitable uniquely, because we have all of our business in New York was required to hold redundant reserves, which will be phased in over a 5-year period. What we've done, the actions we've taken last year in increasing unregulated cash flow and the XXX $1 billion transaction that we did allowed us to address 50% of that redundant reserves. What we said in Q1 and what we maintain is, we remain confident that we'll have a solution in place to mitigate the remaining redundant reserves in the second half of the year. They've taken -- there are 2 work streams happening in parallel, which gives us confidence. One is internal reinsurance. That would be moving business outside of New York to our Arizona company. That enables us to operate on the same reserving standard that every other company does for the 49 other states. And two, is external reinsurance. That allows us to reinsure a portion of the block and bring in capital in the company to address redundant reserves. We would only do external if we thought it was accretive, and we had the appropriate counterparty protections. Otherwise, we have internal. So we've made good progress on both fronts, which gives us confidence that we'd be able to resolve Reg 213 situation in the second half of the year.

Just on the external reinsurance, what's the market now like at the moment? It's been relatively seen in the past, but it's been picking up. But how does -- how would you -- how many different players are out there? And how deep are their pockets to do these kind of transactions?

Yes. I think when we did the Venerable transaction, which was a unique transaction with appropriate counterparty protections, there are probably 2 or 3 players in the market. Now with the influx of cash in the insurance sector, the market has more than plenty of players and counterparties that you can transact with. The importance for us is ensuring that when you transact your trust protections, protect the liabilities of the company at the end of the day. So that's where we're focused on, on the trust protections. But there's no shortage of counterparties, I think, that you can transact with in the insurance base these days.

Do the regulators have a preference for one path over another when you're looking at the Reg 213?

I think the regulators focused like we do on the trust or ensure that the trust provides the appropriate protections for the company.

Okay. I guess a different topic. AllianceBernstein has been a key part of the Equitable story. Your 65% ownership stake. There's obviously been a lot of synergies involved with what they do and what you do. But a lot of people asked, would you look at changing that at some point in time? Is there any magic behind 65%? And what are the different alternatives for potentially either buying it in completely or potentially changing that ownership structure?

Nigel, we're delighted with the investment in AllianceBernstein. If you look at what's happened in AB since the IPO, has been one of, if not the best performing active manager in the sector that's coming through in positive net flows quarter after quarter, and in the increase in the margin in the business as well. So the cash coming up to Equitable Holdings has gone from about $300 million a year to $500 million a year. So we're absolutely delighted with the investment that we've had in there. The 65% was basically what we inherited when AXA spun us off. There's no more magic other than that behind that. We see it as an integral part of what really makes us different to many of our peers, having this three-legged stool, if you like, the affiliated distribution, the retirement and protection leading franchises and their asset management, really means that we can find better solutions for clients. The best example for that is our buffered annuity. And secondly, that we participate in all parts of the value chain. So we see it as integral to it. Within our strategy as well, you would have heard us talk about synergies. I think that's best represented with 2 numbers. Firstly, the $180 million target we've given to enhance the investment income on our general account is really predicated on having AllianceBernstein manage that for us. And secondly, we freed up an additional $10 billion of the general account to seed the growth of alternates inside AllianceBernstein. And AB have a track record -- a pretty long track record for every dollar we put in, they attract another $4 or $5 of third-party money. So it's a very nice internal leverage using policyholder money to seed alternatives. Policyholders benefit because they get a better risk-weighted yield. And then we're building high multiple businesses for shareholders. So that we see a huge amount of value in that part of the chain. So we're very, very happy with the investment. Of course, we look at it from time to time, but it's integral to who we are and how we manage going forward.

I guess just on AB, they recently did an acquisition. Is acquisitions part of the strategy? I wish they're going to be looking at going forward. And if so, does that have any implications for the amount of dividends which you'd likely be receiving from it?

Yes, it was a -- it's an interesting transaction, the CarVal one. It puts -- firstly, we had 2 files open. We have a file for AllianceBernstein. Does it make sense from an AB point of view. And we have a file open on EQH is it going to be accretive and makes sense for our strategy. In both cases, CarVal is a resounding yes. For AB, it moves their ultimate platform to about $50 billion. It was a remarkable acquisition in the sense that there was very, very limited overlap. It fills in some of the gaps AB had, particularly in distressed credit and in clean energy, transport and specialty finance. These were strategies that AB wanted to develop and didn't have and CarVal is strong one. So it's a very, very nice transaction from AB's point of view. From Equitable's point of view, I think we did a smart move, Robin and the team did a smart move and how we financed it. We're allowing our holding to -- of 65% to go down to 62%. That makes it neutral in the short term and slightly positive going forward from an accretion point of view. And of the $10 billion that I mentioned that we're taking from the general account to invest in seed capital, we're going to allocate $750 million at least to the CarVal strategy. So that's a good example where you see the synergies working between Equitable and AB, but a very nice transaction for us.

How about outside of AB? I know you've talked a little bit about acquisitions. It seems like given where your stock price is, it's a very high hurdle against the other buybacks, but are acquisitions something that you consider outside of AB as well?

Yes, it's not the core of our strategy. But I think as we said at the time of the IPO, look, for 3 or 4 years, it would be silly for us to look at acquisitions. We were in the midst of separating from AXA. There was something like 150 different systems we had to take out of AXA. If you load it on top of that M&A, it's too risky, you wouldn't do it. Plus, we were very conscious that as a team, we needed to earn our stripes and we needed to show credibility to the marketplace and deliver on those IPO targets, which we did. Going forward now, yes, we look at opportunities from time to time. It's not critical to the strategy that we do, and we would always be disciplined and we would need to make sure that it makes sense from a shareholder accretion point of view against a pretty high hurdle, which is the buyback route, as you saw. But that's why I think the teams were very smart in the CarVal transaction, because we were able to show that, that was accretive and add to an attractive part of our portfolio, which is the build-out of alternates.

One of the areas across insurance that everyone continues to look at periodically is the new accounting changes, perhaps give us an update. You made comments last quarter, the way the interest rates have moved it could actually be a positive from a full book value, but I thought that would interesting to get an update as to where we currently stand.

Sure. We're very supportive of the new accounting changes. We short term it, for sure, we call it LDTI. The reason is it's going to be greater transparency, consistency and trust back in the industry. This is an industry that doesn't have a lot of trust built into the numbers, and that's because of the opaque accounting within for long-dated liabilities. If you think -- take a step back, I was thinking about this long-dated liabilities, which are very sensitive to equity and interest rates, under the current GAAP accounting, may not move in a time when equity markets are down 20%. In our economic model, the way we manage internally on a fair value basis, your equity markets go down by 20%, your liability should go up. It's a function of your claims profile. And that creates opaqueness in the accounting, because investors don't know if a company is managing the risk appropriately. Going forward, we think this is good for the industry because with this transparency and fair value approach, liabilities will go up or down as interest rates and equity markets move. And what that promotes is proper hedging of risk. And that's why we think Equitable is well positioned. Equitable manages today on a fair value basis, which means our liabilities are mark-to-market. And so we hedge appropriately and fully interest rates and equities. Secondly is the way Equitable is positioned from an interest rate perspective. Under GAAP today, Equitable's GAAP interest rate assumption is 2.25%. It's the lowest in the industry. At transition date, we'll move to the forward curve, which is our internal economic model as well. That creates a gain for Equitable, and that's why our impact as of April has a positive adjustment associated with it. But over the long term, I do think it's going to be good for the industry. Bringing this transparency and trust makes jobs for some analysts easier, I suppose, Nigel as well, but I think it will reflect the true economics into accounting. It will make book value more relevant. And what will be more appealing the industry will be more appealing to a broader set of investors.

Nigel, if I could add something to that behind your question, there is the impact from transition, which has -- we said at the quarter if -- where interest rates are now, would be positive for us. But I think far more important is what's going to happen after that transition point when interest rates move. It will expose or otherwise the extent to which hedging programs are in place. So as you kind of deduced from Robin's answer, our hedging program is not going to change, because we are hedging to the forward curve today. So the accounting is going to come to us and where we are. If we had the position where we were hedging, let's say, just to RBC or part of that one, we would have a mismatch going forward. We don't. We will match going forward. So I think when you're looking at LDTI, yes, we look at the -- at transition, but also look at what's the extent to which hedging is matching the movements in the liability.

A good point. Just on the hedging program, clearly, the market conditions are hugely volatile, interest rate has gone up, markets are down. How is that impacting your hedge program? Is it making it more expensive? Is it leading you to do anything different? Just...

No difference in hedging for us. Again, we manage those 2 hedging programs, dynamically hedging first dollar on the VA portfolio for equity and a forward curve for interest rates. And then we have that statutory overlay program that protects the balance sheet. It's operated at a 95% effectiveness ratio since IPO and continues in this current period, Nigel. And that allows us to consistently return capital to shareholders. So no change is needed. It's about execution, and we've proven that we can do that with that program.

How about the impact if market gets across your businesses? Has that resulted in any sort of like change in consumer behavior or some of the demand for your products? Clearly, it's a very challenging market condition. And how that impacts your business can be quite evident in sales and flows as well?

Well, we're in a position where we see this -- 2 things are really happening, 2 major trends. One the awareness of consumers for the need of protection, financial advice and future planning has been heightened throughout the pandemic. So that is something, which we see coming through the business as we go. And secondly, our ability to reach out has been enhanced through the digitization programs, particularly on the teachers' market as we're going. So the results, as you saw from quarter 1 has been record levels of sales as we look across our business, particularly the retirement side. And on the teachers' market, we are at, if not higher, than pre-COVID levels now. So it's translating into good opportunities. Against that, you would see surrenders in dollar terms up. It's not the incidence of surrenders that is up. It's just that account values are higher than before. But this was built into our reserves and as we expect going on. I think the other major move inside the businesses has been this move to what we call holistic life planning, where we are really moving the insurance sales force into financial planners. And that's been a good move for us. We have already a ready pool of advisors and clients there, which we can draw on to move into wealth management. And we hope to give you more details on that later this year when we have our investor [ virtual ]. But broadly, today, 500-or-so advisors active in that space and about $80 billion of funds under advice on our wealth management.

And I guess on the buffered annuity side, it used to be -- you're one of the pioneers in that market. You've done very well in it over time. You continue to have very strong sales and flows. But one of the things that we noticed is that it's become a lot more crowded. There's a lot more different companies, who've decided to move away from VA living benefit guarantees and move into the buffer annuity market. Is that resulting in any pressure on your type of returns that you can generate? Or are there any other implications as to the market getting more credit?

I think the way to think of it, Nigel, is the pie is growing here. You said we were one of the pioneers. We were the pioneer. We were the ones who designed this product. And I think to Robin's earlier point, this product came out of our economic risk management. How do we design products that are economically sound that are attractive to consumers? It came out of that philosophy. And we had a good few years, free run at it before others have come into the market. Firstly, looking at the industry pressures, there is rational pricing in this part of the market. So we're not worried about irrational pricing. We're not seeing that at all. And secondly, please note, Nick, if I'm right. In March, we had a record level of sales of ACS, which really, I think, is down to the power of our distribution. So the product can be copied, the distribution less so. So what is it -- what do we mean by distribution? Firstly, we have our affiliated advisor force, Equitable Advisors. We get 90% of their annuity business. The [ e-tail cooking ] . So it's a steady regular flow of business coming through as well. And secondly, the -- in addition to the product innovation, the teams under Nick have been very innovative in where we distribute. So we would be #2 in that verbal annuity market. But for example, #12 in the warehouses, we're playing in affiliated distribution. We're playing with general insurance partners and other parts of the market that are less spread sheeting, less pushing the margin there as well. So yes, the pie is growing. We're seeing record sales in March time. And the margin has been maintained.

Perhaps we can touch on the group retirement space as well. It isn't an area that probably gets as much attention, but it's still obviously very important for you with key initiatives there, what you're seeing in the marketplace. Obviously, it's been impacted by the pandemic, probably a little more than some other areas, because of the face-to-face distribution that they kind of relied on. So an update there would be great as well.

Sure. So Equitable is differentiated in this market. So let me start there. We have 1,100 dedicated advisors that work with teachers in these school slots. And what they're doing is providing them advice to the supplemental pension plans that they have available, and they're helping them save additional income for retirement. So our teachers go in and pre-pandemic, and now they're getting back there. Now do go in and sit into school, sit in the chairs with the teachers and help them plan for retirement. We're #1 in the K-12 space. That's the place we operate, because the margins are strong there, because of the advice that we provide. We were impacted during the pandemic, but we didn't sit on that. The team that Mark mentioned it earlier, the teams took advantage of that to digitalize a lot of the processes and go to the schools in a different form. And now we have that and as schools continue to open up, we're operating above pre-pandemic levels. The number of policies are -- continue to grow and our renewal activity is growing as well. So because of the digital nature and how we engaged, we're now positioned better coming out of the pandemic, because we're not only getting the premium, but we can also engage with them to collect more renewals over time to help them save for retirement. But again, it's another example of how Equitable is positioned in the retirement space and helping the needs of American consumers, as they continue to grow and they continue to prepare for retirement. And we're in a prime position there.

Perhaps we can touch on the individual life area as well. We had a bit of the pandemic claims coming through that presumably, I believe, should be looking better. You've got rising interest rates, which should help that area as well. All fair comments? Or any -- what else should we be thinking about? Any update on the individual life side?

Yes. I think fair comments. Firstly, on the mortality side, as we saw sadly in the first quarter, 155,000 Americans passed away due to COVID. That resulted in higher-than-expected claims. But within the guidance is smack bang within the guidance that we gave to the market. Thankfully, the numbers across the nation are significantly down in the 2 months since the quarter end, and we should expect that to reflect in much lower claims that we see as well in the industry as a whole [ set ]. The other point which is going well for us on the individual life side is the pivot, so as part of our overall strategy, moving away from a capital-intensive, high guarantee products, to capital-light accumulation products, which is our VUL product, is going extremely well for us now, and we'll give you an update on quarter 2.

So we've got about 5 minutes left. Happy to open it up to the -- to anyone who have a question. Over here.

One of the things we've looked at is it looks like if you look at a conservative fair value for each of the individual business lines and what you see AllianceBernstein trading at in the public markets, the value of the stock price currently is a lot lower than the total fair value for the business. So I'm curious what options you've explored to realize that fair value and close that gap?

And of course, Nigel put a report out on this a few weeks ago. I think as Nigel said in his report quite rightly, looking at a sum of the parts valuation, which is behind your question, it's very dependent on the inputs you put in. I mean as you clearly said that in your remarks. I think as well from Equitable's point of view, we have always traded at a discount to some of the parts analysis dependent on what inputs you put in. And I think we hear more and more from our investors looking at the value of our business on the cash flow that we're generating rather than the GAAP earnings, which as Robin said, can be a little bit opaque and hard to follow as you go through. From Equitable's point of view, what we focus on is what we can control. And I think we have a really great track record in that cash generation, which has grown from the $1.2 billion at the IPO to $1.6 billion now. And that excludes about $100 million that we monetized from the Venerable transaction as well. So you see about a 30% growth in the cash flow as we go forward. Would you add anything to that, Robin?

Yes. I think there are a few things I think about is, one, we have to resolve Reg 213, put that to rest. We intend to do that. Two, the accounting is going to come towards us. As Mark mentioned, and it approved the approach that we have and make it clear more for generalists as we'll grow book value going forward. We don't even speak about GAAP book value today as a company. Going forward, we'll have the opportunity and investors will be able to see that. And three, as Mark mentioned, we grew the cash flows from $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion. $100 million of that we disclosed this year is due to our wealth management affiliated distribution business. So those are new source of cash flow, capital light. And as we provide more detail on that and continue to grow that, we think that all will lead to continued strong performance from Equitable relative to peers.

I think the other thing just to say on that, Nigel, the free cash flow yield of the stock is 13% or so slightly higher after yesterday. So it's a good place to be for the cash flow yield. And if other investors are coming in, persuaded by the sum of the parts argument, then that's further upside. So it's a good place to be, we think.

Any other questions? So I just put one additional one, just the investment portfolio. You've been adding a little risk since the IPO given that you're almost forced to be heavily in treasuries at that point. Where are you with regards to that transition and the current market conditions, especially the escalated risk of potentially your recession being on the horizon, that kind of lead you to change your strategy a little?

Sure. So we're obviously aware of what's happening around us with volatile equity markets, inflationary pressures happening. And we're fortunate our investment portfolio is conservatively positioned on a relative basis. About 96% of the corporate portfolio is investment grade, A3 rating. So we have a strong portfolio even as we continue to shift to generate more investment income yield. I think where we're focused as a company across the board in this environment are 3 things. It's, one, in ensuring when we invest and when we reallocate that we're investing in higher quality credit, Nigel, that's important. We can still take advantage of good spreads on higher quality. Two is continued execution on the rebalancing, but also our efficiency initiatives. We need to get that $80 million. We're about 1/3 of the way there and we'll continue to get there over the next 3 years. And then third for us is we're -- we installed the program really investing in our people and incorporating agile and agile workforce. And the output of an agile workforce means to operate faster and cheaper as a company. We have to do all those 3 things in this type of environment to ensure Equitable is stronger as we get out of it, while doing all the other things we talked about today.

Right. Well, it looks like we're at time. So many thanks for...

Thank you very much, Nigel. Thank you all very much.

Thank you very much. Thank you.