Phoenix Financial Ltd. (PHOE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello. This is David Alexander, Deputy CEO of the Phoenix Holdings. Thank you for joining us today for the Group's financial review for the Fourth Quarter and Full Year of 2023. The call will be led by Phoenix Holdings CEO, Eyal Ben Simon; and CFO, Eli Schwartz. The presentation for the call can be found on our website or on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange website. The presentation provides key points on the financial statements released this morning and should be read together with the full financials. At the end of the call, we'll answer questions that we discussed today on the call in Hebrew. You can send any additional questions to us individually or to the e-mail address, [email protected]. We'll make ourselves available to meet with investors to discuss performance, strategy or any other questions you may have. We also intend to publish new medium-term targets in the near future. Please note that this call will include forward-looking statements and that the actual future results may be different. In addition to presentation and the call, the Group's performance can best be understood together with the full financial statements available on our website. Today, first Eyal will highlight the key results for the Fourth Quarter and the Full Year and discuss our strategy and targets. Eli will then review the financial results and segment breakdown in more detail.

Hello, and thank you for joining the call today. The Phoenix is the leading Israeli financial group with over $120 billion in assets under management. Our activities include a broad multi-line insurance business, including a leading P&C operation as well as significant Life and Health businesses. Our activities also include a high-growth Asset Management & Credit business. With the market-leading investment house, a growing wealth business leading financial distribution footprint and a growing SME Credit platform. The Group has grown assets under management by 19% annually over the past 5 years with an average return on equity of 15%. At the same time, the Phoenix has a strong capital position and solvency ratio with local and international ratings from Moody's and S&P. 2023 was a challenging year for Israel, for the people, our society and our economy. Many of the risks we face actually materialized during this year, both geopolitical and economic. These included first deep social divisions and high inflation and interest rates and then in October, a difficult war. Despite these challenges and headwinds, the Phoenix has generated over ILS 1.1 billion of income, over 10% return on equity and over 12% core return on equity. Our performance was driven by strong resilience in Israel and across the Phoenix Group. We executed our strategy and grew new businesses with determination and flexibility, adjusting operations when needed and ensuring full business continuity. By the end of the year, we saw in Israel, a return to economic activity and promising rebound in the local financial markets. The Israeli economy is strong and resilient. As the largest Israeli investor and asset manager, we believe in the potential of the Israeli economy, and we continue to invest across a full range of sectors. Israel's potential is supported by very positive long-term macro and structural trends. We do not believe that the current war and the challenges we face will change these long-term trends, including demographics, productivity and innovation. The Bank of Israel still expects GDP to grow by 2%, both in 2023 and in 2024. National debt is low and foreign currency reserves are high, making Israel very resilient from a financial perspective. Capital markets have been liquid and resilient, including bond markets, equities and currency markets with the help of proactive regulators. Inflation is now at lower levels. Unemployment after the conflict is expected to stay around 4% next year. The Israeli citizens continue to save and grow the long-term savings market and opportunity. This has created large domestic capital pools, including those managed by the Phoenix, adding to market liquidity and resilient. 2023 was a strong year for the Phoenix despite negative impacts of uncertainty and market volatility. We generated ILS 1.1 billion income for the fourth year in a row with profit above ILS 1 billion. And we distributed of dividends according to our policy. Income from Core activities grew by 12%, with a strong Q4, both in operations and in investment's performance. We continue to grow AUM reaching ILS 433 billion in 2023. Including the Psagot deal, which was finalized a few weeks ago, we passed the ILS 450 billion threshold. The Phoenix continues to generate value to our shareholders. Our return on equity for the year was 12.6%, in line with our strategy. We are focused on diversification of profit pools, financial resilience, cash flows and liquidity. Our solvency remains high at 209% as of September, above longer-term targets. In line with our policy, we announced this morning a dividend of ILS 265 million based on our income from the second half of the year added to the ILS 120 million distributed in the mid-year, total dividends represent 35% of our annual profits. Our strong performance during 2023 led us to meet or be on track for our 2025 targets. We intend to share with the market updated and new midterm growth targets in the near future. The Phoenix created an engine, which generates steady growth in both lines of activities. The blue is core income from insurance, not including the nonoperating effects of capital markets, interest rates and special items. The orange is core income from the Asset Management & Credit activity. This includes Investment House & Wealth, Retirement, Credit and Distribution. This is mainly stable fee-based income. The gray is nonoperating income, including investment performance above and below 3% real yields, interest rate effects and special items. We continue to grow core income despite the challenging year. Overall, in 2023, we generated above ILS 1.3 billion in core income with normalized return on equity of 12.6%. We saw a negative impact of ILS 229 million from nonoperating income, mostly from underperformance in Israeli capital markets during 2023. For the quarter, we see overall ISL 366 million in core income to which we add nonoperating income mainly from positive impact of rebounding markets. Our core activity was doubled from ILS 600 million in 2019 to ILS 1.3 billion in 2023. Core return on equity grew from 9% to 12.6%. An important driver of group performance is the corporate account of Nostro. During 2023, returns were nominal 4.5% on an annual basis and 1.2% on a real basis. This is below the 3% real yields we use for planning and transparency. Over time, the Phoenix generates average real yield of almost 4%, well above the 3% normalization. We remain focused on dynamic investment and risk management, especially in this period and on constant development of capabilities. Phoenix is focusing on creating a cash-generating holding structure. The strong cash flow comes from 2 sources. First is the insurance activity where we focus on growth on high-margin capital-light businesses like P&C. We aim to improve profitability by constantly creating efficientness and implementing technology and innovation across all of the insurance activities. Second, the Asset Management & Credit activity include high-growth businesses with strong cash flow and low capital needs. We aim to grow and scale our fee-based activities. These 2 strong cash flow are distributed with shareholders and reinvested in value creation. We have built a track record of distributing dividends of at least 30% of income. Since 2020, we distributed over ILS 1.7 billion. We have an ongoing buyback program that was renewed for 2024. We reinvest in growing our high-margin, capital-efficient businesses, and we are proactive in making strategic acquisitions, focusing on high synergies and low risk. In addition, the Group maintains high liquidity and solvency ratio and low leverage, which enable us to pursue opportunities in the market. Shareholders' equity is ILS 10.6 billion, and we continue to have a strong balance sheet. We generated over 3% dividend yield each year. This year, we distributed 35% of 2023 income, consistent with our policy of at least 30%. Our goal is to build a track record of relatively stable growing dividend according to our policy, and we continue to execute the Group's buyback program. The Group will continue to distribute dividends from its profits based on our dividend policy, building our track record while strengthening the Group's capital. We will now review the execution of the strategy and the progress towards our targets. During the year, we continued to implement the group's strategy across all activities in both growth engines, Insurance and Asset Management & Credit. This strategy consists of 4 value drivers, accelerating growth in high ROE activities and shifting our mix to more valuable capital-light activities, investing in innovation to create distinctive capabilities, improve efficiency and customer experience. We actively manage the Group and our business portfolio to unlock and create value. And last, we're increasingly deploying capital effectively against our priorities to reduce volatility and generate higher returns. This strategy aims to create value with several catalysts, growing income and shifting the mix towards fee-based income, expanding margins and deepening competitive advantage, executing M&As and unlocking value across the Group and driving cash flow and excess returns. We published midterm targets in 2020. During the past 3 years, we've increased these targets based on our results. And today, we already met some of them. Two years ahead of schedule and are tracking others. The group's main growth target is core income, which allow us to measure operating performance and growth before capital markets and interest rate effects. Ongoing execution of our strategy has led us within the 2025 target of ILS 1.3 billion to ILS 1.5 billion and above the original target of ILS 1 billion. Our insurance engine continues to grow year-over-year and already passed the updated midterm target. This was mainly driven by strong performance in P&C. We will continue to increase profitability across all segments and will publish new targets in the near future. We have restructured and improved our Asset Management & Credit activities and the income is growing strongly in each segment and has been a significant contributor to Group performance year-to-date. We believe that synergies from restructuring actions will take effect and put us on track to meet our targets of ILS 670 million. Here too, we will share new medium-term growth targets as well. We're on track on ILS 0.5 trillion under management by 2025 and are well above our original target of ILS 300 billion. Acquiring Psagot mutual funds bring us to ILS 455 billion inside the target, 2 years ahead of time. The Group is focused on generating value to our shareholders. Our shareholders' equity is ILS 10.6 billion and return on equity is on track to achieve the 12% to 15% target with core return on equity above 12% already in 2023. Our original equity target was ILS 9 billion. In the insurance activity, we see a shift in the mix of premiums towards capital-light P&C, which is strategic for the Group. We also see continued inflows to investment policies, which are also strategic to the Group. Inflows passed ILS 5 billion for the third year in a row despite the economic environment and capital market volatility in 2023. In the health segment, we terminated our long-term care agreement with the Maccabi HMO and expect to see a decrease in low-margin premiums in 2024 in line with our strategy to shift mix towards high-margin capital-efficient activities and much more profitable activities. Phoenix Insurance has already achieved most of the updated targets for 2025. Part of the strong growth is by successful investments in digitization and machine learning for underwriting and pricing in P&C. Looking forward, we believe there is a room for significantly improving profitability and efficiency, mainly by digitization of services and automation of processes. We focus our growth on capital-light, high-margin segments such as P&C, travel and investment policies. And we continue to develop advanced capabilities and move to implement IFRS 17 which will allow us to decrease accounting volatility. We will share updated midterm targets soon. Beyond Insurance, the second activity is Asset Management & Credit. This is a fast-growing activity, we generate over ILS 920 million in EBITDA. With focused execution, we have been able to double the EBITDA in 3 years. We started to publish EBITDA figures because these businesses are based on fees and commissions with some spread income. These activities generate stable income and are based on capital-light business models. Cash flow from these businesses are mostly distributed to the Phoenix Holdings level, creating strong liquidity. These figures are fully consolidated, including minorities mostly from the investment house and distribution segment, but at the same time, leverage across the Group is low. EBITDA numbers without minorities is ILS 763 million. We see this activity as a strong source of growth and value creation in the coming years. As part of our strategy to increase profitability and accelerate growth, we have built a broad portfolio of solutions, all are profitable, growing and capital efficient. Some were developed organically and some were acquired. Most of them are under the Phoenix brand. We aim to grow each activity on its own and capture synergies at the Group level. As of the end of 2023, our assets under management grew to ILS 433 billion up from ILS 371 billion in 2022. The growth is due to both, through continued inflows and also inorganic growth. The organic inflows across our activities are due to the Group's capabilities, track record, distribution service and branding. In terms of acquisitions, we completed the Epsilon acquisition earlier this year and then the acquisition of portfolios and funds from Psagot, which are both already fully integrated into our business. Completion of an additional acquisition of activity managed funds from Psagot completed a few weeks ago, at ILS 20 billion to our assets under management and bring us above ILS 450 billion and the targets of 2025. In the retirement business, we aim to improve efficiency and increase margins over time. We continue to implement innovation in order to improve customer and agent's experience. In the Investment House & Wealth management, we're growing our mutual funds and brokerage businesses as well as in our alternative investments and wealth activity for qualified investors. In 2023, we already passed the revenue target for 2025. The Phoenix agencies is the leading platform in Israel for insurance distribution benefit and payroll administration and retirement planning. This business is managed with the goal of creating value on a stand-alone basis, not just distributing Phoenix products. The agencies generate strong cash flow, are capital efficient and have attractive business models. The agencies continue to grow fee revenues to ILS 819 million in the year of 2023. During this year, we saw lower growth rates due to political uncertainties and the Gaza war. However, with only 6% market share, there is still a lot of potential. We completed restructuring and very experienced management is leading the business develop ambitious strategic plans and are executing it. As we previously announced, we're assessing interest from international investors for the agencies to unlock value in the short term and accelerate value creation in the medium and long term. The Group credit portfolio at ILS 5.6 billion, mostly in SME financing through Gama -- Phoenix Gama and real estate and project financing under the insurance business. We grew the business this year while carefully managing risks in the challenging environment. During the 2023, we took 1% ownership of Gama through a successful tender offer for Gama's shares held by the public in order to further develop and solidify the position in the SME credit market. We also expanded its offering by merging the construction finance business from the insurance company. The combined activity under Gama started in January 2024. During 2024, we intend to launch our consumer credit activity. Going forward, we believe credit will be an important source of value creation and synergies in the years to come. The Group is moving to implement our ESG strategy. Today, we're more transparent, accurate and better governed Group compared to where we were 4 years ago. I'm proud of our efforts following the attack on Israel in October when our teams volunteered to support several initiatives. Together with friends and partners internationally, we provided an organized financial support to Barzilai Hospital in the South. The hospital performed exceptionally well during this challenging period and continues to save lives every day. We have been active in the arts this year. As the owner of the largest private collection of Israeli art, more than 50,000 people visited the Ramat Gan Museum to see highlights from the Phoenix Collection and we subsidized this effort to provide access to Israel's cultural heritage, especially important during this challenging time. We're committed to our sustainability strategy and will publish a fully report for 2023 in the coming months. I would now like to hand over the presentation to Eli Schwartz, the Group CFO, who will review the financial results and segments in more detail. Please, Eli?

Thank you, Eyal. Looking at the breakdown of 2023 income by segment, we see a strong contribution from both of insurance and asset management. Insurance contribute ILS 907 million pretax income, mainly driven by P&C. Asset Management & Credit contribute ILS 706 million with a strong impact on the income overall. During the fourth quarter, insurance contributed ILS 763 million to pretax income, again driven by P&C. When we look at the breakdown of 2023 by source or type of income, we see growth in both of Core Insurance and Core Asset Management income compared to last year. Nonoperating income, primarily from investment performance net of interest rate effects had a significant negative impact of ILS 432 million before tax. On the right, you see the full breakdown by segment. In the fourth quarter, the Group generated ILS 578 million comprehensive income. We saw a strong growth in both Core Insurance and Core Asset Management during the quarter as well. Due to the rebound and strong end of the year of the Israeli market, we see the positive results ILS 336 million before tax in nonoperating income, mainly impacted by investment income and interest rate effect. The strong balance sheet and debt structure provides financial strength to the Group. They provide resilience in short term and support the Group strategy execution and ability to capture business opportunities going forward. As discussed, we started in 2023, the report of solvency on a quarterly basis with a lag of 1 quarter. Today, we report the solvency for the end of September was steady of 209% with transition measures after distribution, roughly ILS 300 million of construction finance activity to merge it with the credit terms of the Group. This strong solvency position above longer-term target allow us flexibility in strategic choices and investment allocations and give us a room for when interest rates come down. Phoenix aims to implement IFRS 17 and IFRS 9 starting January 2025. We examined previous implementation in Europe and learning a lot from their experience. This will primarily impact the Life and Health segment with the long-term liabilities. It will not impact Asset Management & Credit. We expect to implement IFRS 17 will decrease our accounting volatility, making earning more stable and particularly good. We also believe that the increase of transparency and comparability of performance between companies. This will make easier for the investor to understand the performance benefits in this sector. In addition, valuation of asset will make net income, EPS and multiplier of P/E better indication of the company activities. We will now review each segment in more detail. The P&C segment continued to show improvement of ILS 703 million in profit during 2023. We see continued growth in premium and improved underwriting profit. In Motor, we see a combined underwriting profit on compulsory and property together of ILS 265 million in the year compared to negative contribution last year. The performance was driven by improved underwriting and the full implementation of machine learning models. Overall, we continue to see improvement of the market, but we are still closely watching risk, including car fees. The Health segment contributed ILS 348 million pretax in 2023. Lower underwriting income is mainly due to a long-term care and higher claims. As Eyal mentioned, we finished this year, the agreement with Maccabi HMO, and we hope that this will increase our profit. We also see the impact of the interest rate on income due to the LAT reserves. The Life segment contributed ILS 9 million pretax in 2023, ILS 602 million lower than 2022. This is mainly due to negative market impact and less significant positive effect of interest rate compared to last year. Underwriting profit increased in quarter compared to last year. However, income was impacted negatively by investment performance and collection of variable fees, both in the quarter and the year-to-date. Other equity returns will impact negatively by capital market. Moving to the Asset Management & Credit segment. The retirement business contributed was ILS 73 million pretax in the year. In the quarter, contribution was impacted by special items, including restructuring and claim provisions. This segment includes activity of the Phoenix Investment House, formerly Excellence. It also includes the wealth and alternative investment activity of the Phoenix Advance Investment with the qualified clients. This year, we start to break out a contribution from the different sub-segment to provide more transparency on the business. This activity contributed ILS 241 million in the year and ILS 65 million in the quarter. This contribution is driven by the growing brokerage platform. Brokerage continues to grow as the Israeli switch from banks to investment house for better service and lower fees. We also see higher spread in the margin accounts. During the year, we launched a new training platform that offers an improved experience in more service. In 2024, we expect to see the synergy from the Psagot and Epsilon acquisitions. The Distribution segment delivered ILS 307 million income before tax. Growth had lower this year due to slower new hires, including the tech sector. We are still assessing interest from international investment in the agencies platform with the goal of unlocking value and creating more value going forward. The Credit segment, which include Gama results generate pretax income of ILS 91 million year-to-date. Phoenix Gama continues to perform above 2021 and 2022 levels and has reduced exposure to check clearing while increasing exposure to other types of credit. During the year, we successfully completed the tender offer for Phoenix Gama, taking the company private with a full ownership by the Phoenix. As of January 2024, we merged the Phoenix Construction Finance business from the insurance company into the Phoenix Gama and expect to capture the synergies during 2024.

Thank you, Eli. We'll now review the questions that were discussed in the conference call in Hebrew. The first question. Do your controlling shareholders intend to sell their shares in the near future? If so, how will it affect the company.

Gallatin's and Centerbridge is private equity funds, they intend to sell sooner or later and their experienced investors, and we'll do it wisely. But practically, what we understand that Phoenix is an interesting institution or a financial institution for a variety of investors. When I meet those investors here in Israel and abroad, I can feel their interest. They all understand the difference between the Israeli market or financial market to a global market. Israel, as we said many times in the past, is behind roughly 10 years after mainly the American market, but the catch-up would be much faster and investors understand that. So we believe that the value of the Phoenix in the future will grow -- will be much higher. If you, of course, compare situation Israel to the situation of global markets. And three, eventually, Phoenix management is committed to that -- actually value creation. And as we have presented and executed in the past and with the updated targets that we plan to bring to the market in the next few weeks, I believe that everybody will understand the value is hidden in that company.

Second question. You increased your 2023 dividend payout to 35%. Should we expect future dividends to maintain this level?

Our dividend policy is at least 30% of annual income, distributed twice during the year. We have flexibility to increase the payout with Board approval. At this point, there is no change of policy, but our goal is to maximize the value we are creating for shareholders based on our policy that is attractive and can be predicted. We continue to assess the policy from time to time and will update when it is appropriate.

Next question. In the Asset Management & Credit activity, it seems that to meet your updated target, you need to grow income by ILS 200 million in the next 2 years. How do you intend to achieve this?

Yes, we intend to grow income from ILS 450 million to ILS 670 million net in 2025. We updated the target based on results and acquisitions and synergies are not reflected in our results yet -- not all synergies are reflected in our results yet. We have not published an EBITDA target, but it would mean growth well above the ILS 900 million we see today. The asset management and the credit activity is growing relatively very fast. The investment house is growing organically and via acquisitions. In ETF and passive funds will lead the market. After the recent acquisition, we lead the fund market overall. In brokerage, we're growing quickly in terms of number of clients. This year, we also launched a better trading platform. We are growing the wealth business of distributing alternative investments for qualified clients. And as you could see, we integrate it into our systems a new Apollo's and KKR's evergreen funds. We're growing and scaling the agencies even though 2023 was not that strong year due to the judiciary reform and the war at Q4. We're increasing synergies between agencies and we'll maximize profitability in each agencies. And we restructured Phoenix Gama to increase growth of credit arm. We are growing market share in SME lending. We're growing the Construction Finance business and we are launching the consumer credit offering this year. These businesses are being managed by a very experienced, incentivized managers and are supposed to grow. That's why I believe and know that we'll meet and maybe like we did previously also exceed the targets of ILS 670 million a year.

Next question. How do you explain the growth in P&C profitability in the fourth quarter? How do you see growth in 2024? Will the pace remain strong?

As we said in the past, and it took us 2 years and lots of millions to create this machine learning platform to actually to lead the pricing in P&C. And as you could see, we have managed to grow significantly during 2023. Due to using this platform better, we recognize that there is a value or a higher margin that we could capture. Over 2023, growth would be based mainly in cars, in motor on this machine learning platform that is already working. It would be also implemented into part of the claims management and I believe that overall in P&C, we'll manage to grow due to the understanding if we can capture or if we can create advantage through using advanced tools like the machine learning, and of course, using our brand and balance sheet to create an overall P&C, which is not on the motor insurance, but on the other insurance businesses like using our good relations with reinsurers and so on.

Next question. What will be the size of the effect of the IFRS 17 and IFRS 9 implementation next year?

The main advantage of the implementation is decreasing the accounting earning volatility. It also allow us to be more easily compared to international companies. Overall, it will facilitate transparency and comprehension between companies in Israel. In Europe, we also saw, at some insurance companies, positive impact of earnings. And also, we believe that it will increase the EPS and the multiplier of P/E because that today, the EPS and the P/E multiplier are not reflecting the comprehensive income in Israel. At this point, it's still early to estimate the size of the impact. We will know more in a few months.

Next question. In the past, you mentioned your intention to increase the share of international investors in the Phoenix stock. Do you still believe there's such a potential?

So the answer is yes. We meet with many international investors, both in Israel. We do lots of Zoom calls and abroad in non-deal road shows that we do regularly in New York and in London. The response of international investors, both those that have already invested and those that are considering an investment is very positive. They appreciate very much the potential in Israel and the long-term trends, given the fact that financial services in the U.S. and the EU are 10 to 15 years ahead of Israel. So they can see the potential. They can see how Phoenix has built a platform that can capture that opportunity and they can see the performance and the numbers and how that platform is moving in that direction and building that potential. In contrast to what people think about the market in 2023, which was very challenging, and there were issues about international investors in the high-tech sector in Israel. In the Phoenix stock, the actual share of international investors grew in the last year. We're currently above 40% of shares held by international investors. That's about 30% the control group and over 10% from the float and that number has grown in the last year. So we believe that there's good momentum despite the challenges, and we think that there's lots more potential given the platform that the Phoenix has built, the performance and the business opportunities, we think that international holders could be very significant for the Group and for the shares trading in Tel Aviv. And then even more than that, we think that there's a growing potential for the entire sector in Israel. More and more companies are translating into English. I think they're doing interesting things, growing and focusing on profitability and value creation. And that could be very interesting for international investors for the sector overall, and it could be very interesting for the sector.

The next question. Your fourth quarter results were characterized by positive nonoperating impact. Looking towards the first half of 2024, how do you see such impact on the Group income?

Overall, the Group creates more than 3% real yields. It's 3.9% average for 5 years. We are working to reduce volatility by changing the mix of activities, implementing of the IFRS 17 and IFRS 9, as I mentioned and other step. It is still early to talk about 2024, but it will depend primarily on the market, the war and the interest rate.

And then the last question, when will you share updated midterm targets with the market?

In 2020, we published our strategy and targets. Today, we reach our own target to reach the 2025 ahead of schedule. And to remind to everybody that those targets or those KPIs were readjust at 2022. We plan to share medium-term growth targets beyond 2025 in the near future. And more importantly, we will share our plans for how to achieve them.

Thank you. These were the questions that were discussed on the Hebrew call today. Investors are welcome to contact us directly to each one of us any time via e-mail. And as mentioned, we'll be happy to answer additional questions or to arrange for a conversation or a Zoom call to discuss in more detail. You can also reach us via the e-mail address [email protected]. Finally, we should mention that you'll find the presentation and the other materials from the financials on our website. And starting tomorrow, you'll find a recording of this call uploaded as well. Thank you again for joining the call.