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

Hello. This is David Alexander, Deputy CEO of Phoenix Financial. Thank you for joining us to discuss the group results for Q1 2025. The call will be led by Phoenix CEO, Eyal Ben Simon; and Deputy CEO and CFO, Eli Schwartz. This quarter is the first quarter that we're implementing the new accounting standard for Insurance, IFRS 17, and it's reflected in the financial statements and in the call today in the analysis and the numbers we'll be presenting. The presentation for the call can be found on our website or 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 were discussed today on the Hebrew call. You can send any additional questions to us individually or to the email address, [email protected]. We'll make ourselves available to meet with investors to discuss performance, strategy or any other questions you may have. Please note that this call will include forward-looking statements so that actual future results may be different. And in addition to the presentation and the call, the group's performance can best be understood together with the full financial statements available on our website. Eyal will first highlight the key results for the quarter, our strategic growth and our targets. Eli will then review the financial results, IFRS 17 implementation and segment breakdown in more detail.

Hello, and thank you for joining the call today. Phoenix is a leading Israeli financial group with over $140 billion in assets under management and distinctive competitive advantages. For those of you who are new to the company, we have 2 businesses. First is a broad multiline Insurance business, including a leading P&C operation as well as significant life and health businesses. The second business is Asset Management with high-margin growth engines. This includes a growing Wealth business, the market-leading investment house, the leading financial distribution footprint of Brokers & Advisors and a growing financial platform. Both businesses are showing strong growing, generating significant and stable cash flows. And we are capturing growing synergies across these businesses. Phoenix has a strong capital position, liquidity and a good solvency ratio. We use our strong cash flows to grow, distribute dividends and execute buybacks. Israel's significant potential is supported by very positive long-term structural trends. Key trends for us are demographics, wealth accumulation and high saving rates. In the shorter term, the Israeli economy remains resilient despite the war. Local capital markets outperformed leading global indices in 2024 and so far in 2025. The main indicators show resilience and a rebound since the war, including GDP growth and inflation. Going forward, Phoenix is well positioned to capture the opportunities in Israel. Q1 was another strong quarter for Phoenix with strong growth in Asset Management and higher earnings in Insurance. We generated almost ILS 568 million in comprehensive income and return on equity of 21.3%. Phoenix continues to reduce volatility. We're changing business mix and lowering sensitivities to rates. The strong performance and financial resilience allow us to accelerate our dividend distribution with a quarterly distribution of ILS 230 million announced this morning. Phoenix is currently ahead of targets for 2027, and we intend to update them in 2025. Phoenix continues to grow in core income in both businesses. Total core income without nonoperating effect was ILS 626 million in the quarter, and core return on equity of 23.6%. Our Asset Management activities generated strong growth with 43% increase in income year-over-year. We see growth in all our platforms, Investments, Wealth, Brokers & Advisors and Financing. In Insurance, we see growth year-over-year, both compared to IFRS 4 and also pro forma in IFRS 17. This means we're growing organically beyond the positive impact of the new accounting standards. Phoenix's investment management capabilities in Israel are one of our competitive advantages. Our focus is to maximize performance and provide competitive risk-adjusted yields to our clients. We continue to develop our capabilities by partnering with leading international managers. Two weeks ago, we announced an update of our policy to distribute dividend every quarter instead of every 6 months. Today, we announced a dividend of ILS 230 million in addition to ILS 565 million announced in March. In addition, we continue to execute our annual plan of ILS 100 million buybacks. This is how we deepen our commitment to share value with shareholders. Over the last few years, since adopting our dividend policy, we distributed more than ILS 3 billion in dividends and buybacks. This represents over 5% dividend yield since 2021. We will now discuss strategic execution towards our targets. Last quarter, we explained that we see potential upside of ILS 400 million to ILS 600 million to our ILS 2 billion target for 2027. As you can see, we're on track to reach this range of ILS 2.4 billion to ILS 2.6 billion, perhaps sooner than 2027. In Asset Management, we see accelerated growth in all platforms that we expect to reach the target range plus upside. In Insurance, we see IFRS 17 positive impact together with accelerated strategic growth in P&C. We intend to publish updated 2027 targets later this year. Our value-creation strategy focuses on 4 drivers: accelerated growth in high-margin, high-multiple businesses; innovation for competitive advantage and efficiency; active management of people, culture and structure; and strategic deployment of capital and investments. We believe that there is a long runway for growth and value creation in the market, and we continue to make sure Phoenix is well positioned to capture it. After building capabilities, we are now focused on driving growth and creating value in each of the platforms. In parallel, we continue to invest in deeper capabilities and competitive advantages for longer-term growth and value creation. This includes advanced data skills, AI engines and improving how we work with clients. We continue to grow our AUMs to nearly $150 billion. We're focused on highly profitable activities such as investments, wealth and investment policies. As a target, AUMs are less important to us than income. The mix is more important than the total number. Our growth engines in Asset Management are very profitable, generating growing EBITDA and solid cash flows. These businesses generate significant fee-related income and commissions. EBITDA in the quarter grew 30% year-over-year to ILS 380 million. This growth improves liquidity and supports quarterly dividends. Within the Asset Management businesses, we continue to grow the wealth, investment and retirement activities with alternative mutual funds, ETFs, portfolios, pensions and stock option administration. We're market leaders, and we intend to continue and use our competitive advantages to capture market share. Q1 shows strong results with continued organic growth and synergies from last year's acquisitions. The Brokers & Advisors in the Phoenix Agencies continue to grow and improve performance. This platform focuses on benefit administration, retirement planning, investments and insurance distribution. Phoenix Agencies continues to grow at double digits, both organically and through roll-up acquisitions. The businesses generate strong cash flows and we continue to see many opportunities in a highly fragmented market. Phoenix continues to grow our financing activity while focusing on profitability and risk management. The business is based on Phoenix Gama, a strong platform that provides credit card clearing and SME credit solutions. We see growth across activities of SME, construction and consumer financing. This year, we merged our holding in the El Al Frequent Flyer Program to strengthen our credit card activities. In the Insurance business, we continue to focus on competitive advantages in high return-on-equity activities. We're growing P&C in line with our strategy. Across all businesses, we're optimizing, shifting to digital self-service and improving productivity. This is in addition to implementing IFRS 17 that improves profitability and reduces volatility. Now Eli will take it from here and review the financial results and segments in more detail. Please, Eli.

Thank you, Eyal. First, I would like to summarize some accounting and reporting changes that we made in the first quarter around IFRS 17. This is the first quarter we report full results and sensitivities under the IFRS 17 standard. As explained last quarter, we updated the way we normalize our core income. We are normalizing nonoperating effect based off nominal risk-free plus 2.25% margin. In addition, we reclassified investment policies from Life Insurance and Health Investment segment that include also Investment House and Capital Partners and the structural changes reported last quarter are implemented in the current report. When looking at the income by sources, we see a strong performance of Asset Management, generating ILS 331 million before tax and another solid quarter of Insurance, generating ILS 631 million. Nonoperating effects were limited, driven by negative capital market, partially offset by interest rate. Looking at the breakdown of the first quarter by segment, we see income growth across all operating segments. Asset Management platform generates strong income and cash flow. The strong balance sheet and debt structure provide financial strength to the group. They provide resilience in the short term and support the group strategy and ability to capture business opportunities going forward. Our solvency estimated for the end of 2024 remains high of 183% with transition measures. This strong solvency position, above long-term target of 150% to 170%, allow us flexibility in strategic choices, investment allocation and dividend. According to IFRS 17, we aligned the implementation guidelines. We published today pro forma results for 2024 under the new standard. This is compared with the result we already published in the IFRS 4. Impact of the IFRS 17 is over ILS 500 million in the core income and just under ILS 300 million in the comprehensive income due to volatilities. Most of the impact was in the Health and Life segments. Here, we can see the impact of the IFRS 17 in 2024 quarter-by-quarter; the results we report in the IFRS 4 compared to the pro forma of the IFRS 17. While the IFRS 17 improves profitability, it also reduced volatility between quarters compared to the old reporting. We see the average quarterly core income was ILS 575 million with little variance above and below. We will now review each segment in more details. P&C continued to show strong results with ILS 229 million before tax in the quarter. This was driven by Property & Liability segment as well as the full implementation of machine learning models for underwriting and pricing in motor segments. In the Health segment, we see improvement in the underwriting profit of ILS 237 million. This was partly offset by nonoperating effect, mainly of capital market performance. The Life segment generated ILS 105 million before tax, ILS 25 million more than the parallel quarter of last year. Results were positively impacted by interest rate effect, offset by capital market. Other Equity Returns were impacted negatively by capital market. The Wealth & Investments segment include activities of the Phoenix Investment House, Phoenix Capital Partners and the investment policies. We see a strong growth in mutual funds and ETF income, including synergy from the Psagot acquisitions. Our Brokerage business continued to grow both in number of clients and income per client. We also see a growth in income for alternative and wealth as we reach the scale and growing the business. The Retirement business contribution was ILS 39 million pretax, an increase in the core income year-on-year. We are focusing on efficiency and improving profitability, and you can see the impact of the results. The Brokers & Advisors segment include the Phoenix Agencies and delivered ILS 113 million of income before tax and strong growth year-over-year. The business shows strong organic growth as well as synergy for M&As. We continue to grow, improve our business performance and capture market opportunities. The Financing segment generated strong income growth to ILS 51 million before tax. This, while maintaining the responsible credit portfolio in a challenging environment. We see ongoing contribution of merging Phoenix Construction Finance business from the insurance company last year into Phoenix Gama. Our consumer credit activity launched during the year is now scaling. We also merged our minority stake in the El Al Frequent Flyer Club to strengthen our credit card activity.

Thank you, Eli. We'll now review the questions that were discussed in the conference call in Hebrew. The first question is about the targets. You said that you intend to update targets. When will they be updated? And will the new targets reflect the income potential you published in the previous quarter?

Well, we'll update targets during the second half. We're evaluating the IFRS 17's impact and performance rate in assets under management or Asset Management in general. Also, we are looking at the pace of meeting the published upside. Currently, it looks sooner rather than later. We'll assess and then we'll update again. We plan to do it on the second half of 2025.

Second question is about Asset Management. The profit from Asset Management grew impressively in the last quarter. What is behind the growth? And is it representative?

Yes, it's representative definitely on the growth and also on the bottom line, on the profit. And what we see strong established and profitable platforms with economics of scale and a lot of differentiated products, a very strong leadership in all our businesses. On the investment house, we see also a lot of synergies in the brokerage and the synergies between ESOP and the other activities. On the agencies, we see a very strong organic growth. And also, we start to see growth from the acquisitions that we committed on 2024. And going forward, we think that it will be even much higher. And of course, on credit, what we see is improved synergies. We see improved numbers in all segments, also in the clearing and the credit itself and the construction credit and we started the private consumer credit.

Next question is on return on equity. This is the third consecutive quarter that you're showing a return on equity of over 20%. Will the ROE targets be updated? Is this the new level we should expect?

Yes, again, it's representative. And as I said before, we're going to assess and we're going to update in the second half of 2025, all numbers. We see growing platforms with minimal capital requirement for growth, as we said in our strategic plan. And of course, as we already said that we are moving from measures of price-to-book to a price-on-earning multiples, which reflects, according to what we believe or what we see, a much better way of understanding the value of the group.

The next question is about the dividend. What led you to the decision to increase the frequency to quarterly dividend distributions?

As you can see from the financial reports of the first quarter, you can see a better capital and liquidity from Asset Management segment. This strong performance of financial stability allow us more frequent distributions. This also align us with the local and leading companies in the world.

The next question is about Insurance. You mentioned the positive impact of implementing IFRS 17 on Insurance results. How do you see the impact in the long term?

The main impact of the IFRS 17 is on the long-term liabilities of the Insurance. In the midterm, understanding better pricing of the risk and profitability of different products. And Phoenix is -- as Eyal mentioned, we are focusing on high return, low volatility, capital-light cash flow generating business.

Next question. Are you working on implementing artificial intelligence in the company? And how do you estimate the technology will affect the company's performance?

As we said, and actually internally, we established a dedicated unit for AI under the technology because we see the changes and we see the very rapid things or rapid pace of AI generally. So machine learning is producing a competitive advantage in pricing. We said that in the past few times. And as we said, we see it working. And we see increasing efficiency and improving service and customer experience. And of course, immediate quick wins more significant in the medium, long term. That's what we see on the technology. And eventually, it would be a combination of AI capabilities, machine learning capabilities, digital capabilities and as kind of a comprehensive solution to the client that will enjoy much better services and much more efficient.

Next question. What is your position on the committee's recommendations to open deposits to competition?

Well, it's a very good recommendation. Actually, it opens for Phoenix new horizons of development with improved way of providing credit to customers, whether it's individuals or SMEs. We believe that Phoenix Gama is positioned and Phoenix as a group is positioned in the best way to capture this value of the new regulation. It will take time, I believe, more than a year, but the trend is very positive when we look at it from our own eyes.

Next question. Is your strong performance related to the continued recovery of the economy? Where do you identify the greatest opportunities for investment in the local economy?

As you can see, the economy is strong and resilient. The strength of the economy is reflected in leading companies' performance, including Phoenix. Seeing investor interest, higher share in daily volumes, not only in Phoenix, we see it in the whole market. Israel became more interesting, although we face a lot of challenges, especially in the last few months. But still, if we look forward in the next quarters, we see that the market has managed to overcome the impact or the effects of the war. Still, as I said, there are a lot of challenges. But Phoenix, as we said in the credit, is positioned in the best way to capture more value in the growing Israeli market. And of course, the strength and the resilience of the economy is one of the main catalysts for Phoenix growth. But also, we've actually shown in the last few years that we know how to capture and grow our businesses even much faster than the economy.

Thank you. These were the questions. Investors are welcome to contact us directly at any time or via email. We'd be happy to answer questions or arrange conversations to discuss in more detail. Our email is [email protected]. Finally, I'd like to mention that you'll find this presentation and other materials on our website as well as a recording of this call that will be updated either tomorrow or Sunday. Thank you again for joining the call.