Unum Group (UNM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for attending our session with Unum Group. Today, we have CEO, Rick McKenney; and CFO, Steve Zabel. Thank you all for joining us this afternoon.

First, could you please start by giving us a brief overview of Unum's corporate strategy, business segments and geographic mix? And please discuss Unum's strategic advantages within its business lines.

Great. Thank you, Wilma. I appreciate you having us here at the Raymond James Conference. Appreciate for the people in the room as well as those on the webcast to hear the Unum story. I think what's good about this conference as well as we have other general investors that are getting to know the Unum story. So I'm happy to talk about the strategy that we have for Unum Group. I'll start off with the where we play from an organizational perspective and we're at the workplace. So when you think about our business, we are an insurance company, but we are solely focused on the workplace and taking care of employers and their employees at time of need. When you think about that, you could think about a multiple product set that we bring out and multiple solutions that we deliver to those employers. And so when you think about everything that's distributed at the workplace, we will do all products. We will not do the savings products. I think 401(k) and defined contribution is not where we focus. We do not do health care as well, but we do all of the other products that you might expect to get to workplace that ranges from group disability insurance, life insurance, what we have from a dental insurance and then voluntary benefits, which is a number of products as well. So being at workplace, we think, offers a distinct set of advantages in the insurance space. One is it provides you actually the scale to get to more and more individuals at time of need, think about the scale of the workforce across the United States. And Unum actually has the position to be -- cover all-size employers. So we range from the very small from 2 employers to the very large 200,000 employers. And because of the scale that we have across all of those, it enables us to have good risk distribution across that know-how and then making sure that we can continue to bring the solutions to the employers to help their employees. The workplace is also a wonderful place to distribute insurance products mostly because employees do expect their employers to provide some level as they look at these benefits they're providing, they're actually going to do some diligence across what it looks like, how they can provide it and whether the employer is paying for it or whether the employee is paying for that product, they have good knowledge that they're getting good value for the products they have out there today. So that is our strategy. So some of the areas that we focus on as well include Colonial Life is an agency force that gets to individuals, things smaller companies in what they do. And so we are one of the few agency forces out there that can reach those individuals and a small employer provide to them protection products that is oftentimes paid for by the employee, but the employer might pay for a part of that, as well as our international operations, which are really exciting operations we have in the U.K. as well as in Poland to provide those same benefits very similar to what we do here in the U.S. in the different geographies. And so that expansion has been good for the overall growth of the company, and we think it provides value in multiple places. The strategic and competitive advantages that we have across this one, our history in this business. It's all we do. So because we have that sole focus on the workplace and taking care of individuals that time of need. We have a long history of making sure that we actually have that connection points through either a brokerage channel or through our independent agents to be there to serve people at time of need. And as well as we have the data and the knowledge and the history that we can do a good job on an underwriting perspective and then bring new services such as leave management to those individuals. So all of that taken together gives us the ability to have a very good operating business and our purpose of helping the working world thrive throughout life's moments comes to the forefront when we think about what we do. So just a quick overview of those that are less familiar with Unum, and maybe you can talk a little bit more about some of the details as we get into it.

Sounds great. What supports Unum's long-term premium growth expectation of 4% to 7% in core businesses an expected 8% to 10% long-term EPS growth. Those are both very solid targets versus peers. So just talk a little bit about that.

Yes. Our business model is actually one where we think about growth, first and foremost. And we think about that as the employees that we cover. So we think about all the people across the country, the 45 million employees that we protect today across the United States and the U.K. and Poland. With that translates into premium growth as we protect more and more people, translates into 4% to 7% premium growth, and those are the levels we've had. We've seen 5% premium growth pretty consistently for a period of time. And so when you think about that overall, 5% growth on a roughly $10 billion premium base, you're talking about a lot more customers are providing year in and year out. And if we bring on those customers and do so at reasonable margins and consistency around what we do, that translates to an earnings growth potential that looks similar to that. And after we think about our capital deployment. So one of the great parts about our business, it is very cash generative. So we're able to redeploy that capital, that cash on multiple fronts of growth but equally as important as we, over our history, have bought back our stock. And so as we do that, the earnings per share growth that we see brings us into that 8% to 12% on a longer-term trajectory.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Unum expects 5% to 10% sales growth in 2025 in both Unum US and Colonial Life. Could you talk about some of the drivers there? And are those good long-term levels of sales growth in the 2 businesses?

Yes, I can take that one, and thanks for having us here today. So on the Unum US brand, that's a brand that's been pretty consistent from a sales perspective, really through multiple cycles. So as we were looking forward to 2025, we thought 5% -- 5% to 10% was pretty much the range that would be a consistent delivery of sales growth that we've had historically, and it's probably kind of a good marker to think about going forward. In this business, you don't want to grow too slow or too fast, you need to remain disciplined with how you sell the business because over time, you may need to adjust premiums along the way, and you just don't want to create the volatility for your customers. And so we think 5% to 10% is pretty good for that line of business. For Colonial it's probably a little bit slower than what we would have seen historically. Colonial is a -- it's a business of ours that came through the pandemic and has really recovered a little bit slower. And so as we think more longer term and historically, that business from a sales perspective, grew more in the high single digits. And so over time, we are looking forward to get back to that range. But as we look to 2025, the 5% -- 5% to 10% range, what we thought was a pretty reasonable range to set expectations.

And in group disability, Unum expects favorable benefit ratios to continue into 2025 after a few favorable years. The outlook is for the low 60s, which compare to mid- to low to mid-70s pre-pandemic. What are the drivers for this to persist into 2026 and beyond?

Yes. I can take that one as well. Just to give you a little bit of a history, one of the largest product lines that we have would be group disability. And for years, our benefit ratio in that line somewhere between 70% and 75%. And what we saw during the pandemic was a little bit of volatility from incidents or new claims. So we got into that line of business. But what we did see throughout that period of time was really good recoveries. And that's a core part of what we do and the value that we create for our employers is getting people back to work and off of disability, so they can be productive. And our interests are really aligned with both the employee and the employer to do that. So what we've seen over really the last decade is continual improvement in being able to do just that, get people back to work. And so as we found ourselves coming through the pandemic, our loss ratios ended up being somewhere right around 60% and for some quarters, even a little bit less than that. And so one of the big questions out there for the market is, is that sustainable? Are those margins sustainable? And there's really two pieces to that. One is just operationally, do we think we can continue to deliver that level of recoveries, getting people back to work? And the answer is, yes. We know what we've done internally through protocols, through technology and through really being able to understand for each claim at how best they can get back to work, whether it's because of their occupation, their industry or what their issue is, we've got the know-how to do that. So then the question becomes pricing. And in a competitive marketplace, how is that going to play out as far as our margins and the competitive marketplace? And do we need to give some of those margins back. And so far, what we're seeing is we do not. It continues to be a pretty reasonable marketplace. And so we feel pretty comfortable as we go into 2025 that those margins are sustainable. We'll continue to reevaluate that as we get into further into 2025 and we can talk about '26 when we get closer to that, but we feel very comfortable that we're going to be able to maintain those levels of margins and are very happy with those levels of margins as we go into 2025.

Great. And could you talk a little bit about Unum International sales growth, expect 8% to 12% in 2025, pretty strong level of growth there. So what's driving that? And could you talk about how it compares to the long-term expectation as well?

Yes, I can take that one as well. So again, International, great business. We have both our U.K. business there and our Poland business. I would -- the majority of the driver of both growth as well as earnings is going to come to -- come from our U.K. business. And that's a business that historically grew mid- to high single digits year-over-year from a sales and a premium growth perspective. It's always been a pretty high-growth market. But what we've seen recently is even higher growth. And so the guidance that we gave is closer to 10% or a range around that. I think longer term, we probably expect that to be down more in the high single digits. But really, the driver is there, over in the U.K. that sell similar products to what we sell here in the U.S. there's really two things. One is the value proposition to the customer and just what the suite of services that you can package along with your products. And so we've done some innovative things over there to kind of give the employers more than just the basic product suite. And then the other thing is working with brokers. Brokers are a really integral part of not just the sales process over in the U.K. but also how the business is services. So we've invested a lot in just connectivity and giving the brokers access to understand how their cases are evolving. And that's allowed them to really manage and administer along with us, the activity of the different employer groups. So feel really good about the investment we made over there and feel good about the business proposition going forward for that business.

Okay. Great. We just talked about Unum solid growth outlook in its in-demand group insurance space, which we estimate trades at 20x plus earnings in private markets but Unum also has a noncore long-term care or LTC business. And just last week, you announced an innovative $3.4 billion LTC deal, which reduced LTC reserves by 20%, this was a promising development. Can you talk about the impact this deal has on Unum from a financial and strategic perspective? And lastly, what is your outlook for additional activity in the space?

Great. Well, let me start from a strategic perspective. We've said many times that long-term care was a business that we actually closed to new contracts going back to the 2010 range. So I think that it's something we've been out of for quite some time. And clearly, from an investor perspective, and then focused on how this product and we continue to service it and continue to take care of those customers but has created some challenge in terms of the view of our business. Our underlying businesses that Steve and I have been talking about are tremendous businesses. And as you said, the multiples on these businesses have been very, very strong. Long-term care has actually overshadowed that a little bit. So last year, we actually -- go back to 2023. We made the statement back in 2023 that we are not going to put any more capital into this business. So that was a strategic move that we made to fund up the level of capital we had behind this business. I think that was very good to talk about that the ongoing cash-generated business that we have across the board, we'll be able to flow to the holding company and ultimately be there for redeployment. So that was step 1 to work on the strategy around that. I think the transaction you referenced last week is another important step on that, which is to actually take strategically to take [ actually ] this business and remove it from our balance sheet from risk perspective. Last week was 20% that we were able to do with this block of business. The longer-term goal is to actually remove it in its entirety. It will take some time. It is complicated. We're very happy with the transaction but I think that, that was a really important piece. So maybe, Steve, you can talk about some of the dynamics of that specific transaction, which we were quite happy with.

Yes. So the block of business that we transacted on, it was part of our individual long-term care block, which tends to have richer benefits than the group equivalent of that, that we have on the balance sheet. It was approximately 20% of our reserves, is about 30% of the individual reserves that we do have on the books. It was an older age cohort, and we worked with a counterparty, and we're able to reinsure that. And one of the questions that is out there in the market is what would it take from a kind of capital deployment perspective for us to be able to get a reinsurer to reinsure that type of business. And it netted to something that, frankly, was pretty inconsequential to us from a capital perspective. We were able to pair it with another in-force block of business that we did have on the books. And so we've reinsured that to the counterparty kind of as a package. And it ended up being a net capital positive for the organization. So it was a really important step for us, I think, for a couple of reasons. One is it was a validation of our best estimate assumptions around that block of business, which continues to be somewhat uncertain to the market of whether -- how that business is consistent with how a third party would value it. And so we felt really good that we did get some validation there. The other question is what would it take from a total capital outlay for us to offload the total risk? And so this was a good indicator of what a read across may be to our entire block. And basically, like I said, we have a lot of capital flexibility. It was about $200 million net capital that it took for this piece of the transaction to be able to reinsure that off the block of business. So really, really happy great teams back at the home office that have done a lot of work over the last -- not just weeks or months, but it takes a long time for these to come together. And so very happy, it's step 1, and we'll continue to work with counterparties to see what other solutions we can bring to the rest of the block.

And one other element that we announced last week as well, which is some internal reinsurance that we did or transactions, Steve, maybe you could provide some color on that internal transaction as well.

Yes. And I think it's important that people understand it. It was actually 2 distinct transactions that just happened to come together and conclude at the same time when we announced at the same time. We had this external reinsurance transaction, which we referenced. But then we also did some internal restructuring where we took 100% of our long-term care business in our New York entity and just as background. Our New York entity is pretty concentrated to long-term care business. And so we go through some of the reserving adequacy work, you don't have a lot of other business with other margins to really help the whole legal entity think of reserve adequacy and reserve margins within the block. So we reinsured 100% of that to another of our legal entities. It's a Tennessee domiciled legal entity. And that entity does have great diversification of other products. Many of our other product lines we write out of that legal entity. And so there are good margins. There's good ongoing cash generation. And what it was able to do it was -- it's able to really reduce some of the capital volatility we've seen in our New York entity as a basically as a reaction for things that we had to do to adjust reserves in that legal entity. So we're really happy about it. It's a good risk management action that we took, it's a good way to decrease capital volatility. And kind of as a secondary impact, it did release some capital up to our holding company, which was a good outcome, but not the primary objective.

So when you bring all that together, long-term care and the focus we've had, the team has done a great job and really on 3 fronts. One is we've also continued to take price increases where appropriate, and that's something we've been doing for many year now. And so that number is right around $5 billion of rate increases that we've taken into that block of business. We've been talking about reusing the footprint, which is another part of the strategy. And then also looking at making sure that the outcomes are consistent. And so part of that has been the hedging that we've done as well to manage interest rates. So managing long-term care has been something we've been active on for multiple years, and we were really happy about part 3 of that, which was start to take this externally with the reinsurance transaction.

Great. And as part of the internal reinsurance or LTC restructuring that you mentioned, you drove a $600 million plus release of cash and you now expect $2.5 billion of holding company cash at year-end 2025 versus the prior $2 billion expectation. Is there any room for Unum to deploy part of this liquidity towards share repurchases?

Yes. So maybe I'll step back and talk more broadly about what we're doing from an overall capital generation deployment perspective. And as I mentioned, as we went back to 2023, and there is no more capital going behind long-term care. The generation that we saw in 2024 has accrued to the company. We saw that moving up to our holding company. Last year was a good year of capital deployment. We were able to actually buy back close to $1 billion of shares. But I'd step back from that and talk about what are the uses that we have. You're absolutely right. Our new number that we have out there is $2.5 billion once all of this is settled down and most of that will be there at the end of the first quarter. And so the ability to put that to work is really important to us. But I go all the way back to the first thing, back to the very beginning of this conversation is continue to protect more people and that is the growth that we look for in the company that can come organically, which we've grown at a reasonable rate, which we discussed. But also M&A would be a use of capital that we'd like to deploy in the right type of transaction that allows us to grow the company and actually adds value. It's not necessarily a block deal, that's a short-term thing. It's really about the long-term strategic value that can be created through good M&A. So that's the second piece. We also continue to increase our dividend. You've seen us do that pretty consistently over the last many years. Also important to bring that back to shareholders through dividends. And then also, as you mentioned, share repurchase is something that we'd be comfortable in doing. This year, our plan is to do somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion of share repurchase. As you said, we've stepped up the amount of capital available. And so that's something we'll have to evaluate and talk about as we go through the year about how much of that will go back in the form of share repurchase. But as I said last year, we're very happy to buy back our stock. We think it's a good value today. So all of the money that we put back towards share repurchase, we think is a good use of shareholder funds.

And Unum guides to $1.5 billion to $8 billion of capital generation in 2025. That's a very good level. And just -- I know you touched on some of these near term, but could you just talk about your longer-term cap uses for that capital as well in the outlook?

Yes, I can just size that up. And just historically, that number has really grown, specifically since the pandemic, we used to have somewhere between $1 billion to $1.2 billion of cash generation pretty consistently for the entity. Like you said, the outlook that we gave for 2025 has been continued growth from what we've seen. There's no reason to not expect that to be able to grow over time as we grow our GAAP earnings and just top line of the company. And so that's what we would expect. We have about between $500 million and $600 million of kind of capital deployment that's somewhat discretionary, but it's things that we plan for every year that we count on. Debt service is one. The other one would be our dividend scale. So think about of that amount of cash generation that's pretty much earmarked already to do those two things. And then the rest is pretty much totally freed up for us to do the things that Rick mentioned, whether it's buy things to grow, either organically or inorganically and then to also think about capital deployment back to our shareholders. And so those are decisions that we make quarter-to-quarter, and we will make as we proceed through 2025.

Yes. We sit on a good level of excess capital, depending on how you define it today already. And I think the important thing is that generation of the machine continues to run. So we've got to put that back to work, It's not going to sit there fallow. But we haven't made those commitments yet, but it's really important to say excess that we have sitting there today, but also the generation putting that to work. So it's a 2-part element that we have with the capital available to be deployed.

And you touched on it, but is M&A -- question?

Yes. Just can you go back to the long-term care? I didn't completely understand the gap. So you said -- I thought you said it's 20% of your block. It was slightly risky year than the rest of you block, is that right?

Yes. It's more rich benefit...

We should repeat that because they may not be...

Yes, I'll repeat it for the webcast.

The gest of the question, and it cost you $200 million, so is it fair to say for $800 million-ish, give or take, you can get rid of the whole lot? Or am I missing something? That's the question.

Yes. So I'll repeat it so for the people on the webcast. So the question was a 2-parter. One is, is it the right way to think about the 20% of the book that we reinsured, is that kind of the more risky block? How I would characterize it is that it's part of the block that has richer benefits. Our individual block, how it was sold in 2 individuals was much different than how we sold it to groups. When we went into groups, a lot of employer-paid coverages, and they usually took pretty low coverages, so not a lot of inflation built into the policy. Not a lot of lifetime benefits or more limited benefit periods, lower daily benefits. The individual block much higher, and we did put out some information in our presentation that we did last week that really shows the demographics of the different blocks and split it out between our group block and our individual blocks. So I won't opine on risky or not risky, but definitely more rich coverage and therefore more uncertainty if things diverge in the future with our actual experience. Then when it comes down to the capital uses. So yes, you were right. For the LTC part of the transaction, the capital cost was about $200 million to us. I do though -- I don't want to jump to just extrapolating that because every deal is different. Every deal will have to be negotiated we felt very good about the value of this specific transaction. We felt like it was very validating of our assumptions. What we wanted to do is at least give the market some perspective of what a transaction may cost us and give more comfort that we could do more block transactions with a major -- without a major drain of our capital. And I think this transaction proved that, at least for this block of business, that is true. And so I don't like to do blanket extrapolations on things, but I think it's a good read that this is something that would be manageable if we were able to negotiate similar types of transactions.

I think it's fair to say we got the question a lot coming out of the transaction. When is the next one? How quickly can you get through the multiple transactions? And these transactions are difficult to do. We've been working at this for a while to find a counterparty in the right structure. So it's about doing that. It will take some time. And so we want to make sure that the market understands that. We also laid out some of the sensitivities that we have because we actually have an entity where we have excess reserves and capital behind that. It's not just money that's coming from the holding company. And maybe you can talk about that quickly Steve, the sensitivities we have and what they were before and what they are now.

Yes. About 80% of our block is in a captive subsidiary Fairwind. And so we talk a lot about the block in Fairwind. And we've given sensitivities in the past as far as if you were to in essence shock certain of the liability assumptions to different degrees, what the impact would be on how we think about the best estimate liability for that block business. And part of it is to just kind of put in the scope if we do have divergence in the future of our actual experience. What that might mean as far as erosion of margins that we like we have in those reserves. So last week, what we did is we provided those sensitivities both kind of for the total block but then what those look like for the remaining block. And part of what we wanted to demonstrate is that we weren't left with relatively more risky business. And if you look at the, it varies a little bit from the 20%, but it does give a good indication that there was a fair amount of risk in the block that we reinsured. I think one other important piece of this is,-- if you look at a transaction that across LTC, you've got an active life reserve, which is -- are those people that have not claimed and are still paying premium and healthy. And then you have a disabled block. And those have different assumption sets across those two. This was a block that was over 60% of active life reserves, which means there's a lot of people that were still active, healthy paying premiums. And so if you look up and down the different liability sensitivities, we did really reduce risk across all of those liability sensitivities. And so I think that's a real important specific thing to highlight. So a really good question.

Another question in the room?

[indiscernible].

Defined tenor?

[indiscernible].

Yes. Again, I would -- I would probably answer that question the same way that these are basically lifetime projections of how we think about premiums and benefits for the different blocks business. And so in aggregate, it was a reduction in those sensitivities for the sensitivities that we provide. So I think it's just a good indication that we didn't pick a block that was not exposed to certain of these sensitivities. Again, demonstrate there's some price discovery as far as how we think about the lifetime expectations for the block. And those sensitivities are basically a step change forever in how incidence rates perform, our mortality rates performed all those things. So it is kind of a lifetime view of the block of business both before the transaction and after the transaction.

[indiscernible]

Yes.

So does that happen near term effect on cost ratio?

Not in the near term. It would not in the near term. And just think of it purely as risk reduction for any kind of actual experience in the future for the lifetime of these blocks that's different than what our current expectations are.

Have you been prevented from doing M&A by just the? Market's reticence on the value of this. So now the market's got the confidence so you're more willing to use your stock in a deal or more use capital?

I would say, from an M&A perspective, we really -- so going to the question is.

Yes. So I was just -- my next question was, is there an interest in M&A, especially your international business is growing really quickly. And we have a breakthrough session, too. I'd love for you guys [indiscernible].

But the question is around M&A. And so have we been precluded because of this, ideally not. And so if you went back to 2018, 2019, we did a series of transactions. We bought a dental business in the U.S., a dental business in the U.K. Our Polish business was bought in that period of time. And so we haven't been precluded from doing that. We've been sitting in a good level of capital where we would be happy to have transacted for the right transaction, and that's what it's all about. It's not just to do M&A. So I think it's been something that's been consistent where we're trying to evaluate that. We have the excess capital to do so. We didn't believe that we would need that excess capital. We've said that pretty consistently to were infrastructure for long-term care. We weren't really doing that because we had it isolated in that entity and I think that's proven out. And so as we look to the future, it's the same is true. This excess capital is out there. We'd love to do M&A to grow the franchise, still true. We think we have significant firepower, not with just the cash that we have on the balance sheet or the excess capital we have in the legal entities. We also have debt capacity to do that. So M&A would be great if the right transaction comes along. And so we haven't been precluded from doing that throughout the cycle, nor are we today.

And then just one final question, and hopefully, everyone will join for the breakthrough. Do you think there is anything investors are currently underappreciating about Unum? Are there any specific factors that you'd like to highlight about the stock?

Sure. We will both take a shot at that. I think last week was a very good week for the company to talk about the area that's been underappreciated, which is the long-term care has really sucked up a lot of the air, a lot of oxygen of the discussion around unit stock. We have a great core franchise that serves a very important purpose. So people that are focused on the company recognize that. People that are in the markets around group benefits in the markets around employee benefits at large, recognize that we have a very strong franchise. I think that with long-term care, people that was kind of where the discussion stopped with some people, they just didn't want to get near that. Now we're seeing that alleviate. So with the actions that we've taken, putting capital behind it, looking at risk transfer. And I think it's allowing the core business to shine through more than it has in the past. And we're really excited about that because we think it's a tremendous franchise.

And I'll give my boss the last word.

All right. We'll stick with that. We do appreciate everybody joining us today. We'll be able to take some questions after this session. We'd love to converse more with you about those of you on the webcast. I appreciate you joining in.

Thank you very much.