Voya Financial, Inc. (VOYA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Voya Financial 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Rod Martin, Chairman and CEO. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Welcome to the 2020 Voya Financial Annual Meeting of Stockholders. It's 11 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, May 21, 2020. I now call the meeting to order. I'm Rod Martin, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Voya Financial. On behalf of our directors, officers and employees, I thank you for attending our 2020 annual meeting. Following the official items of business, I'll provide a brief presentation and then take any questions. Now I'll ask Jean Weng, our Corporate Secretary, to begin the formal business of the meeting. Jean?

Thanks, Rob, and good morning, everyone. We're happy to have with us members of our Board of Directors. We also have in attendance members of our Executive Committee and representatives from our auditor Ernst & Young. Also attending is Tracy Oats, the inspector of election. Ms. Oats has filed with me her oath as inspector and has provided me with her duly executed certificate of quorum. With that, we will now begin the official business for this annual meeting. As indicated in our proxy statement, we're here today to consider the following items: the election of 9 directors to our Board of Directors for 1-year term, an advisory vote on the approval of executive compensation, a vote to ratify the appointment of Ernst & Young as the company's auditors for 2020 and a vote to determine the frequency of future advisory vote on compensation. The vote will now be taken on the foregoing 4 matters. We will now pause to allow stockholders to vote. [Voting]

The polls for voting on all matters are hereby closed. I have the report from Ms. Oats on the votes cast. As to the election of directors, each director nominee has received the vote of a majority of votes cast and has been elected. As to the second matter, stockholders have approved on an advisory basis, the compensation of the company's named executive officers. As to the third matter, stockholders have ratified the appointment of Ernst & Young as the company's auditor for 2020. As to the final matter, stockholders have approved the frequency of future advisory votes on compensation to be every year. Before our Chairman and CEO, Rod Martin, provides a business update and take your questions, I would like to remind everyone that statements made today which are not historical or current facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements reflect management's current expectations or beliefs. We call to your attention the fact that the company's actual results could differ from these statements. The company has filed with the SEC reports that list some of the factors that may cause results to differ materially from these statements. We assume no duty to update these forward-looking statements. Please also note that we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial metrics. In particular, we refer to adjusted operating earnings, which is a non-GAAP financial metric. For a reconciliation of this metric to the most comparable GAAP measure, please refer to our most recent investor supplement available on our Investor Relations website. With that, I turn it back to our Chairman and CEO, Rod Martin.

Thank you, Jean. Today, I'd like to give you an overview of our business. I'll also highlight the progress that we've made in positioning Voya for continued growth and value creation. As I noted on Slide 2, I'll be talking about some non-GAAP measures and forward-looking information. Moving to Slide 3. As the world confronts the many challenges related to COVID-19, we at Voya are incredibly grateful to all who are working on the front lines to address this global pandemic. As we navigate this crisis, the safety of our employees, their families and our customers remain our top priority. I'm extremely proud of our 6,000 employees and the dedication and commitment that they have shown for our advisers and customers. We have quickly pivoted to having more than 95% of our employees working remotely. And we're seeing great resilience among our teams. This would not have been possible without the significant dedication of our employees. When we do return to our offices, we will do so thoughtfully and gradually, and we will continue to make decisions based on the best interests of our people. Importantly, Voya remains open for business, and we're taking actions to address our customer needs. We were the first major retirement plan provider to waive fees in response to the CARES Act and to help our customers and all Americans manage through this difficult time. Specifically, we are crediting hardship distribution and loan initiation fees associated with COVID-19 related distributions. In total, we expect to credit back approximately $10 million to $20 million to our participants through September 30, 2020. We are proud to serve many customers and clients who are directly serving others during this time, and we are incredibly grateful to all who are working on the front lines. We're also supporting our broader communities, including, but not limited to, providing all Americans with free online resources and phone access to our financial advisers. And through our partnership with AmeriCares, we are supporting the shipment of more than 23 tons of personal protective equipment to partners across the United States. While this situation will continue to evolve, we are confident in how Voya is positioned and the team that we have to navigate through it. We will get through this together. Turning to Slide 4. At Voya, our vision is to be America's retirement company. We believe we can achieve that vision through our workplace and institutional-focused business mix, consisting of retirement, investment management and employee benefits. Voya's strong brand and complementary businesses continue to stand apart in the industry. We have demonstrated our ability to increase EPS and improve value for all of our stakeholders. And despite market conditions, we saw strong results across our businesses during the first quarter. Our balance sheet and capital position remains strong. Since our inception, we have returned approximately $6.4 billion to shareholders in share repurchases and dividends. We entered this unprecedented time in a position of strength as a result of the purposeful strategic decisions that we've made to simplify our company and streamline our businesses. Because of these decisions, and despite the macro backdrop, we remain poised for further success for our customers, shareholders and employees. Moving to Slide 5. Our proactive actions to simplify our business include the sale of our individual life and legacy annuity businesses, which we announced in December. This will reduce risk and enable us to fully focus on high growth, high return, capital-light businesses that serve the workplace and institutions. We continue to make great progress with Resolution Life and our regulators, and we remain on track to close the sale by September 30, 2020. Moving to Slide 6. We believe that how we have achieved these results has been just as important as what we have done. Our efforts are broadly being recognized externally. For example, earlier this year, we were again named one of the World's Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute. This is the seventh consecutive year we have earned this distinction. We were also named as one of Fortune's World's Most Admired Companies as a Best Place to Work for Disability Inclusion on the Disability Equality Index; and as one of Barron's 100 Most Sustainable Companies, ranking #3 overall and #1 in financial services for the second consecutive year. In short, we continue to hear from our clients that our culture and the way we do business distinguishes us from others and is helping us win new business. Turning to Slide 7. Voya has achieved significant success over the past few years for our customers, for our employees and for our shareholders. The purposeful decisions that we've made as a company have enabled us to enter this unprecedented time in a position of strength. We have demonstrated our ability to achieve EPS growth. We have delivered organic growth across our businesses, and we remain on track to complete the sale of the Individual Life business. Our current excess capital, future free cash flow from our ongoing businesses and the proceeds from the Individual Life sale will only further bolster our financial strength. As we move through the remainder of the year, we fully recognize that there will be a number of challenges that we'll need to address, and I'm confident in the talent that we have at Voya to enable us to execute on our plans and the depth that is needed to continue to position Voya for long-term success. I want to again express the heartfelt gratitude that all of us at Voya have for the everyday heroes for enabling the nation to navigate these challenging times. I hope you and your families remain healthy and safe. We look forward to updating you on our progress as we pursue our vision to be America's retirement company. With that, I will turn it back over to Jean so that we can take any questions you may have.

Thank you, Rod. At this time, we will be happy to answer any questions. We will now pause to see if there are any questions.

Thank you. We do have 2 questions that have come through. I will read each question and we will answer each question. The first question is: Good morning, Mr. Chairman. My name is [ Sinéad Blackwood ]. The recent dramatic growth in the size of passive mutual funds' corporate ownership interest in U.S. corporation raises important public policy and corporate governance issues. Currently, BlackRock holds 6.3% and Vanguard holds 10% of the company's outstanding shares. Vanguard is an investment manager for a portion of the assets of one of the company's retirement plan. Does the Board see this growing ownership concentration as a positive or negative development as regards to long-term corporate planning and performance? And also, are there potential conflicts of interest when a 5% holder is managing company retirement plan assets? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for the questions. You specifically call out BlackRock and Vanguard as being 6.3% and 10% owners, respectively. And we're very pleased with that and happy with that outcome, particularly because they are 2 very good examples of firms that pay a good deal of attention to a number of the things that we just talked about in my opening remarks. By way of example that we're recognized by Ethisphere as being one of the World's Most Ethical Companies, by Fortune as being recognized as one of the World's Most Admired Companies for Disability Inclusion and by Barron's as one of the Most Sustainable Companies. Those are all attributes including to -- including our broad focus on diversity and inclusion with our Board and our management ranks, are attributes of investors that we admire, think a lot about and are highly supportive of. So we're pleased with those investments. We're pleased that they recognize Voya as one of the distinguishing companies in that category. In terms of the second part of the question, you are correct that we do offer in one of our retirement plans that Vanguard as one of the many investment choices. It's important for me to point out that we have a separate Retirement Investment Committee that chooses the funds that are being offered. And then ultimately, each one of our employees that chooses to participate in our retirement plans make the ultimate choice about whether to choose Vanguard or any other fund that we make available. Thank you for the question. Jean, back to you.

Thank you, Rod. Let me read the second question. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. My name is Gerald Matthews of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. The carpenter union pension funds with combined assets of $70 billion has a collective ownership position of 416,156 shares of the company's common stock. In the first quarter, the company engaged in a $366 million share repurchase with $280 million of share repurchase authorization remaining. Given the importance of financial liquidity during the market disruptions associated with the pandemic, will the company be suspending additional share repurchases in the near term? Thank you.

Mike Smith, would you like to take that?

Sure. Thank you, Rod, and thank you, Mr. Matthews, for the excellent question and also thanks to the pension -- the union pension fund for their support of Voya Financial through their ownership. We did, in fact, pause our share repurchases in mid-March as we began to evaluate more seriously as the seriousness of the economic consequences of the pandemic became more clear. We enter the second quarter with a very strong capital position. We have over $600 million of excess capital in our operating companies. In our holding company, we have over 1 year's worth of liquidity available to cover dividends, interest and other related expenses. In addition, as Rod mentioned, with the -- the pending sale of the Life transaction, we would generate significant additional excess capital. So we'll continue to monitor developments in the outside environment, particularly as it relates to the potential for credit migration or credit losses in our general account fixed income portfolio. We'll continue to assess that against the excess capital that we have and our expected future needs and other uses for that capital. And as we have done consistently since our IPO, and as Rod mentioned, our prudent stewardship of shareholder capital will continue. We felt like in the current environment, it made sense to pause our repurchase activity, and we'll continue to monitor that as events unfold. But thank you for the question.

Thank you, Mike. We see there are no other questions. On behalf of Voya Financial, I would like to thank you for participating in our annual meeting. The meeting is hereby adjourned.

The annual meeting has now concluded. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.