Prudential Financial, Inc.
Q1 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 6 May 2020

[Darin Arita:]

Good morning, and thank you for joining our call. Representing Prudential on today’s call are Charlie Lowrey, Chairman and CEO; Rob Falzon, Vice Chairman; Andy Sullivan, Head of U.S. Businesses; Scott Sleyster, Head of International Businesses; Ken Tanji, Chief Financial Officer; and Rob Axel, Controller and Principal Accounting Officer. We will start with prepared comments by Charlie, Rob and Ken, and then we will take your questions. Today’s presentation may include forward-looking statements. It is possible that actual results may differ materially from the predictions we make today. In addition, this presentation may include references to non-GAAP measures. For a reconciliation of such measures to the comparable GAAP measures and the discussion of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements, please see the slide titled Forward-Looking Statements and Non-GAAP Measures in the appendix to today’s presentation, which can be found on our website at investor.prudential.com. Also, due to circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic, we have decided to cancel our Tokyo Investor Day that was scheduled for September. With that, I’ll hand it over to Charlie.

[Charlie Lowrey:]

Thank you, Darin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I would like to start this morning by recognizing the extraordinary circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic and by expressing our gratitude to all of those on the front lines who are fighting this crisis around the world. For those individuals and their families directly affected by the pandemic and particularly those who have lost loved ones, we extend our deepest sympathies. At Prudential, we're guided by our purpose

[Rob Falzon:]

Thank you, Charlie. As Charlie indicated, the results from our businesses in the first quarter were negatively impacted by two significant factors that we had not anticipated

[Ken Tanji:]

Thanks, Rob. I will begin on slide 12, which provides insight into earnings for the second quarter of 2020 relative to our first quarter results. We began with pretax adjusted operating income in the first quarter, which was $1.2 billion and resulted in earnings per share of $2.32 on an after-tax basis. Then we adjust for the following items

[Operator:]

Thank you. Looks like our first question comes from the line of Erik Bass of Autonomous Research. Your line is open.

[Erik Bass:]

Hi. Thank you. First, can you provide a bit more color on how you're coming up with your estimated COVID impacts and how you're thinking about the interplay between mortality and longevity exposures. And then also just to clarify on the expenses. Is that just related to COVID, or is that a net impact factoring in other things such as lower T&E expense?

[Ken Tanji:]

Yes, hi, Eric, it's Ken. I'll take your questions. On the COVID estimates. First, I want like to recognize that these are placeholders. These are based on an estimate of 100,000 deaths in the U.S. and 40,000 deaths in Japan. Now we'll have to see how things play out. And there's likely a range of outcomes around that for the U.S. and Japan. So I just want to recognize that we've done our best to give a placeholder, but it's predicated on a number of assumptions. What we do then is we then make considerations for lower fatality rates for the insured populations versus a general population. We certainly have taken certainly have taken in consideration higher fatality rates for the older population and then we took into consideration the geography of our insured population with –tend to have a little bit higher concentration in New Jersey and New York, California and Washington. So when we put that all together, we've applied those to our average profile and provided those estimates. And again, we'll likely have a good range around some of those assumptions. In terms of our retirement business, it does provide an offset to some of our life insurance as we've expected and designed. It offsets about 30% of our exposure, and that's just kind of how the modeling plays out. And then your second question was around the expenses. We've – we looked at the steps that we need to take in order to care for our employees for crisis care as well as compensation for sales professionals, particularly in international locations, if our sales were to decline. And we've estimated that is the appropriate thing to do given the situation. We will – we haven't included in that estimate, potential offsets for the fact that travel and conferences and entertainment will be lower. We would expect if things return at some point to normal that some of that might come back you know sort of rebound. But I would estimate that we are going to have savings here in the next quarter or so that you can think of that in the tens of millions, but that's not included in the estimate.

[Operator:]

Next, we have the line of Suneet Kamath of Citi. Your line is open.

[Suneet Kamath:]

Thanks. I wanted to go to long-term care. Earlier this week, one of your competitors announced a regulatory review of long-term care reserves resulted in a pretty sizable increase to stat reserves. So just curious if any of your regulators are contemplating or conducting similar reviews and maybe over what time frame would we expect any resolution, if there are such reviews in place? Thanks.

[Ken Tanji:]

Yeah. Hi, this is Ken, Suneet. Just an ordinary course, we review our reserves with our regulators. And they have not indicated any concern about our level of reserves related to long-term care, and there's no special review underway.

[Operator:]

Next in queue, we have the line of Tom Gallagher of Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

[Tom Gallagher:]

Good morning. The $2 billion of debt that PRU issued in 1Q is, I think being counted as operating debt. So just curious why that's counted as operating debt, I think which is excluded from the leverage calculation and what your plan is with those proceeds? And then let's see the other question I had is just on the GAAP breakage you had on the variable annuity side this quarter? Was there also a similar statutory level of breakage. I realize it's uneconomic based on the accounting differences between the assets and the liabilities. But just curious, if you had a similar impact on statutory? Thanks.

[Charlie Lowrey:]

Yes. Hey, Tom, it's -- I'll take those. On the $2 billion of debt included the $1.5 billion that we issued at the holdco. You can think of that as we would ordinarily have issued, say, $500 million earlier in the year and $500 million towards the end of the year. But we decided to do $1.5 billion in March. We were worried about how the conditions were developing and thought it would be prudent to do $1.5 billion, which essentially will take care of any maturities in 2020 and 2021. So it's about $1 billion more than we would ordinarily have done perhaps, but we thought it was an appropriate thing to do. In terms of why we call it operating debt, right now, those proceeds sit at the holding company in cash. And we follow sort of the way that our rating agencies think about classifications of debt. So -- and the planned proceeds, again, we have it available at the holding company. And it would -- it's used -- it's available for paying off the debt again for this year and next year. In terms of the non-AOI item for the quarter, our variable annuity business is very well hedged. And we like to align our outcomes for GAAP us in stat economics. And as Charlie mentioned in his comments, it was highly effective at 99%. The way we hedge interest risk, again, which was highly effective in the quarter, is with both derivatives that mark-to-market and recorded in the P&L, but also by holding a 30-year U.S. treasuries, which had a $1.7 billion gain and would have offset the non-AOI item in the quarter. But the gain on the U.S. treasuries is recorded to OCI and not to the income statement. So economically, and from a stat standpoint, we were very well aligned just with a little bit of difference between where our gain is recorded for GAAP.

[Operator:]

Next, we’ll go to the line of Ryan Krueger of KBW. Your line is open.

[Ryan Krueger:]

Hi. Thanks. Good morning. Can you help us think about – I guess interest rate sensitivity within the balance sheet, both GAAP and stat? I think previously, you provided sensitivity for 10-year rates in the 2% to 2.5% range. But given where they are today was hoping for some additional sensitivity.

[Charles Lowrey:]

Sure. Yeah. Maybe I'll start with stat, Ryan. And the – we have had sensitivity to our stat financials, primarily around asset adequate testing. Last year, given the decline in rates, we increased our asset adequacy testing reserve by about $0.5 billion. Now we had derivatives that offset that, so we were with a gain. So we were – had a stable RBC outcome. But it's also important to know that sort of at this level of very low interest rates, that the way the testing works is the – when rates are so low, the shock is much lower. So we'll have less sensitivity to lower rates from this point forward. From a GAAP standpoint, our sensitivity really hasn't changed. And as you know, we have a process – I'll remind people that we have a process where we look at our long-term rate assumption and that includes doing a survey of economist banks and other managers. And we also look at the implied forward curve, and we look to be at the median of all that. And that's the process that we're going through. I'd also note that, the way our interest rate assumptions work for GAAP is we start at current rates and we grade to a long-term assumption over 10 years. So as a result, our – the 10-year treasury under the next seven years is less than 3%. So we're going through our process as we typically would and that will be finalized by our risk management committees in late June. So no change in our – significant change in our GAAP sensitivity, and we'll be doing our usual process in the second quarter.

[Ryan Krueger:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

And next in queue, we have the line of Alex Scott of Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

[Alex Scott:]

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. First one, I have is just a follow-up on the stat rate sensitivity comments that you made. I just want to make sure I interpreted it correctly. I guess, as you go through your actuarial review and if the ultimate rate is set lower, does that reduce sensitivity sort of apply now? Like would we -- if it is sort of the 3% to 4% book value type impact on GAAP, would that not necessarily all translate to statutory?

[Charlie Lowrey:]

Again, the way asset adequacy testing works is we don't set a long-term rate. Those are prescribed by GAAP. And we're going through our -- and so it's a little bit of a different framework. And we'll also -- so we're working through that.

[Operator:]

Next in queue, we have the line of Nigel Dally of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

[Nigel Dally:]

Great. Thank you. So, I had a question on the -- on buybacks. You spend a fair bit of time running through the strength of your current capital position? And also what appears to be quite a manageable stress scenario. Clearly a number of moving factors, but what are you looking for? What are sort of like some of the things that you're looking for to be comfortable in resuming buybacks? Should we assume that buybacks suspended through the end of the year, or potentially, could it be somewhat sooner than that? Any color there as to kind of how you're looking at that?

[Charlie Lowrey:]

Yes. The -- I think the primary thing we're looking at is the economic cycle. And we're seeing substantial impact given the situation that we're in. We like the quality of our investment portfolio, and we think it's manageable, but we want to see how this credit cycle emerges. So, I don't know if I can put a timeframe on that. I think time will tell.

[Operator:]

Next in queue, we have the line of Humphrey Lee of Dowling & Partners. Your line is open.

[Humphrey Lee:]

Good morning and thank you for taking my questions. My first question is related to Assurance IQ. The losses for the quarter looks a little bit larger than expected, like how should we think about those losses would trend? Should we expect for the next couple of quarters will be kind of in that $30 million range before seeing a recovery in the fourth quarter when activity started to pick up due to enrollment period?

[Andy Sullivan:]

Yes, Humphrey, good morning it's Andy. And thanks for your question, and I'll give kind of a little bit of a break here. So, on Assurance IQ, I would characterize the results for quarter one as modestly worse than what we expected. We have started to lean in from an investment perspective to building out the platform more broadly. And to bringing new product solutions onto the platform as we think the first-mover advantage is very, very important. As we talked about last quarter as well, we learned some lessons from a Medicare Advantage perspective and we are investing ahead of Q4 to make sure that we have the right number of agents and that they are fully and properly trained and we're ready to ready to go in the fourth quarter. So, I think you could think about performance similar in the next couple of quarters. And obviously, the large opportunity is in Medicare Advantage in Q4.

[Humphrey Lee:]

Got it.

[Operator:]

Next, we have the line of John Barnidge of Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

[John Barnidge:]

Great. Thanks. If we were to assume the disease, a seasonal nature and returns at the very lease in 1Q 2021, could you help me dimension how many of these non-mortality and morbidity CV-19 cost would remain on a go-forward basis?

[Charlie Lowrey:]

Yeah. I don't think we want to try to forecast that far, which -- given the situation. Eventually, I think we will operate differently given the changes in environment and the way we're going to have to conduct business, but that's a bit out there. So I don’t think we want to start to look through that far at the moment.

[John Barnidge:]

Okay. And then could you maybe provide average age on the products where you have some CV-19 exposure, please?

[Andy Sullivan:]

Yeah. So -- this is Andy. So, obviously, two predominant areas there are, really are individual life business and our group life business, and then obviously offsets in the longevity business that we have in retirement. So actually, an individual life and in group insurance, average age across the whole book is relatively similar in the -- about 55. And in group insurance, in particular, though, 95% of that business is under the age of 65. As far as of the longevity risk transfer business and the pension risk transfer business our average age is in 74 to 75 range.

[John Barnidge:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

And next in queue is Elyse Greenspan from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

[Elyse Greenspan:]

Hi, thanks. My first question is on the group business. Can you just discuss your outlook for the margins within that business for the rest of the year, just given that I think COVID-19 could impact some of those businesses, or do you think that we might not see an impact there maybe until 2021?

[Andy Sullivan:]

Yeah. Elyse, this is Andy. So I'll take that question, and there are a number of impacts. So maybe I'll start more on the claim side of things. And we do expect, and it was in the estimates that Ken walked through. That we will see increased mortality in the book of business. Obviously, in the group business, as I just referenced, that's somewhat mitigated by the average age. But we do think that, that will go up. We also believe and have seen evidence that we'll see an uptick in short-term disability incidents. So that will serve to compress margins throughout this year. We see a couple of other impacts I just mentioned from a sales and flows perspective. Most of our book of business is medium and large size employers. So actually, most of our sales for 2020 are already baked in that business. And any slowdown we're seeing is more of a 2021 impact. I guess, the last thing I’d mention is a lot of the impacts that group insurance will feel, we actually are mitigated against from the perspective that we're not in the under 100 live segment business. So we don't have exposure to the small segment employers. And, obviously, here, early days, that's where a number of the impacts have been.

[Elyse Greenspan:]

Okay, great. And then my second question, you guys, in your prepared remarks, went through shifting the business to less interest rate-sensitive products. How do we think about the capital that you have to put forth to write some of the new business where there’s less interest rate-sensitive versus some products that maybe required more capital, is there kind of capital arbitrage there some products that may be required more capital. Is there kind of a capital arbitrage there as you kind of shift your writings in this low interest rate environment?

[Ken Tanji:]

Yes. I'll take that. The products that we are shifting towards do have less interest rate sensitivity, things like variable life things like we’re looking to release a structured variable annuity. And so, they will be less capital-intensive and less interest rate sensitive. I don't think there's anything more to the dynamic than that.

[Andy Sullivan:]

And this is Andy. Maybe I'll just add some color commentary. So, in the individual life business, as Ken referenced, we've been shifting towards variable life. We're very pleased in Q1 that our sales were $187 million which was up 15% -- Q1 of last year and 50% of those sales were variable life. We've also in April launched a product that is much less sensitive to interest rates and equity markets tuned to the RIA channel. And our buffered annuity, we're very excited about that launch. That has become a robust market. And 60% of the volumes in that marketplace are going through independent broker-dealers, and we have very, very strong relationships there. So, we think to be very promising for us.

[Operator:]

Next in queue, we have a follow-up from the line of Suneet Kamath of Citi. Your line is open.

[Suneet Kamath:]

Yes, thanks for the follow-up. On the Individual Life business, in the past, you guys have talked about using reinsurance to either dampen down the earnings volatility or actually free capital. So, I want to get an update on that? And is that strategy still effective or still possible given all the uncertainty around COVID-19?

[Andy Sullivan:]

Yes Suneet, its Andy. And maybe I'll take that question up a level first. As we talked about last quarter, we are leaned into performing the overall -- to improving the overall performance of that book of business in that business. We’ve three levers. First, we are very much leaned into improving the expense profile of the business. A lot of our future of work, energy and effort is aimed in that regard. And we actually saw a reduction year-over-year in our expenses on business. So, we like the progress we're seeing there. The second lever is leaning into and growing the business with profitable business that we're putting on the books. And as I mentioned, our sales are up year-over-year. And we are comfortable with the pricing and the profitability of the business that we’re selling. As far as the third lever and it’s the lever that you referenced, it really is looking at the ability to reinsure the block of business. We continue to explore solutions. Obviously, we’re looking very carefully about what is the right economic favorability for us and if and when we take action on that, we will report out on it, but nothing to report as we sit here today.

[Suneet Kamath:]

I just have one quick follow-up for Ken, I guess, a follow-up to Elyse's question on capital. You cited in your prepared remarks pretty significant declines in sales, both in the U.S. as well as Japan. So, any sense of how much capital or lower strain could you guys experience relative to a normal year based on that sales decline?

[Ken Tanji:]

Yes. So all things being equal, we would have less -- if we're selling -- when we sell business, we capitalize it well. And if we're selling less that means it's requiring less capital to support it. And so, we would expect all other things being equal that would be the case. I think it's too hard to quantify that right now

[Ken Tanji>:]

We'll see how our sales plays out. If we have if we have opportunities to make sales in attractive business, we'll do that. If the conditions are such that either the returns aren't attractive or it's too difficult to conduct business that would lower sales and we would see some capital offset for that. So I just don't -- I think it's a little tricky to put a number on that right now.

[Suneet Kamath:]

Got it. Thanks.

[Operator:]

We do have a follow-up from the line of Alex Scott of Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

[Alex Scott:]

Hi. Thanks for taking the call. I just wanted to see if you could provide an update on the mortgage loan book. And I guess, specifically the commercial mortgage loans, would be interested if you can operate anything up around like how much of it you've got forbearance requests on and what you'd expect there?

[Rob Falzon:]

Alex, it's Rob. Let me handle that one. We haven't received forbearance request. The vast majority of that, as you would expect is coming from the hotel and mall tenants having said that to date through April in any event, we've actually granted forbearance on a little less than 3% of the portfolio. And that by and large almost entirely has been just with respect to principal amortization, the loans continue to remain current with regard to interest payments. We do expect that that will build over time to some greater amount, but having said that, we're actually quite comfortable. If you look at the loan-to-value that we have across the mortgage portfolio, it's at 56% and based on our internal appraisals. What we find is if we actually use external appraisals that drops to around 46%. So being in a position to be able to provide forbearance on principle, we don't think actually puts at risk our ability to be repaid on those loans given the relatively low amount of leverage that we have on our property, and combined with the fact that our mortgage portfolio is very concentrated in higher quality well located properties. So we're feeling quite good about the status of the mortgage portfolio, and we expect it to be resilient through this crisis as it has been in fact through all prior of our recessions. If you look at the 2008 recession and you sort of take that and you roll that forward, we've had sort of a 1 basis point loss ratio on our mortgages from that period until now. So we actually feel pretty good about the way in which we've underwritten it, and we feel very good about the way we're positioned going forward.

[A – Andy Sullivan:]

Alex, it's Andy. I was just going to add a point from our third-party managed fund business, very similar trends. We've to date seen low single-digit levels of forbearance. And clearly, that will rise over time, but very similar trends to what Rob covered.

[Operator:]

Next, we do have a follow-up from Humphrey Lee with Dowling & Partners. Your line is open.

[Humphrey Lee:]

Thank you for taking my follow-up. Looking at PGIM, so other related revenue has always been a source of variability for that segment. I think this quarter, you had some spread related kind of issue hurting some of the private credit. But looking forward, like some of the strategies that you have in PGIM, whether it's real estate or private credit or some of the specialty products, they're likely to see lower activities, so how should we think about the other related revenue will trend for the balance of the year?

[A – Andy Sullivan:]

Yes. So Humphrey, it's Andy. So you're correct. In first quarter, the predominant impact in other related revenue was from our strategic investing portfolio. That's where we have our seed strategies as well as where we co-invest alongside of our clients. The predominant impact was in -- from credit spread widening on the fixed income portion of that portfolio. In general, if you look back, we tend to have somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 million to $60 million coming from our ORR. We do think it is reasonable as you kind of look forward over the next couple of quarters Obviously, we think flows will be lumpier in general, and we do believe that there will be some slowdown in client activity and then transactions. So there may be some near-term pressure on that. But over the long run, you could think of that in the $50 million to $60 million range.

[Operator:]

With no further questions here in queue, I'll be happy to turn it back to Charlie Lowrey for any closing remarks.

[Charlie Lowrey:]

Great. Thank you very much. We'd just like to say in closing that we'd like to take a moment to thank all our employees for the extraordinary steps they've taken to support our businesses, our customers and our communities. Together, we remain financially strong. We remain resilient, and we remain committed to fulfilling our purpose of solving financial challenges of our changing world, including doing our part to contribute to an inclusive global recovery. Thank you all for joining the call. Please stay safe, and we look forward to talking to you soon.

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.