Alignvest Acquisition II Corp

TSX:SFC

Earnings Call Transcript

[Operator]

Good afternoon. My name is Judy, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Sagicor Financial Company's Second Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Mr. George Sipsis, Executive Vice President, Corporate Development and Capital Markets, you may begin your conference.

[George Sipsis, executive]

Great. Thank you, operator, and hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss Sagicor's Second Quarter 2024 Results.

Before we begin, I'd like to highlight our documents and results are available under the Investor Relations tab on our website at sagicor.com, which includes the financial statements and MD&A. New to this quarter, we have published our first supplemental information package, which includes additional disclosures as well as drivers of earnings analysis and a core earnings measure. These materials, along with the press release and the link to our live webcast is available on our website.

This conference call is open to the financial community and investors, the media and the public, with a reminder that the Q&A period is reserved for the financial research analysts.

I will begin by referring you to the cautionary language and disclaimers in our materials and public filings regarding the use of forward-looking statements and the use of non-IFRS financial measures and ratios, which may be mentioned as part of our remarks today. I would also like to remind the audience that actual results regarding forward-looking information could differ materially. And please note that a detailed discussion of Sagicor's risk factors is provided in our MD&A, which is available on SEDAR+ and on our website.

Discussion of the assumptions underlying our expectations is provided in our filings, earnings release and in our other public statements. Unless otherwise noted, all dollar amounts referenced will be in U.S. dollars, consistent with our reporting practice.

Joining me today is our President and CEO, Andre Mousseau; our Chief Financial Officer, Kathy Jenkins; and Anthony Chandler, our Chief Controller. We'll begin with prepared remarks by Andre and Kathy, followed by a Q&A session.

With that, I'll pass the call to our President and CEO, Andre Mousseau.

[Andre Mousseau, executive]

Thank you, George, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to join us today. We're very pleased to be here on this call being able to walk through our results and another solid quarter aided by our new supplemental information package. This core earnings analysis framework is something that we've talked about delivering since the advent of IFRS 17. And we believe it will significantly help our investor base and the investment community at large, understand our results better, really show the earnings power of each of our businesses and have a clear picture of our overall results.

In a quarter where we saw some actuarial volatility, Sagicor delivered $25 million of core earnings to shareholders in Q2. This was within the range of our expectations and was aided in part by positive aggregate insurance experience from our operating subsidiaries, broadly represents the core earnings generation run rate of our business right now. We did see negative market experience that was due to differences and changes of our mark-to-market valuation of our assets and the calculated value of our liabilities as dictated by IFRS 17.

We view this experience as transitory and subject to reversal over time and therefore, view core earnings is better representative of the performance of our business. This core earnings shows that we are on track with our business model since onboarding our Canadian segment in 2023, and provides a solid platform upon which we can grow our earnings, return on equity and ultimately, value to shareholders in the year to come.

I'll now hand the call over to Kathy to discuss both the new disclosure and our results in detail. Kathy?

[Kathy Jenkins, executive]

Thank you, Andre, and hello, everyone. As Andre said, it is a pleasure to be able to walk through our new disclosure framework, which includes a supplementary information package with core earnings by segment as well as a more user-friendly MD&A. Within the supplementary information package, you will see we have calculated core drivers of earnings by segment for each of the last 6 quarters, those being the quarters under the implementation of IFRS 17. And it's really the last 3 quarters since the acquisition of our Canadian segment in Q4 2023 that represent the earnings power of the business that we have today.

One of the most important things this framework does is distill out the market volatility, which is proving to be pervasive under IFRS 17, where the standard is changed to have asset prices and liability prices be calculated separately. Imprecision and the liability calculation relative to asset price movement has created volatility in net earnings. And while we will continuously attempt to refine our calculations to minimize this volatility, it may never be eliminated. So this framework allows us to see through the volatility and make sense of this quarter, where we saw a net income loss due to this volatility, but also quarters like Q4 of 2023 and Q1 of 2024 when we saw net income that was higher than our overall economic profitability due to positive market experience. This framework also allows us to drill down on insurance experience which we do view as a core representation of our profitability.

In aggregate, we had just slight positive emergence in Q2, while in Q1, we had negative insurance emergence across each of our operating segments. This explains why our core earnings in Q1 were lower than our run rate expectations, while in Q2, we were just ahead of it.

So let me talk about the market experience before getting into the segment financials. It was $55 million overall, $29 million of it was the U.S.A., of which $9 million was related to our holdings in Playa shares and $20 million was related to the fixed income portfolio. We view our Playa shares as a solid long-term investment based on our previous ownership of hotels that we sold into Playa for shares. We have a view that the net asset value exceeds its current trading price and will appreciate over time. The remaining $20 million was due to our liability calculation, not matching asset price movement, which was actually quite benign in the quarter. This $20 million negative movement we view as noise and in fact, is almost an exact reversal of positive market experience in Q1.

Other segments showed negative emergence as well. Canada had $8 million of negative emergence as on an accounting basis, our assets are longer than our liabilities, and therefore, we will see a positive bias to asset prices and negative bias to interest rates. So today, halfway through the third quarter, with Canadian interest rates falling, that market experience we could expect to have reversed. Similarly, SLI had negative experience due to a movement in the Trinidad yield curve, which we would not expect to persist and which may reverse itself as well.

Isolating our insurance experience, it was mixed, and so I will cover that in each operating segment. Broadly, though, if you tax affect our insurance experience gain and take that out of our core earnings, that would get you to about $23 million, which we would say is representative of our current run rate core earnings to shareholders generation per quarter before the effect of the refinancing of our term loan in Q2.

So with that, Sagicor had a solid second quarter on a core basis. Core earnings to shareholders was $25 million, an increase year-over-year resulting from positive core results in our Sagicor Canada segment, offset by additional interest costs to fund the ivari acquisition. Our Sagicor Life and Sagicor Jamaica segments grew year-over-year due to growth in short-term business associated with repricing and improved insurance experience on long-term business, while Sagicor Life USA's core earnings to shareholders declined due to negative core insurance experience.

Net loss to shareholders for the quarter was $40 million, driven by $55 million of market experience losses and was also affected by onetime costs related to the extinguishment of a portion of our original funding for the ivari transaction from the proceeds of the Canadian bond dollar issuance. Both of these items are excluded from core earnings.

Revenues of $1.2 billion year-to-date showed stable growth across all segments, with strong performances in the quarter from Sagicor Jamaica and Sagicor Canada. New business CSM of $40 million was spread relatively evenly across our segments, with Sagicor Life USA experiencing a decrease compared to Q2 2023 as production was increased in the same quarter last year to take advantage of a more favorable competitive and interest environment.

I will now provide more details on each of our segments. Sagicor Canada had a solid quarter with strong sales, primarily in Universal Life Insurance, resulting in new business CSM of $11 million for the quarter. Core earnings to shareholders of $26 million for the quarter was above expectations with the segment benefiting from insurance experience gains.

Net income to shareholders of $20 million for the quarter compared to core earnings to shareholders was primarily lower as a result of market experience losses from the movement of interest rates offset slightly by positive experience in the equity markets. Total net CSM ended Q2 at $566 million, a modest increase quarter-over-quarter in Canadian dollars that was offset by currency fluctuations to end the quarter slightly lower in U.S. dollars.

Sagicor Life USA generated $211 million of new business production in the second quarter which was on track with management expectations. Core earnings to shareholders for this segment was $8 million, which was behind expectations due to insurance experience losses of $4 million. Net loss to shareholders was $27 million for the quarter, driven by market experience losses. Market experience losses were composed of a $9 million after-tax mark-to-market loss on shares of Playa Hotels & Resorts held in this segment; and $21 million of mark-to-market increase of liabilities relative to assets, driven by liability calculations that do not exactly match asset value changes under IFRS 17. These losses were a reversal of gains seen in Q1 2024.

Total net CSM grew 1% quarter-over-quarter to $213 million, driven by new business CSM of $10 million, offset by insurance experience losses and amounts recognized for service provided.

Sagicor's share of Sagicor Jamaica's core earnings to shareholders in Q2 was $9 million, a 32% increase over a weak comparator period in the prior year. Total net CSM increased 2% quarter-over-quarter with strong new business CSM of $9 million. Organic CSM movement also benefited from $3 million of insurance experience gains due to favorable persistency on Universal Life.

Sagicor Life saw growth in insurance earnings over the prior quarter and a decreasing trend in onerous contracts and insurance experience losses, which benefited from adjusting product offerings and repricing initiatives. Core earnings to shareholders of $8 million benefited from stable long-term insurance business as well as above-budget experience in short-term businesses, which was partially offset by lower income in the noninsurance businesses.

Net income to shareholders was $2 million for the quarter, this result was impacted by market experience losses from the change in interest rates I mentioned in Trinidad and Tobago. The segment benefited from a onetime gain resulting from the disposition of the Curacao operations, which is excluded from core earnings. Total net CSM was $232 million, which was flat quarter-over-quarter, largely a result of inorganic CSM movement resulting from the disposition of Curacao. Organic CSM grew by $8 million, driven primarily by new business CSM of $10 million.

Returning to the consolidated picture. Our financial leverage ratio was essentially stable quarter-over-quarter, ending at 26.8%, and our life insurance businesses remain well capitalized with a group LICAT ratio of 138%, which increased 2 percentage points quarter-over-quarter and a consolidated MCCSR ratio at 309%, which increased 6 percentage points quarter-over-quarter.

This quarter, we are updating our previous guidance on key measures. We are adjusting our core net income to shareholders for 2024 to account for the $9 million in year-to-date negative experience. So we are now guiding to core net income to shareholders to be between $80 million and $90 million. New business CSM, which is net of reinsurance, is expected to be between $160 million and $180 million, a slightly lower number reflecting the current interest rate environment. I would note that in prior quarters, we disclosed this number on a gross basis, but I believe a net basis is more appropriate.

Our 2025 target for core net income to shareholders growth remains at 10%-plus growth beyond 2024 levels. And thereafter, we project a target core return on shareholders' equity over the medium term of 13%-plus along with a core dividend payout ratio of 30% to 40%. Our book value per share was a bit affected by depreciation in the Canadian and Jamaican dollars to the U.S. dollar, and finished the quarter at USD 6.36 or CAD 8.71. Our deployable capital or shareholders' equity plus net CSM to shareholders was $2 billion or USD 14.51 or CAD 19.86 per share.

With that, I will hand you back to Andre.

[Andre Mousseau, executive]

Thank you very much, Kathy. I'll close out our prepared remarks by discussing our corporate achievements in the quarter. Sagicor continued excellent progress on many of our strategic initiatives to optimize our balance sheet, enhance our systems and drive operational synergies from our businesses. We capitalized on our newly achieved investment-grade ratings to issue our first bond in the Canadian market and expand and reprice in our favor our revolving credit facility using the proceeds to repay a significant portion of our term loan taken on in conjunction with the ivari acquisition. These issuances and repayments net will be saving us approximately $7 million a year in annualized interest costs.

We've made several executive appointments elevating key team members to senior positions overseeing multiple jurisdictions as well as bringing in new talent to drive organizational change. To oversee some of these initiatives in North America, I have taken on the role of President and Chief Executive Officer of ivari in Canada, in addition to my roles at Sagicor Financial and at Sagicor Life USA. We also brought on board a new director, Cathleen McLaughlin, and we're looking forward to her contributions going forward, which we're enjoying already. With these initiatives, we are confident about our ability to expand our return on equity in 2025 and beyond.

We're also pleased to have announced our 19th consecutive quarterly dividend to shareholders since our listing on the TSX, and our third consecutive dividend at USD 0.06 per quarter or an annualized USD 0.24 per year. We have accelerated our pace of share buybacks in recent weeks and months as our share price has remained at a significant discount to book value and even more significant discount to book value plus embedded future value of profit through CSM. And we continue to view this as an excellent use of shareholder capital.

With that, we are ready to start the Q&A period. So operator, please open up the lines for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Meny Grauman with Scotiabank.

[Meny Grauman, analyst]

First off, I want to thank you for the expanded disclosure. It's much appreciated. In terms of starting off, I'm curious about the change in guidance. If I understood you correctly, it sounded like it was really more of a backward-looking statement or adjustment, not really sort of signaling anything about the coming 2 quarters. So I just wanted to confirm that.

[Andre Mousseau, executive]

So I can -- thank you, Meny. I'd confirm that you have that correct. You look at where we are post the refinancing of the debt in Q2 and we look at our core run rate earnings generation on a quarterly basis of being $24 million to $25 million right now, excluding -- and that's before insurance experience. And so that's quite consistent with the original guidance, which was $90 million to $105 million.

Our view would continue to be that we have no reason to believe that there's going to be material deviations on insurance experience in the second half of the year on either side. And so when we look at it and say, okay, net it's been $9 million negative for the first 2 quarters of the year. Our best estimate is to take our original range and ratchet it down by $9 million. And so then just kind of rounding and getting to round numbers, we take it to $80 million to $90 million. And our -- the underlying profitability that's driving that thinking hasn't changed and the view for a meaningful increase on that in 2025 remains unchanged as well.

[Meny Grauman, analyst]

Got it. That's helpful. And then if I just translate that into the segments themselves. I'm wondering is that just as straightforward as looking at the individual segments and adjusting the insurance experience there to get a better sense of the run rate, or is there some other detail there that you would highlight in terms of translating what you're seeing at the consolidated level to the segments?

[Andre Mousseau, executive]

I think that's actually the right mechanics. So if you go through and take a look at the first half in aggregate for each of them, look at core earnings and then back out insurance experience, that's going to be pretty representative of our view of overall profitability. There may be some deviations here and there by a couple of million dollars. But in aggregate, that's going to be about right.

We do see ourselves investing capital later in the year in our U.S. business to support a little bit more rapid growth than what we've seen in the first half of the year. So there might be a slightly more upward tilt to the U.S. business in the second half of the year relative to the first. But overall, the methodology that you mentioned would be about right.

[Meny Grauman, analyst]

Got it. And just to clarify, I apologize if I missed it, just in terms of the U.S. business, specifically understanding the coinsurance experience losses there, 2 quarters in a row. Just to understand what's driving that and it sounds like you have confidence that that's not going to persist, but just wanted to better understand what gives you confidence in that assessment?

[Andre Mousseau, executive]

Well, part of what gives me confidence in the persistence is that we saw different -- we saw the emergence come out of different pieces of the book. And so that, in a sense, tells you that there's no one particular problem. Now there are a couple of instances that did repeat. They weren't the main drivers. So as with all of our assumptions, we're going to relook at it in Q3. But when we get in under the covers and see what it was in Q1 versus Q2, they were different.

So in the first quarter, the majority of the experience loss was mortality on the older back life book. That improved. In the second quarter, it had a negligible loss less than $1 million. But then we saw a little bit of lapse and a little bit of mortality very unusually in our annuity book. There's little annuity -- there's a little mortality risk in the annuity book. But it can happen, particularly in an interest rate environment where rates have gone up and asset prices have gone down because on an annuity when there's a mortality event, you waive a surrender charge. And so it's unusual, but it came through in the second quarter.

So because when we look down and get a more granular view, we see that it's different pieces of noise. We don't view it as being a material ongoing issue. But we're -- as with all of our businesses, we're going to go and sharpen our pencils for the third quarter and make sure that the reserves are appropriate.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Gabriel Dechaine with National Bank.

[Gabriel Dechaine, analyst]

I just want to follow up on the fixed annuities business a bit more. And you talked about -- well, sharpening your pencil, I guess, that's more of a reserve thing, but the -- just the sales outlook, you did your refinancing, your capital position is much more comfortable in the U.S. to facilitate growth. So what kind of volumes should we be expecting? And is it like ramp up Q3, Q4 kind of thing?

[Andre Mousseau, executive]

We would guide towards a ramp-up in Q3 and Q4. Our liquidity position improved greatly with that refinancing in June. And so we were able to get comfortable with putting our foot on the gas a little bit more. We did do that for the first half of Q3, with the recent big move up in asset prices and moved down in interest rates. We've dropped crediting rates as a lot of the competitors have, and to preserve spread. And so we've stepped back a little bit just in the last coming weeks -- in the last couple of weeks. But overall, we would guide Q3 and Q4 production to be in the ZIP code of 150% of what it was in the first half of the year.

[Gabriel Dechaine, analyst]

Got it. And then the -- just to dive a bit more back into these experience items and the guidance, I guess. So if I understand you correctly, the guidance reduction is tied to the experience items that have been going the wrong way in the first half, and it's a mishmash of experience items, mortality in the first quarter, lapse and a bit of mortality this quarter. And that's pretty much it?

[Andre Mousseau, executive]

Yes. And you have that just a bit right, those specific comments were about the U.S. business. If you look through elsewhere, Q2 was a lot better than Q1. We saw for the first time in a number of quarters to experience get to just about flat for Sagicor Life in the Southern Caribbean. And if you remember, we did strengthen reserves in Q4 to make that right. So we're pleased to see it get back to where we wanted it to in the second quarter. The Canadian business had a very positive -- just claims emergence in Q2 relative to expectations. You see the positive USD 7 million there. But we don't necessarily expect that to persist.

[Gabriel Dechaine, analyst]

And then I guess just to dive into the lapse issue a bit more specifically. Like can you tell me why that's taking place? I mean maybe that's a dumb question, but last quarter, if I recall correctly, there was some negative experience related to crediting rates where on renewal, you would assume a certain crediting rate. And then as it turned out, you have to pay a higher crediting rate to retain the business. And despite that, the lapses are still picking up, maybe I'm mischaracterizing that.

[Andre Mousseau, executive]

No, no, no. You're talking about the right commercial dynamic that we were talking about. And what we did last year was we instituted renewal commissions to encourage renewals and reduce lapses. And so we strengthened reserves to account for that, and it came out of the CSM. And so that was the effect of our pulling the lever to have -- to bring lapses down towards what our projections were. It definitely moved in that direction. In Q1, it was almost right on top of our assumption. In Q2, it bumped up a little bit again, and that's where you see $1 million or $2 million of negative emergence in that second quarter. So it is an item that's subject to chunkiness and some noise. But if a pattern starts developing, there are commercial levers that we can pull. And so this is something optimizing our renewals on the annuities is something that we're paying really close attention to.

[Gabriel Dechaine, analyst]

Sorry to belabor this point, but it's a big growth driver of your business.

[Andre Mousseau, executive]

Yes.

[Gabriel Dechaine, analyst]

If -- you put through higher renewal commissions in order to increase persistency?

[Andre Mousseau, executive]

Yes, that's right.

[Gabriel Dechaine, analyst]

So that needed a higher reserve for future renewals, I guess, renewal costs. Yet the lapses were still coming in higher than expected this quarter, or is it...

[Andre Mousseau, executive]

So in Q2, the lapses were much lower than we saw in Q3 or Q4 of last year, but they were still a little above what our ideal estimate would be. And so we're looking at, is that noise? Or are there more commercial levers that we should pull or should we just change our assumption?

[Gabriel Dechaine, analyst]

Got it. And then if you did have to change your assumption, would that go through the CSM or would there be a P&L?

[Andre Mousseau, executive]

That's where you start looking at cohort-by-cohort basis. It would be -- like if you look at the experience from last year, it would more be to CSM than to P&L, but it would be a combination of both.

[Operator]

And there are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn it back to Mr. George Sipsis for closing remarks.

[George Sipsis, executive]

Great. Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. A replay of this call will be available for one month on our website and a transcript will be posted as soon as available. If you do have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to any one of us. With that, thanks again for your participation and interest today. Have a great day, everyone.

[Operator]

Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.