Phoenix Financial Ltd. (PHOE) Earnings Call Transcript

Hello. This is David Alexander, Deputy CEO of The Phoenix Holdings. Thank you for joining us to discuss the group's financial review for the first quarter of 2024. The call will be led by The Phoenix Holdings' CEO, Eyal Ben Simon; and CFO, Eli Schwartz. The presentation for the call can be found on our website or the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange website. This presentation provides key points on the financial statements released this morning and should be read together with the full financials. At the end of the call, we'll answer questions that were discussed today on the Hebrew call. You can send any additional questions to us individually or to the e-mail address ir@fnx.co.il. We'll also make ourselves available to meet with investors to discuss performance, strategy or any questions you may have. We intend to publish new medium-term targets in the near future. Please note that this call will include forward-looking statements that actual future results may be different. In addition to the presentation in the call, the group's performance can best be understood together with the full financial statements available on our website. On today's call, Eyal will first highlight the key results for the quarter and discuss our strategy and targets. Eli will then review the financial results and the segment breakdown in more detail.

Hello, and thank you for joining the call today. The Phoenix is a leading Israeli financial group with $130 billion in assets under management and distinct competitive advantages. We have 2 lines of activities. First, a broad multi-line insurance business, including a leading P&C operation as well as significant life and health businesses. And second, a high-growth assets under management and credit business with the market-leading investment house, a growing wealth business, leading financial distribution footprint, and a growing SME credit platform. The group has grown assets under management by 19% annually over the past 5 years with an average return on equity of 15%. Both activity lines are growing, generating profit and cash flow. At the same time, The Phoenix has a strong capital position and solvency ratio with local and international rating from Moody's and S&P. The Israeli economy is strong and resilient despite ongoing challenges and headwinds. As the largest Israeli investor and asset manager, we believe in the potential of the Israel economy and invest actively across a full range of sectors. Israel's potential is supported by very positive long-term structural trends. The Bank of Israel expects GDP to continue to grow in 2024 with rebound already in Q1 after a difficult Q4. National debt is low and foreign currency reserves are high, making Israel very resilient from a financials perspective. Capital markets have been liquid and resilient. Inflation is now at lower levels. Unemployment after the conflict is expected to stay low. And a key trend for us is growing long-term saving opportunity. This has created large domestic capital pools, including those managed by The Phoenix adding to market liquidity and resilience. In Q1, Phoenix generated ILS 284 million of income and 11.2% of return on equity while maintaining a high solvency ratio. This was despite the war, ongoing uncertainty, interest rates and markets volatility. We continue to grow AUMs reaching ILS 472 billion at the end of the first quarter, with continued strong growth in asset management and credit activities, which is an important strategic focus for us. The Phoenix has strong profitability, cash flows, liquidity and excess capital. As a result, we're updating the group's dividend policy, increasing payouts from at least 30% to at least 40% of comprehensive income. The change will take effect for the next distribution following Q2 results. In parallel, we updated The Phoenix Insurance dividend policy payout ratio from 30% to 50%, at least to 40% to 60% at least. Here, we see the growth of comprehensive income broken down by insurance in blue and asset management and credit in orange. The gray are nonoperating effects, including investment performance above and below 3% real yields, interest rate effects and special items. Out of total income of ILS 284 million in the first quarter, ILS 193 million were core income from insurance and ILS 129 million from asset management and credit and negative nonoperating effects of ILS 38 million. Overall core income in Q1 was ILS 322 million compared to ILS 301 million in Q1 2023. Q1 2024 results demonstrates the accelerated growth in asset management and credit activities, which contribute high profitability and strong cash flow to the group. Insurance core income was stable with growth in P&C, offset by lower financial margins in equity. An important driver of group performance is the corporate account or Nostro. In Q1, returns were 6.5% nominal and 5.3% real, both on an annual basis. This is above the 3% real yields used for planning and transparency. Over time, The Phoenix generates average real yield of almost 4%. Since April, we have seen higher volatility in the markets, but we're prepared with strong liquidity and excess capital. Shareholders' equity is ILS 10.6 billion, and we continue to have a strong balance sheet. We decided to increase the group's dividend payout ratio to at least 40% of annual income compared to 30% until now. We also updated the insurance subsidiaries' dividend policy payout to 40% to 60%. In parallel, we continue to execute our buyback program. By end of May, we executed ILS 54 million year to date. The Phoenix has a strong capital position, high solvency and liquidity with sufficient resources to both distribute attractive dividends and to capture the opportunities we are seeing in the Israeli market. We have built a track record of relatively stable growing dividends and plan to continue to build it -- on this going forward. We will now review the execution of the strategy and the progress towards our targets. The group continues to execute our strategy across all activities. This strategy has proven itself over the past 4 years, and we see even greater value creation opportunities now that the platform are fully built. Our strategy is based on 4 levers: accelerated growth in high return on equity activities, innovation and efficiency, active management of business, and our talent and strong capital management. This strategy creates value by focusing the group on generating strong cash flow, delivering attractive return on equity and expanding higher multiple businesses. Our insurance engine continues to grow year over year and already passed the updated 2025 target. In line with work plan, we continue and increase profitability and improve efficiency across all segments. In asset management and credit, we created a high-growth platform with strong management teams and income is growing strongly in each segment. Q1 performance was strong, and we are on track to meet our 2025 target of ILS 670 million. The group has already met or is approaching our 2025 targets in assets under management, return on equity, and shareholders' equity. Our ability to accelerate growth while increasing profitability is the key to creating long-term value. In insurance, Q1 results demonstrated continued strategic focus with growth and profitability in the key P&C business and continued inflows in investment policies. In health, there was a decrease of ILS 300 million in premiums due to the termination of a collective LTC agreement with the Maccabi HMO. This is consistent with our focus on high-value activities with attractive risk-adjusted returns. Implementation of technology creates significant potential across insurance segments for growth, efficiency and improvement of service levels. We invest significant resources to turn technology into competitive advantage for the group. Our machine learning underwriting model is driving profitable growth in P&C. The main KPIs for measuring successful turn of technology into competitive advantage are growth in P&C, efficiency and accurate capital management. The increase in the health expense ratio is due to the lower premiums primarily ending the LTC collective HMO agreement and regulatory product transition. We believe we will meet these targets as well. We continue to grow our assets under management on a steady basis. By end of Q1, we managed ILS 472 billion compared to ILS 433 billion by end of 2023. About 50% of the growth was organic and 15% of the growth came from merging active mutual and money market funds acquired from Psagot into Phoenix Investment House. Our asset management and credit activities are fast-growing profitable activities, which generate steady growth in EBITDA, cash flow and capital efficiency. Cash flows from these businesses are mostly distributed to The Phoenix Holdings level, creating strong liquidity. In Q1, the EBITDA reached ILS 281 million, 26% of growth year-on-year. After eliminating minorities, EBITDA was ILS 236 million. In the investment house and Wealth Management, we're growing mutual funds and the brokerage businesses. Our wealth business is focused on alternative investments for qualified investors, which is growing as well. In the retirement businesses, we aim to improve efficiency and increase margins. The Phoenix agencies is the leading platform in Israel for insurance distribution, benefit and payroll administration and retirement planning. This business is managed with the goal of creating value on a standalone basis, not just distributing Phoenix products. The agencies generate strong cash flow, are capital efficient and have attractive business models. The market is very fragmented, and we are the leading agencies business with below 10% market share. So there is still a lot of room to grow. We intend to meet our 2025 targets in this segment as well. We continue to grow our credit activity while focusing on profitability and risk management. In the beginning of 2024, we moved our construction finance business from the insurance company to Phoenix Gama, our SME credit platform. Overall, the group credit portfolio is at ILS 5.6 billion. We intend to launch our consumer credit activity in the upcoming months after building all necessary platform and capabilities. We strongly believe in its potential to become a growth engine for the group. Now Eli, the CFO of the group, will take it from here and review the financial results and segments in more detail. Please, Eli.

Thank you, Eyal. In the first quarter, we saw growth in both of core insurance and core asset management income compared to the last year. Insurance, core income was ILS 291 million before tax and asset management and credit income was ILS 211 million. After limited nonoperating effects, primary interest rate effect, the total comprehensive profit for the quarter was ILS 284 million before tax. On the right, you see the full breakdown by segment. Looking at the breakdown of first quarter income by segment, we see a strong contribution from the asset management and credit segment. This line of activities contribute ILS 206 million with an accelerated growth and strong impact on the income overall. The strong balance sheet and the debt structure provide financial strength to the group. They provide resilience in the short term and support the group strategy execution and ability to capture business opportunities going forward. Today, we report the solvency for the end of December was steady of 194%, with transitional measures and 152% without transitional measures. This was after distribution, the construction finance activity of around ILS 300 million of equity from the insurance company to Gama, as Eyal mentioned before. These strong solvency positions above longer-term target allow us the flexibility and strategic choices, investment allocation and dividend. We will now review each segment in more detail. The P&C segment continued to show improvement with ILS 251 million in profit during the first quarter. We see continued growth in premium and improve our underwriting profit. The performance was driven by the full implementation of machine learning models for the underwriting and pricing in the motor segment. Overall, we continue to see improvement in the market, but we are still closely watching the risk, including car thefts and prices of parts. In the health segment, we see stability in underwriting profit and improvement in the profit from investment. This offset by negative impact of interest rate and liquidity premium on the last results. In the life segment, we see a growth of ILS 26 million in the underwriting profit year-on-year, offset by negative of the impact of nonoperating effect. Other equity returns were impacted positively by the capital market in the quarter compared to the first quarter of the last year. We decreased ILS 86 million in finance margin due to increase of the inflation. Moving to the asset management and credit segment. The retirement business contribution was ILS 31 million, higher than the first quarter last year. This segment includes activity of Phoenix Investment House, formerly Excellence. It also includes the health and alternative investment activity for qualified investors. Those activities contributed ILS 95 million in the quarter. The contribution is driven by the growth in mutual funds, part of it by M&A synergies. Full synergy with the acquired funds is expected during the 2024 full year. Our brokerage business continued to grow, both in the number of clients and the income per client, as Israelis switched from banks to investment house for better service and lower fees. The distribution segment delivered ILS 74 million operating income before tax compared to ILS 66 million last year. The credit segment, which include Gama results, generate income growth while maintaining stable credit portfolio in challenging environment. Gama continued activity, manage its portfolio to maximize its risk-return profile. In January, we merged The Phoenix Construction finance business from the insurance company into Gama. We see the shift with the portfolio already increasing our profitability and expect to capture the synergies during 2024 full year.

Thank you, Eli. We'll now review the questions that were discussed in the conference call in Hebrew. The first question, Phoenix has grown significantly in the past several years. Can you continue to grow in the same pace?

Well, the Israeli economy has strong growth fundamentals, but I want to look at it through a different perspective. First, the insurance and then the asset management and credit. Well, when we look at the insurance, we see that this is a very fragmented, underpenetrated and still not fully developed market. The Phoenix is only #3 in market share with only 16%. So there is a lot of room to grow. Insurance is like Israeli banks of 10 to 12 years ago, there is a huge room for growth and profit gains. And we believe that technology is a big opportunity for profitable growth with accuracy and automation. And of course, we said already we implemented the machine learning, which is a great or huge advantage in this market. And more than that in insurance, it's not only growth, it's growing in the right line of businesses, meaning, for example, we lost market share in health in LTC, which is a very nonprofitable with a very low or even negative return on equities. And we grew significantly the P&C business, which eventually provides much more value, much more profitability, and we overperformed the market. So what we believe is not only growing, is growing very strongly in the right line of businesses. On asset management and credit markets, so these markets are growing and are also very fragmented. As we see global trends shift of value from commercial banks to asset managers and credit companies, we believe local market will follow. So we'll see much more value and much more income and growth will come to the financial institution where Phoenix is a market leader by far in this segment, and we're very well positioned to capture the value and growth of those products and clients in the future.

Second question, how do you plan to achieve the 2025 growth target set for asset management and credit?

First, yes, we intend to grow income from ILS 450 million at the end of 2023 to ILS 670 million at the end of 2025. And as you could see on Q1, we have already made a huge progress to this direction. The asset management and credit activity is growing fast. It all starts with management. These businesses are being managed by very experienced, incentivized and committed managers. The investment house is growing organically and via acquisitions from the last couple of years. Full synergies are not reflected yet in full, of course, in our results yet. In ETFs and passive funds will lead the market. After the recent acquisition, we led the mutual fund market overall. In brokerage, we're growing quickly in terms of number of clients. Last year, we also launched a better trading platform. We are growing the wealth business of distributing alternative investments for qualified clients. This is a market with a huge potential as we see in global markets. And in Israel, it's, I would say, in a very early stage position. So there is indeed a huge room to grow. We're growing and scaling the agencies. And we restructured Gama to increase growth of credit arm. We believe in the potential of these businesses and believe that we will meet these targets and will soon publish additional medium-term targets.

Third question. Will the trend of growing profitability in the P&C insurance continue in 2024? How is The Phoenix positioned in the motor insurance market?

Well, first, this is not only a local trend, it's also a global trend. Inflation and a high level of theft hit our cost, profitability drops and prices increases. How you manage this cycle is the key for long-term success. The local market is fragmented and competitive, but it holds significant profit pool from companies who work right. We continue to differentiate by creating accurate pricing and underwriting, digitizing services and driving efficiency throughout the business. We invested tens of millions of shekels to develop technological capabilities such as machine learning, underwriting and pricing models, which enable us to continue and grow while increasing profitability. We intend to capitalize on our competitive advantage and increase market share. And more than that, we have shown that we have managed to grow and grow the businesses, the top line and grow our profitability. And if you measure the last 3 to 5 years, you see that Phoenix grow over 50%, much more than the market. And of course, we have managed to demonstrate the best profitability at those years.

Next question. The Phoenix was part of the winning group for the tender of the Israel Post. Should we expect similar moves in the future?

The Phoenix is the biggest investor and asset manager in Israel. We're a relevant candidate in any investment in the market and can often secure the deals we find attractive. Together with our partners, we can upgrade the postal office organization, operation and services and to do all of that to the benefit of our shareholders and of course, those we choose to put their money with the Phoenix products.