Unum Group Q4 2024 Earnings Report

Black Stone Minerals EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $2.03
• Consensus EPS: $2.14
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$0.11
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Black Stone Minerals Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: $3.29 billion
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Black Stone Minerals Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q4 2024
• Date: 2/4/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, February 5, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 8:00AM ET

Black Stone Minerals (NYSE:BSM), founded in 1876 as W.T. Carter & Bro., has evolved into a leading Houston-based oil and natural gas corporation. The company's primary focus is owning and managing oil and natural gas mineral interests across the United States. Black Stone Minerals, L.P. has established itself as a key player in the industry with a rich history and a vast portfolio of approximately 16.8 million gross acres spread across 41 states.

The company's mission centers around the efficient and responsible development and management of its mineral assets while maximizing long-term value for its stakeholders. Black Stone Minerals, L.P. plays a crucial role in supporting oil and gas exploration and production company operations by participating, nonparticipating, and overriding royalty interests.

Black Stone Minerals, L.P.'s core product is the ownership of oil and natural gas mineral interests, which grants the company a share in the proceeds generated from oil and gas production on its properties. The company's target market primarily comprises energy companies engaged in exploration and production activities. By providing access to valuable mineral interests, Black Stone Minerals, L.P. supports these companies in extracting and producing oil and natural gas.

The company's key customers are oil and gas exploration and production companies that rely on mineral resources for their operations. These customers benefit from partnering with Black Stone Minerals, L.P., accessing the company's extensive mineral interests and expertise. Black Stone Minerals, L.P. contributes to the sector's growth and development by focusing on serving the energy industry.

Black Stone Minerals, L.P. has achieved significant milestones and recognition throughout its history. Notably, the company discovered the Double A Wells Field in East Texas in 1985, marking a pivotal moment in its journey. Over the years, Black Stone Minerals, L.P. expanded its interests and diversified its holdings, amassing millions of acres of mineral interests across various plays and shale formations in the United States. These achievements have solidified the company's position as a reputable player in the energy sector.

The success of Black Stone Minerals, L.P. is attributed to its solid and experienced management team. The team is led by President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman Thomas L. Carter, Jr. and possesses a wealth of industry knowledge and expertise. Each member plays a crucial role in shaping the company's strategic direction and ensuring operational excellence. Dawn K. Smajstrla serves as the Chief Accounting Officer (CAO) of Black Stone Minerals, L.P. With her comprehensive background in accounting and finance in the energy industry, Smajstrla is responsible for overseeing the company's financial operations. She joined the company as Vice President and CAO in September 2015, bringing valuable experience from her previous roles at LRR Energy, LP, and Goodrich Petroleum.

Black Stone Minerals, L.P. has demonstrated strong financial performance in recent years, showcasing its robust portfolio of mineral interests. The company has experienced consistent revenue growth. Its earnings metrics are also improving, with a trailing price-to-earnings ratio indicating favorable valuation relative to its earnings. The company boasts a remarkable net margin of over 70%, underscoring its ability to generate substantial profits from mineral interests. Black Stone Minerals, L.P. has effectively managed its resources, resulting in a return on equity of over 50% and a return on assets of around 35%. These metrics highlight the company's commitment to maximizing returns for its stakeholders.

Black Stone Minerals, L.P.'s stock performance reflects investor confidence in the company's operations. Monitoring recent news and events that may have influenced the company's share price is essential for understanding its market performance. These factors can contribute to a more comprehensive company stock performance analysis.

Operating in the broader energy sector, Black Stone Minerals, L.P. holds a strategic position as an owner and manager of oil and natural gas mineral interests. Its extensive portfolio across multiple states provides a competitive advantage, enabling the company to leverage opportunities in various plays and shale formations. This advantageous positioning enhances the company's potential to thrive in the industry.

Black Stone Minerals, L.P. is well-positioned to seize growth opportunities within the energy industry. The company can leverage its extensive mineral interests to capitalize on emerging prospects and fuel its expansion. With a focus on maintaining competitive advantages, such as its vast acreage and strategic partnerships, Black Stone Minerals, L.P. is poised to pursue growth confidently.

As with any company operating in the energy industry, Black Stone Minerals, L.P. faces potential risks and challenges. Fluctuations in oil and gas prices, regulatory changes, and environmental concerns can impact the company's operations and profitability. However, the company's risk management strategies and industry expertise help mitigate these risks to a certain extent.

Unum Group Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Presentation

[Operator]

Hello, and welcome to Unum Group Fourth Quarter twenty twenty four Results and twenty twenty five Outlook Conference Call. Please note that this call is being recorded. After the speakers' prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Thank you. I'd now like to hand the call over to Matt Royal, Senior Vice President, Head of Investor Relations and Treasury.

[Operator]

You may now begin.

[Matt Royal, Senior Vice President-Investor Relations at Unum Group]

Thank you and good morning. Welcome to Unum Group's fourth quarter twenty twenty four earnings call. Today, we will be discussing full year 2024 results along with highlights from the fourth quarter. We will also use the time to discuss our outlook for 2025. Please note today's call may include forward looking statements and actual results may differ.

[Matt Royal, Senior Vice President-Investor Relations at Unum Group]

We are not obligated to update any of these statements. And as always, you can refer to our earnings release and our filings with the SEC for a description of the factors that could cause actual results to differ from expected results. Yesterday afternoon, Unum released our earnings, including the financial supplement and presentation materials for today's call. Copies of those materials can be found on the Investors section of our website. Finally, references made today to core operation sales and premium, including Unum International, are presented on a constant currency basis.

[Matt Royal, Senior Vice President-Investor Relations at Unum Group]

Participating in this morning's conference call are Unum's President and CEO, Rick McKinney and Chief Financial Officer, Steve Zabel. Following remarks from Rick and Steve, additional members of management will participate in Q and A, including Mark Till, who heads our Unum International business Tim Arnold, who heads our Colonial Life and Voluntary Benefits lines and Chris Pine for Group Benefits. Thank you again for your time this morning. And with that, let me turn the call over to our CEO, Rick McKinney.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

Thank you, Matt, and good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here with you all today. We appreciate the opportunity to share not only the strong results we delivered throughout 2024, but also on the excitement as we look to the future. Our leadership position is hard earned and embedded in our DNA is a desire to find new ways to develop and grow in the employee benefit space. In fact, we are motivated by the privilege we have to serve 47,000,000 customers and are well positioned to serve many more.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

Our focus on taking care of our customers at time of need, supporting our employees to provide excellent service and engaging in our communities has the profound effect of building a durable franchise that delivers significant value for our shareholders. Steadfast commitment to the working world are core to who we are and brings delivery and creativity to those who we are connected with. These connections are strong and built to last. The capabilities we are bringing to the market such as HR Connect, Total Leave, Gather and Help at Hand are connection points with employers and employees to bring greater customer satisfaction and ease with the benefits experience. When considering the expertise and empathy our team adds to every interaction in every touchpoint and connection, these advancements have been instrumental in attracting customers and maintaining our competitive advantage.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

These advantages are not only as good as the ability to deliver them year in and year out, it takes consistency and a disciplined approach to run a leading business in our market. Our commitment remains unwavering and has continued to deliver top line growth, earnings growth and high returns on equity. Overall in 2024, we grew earnings per share 10%, which is above our initial expectations of 79% growth going into the year. We saw most of our product lines meeting or exceeding our expectations throughout the year and our core operations delivered over 20% ROE in 2024. From a capital standpoint, we've again executed our plans in line with how we describe them coming into the year and with good overall results exceeding expectations on value delivered to our shareholders.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

Twenty twenty four was the first year in many years that LTC did not consume any capital. The actions we took in 2023 to fund this block and our expectation of not needing to put more capital here are playing out. Further, we raised our dividend by 15% and repurchased approximately $1,000,000,000 of shares throughout 2024, including just over $700,000,000 of repurchases when excluding one time additional repurchases following the PCAPP Trust transaction. With these actions, we still ended the year with stronger than expected financial metrics, including holding company cash of $2,000,000,000 and an RBC ratio of 430%. This is in addition to the significant capital buffer within the closed block, which Steve will talk about more in a minute.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

Looking forward, we expect our key metrics to enhance further and provide even greater strategic optionality as our core businesses will continue to deliver between $1,300,000,000 and $1,600,000,000 of free cash flow in 2025. As we transition to think about 2025, we continue to witness both a market backdrop and an economic environment that are highly supportive of our business. A competitive labor market, wage inflation and sustained interest rates provide us with ample opportunities to grow and thrive. Our action plan is to continue building on our solid foundation and maintain our leading foothold with digital capabilities. We're dedicated to continually upgrading our core operations while maintaining our disciplined approach and innovating in ways that resonate with our customers and the market.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

When we look across the company, we are hitting the ground running in 2025 and our teams are looking to build on some very strong growth rates with consolidated sales growth of high single digits coupled with good persistency, premium growth is expected to deliver in the 4% to 7% range. With continued disciplined underwriting, we expect to maintain good margins that will flow through to earnings and after we've used some of our capital generation to purchase shares, we will deliver 8% to 12% earnings per share growth on top of the 10% adjusted EPS growth we delivered in 2024. All of this is predicated on our customer centric approach remaining at the heart of our strategy. We're constantly adapting our services to meet changing

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

market needs and ensuring we remain the preferred choice for our clients. When we

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

met last February, we results. For For Unum in The U. S, we are leveraging our go to market expertise to connect benefit solutions to HR platforms effectively, while also ensuring our leave management is best in class. Leave management has been a challenge for the industry and with our history, knowledge and focus, we can continue to give a differentiated experience to our customers. In addition, we saw strong momentum in the trend of customers preferring the full suite of products.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

Our efforts are geared towards seamless enrollment, billing and administration via solutions like myUnum and establishing robust connections with select third party platforms. In Colonial Life, the focus is on continuing to build and support our independent sales force with enhanced tools and solutions. Our proprietary industry leading agent assist technology, which enables automated lead generation, CRM and workflow will help boost agent productivity of our independent agents so they can continue to focus on building their agencies. Another key tool is our in our arsenal is Gather, which modernizes enrollment and benefits administration and streamlines the client experience. Finally, enabling Colonial Life agents to offer Unum employed Unum employer paid products ensures that they have the solution for every employer and broker with market leading group products.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

For Unum UK, our approach has been to redefine the broker experience, setting a market leading standard that is distinctively Unum and enhancing our relationship management model. We are dedicated to providing value added services that drive customer engagement and loyalty such as through Help at Hand, which offers integrated value added services and by delivering comprehensive management information that yields actionable insights. Moreover, we're expanding our product set to encompass a broader spectrum of risk and well-being solutions. In 2024, we launched a claims portal for large customers, the first of its kind delivered by a disability insurer in The UK. All of these efforts across the company will drive growth in the number of employees we serve and in turn will generate the growth of premiums and earnings.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

It is a simple purpose driven strategy that has resonated through different cycles. We have a proven track record of achieving our growth aspirations. If you look at the last ten years, first you can note our compound annual growth rate of 4% for core premiums, which is especially remarkable when looking when talking taking into account the pandemic. The second is to look at growth and book value per share. We have seen 9% compound growth driven by a similar EPS growth.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

There is a strong story that encapsulates how we have driven value over the long term. We also remain disciplined stewards of our capital in building franchise value. The consistency of our capital priorities remains intact. First, we ensure strategic investments directly support our businesses. We have a clear growth strategy continuing to build out our offerings and capitalize on our well positioned and profitable products.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

Second, we continue to look externally to identify and pursue selective M and A that supports our internal initiatives in line with this strategy. And third, we will continue to return capital to shareholders via regular dividend increases and share repurchases as we have demonstrated through our actions in increasing both commensurate with our plans. Summing it up, our strong capital generation, $500,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 of share repurchases and no LTC contributions will leave us in a position of greater than 400% RBC and holding company cash greater than $2,000,000,000 at the end of twenty twenty five. Our continued commitment to innovation, prudent capital allocation and shareholder returns remain steadfast. With our customer first mindset, agile operations and comprehensive financial strategies, we continue to shape our future.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

2025 is going to be an exciting year for Unum. I'd like to now hand it over to Steve to provide further insights into how we wrapped up the year and provide outlook details for 2025. Steve?

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Great. Thanks, Rick, and good morning to everyone. As Rick mentioned, we were extremely pleased with the strong finish to the year across the board. The fourth quarter capped another year of solid growth as evidenced by our results. For the full year, sales were up 6.1% in Unum International, down 1.4% in Colonial Life and up 6.5% in Unum U.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

S, where we saw record absolute sales and growth of nearly 20% in the fourth quarter, which is our largest sales quarter of the year. Premium for our core operations increased 3.6% in the quarter compared to a year ago and finished up 5% for the full year. This is within the expectation laid out last February and consistent with our long term expectation of 4% to 7% annual premium growth. Margins across the business continue to be robust. Unum U.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

S. Results saw continued sustainability in both disability and life results highlighted by a disability benefit ratio of fifty nine percent for the full year and sixty point four percent in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, group life and AD and D finished with a benefit ratio of 66.3% for the year and 66.7% for the quarter. Looking ahead, we expect performance for both of these lines to continue and are maintaining our outlook for both benefit ratios. Specifically for disability, we firmly believe that the results we are seeing are durable for the near to midterm as we continue to see support for these levels in our operations and in the market and, therefore, reiterate our outlook for a benefit ratio in the low 60s.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

For group life and AD and D, we think current trends will continue for the near term and, therefore, believe the benefit ratio outlook will be around 70% with potential period to period favorability as we have recently experienced. We also saw strong margin performance beyond Unum U. S. Colonial Life delivered one of its highest quarters of earnings on record and International continues to produce earnings in line with its earnings outlook, which we did raise earlier this year to the mid to upper £20,000,000 range per quarter. Both franchises are well positioned to continue these strong operating trends as we enter 2025.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

All of these factors enabled us to end the year with after tax adjusted operating income of $1,600,000,000 and after tax adjusted operating earnings per share of $8.44 which represents growth of 10.2 over full year 2023. The strong earnings power for GAAP was also apparent in our statutory results with full year after tax operating earnings of over $1,300,000,000 which was within our outlook of $1,200,000,000 and $1,400,000,000 Earlier, Rick mentioned our capital priorities and detailed our aspirations to grow the business while also returning capital to shareholders. Our consistent and powerful cash flow generation model provides us with significant capital flexibility, which was further enhanced in 2024 without the need to fund LTC. As a result, we returned $1,300,000,000 to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends. This was an increase of 2.5 times from our deployment of just over $500,000,000 in 2023.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Our top capital priority is to reinvest organically into the business. The strength of our persistency and new account sales metrics are a testament to the value of our offering in the market and the success we are seeing with the key strategic initiatives that Rick discussed. Investing in these capabilities to grow our core business and increase efficiency is a key priority. As a result, the full year 2024 adjusted operating expense ratio of 21.7% was consistent with 2023. In 2025, we expect the expense ratio to increase slightly as we balance continued investment to maintain our differentiation in markets with realizing further productivity gains.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

So then focusing in on the fourth quarter, results represented a continuation of some of the strong trends we've seen throughout the year, mainly around margin sustainability and group disability in life. We did see some pressure in our supplemental and voluntary lines that I will discuss in a moment. However, we don't expect that to persist in 2025. All in all, this produced after tax adjusted operating earnings per share of $2.03 for the quarter and $8.44 for the full year, representing 10.2% growth over 2023. Notably, this growth level follows multiple years of double digit EPS growth.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

So then, I'll now briefly review our 2024 results by segment, provide updates on the closed block and then shift to our 2025 outlook. In Unum US, full year adjusted operating income of $1,400,000,000 increased 6.2% over 2023. As mentioned earlier, these results were bolstered by sustained group disability margins, but also group life performance with the group life and AD and D product line experiencing full year adjusted operating earnings growth of 62.8%. While this quarter saw pressure from our supplemental and voluntary lines, specifically voluntary benefits, we view these impacts as transitory and believe results in 2025 should return to more normal levels, specifically quarterly earnings around $121,000,000 compared to the $104,000,000 in the fourth quarter. Then from a growth perspective, Unum U.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

S. Earned premium grew 4.6% to $6,900,000,000 due to natural growth, higher sales and solid persistency, which is near our 5.7% expectation. Moving to Unum International, the segment continued to show strong trends in its underlying earnings power and top line growth. Adjusted operating income of $157,800,000 for full year 2024 was relatively flat compared to the prior year, but didn't have the benefit of high levels of UK inflation seen in 2023. As such, the underlying earnings power of the business grew in 2024 and when adjusting for the impact of inflation, UK earnings grew approximately 15 over 2023.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Fourth quarter UK results of £27,600,000 were in line with our outlook for adjusted operating earnings levels in the mid to upper £20,000,000 range. As we enter 2025, we expect to grow off of this range and believe the upper £20,000,000 range remains an appropriate outlook. We are pleased with the growth levels in The UK, highlighted by full year premium growth of 9.4% and sales growth of 6.6%. While The UK business is the major driver of this segment, Poland saw another year of significant growth, increasing premiums 24.2% while sales grew 4.2%. Then turning to Colonial, while sales were down for the full year, premium did grow steadily at 3.3%.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Despite slower levels of growth, margins remained outstanding and fourth quarter adjusted operating earnings were some of Colonial's best ever at $122,700,000 Full year results of $466,700,000 were up 16.6% over 2023 and equated to a return on equity of 19.7% compared to 18.1% in the prior year. So, before covering the closed block results, the corporate segment, which consists predominantly of corporate debt related expenses, produced a loss of $50,400,000 in the quarter and we expect this level of loss to continue into 2025. Switching gears to the closed block of business and focusing on this quarter, adjusted operating earnings were $27,700,000 This brings full year earnings to $137,800,000 which is in line with our outlook of $130,000,000 to $160,000,000 The LTC net premium ratio, which is indicative of a lifetime benefit ratio expectation, increased slightly to 94.6% from 94.5% in the third quarter of twenty twenty four. Further, LTC incidents remained above long term expected levels and was generally consistent with our experience in the third quarter. We continue to believe the elevated incidence rates has been a function of inventory levels normalizing in the environment following the pandemic and we may continue to see some of this volatility going forward.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Lastly, for the closed block, our alternative investment portfolio, which largely backs LTC, produced income of $30,500,000 in the quarter or a yield of 9.1% on an annualized basis. Since inception of this portfolio, our diversified alternative portfolio has produced returns which are in line with our long term expectation of 8% to 10%. And moving on from quarterly results, I'll now take a look take a few moments to address the overall position of our LTC block. 2024 saw a handful of positive trends, including the higher for longer rate environment as well as our success regarding our premium rate increase program. Both of these factors drove pronounced impacts to our block that I'll describe.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

First, through the end of twenty twenty four, we have achieved over 50% of our current premium rate increase program expectation. We are pleased with both the pace and the receptiveness from regulators for these requests. A key element of this success has been offering policyholders flexibility. We regularly present choices for coverage adjustments and other methods that we may better suit their present financial and insurance needs. Second, a higher rate environment has had major benefits to LTC over the last few years and this was no different in 2024.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Our hedge program remained active and with $2,600,000,000 of outstanding notional at year end with average hedge rates of 4.3% exceeding our best estimate ultimate assumption for the thirty year treasury of 4.25%. In addition, as we discussed earlier in the year, we took the opportunity to extend the horizon of investable cash flows hedged from five years up to ten years in some cases. Overall, we are very pleased with the impacts of our hedge program and the prudent risk management it provides. As Rick mentioned in his opening, we no longer anticipate the need for further capital contributions for LTC. Our 2024 capital deployment demonstrated this, allowing us to concentrate further on expanding our core operations and returning value to our shareholders.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Our confidence is reinforced by the $2,600,000,000 of protection which consists of the difference between our best estimate reserves and our recorded statutory reserves, plus excess capital at Fairwind. With the sustained levels of interest rates, we were able to release a large portion of our premium deficiency reserve in Fairwind. Due to tax impacts on reserve releases into Fairwind excess capital, the level of protection decreased as expected from $2,800,000,000 reported last year to $2,600,000,000 this year. On an economic basis, we are in a similar position of strength to last year as this capital will stay in Fairwind. We've provided update sensitivities to show the relative size that changes in assumptions have against our protection level.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

I'd like to take a pause here and describe a little bit the sensitivities that we show in the materials that are on the screen. And as I'm looking at the table on the right side of the page, what we've done is looked at the major assumptions that we have within our best estimate assumption set for our economic reserve for this line of business. And what we have done for both the premium rate increase as well as the morbidity and mortality improvement is just give an indication of what the impact of removing the benefit of those assumptions from our best estimate assumptions would impact our best estimate reserve. For policy lapses and mortalities, claim incidents and claim resolutions, we've really taken the approach to take a one standard deviation variance to our best estimate assumption forever and show the impact of what that would have on our best estimate reserve. And then the last sensitivity that we gave was to take the new money rate for the thirty year Treasury and take that down to 3.25% for an ultimate rate and the impact that that would have on our best estimate.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

We obviously do not think that these will all occur together but wanted to give the market some indication of the sensitivities for these various key assumptions within our best estimate reserve and be able to relate that back to the level of protection that we do believe we have between our recorded regulatory reserves and our best estimate reserve. So, this further validates our view that we will no longer need to contribute capital to the block. Considering all of this, we are pleased with the position of our block and we will continue to pursue all of our options, both internally and externally to best actively manage it. Internally, we will focus on continued risk management actions such as implementing hedging strategies and advancing our premium rate increase program. Externally, we will continue to seek opportunities for economic risk transfer.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

These actions remain a top priority as we move into 2025. For your reference, we have updated the LTC key metrics and block demographics and they can be found in the appendix of today's presentation. So, stepping back, 2024 was an incredible year for the company and as we turn to 2025, we see many of the same tailwinds and opportunities to win. So, with all that considered, it's time to talk about our outlook for this year. I'll start with our view of business growth and earnings power and then discuss how that plays into capital generation.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

The key theme of our 2025 outlook is consistency with the strong results that we saw in 2024. The major trends that drove those 2024 results are expected to continue and in 2025, specifically our group disability and life product margins. The durability of these trends drive high levels of earnings power and lead to robust free cash flow generation and capital optionality. These sustained margins paired with top line growth and a thoughtful share repurchase strategy drive expected earnings per share growth of 8% to 12% in 2025. I will now turn to our expectations for top line growth and returns of our core businesses.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Following our core operations sales growth of 4.3% in 2024, we expect sales to build momentum in 2025, including continued success in Unum U. S. And international with Colonial resurging to the 5% to 10% growth range. There are different stories across lines of premium growth, but importantly, we believe core operations growth will continue to produce results in line with our long term expectation of 4% to 7%. It's also noteworthy that our international segment continues to produce very strong growth results while maintaining its solid level of margin seen post pandemic.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Returns on equity across the board are robust and sector leading, driven by the sustained product margins I referenced earlier. I'll now pivot from GAAP metrics to our capital expectations in 2025. Our capital generation model continues to grow after a fantastic 2024 with our sources of expected capital totaling $1,500,000,000 to $1,800,000,000 This compares to our outlook last year of $1,400,000,000 to $1,600,000,000 As a reminder, our cash generation is driven by earnings in our US insurance subsidiaries, which will convert to dividends to our holding company, dividends from our UK operations and other fees charged to our operating companies, specifically asset management fees. This is all fueled by our strong earnings across our businesses. We do not expect major changes in our capital usage in 2025.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Specifically, we will continue to service our debt at leverage consistent to current levels, steadily increase our dividend and return capital through a sizable share repurchase program. For 2025, we expect to buyback between $500,000,000 and $1,000,000,000 of shares as we assess our capital deployment priorities throughout the year. For context, in 2024, we repurchased approximately $700,000,000 of shares after removing those shares repurchased in conjunction with our PCAPs transaction in the fourth quarter. So, now turning to page 12 in the presentation, I will finish with our expectation for capital levels at the end of twenty twenty five. We expect capital levels to continue to be strong and well above our targets which are calibrated to maintain our current ratings.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

This includes risk based capital and our traditional subsidiaries to be between 425450%, holding company liquidity to be greater than $2,000,000,000 and ample leverage capacity between 2122%. As we always do, we will ensure a prudent approach to capital management and do not plan for sudden changes to our capital structure. That considered, over time, we do plan to manage these metrics back down closer to targets. However, in the near term, this position grants us immense capital flexibility and allows us many options to further advance our business strategy and return more capital to shareholders. So, to wrap up our prepared remarks, we are extremely pleased with how the company performed in 2024 and excited for the opportunities for our businesses in 2025.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

We will continue to deliver on our promises to more and more customers, create a desired workplace for our employees and deliver industry leading margins for our shareholders. I will now turn it over to Rick for his closing comments before going to your questions.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

Great. Thank you, Steve. As you can see with 2024 in the books, 2025 is shaping up to be another great year for Unum and with continued momentum in our core business and our capital generation. Plenty of topics to cover this morning, so with that, we will move to your questions.

[Operator]

We are now opening the floor for question and answer session. Your first question comes from Tom Gallagher from EVR. Your line is now open.

[Tom Gallagher, Analyst at Evercore]

Thanks guys. So, Steve, one question I had. My first one is just on group disability. You said you expect it to remain favorable over the midterm. If you were to kind of isolate and say why is that, because I think there's a broader concern it's going to revert to the mean, get back into the 70s.

[Tom Gallagher, Analyst at Evercore]

What is it about the underlying that's really driving it sounds like there's been a structural change here. Is it really clean recovery? Is it incidents? Is it a combination of things? And why won't why don't you assume that price competition will erode the margin if it's if it's as favorable?

[Tom Gallagher, Analyst at Evercore]

Or do you think your maybe your margin is better than many peers, so that's not a threat? Any color on that? Thanks.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Good morning, Tom. And I'll cover really just from a claims performance perspective what we've been seeing and why that gives us confidence kind of in the near to mid term. And then maybe Chris can talk a little bit more about the competitive market. We've gone through kind of the fourth quarter selling season. And so, we have kind of an updated read on pricing and the competition out there and I'll let him cover that.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

So, just to zoom out a little bit, group disability for the year had an actual benefit ratio that was right around fifty nine percent. And so, although in the fourth quarter it ticked up a little bit to 60.4%, it is well within any kind of range of volatility that you might see quarter to quarter. So, we continue to feel very comfortable about giving an outlook going into 2025 that would be in that low 60% benefit ratio range. And then what I would say is just kind of the dynamics of the experience we're seeing. Incidence bounces around a little bit quarter to quarter, but I'd say, generally speaking, incidence is pretty much at levels that we would expect longer term and pretty consistent with what maybe we would have experienced pre pandemic.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

So, I would say we feel really good about that and that's been relatively stable. From a recovery perspective, that's really where we've seen the improvement. And that's been kind of a decade long improvement that we've seen there. It was clouded a little bit by some of the volatility during the pandemic. But as we came out of that in the 'twenty two, 'twenty three, 'twenty four kind of period, we really saw continued improvement.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

And that gets down to just our team, them working with our customers, with employers, with physicians to figure out ways to get people back to work at a higher rate. We've been able to apply data to better understand outcomes and to implement accommodations for those people to get to better outcomes. And we're all aligned. People want to get back to work. We want them to get back to work.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

And we've been very successful with our people, with our technology to be able to do that at a higher rate. And for those reasons, we do think that performance is sustainable going forward because we've embedded that just into our claims management process. And so then, with that, I'll turn it over to Chris to just talk a little bit about the competitive environment and pricing and what that looks like going forward.

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

Yes. Thanks, Steve. And Tom, thanks for the question. Absolutely remains a competitive environment. We expect to operate in that type of a world.

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

But building on what Steve was saying around, you've got an excellent operational performance. You do have a favorable kind of attractive retained reality that employers are dealing with. They want a quality benefits package. They want it to work really well for their employees and them as a customer. And when you kind of combined high quality coverage with connectivity into the human capital management platforms or other kind of technologies that are important to them, when you're solving challenges that are as important as leave and that's the reason maybe a customer came to you or they're considering staying.

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

These are modestly different conversations than in the past or where price was more central to the conversation. Price is a part of the equation, though there's no question. We want to charge a fair price. We want it to be stable over time. Customers appreciate that.

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

And we just have a nice history of delivering both the value and price combination as it relates to our investments.

[Tom Gallagher, Analyst at Evercore]

That's helpful guys. Thanks. And just my follow-up just on Long Term Care. The peer of yours on Manulife announced another risk transfer deal in late twenty twenty four on a younger vintage block. How do you feel about the market right now?

[Tom Gallagher, Analyst at Evercore]

Do you is it getting better for risk transfer? Is the bid spread still too wide? What do you think the prospects are for you?

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

Yes.

[Tom Gallagher, Analyst at Evercore]

'25 possibility.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

Sure, sure. Let me touch on that and be fairly consistent with how we've talked about in the past. One thing that did change in the quarter, we did see another transaction.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

So as we talked about the first transaction we saw just over a year ago, we think that's good. We think that actually shows that the market is coming together and where you can actually have the right attributes of a LTC company, meaning somebody that will be willing to take on that risk. Remember that the new development there is we're also bringing in other parties that are taking on some of the asset risk, which can enhance the overall proposition. So I think that those are both good transactions to see. But as we talk about it, these transactions are hard and we have to make sure that we're able to find the right partner to take on specific attributes of our block.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

The team has done a really good job of parsing the block, so we can really structure the block and something that we'd want to transfer from a risk perspective to see what the buyer is looking for and structure around that. So all those are, I think, are very positive dynamics that are happening out there. But these are difficult transactions. And so we don't want to talk about anything of a particular time frame, but we will be active in the market. We will talk to a number of players out there and the deal has got to make sense for us as well for the longer term for our shareholders.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

But this is something we do think strategically is very important for our company to be off of the LTC risk. It's very unlike everything that we do. This is a legacy block of business. And so we want to make sure that we're focusing on the core, which you've seen the results are very strong. And so we want to do both of those things, continue to run a great core business and then work to transfer the risk of LTC to another party.

[Tom Gallagher, Analyst at Evercore]

Okay. Thanks.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Elyse Greenspan from Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

[Elyse Greenspan, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities]

Hi, thanks. Good morning. My first question is just on the capital side, right? I mean, you guys, your HoldCo cash is going to grow during the year as is your RBC is going to expand. And yet, you guys seem to be it seems a little bit conservative, right, with the buyback.

[Elyse Greenspan, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities]

I know there is a big range there. But are you guys just leaving some buffer depending upon what happens with on the M and A side? And if that is the case, can you just talk about some stuff that you guys might be considering with potential transactions for M and A?

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

Sure, Elyse. This is Rick. Let me take you through. And first, I guess, this conversation with what Steve is taking you through is the very, very strong capital generation. So you have to start with that.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

The businesses are generating a tremendous amount of capital. I think importantly too, as we talked about 2023, that was where we actually made a different move on long term care to have that fully funded. So, when you have that strong generation, you don't have those needs across long term care, you've got a lot of choices to make. And we've been very consistent to say, first and foremost, priority, grow the core business. We've got a great franchise.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

You've heard about that today. How can we enhance that? How can we grow that? That's true organically. Also true from an M and A perspective.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

And so you asked about the types of things we look at M and A. Really, it's about how do we continue to use those transactions to grow the premium line, think about that as capabilities, think about that as potentially distribution and then certainly our international businesses are places we'd like to continue to look to grow as well. So that's the acquisition front and that use. But then you get to the things we're going to do from a shareholder perspective. Increasing our dividend rate is something we've done consistently over a longer period of time.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

We'll continue to look at that. And then from a share repurchase perspective, when you get through all of that, we've said we're going to be dynamic. So it is a wide range, dollars 500,000,000,000 to 1,000,000,000. A lot will transpire over the course of this year, and we want to actually be responsive to whatever that environment brings forward to us. Last year was a good example of where we were more dynamic.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

We exceeded the amount that we had going into the year with our kind of underlying $700,000,000 and then a PCAP transaction which

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

brought that

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

up close to $1,000,000,000 So, this is going to

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

be an area we're going to

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

be very active from a capital deployment perspective. I think in 2024, we showed that we will be dynamic, and we expect 2025 will shape up similarly.

[Elyse Greenspan, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities]

Thanks. And then on the voluntary side, right, the results were a little weaker in the Q4, but it sounds like you guys don't expect that to continue given the earnings guide for 2025? Can you just kind of provide a little bit more color on what went on there both in the Q4 and just the outlook for this

[Elyse Greenspan, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities]

year?

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Yes, this

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

is Steve. I'll take that one. Yes, we, as we kind of look back over multiple quarters, we've seen this line of business have some volatility in it. A lot of that volatility was focused, I'd say, on the actual voluntary benefits product line within supplemental and voluntary. And it's really been different things as we look quarter to quarter, different products that are in there that we've seen some unfavorable volatility.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

If you go all the way back to the first part of last year, the earnings power of that block was above kind of what our expectations would have been at $120,000,000 per quarter. So, it bounces around a little bit, but nothing that we see in there we feel like is systemic and would continue going forward. And so, right now, when we think about the earnings power of that business, the 120 per quarter seems like a pretty reasonable level that we can expect going into 2025 and we'll just have to see how that plays out as we get into 2025. I will say that all the lines that are within, supplementary and voluntary, they continue to be good growth engines for us as an organization. We really like those businesses.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

They're very much meeting the market and I would say are growing at a faster pace than what our group benefits businesses are. And so we really like those businesses.

[Elyse Greenspan, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Wes Carmichael from Autonomous Research. Your line is now open.

[Wes Carmichael, Senior Analyst at Autonomous Research]

Hey, thank you. Good morning. I wanted to ask again on pricing trends for Unum US for twenty twenty five renewals. Can you maybe just give us a little bit of color, particularly in group disability and group life? And if you could maybe just touch on how long that renewal pricing is being locked in just at a high level?

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

Yes. Thanks, Wes. It's Chris. So, a good topic to talk about just in general how the block performed. If you step back and you look at really what was incredible persistency in 2024, we talked about that a little bit around our capabilities making a real difference, but also just strong performance over time, stable pricing, etcetera, etcetera.

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

There was some element of kind of projects, bid projects that have been put off for a while. We saw more of those in 2024 where cases came to market that hadn't come out. For us, that's a little bit of a double edged sword because obviously in the sales side, we really enjoyed a strong oneone. So as some of those projects were coming out, we won some. On the flip side, some of our cases also went to market just for overdue market checks or more than like.

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

Where we can tie things to investments and longer term strategies, we feel really good about it being a driver of persistency.

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

On the flip, as I said to the

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

earlier question from Tom, it's a competitive market and we are looking to continue to get a fair price and stable over time and feel very good that we can do that. We are really thrilled with the sales in fourth quarter. We think that that's a nice combination of a really coordinated strategy across the company that shows up well for our customers and

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

we think that's something we can build on.

[Wes Carmichael, Senior Analyst at Autonomous Research]

Got it. Thanks, Chris. And maybe on long term care in terms of premium rate increases, I think you're about 50% through your current program. I'm curious, it seems like that's going pretty quickly.

[Wes Carmichael, Senior Analyst at Autonomous Research]

So, how does that pace compare to what you originally thought and what's embedded in reserves? And I guess separately is given your need of no more capital in the business, your level of protection, do you expect this to be you're largely done with rate increases or do you continue to expect those to go on over time if they're actuarially justified?

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Right. Yeah. And you're right. We're very happy with the progress that we've seen so far since last fall. And, yeah, reiterate the progress that we've made, we're a little over 50% through the current best estimate assumption that is incorporated into our reserve right now.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

I will say between then and now, we have had some very large state approvals. We were expecting those, but those did come through in the fourth quarter and have been reflected in our statistics there. And as such, I wouldn't expect the pace going forward over the next few years to be at that level. We tend to get these approvals and get them implemented over kind of a three to five year period when we launch a program. And I think that still feels like a reasonable timeline.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

With that said, we are very happy that we're able to get some pretty large ones over the finish line and very happy with the progress that we have made. Your question just about not launching kind of future programs, that's always really just dependent on what we see emerge from the product. And also, we're continually looking at opportunities to maximize that program. So, I would never say never on that because we're consistently challenging where we might be able to go back to states and get fair returns on this product line.

[Wes Carmichael, Senior Analyst at Autonomous Research]

Thanks, Steve.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Joel Horwitz from Dowling and Partners. Your line is now open.

[Joel Hurwitz, Lead Analyst at Dowling & Partners]

Hey, good morning. I want to go back to the voluntary benefits business. So we've heard other key players call out expectations for higher loss ratios moving forward. I think it was two years ago you guys put out a benefit ratio target of 40% to 43% for the VB business. Is that still the correct way to think about this business?

[Joel Hurwitz, Lead Analyst at Dowling & Partners]

Or is something fundamentally changed to drive benefits higher, maybe the competitive environment or something?

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Yes. I would say probably we would peg that somewhere closer to the mid-40s right now from a benefit ratio going forward. So, modestly higher, but we still feel very good about the returns that we're getting on that line of business and feel very good about just the earnings power going forward. So, that's probably a good planning assumption.

[Joel Hurwitz, Lead Analyst at Dowling & Partners]

Okay.

[Joel Hurwitz, Lead Analyst at Dowling & Partners]

And then just shifting gears to U. S. Group sales. I guess how much of the strong sales at OneOne were associated with customers utilizing capabilities like HR Connect or Total Leave?

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

Yes. Joel, Chris, again, thanks for the question. Let me start by saying sales upmarket were extremely strong and that's the best chance for us to go in and talk about really important topics like the human capital management platform and what they're trying to do with it and how we can incorporate our capabilities. Same with lead management, you've got much more access to the customer to talk about long term solutions that we've been investing in. And when they're centered around problems like lead management, it gets a lot of attention.

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

So to kind of affirm your point in the question, strategically aligned sales continue to be really critical in terms of how we are winning new business. And we are more and more excited to talk about those things as they continue to get better after ongoing investment over time. And those are topics we've been investing in for a long time. As you move through mid market, these topics are still critically important, but you start to add in things like broker distribution platforms that are important and smaller customers rely more on their distributors to do work for them. So, we've targeted broker platforms that can really help with their execution on behalf of their customers and we're starting to see incredible progress there.

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

We're really pleased with with how that's working in the smaller and mid market. We've even got some nice traction with our Colonial partners where they're strong play with the Gather platform, which Rick referenced incorporates employer funded group products from Unum is starting to actually make a mark in the marketplace and that's a good thing. So, the spirit of your question is right on. Capabilities matter a lot to us.

[Joel Hurwitz, Lead Analyst at Dowling & Partners]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from John Barnidge from Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.

[John Barnidge, Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies]

Good morning. Thanks for the opportunity. Other market participants have begun more meaningfully talking about investing in lead management capabilities. Can you talk about the continual investment that's going on to support HR Connect, Gather and the whole suite into the capabilities? And what proprietary notes there are that third party products off the shelf fail to replicate?

[John Barnidge, Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies]

Thank you.

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

Yes. John, lead management is, it is the number one or two, put it behind the cost of healthcare, it's up there for every employer. If I were to step way back, we've been in the lead management business for literally decades. And it starts with kind of FMLA many, many years ago where employers needed assistance just to manage something that was new and different. But it's evolved to become an extremely complex set of issues depending on how many states you're in as an employer, what your own motivations are for corporate leads and how you want to handle them.

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

And our experience not only being in the leave business for many, many years, but also being experts in the disability business, which is a significant part of leave management. There are a lot of leaves that are associated with an employee's own condition, give us a real advantage. So, the competitive votes start with our own experience and what we're building on in the number of years of investment. And then couple that with a real concentration on the ecosystems that employers want to use to manage their employee populations and making investments in very specific kind of what I would call winning platforms of choice so that we can interact and exchange information with literally right up to their frontline managers so that they have a good handle on what's happening with their employees, when they'll be back to work, what the protocols are around staffing that they're going to need to take hold of. These become somewhat indispensable tools for employers.

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

And frankly, it's a really fun way to sell because you're getting into expert consulting where we can make a real difference for our broker consultant partners and their employers. So, let me just finish by saying we spend a lot of time on an end to end strategy all the way through our company, culminating with our sales and client management teams to make sure they're the best in the business of being able to kind of incorporate these solutions for the benefit of brokers, consultants and customers.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Hey, John, it's Steve.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

The only thing that I'd add, there's a question in there just about kind of the financial commitment to investing in these types of technologies. And I'll take TotalEase for an example. We've been investing in that for five, six years. We brought it to market a few years ago. And that's really incorporated into the earnings power of our statutory companies and that's been embedded in that.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

And so, when I think about the outlook going into next year, dollars 1,300,000,000.0 to 1,600,000,000.0 of statutory earnings, we're funding that within that capital generation and we have been for some time. So, we're basically utilizing our current scale to be able to make those investments and then still generate very, very healthy returns and capital redeployment.

[John Barnidge, Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies]

Thank you for those answers. And my follow-up question, can you talk about the market dynamics and the core market versus the large case markets? Feels like there's been a bit of a bifurcation in sales growth between those two that

[John Barnidge, Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies]

have emerged over the last year. Thank you.

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

Yes. Thanks, John. We actually we're really pleased with both the growth in core sales, that's the end 2,000 business for Unum and the over 2,000. Certainly, National Client Group sales over 2,000 Lives stood out, but that's a lot of winning of upper mid and national client group level customers, again, tied to capabilities. OneOne is the biggest day for that and we saw a really nice influx of new business there this year.

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

On a core from a core basis though, we are really pleased with what essentially is double digit sales growth for group in the quarter. You need to net out the stop loss sales from the prior year to kind of see that growth. But mid market, when we talk about workforce now platform of ADP ADP and you look at where Workday is headed in terms of taking their capabilities down into the mid and smaller end of the market, we do see those things stand out. We invest heavily in the bundles down market around, as I said, the broker distributed platforms and also our own My Unum. We know that there's more work that or more kind of upside associated with that.

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

So sales growth was good. The bundle's working. We love our portfolio of products. This particular quarter did NCG did shine, but we feel really good about the balance between both.

[John Barnidge, Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies]

Thank you.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

Thanks, John.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Ryan Krueger from KBW. Your line is now open.

[Ryan Krueger, Managing Director at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)]

Hey, good morning. Unum U. S. Premium growth decelerated during the course of 2024, including in the fourth quarter. It looks like you expect a reversion back higher in 2025.

[Ryan Krueger, Managing Director at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)]

Is that just a function of the timing of of how sales has come through over the last year? Or is there something else going on that depressed premium growth in the last quarter or two?

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Yes, Ryan, Steve, there's nothing specific in the fourth quarter. There's some kind of seasonal recognition things that occur. But I just kind of zoom back, 5% growth for the full year and we feel really good about growth going into 2025. And it may vary a little bit quarter to quarter, but feel really good that we can continue to grow those businesses.

[Ryan Krueger, Managing Director at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)]

Got it. Thanks. And then can you give a little bit more color on what is driving the expected Colonial Life sales turnaround in 2025?

[Tim Arnold, Executive Vice President of Voluntary Benefits & President of Colonial Life at Unum Group]

Yes, sure. Hey, Ryan, it's Tim. Thanks for the question. So, let me start with 2024 first. Clearly, 2024 was not the year we expected from a sales growth perspective.

[Tim Arnold, Executive Vice President of Voluntary Benefits & President of Colonial Life at Unum Group]

In the fourth quarter, we were up against an extremely strong fourth quarter in 2023 with higher than 11% growth in that quarter. That was driven by the large and jumbo market. So we had some really good success in 'twenty three with a couple of extraordinarily large clients. Maybe just building on Chris' point from the question from John, on the Colony Life brand, we view the large case market as being an opportunistic market and we've been pretty consistent about saying that through the years. We want to grow in large case but only where it makes sense from a profitability perspective for us.

[Tim Arnold, Executive Vice President of Voluntary Benefits & President of Colonial Life at Unum Group]

So premium growth last year, Steve pointed it out, but it's worth reiterating 3.3% in the range that we gave you guys earlier last year. That was driven by strong persistency and pretty good sales results at 23%. And then that led to extremely strong earnings, as Steve pointed out, from high levels of premium benefits were favorable and expense management was really good as well. As we flip the page to 2025, focus specifically on the Colonial brand, we are excited about the progress we're seeing with the strategic investments that Rick mentioned and Chris and Steve have touched on as well. Gather platform product sales are growing very, very rapidly.

[Tim Arnold, Executive Vice President of Voluntary Benefits & President of Colonial Life at Unum Group]

We're seeing good growth in sales from Colonial Life agents on the Unum product portfolio, which is really important to us going forward that we are able to offer an integrated solution to our clients. And what's really neat is when our agents sell MoneyLite voluntary unit ancillary and put it on Gather, our client gets a single bill rather than numerous bills. So we're excited about the opportunities there. We are seeing very strong adoption of our agent productivity tool. We call it Agent Assist.

[Tim Arnold, Executive Vice President of Voluntary Benefits & President of Colonial Life at Unum Group]

And when that is coupled with the fact that new agent recruiting was up 12% in the fourth quarter, in fact, the highest quarter of recruiting that we've had in recent memory, we lack our chances in 2025. Perhaps most importantly though, in the fourth quarter of last year, we did name a new SVP of sales. She has a very long history of success in our Cloning Life sales organizations, in virtually every role she's been in. She started at an entry level and worked her way up and was most recently the Vice President of Sales for one of our regions. She's a transformative execution focused leader and we're confident that she will be able to help us in 2025.

[Tim Arnold, Executive Vice President of Voluntary Benefits & President of Colonial Life at Unum Group]

We did only name her in the fourth quarter, so it may take a quarter or two to get to the place that we want to be, but we're confident we can be in the range that Steve shared.

[Ryan Krueger, Managing Director at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Alex Scott from Barclays. Your line is now open.

[Alex Scott, Insurance Research Analyst at Barclays]

Hey, good morning. First one I have is on the Unum U. S. Premium growth. I was actually interested if you could talk about persistency a bit.

[Alex Scott, Insurance Research Analyst at Barclays]

I mean, just in light of sales being as strong as they were this quarter and persistency looked like it was a pretty good outcome too probably on the back of some of the capability advantages that you have. And so I just wanted to understand like how that's translating into premium growth. It's always a little hard from the outside to do that conversion. And what sort of assumed in the premium growth guidance you've given us for 2025 in terms of persistency?

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

Yes, Alex, Chris, I probably wasn't clear enough in my previous answer, kind of that double edged sword when you think about some of the pent up demand of either market checks or RFPs related to solutions that hadn't hit the market in, say, 2022, '20 '20 '3 that drove nice persistency in 2024 for us, but there was more larger case in the market. And we won quite successfully, but it also the other side of the coin is that some of our enforced block was in play and any time it's in play, you do run the risk of losing a customer. So when I think about super strong persistency in 'twenty four, I would think about much more normalized persistency in 'twenty five and that's part of it. We still get excited about capabilities and solutions when we're solving bigger problems that customers will stick longer. But that's only a portion of our block and it will take time to make that the more and more significant part of our overall business.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

And Alex, just to make it clear, so oneone renewals, kind of the results of that will be reflected in our first quarter persistency. And so as we go into next year, we'll report kind of the results of that as we go forward.

[Alex Scott, Insurance Research Analyst at Barclays]

Got you. Okay. And then I had one more on Long Term Care. Appreciate the way that you guys think about it in terms of protection against your base case. But I did think it was interesting that in this around $200,000,000 lower impact, if that's tax related and the tax rate is around $20,000,000 then sort of assumes that the equity in Fairwind got significantly better.

[Alex Scott, Insurance Research Analyst at Barclays]

And so I'm just interested where that sits at this point. I mean, how does that compare to a statutory reserve? I think some of these metrics may help us frame things and particularly when we're comparing and contrasting to some of the transactions Manulife done and so forth?

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Yes. This is Steve. I'll take that one. So, you're right. I mean, we anticipated coming into 2024 that given where rates were and how that works its way into our new money rate assumption for the premium deficiency reserve, that we would see our discount rate over time

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

move up

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

due to that fact. And we did see that as we went through 'twenty four and kind of finalized what would be our year end valuation on the premium deficiency reserve. So we were able to release some premium deficiency reserve during the period. The interest rate component of that would be very consistent with what you'd have seen in some of the sensitivities that we provided, I guess, last year as part of our outlook meeting. When those basically transition, though, from the reserve to, in essence, capital, it is tax affected.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

And that works that way both ways. When we set up the PDR, there is a tax benefit related to that. When we release it, there's a tax expense. So, you're thinking about it right. And that's why we're kind of indifferent to whether it resides in reserves or capital, and that's why we're not really breaking those two down and reporting those separately.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

We kind of think about it in aggregate as the protection we have. And importantly, we think of it that way because we're leaving all of that excess capital in Fairwind. And so, you're right, it's the simple math of the protection that we report went from 2.8 to 2.6 because there were some tax friction as we released those premium deficiency reserves during the year. The other thing that I would just note is the sensitivities that we do give, those were kind of a multiple year sensitivity as those rates work their way to the calculation. That's not necessarily a one year event.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

And so, you'll see that recognition kind of over multiple years as it works its way into the three year trailing average.

[Ryan Krueger, Managing Director at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)]

Got it. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Suneet Kamath from Jefferies. Your line is now open.

[Suneet Kamath, Senior Research Analyst at Jefferies & Company Inc]

I wanted to start with Long Term Care. I mean, one of the things that we saw with the two Manulife deals were the company sort of bundled some asset intensive business with the Long Term Care in order to transact. And I don't think about Unum as having a bunch of asset intensive business, but I guess how are you thinking about the possibility of bundling some non LTC exposure if you were to transact?

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

Yes. Thanks, Suneet. I think we've talked about this in the past, but talking about we do have multiple lines of out there. So we don't see that as a constraint in terms of what that might look like. Now we don't have asset intensive, maybe annuity type businesses, but we've got some good returning businesses that would have that potential.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

And so I think that, like I said, I don't think it's a constraint. I think it would be part of consideration as we talk to other counterparties to put together something that makes sense for them, makes sense for us and overall, so.

[Suneet Kamath, Senior Research Analyst at Jefferies & Company Inc]

Okay. Got it. And then I guess on your capital, I mean, I think, Rick, you'd said your top priority is organic growth, which makes sense. But do you have a rule of thumb or helping us frame how much capital do you need to support the growth plans that you have in your 2025 outlook?

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

Yes. I think that when you look at the capital that's needed for organic growth, it's pretty consistent. And so without breaking that out specifically, I think year over year that hasn't changed much. And so if we kind of were able to do a whole lot more, would it consume a lot more capital? It depends on the line.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

But many, many of our lines are actually pretty low consumptive from a capital perspective. So we say that, we want to do that, we want to continue to invest in those lines, but that's not necessarily going to be the largest use of what we have out there. So but we just want to make sure that is the priority. It is about growth. And then you can weave kind of the M and A type of things that we can add into that to also grow the premium line.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

So hopefully, that's helpful, but it's this growth engine has been very consistent. We show you the chart of premiums. And as a result, the capital consumptive nature of it has been a steady state for many, many years.

[Suneet Kamath, Senior Research Analyst at Jefferies & Company Inc]

If I could just sneak one more in just relatedly. M and A wise, what sort of size transaction would you guys be thinking about? I think in the past, you talked about a couple of hundred million dollars but I just want to get an update there.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

Yes. I think that that would probably be consistent. And we really haven't talked about the size so much as the type of transaction we look at and these are capability driven type transactions. Could be a technology, could be something on distribution side, which would denote a little bit smaller transaction. Would we move up from that?

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

I don't think, materially, it's all going to be all about growing that premium line. So we try to stay away from the exact size, but I think the types of transactions that we talk about, type of companies we'd like to buy are probably in that smaller range.

[Suneet Kamath, Senior Research Analyst at Jefferies & Company Inc]

Okay, got it. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Josh Shanker from Bank of America. Your line is now open.

[Joshua Shanker, Research Analyst at Bank of America]

Yes, thank you for taking my question. I want to talk a little bit at the beginning of the Q and A, we talked about the competitive environment and how you're seeing about pricing. I want to understand, are you thinking that your pricing current disability in the low 60s type benefit ratio range, but you expect that the favorability trends will continue and they might be better than that? Or are you pricing right now for sub-sixty type experience?

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

Yes. Josh, thanks for the question. Again, stepping back, we have the power through the bundle of both solutions and products that we can put together to be flexible with our customers to set that long term pricing plan at a place that they're comfortable and that we can expect to have. Sometimes you've got to make rate adjustments up and down, but to make them in the more modest sense. And again, when you're talking about bundling of things like lead management or ACM capabilities, it does take a little bit of the kind of bottom line nature of the conversation away, which is a good thing.

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

So we're counting on our claims organization to continue to perform at the level that they are. They've shown a great history of that. We feel like we can put that together with reasonable pricing so that we can continue on this very good trajectory that we've been on for some time. And as you can see, we've gotten the loss ratios to be kind of low 60s, but keeping where we are for the period of time on both disability and life insurance creeping up towards the 70s. But again, feel like we're in a really good spot there as well.

[Joshua Shanker, Research Analyst at Bank of America]

And I guess, how much is price factor in your ability to win business? If you were to say, you know what, we're willing to price 300, four hundred basis points, less margin than we have currently been earning, would it stimulate much growth?

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

Josh, I think down market, if you wanted to make a play to win a pure commodity buyer, you could fairly quickly change your sales trajectory if you want to win there. Up market, a lot of customers really do look for value first. So even if they see some sort of a meaningfully discounted offer from a carrier, listen, certainly there are times when a company has to make an economic decision and take advantage of every bit of savings they can, but that's the minority. Most of and we it's part of the reason we really like that mid and upper market, large market, where more value conversations happen and that's less likely to be the driver. Again, I've been doing this for a long time.

[Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits at Unum Group]

I do not want to suggest the price doesn't matter, it does. But again, the whole package is what's at play and just underpricing by three or four points isn't going to lead to long term success from a growth perspective.

[Joshua Shanker, Research Analyst at Bank of America]

Thank you for the answers.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Mark Hughes from Truist Securities. Your line is now open.

[Mark Hughes, Analyst at Truist Securities]

Yes. Thank you. Just one quick one. You talked about a lot of optionality in the potential risk transfer for the long term care block. How much do you prioritize just getting a full solution so it's entirely off your books or maybe a partial solution that just has components of the block?

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

Yes, Mark, it's Rick. I think about a full solution, that's probably if you go back five plus years, we would talk about that. Just given the size of the block, I think realistically that's why we think about the tranches. Ultimately, we would like to be off the entire risk. But I think it's much more reasonable to think about it in terms of piece by piece.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

And so that's what we're approaching. That's why we say we can take out any part of the block from a structuring perspective. And so we're going to focus on that. I think that's the realistic way that that's going to happen. Longer term, sure, we want to be off the block, but I think it's going to be a little bit broken into a couple of pieces as we do that.

[Mark Hughes, Analyst at Truist Securities]

Appreciate it.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Jack Madden from BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

[Jack Matten, Vice President Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets]

Hi, good morning. Just a quick question on the closed block segment outlook and the LTC net premium ratio, which ticked up slightly from last quarter. I know you called out that Ensign continues to run a little bit above your longer term expectation. Just wondering if you could unpack that at all on what's driving that and why you're confident that that could moderate going into 2025?

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Yes. This

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

is Steve. I'll hand

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

I'll now talk a little

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

bit about the quarter and then maybe talk a little bit about kind of our view of the outlook for 2025 and what the underpinnings of that is. So, for the quarter, yes, we did see incidents continue at a level that would be elevated from our longer term expectations. It's pretty consistent with third quarter. And so, what we're seeing, we still feel good that as we get into next year, incidents will continue to kind of drift down to more normalized levels. And we're seeing our kind of inventory of claims indicate that that probably is going to be the case as we go into next year.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

So, that dynamic is incorporated into how we think about just claims performance in 2025 and is part of the driver of our range going up a bit from what we would have put out there and what our actuals were in 2024. The other thing for the quarter, which we don't think is going to necessarily continue, was we did see kind of lower impact from claimant mortality. And I think in kind of our public statements in the earnings release, we talk about kind of terminations. Specifically, that was claimant mortality. We saw the count pretty consistent with our expectations, but the average size of claim related to those claimants was lower than what we would expect.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

We think that's kind of just a one quarter thing. Both of those things would have had a modest negative impact on our net premium ratio, and so that did go up pretty modestly 10 basis points. We don't think that continues. It hasn't really been incorporated into an outlook for 2025. The other thing that we are looking at though is our alternative investment portfolio.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Our I mentioned our yield annual yield for the fourth quarter was about 9%. For the full year, that was a little under 8%. Our longer term expectation for that would be 8% to 10%, and that's what we would have incorporated into our 2025 outlook. So, we finished the year at just over, I guess, or just under $140,000,000 for the full year in closed block. The guidance we gave was $140,000,000 to $170,000,000 and so those two dynamics around incidence maybe continuing to abate as well as better yields on the alt portfolio is really driving that increase in the range that we set.

[Jack Matten, Vice President Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets]

That's helpful. Thank you. And then just a follow-up on capital generation. Is a nice step up in the outlook for U. S.

[Jack Matten, Vice President Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets]

Stat earnings and international dividends. I guess, is there anything notable driving the improved outlook? It seems like the capital consumption from organic growth isn't expected to really change meaningfully, but just wondering if there's anything notable driving your 2025 expectation?

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

No, just growth. We continue to have very solid margins across both the international businesses as well as our US insurance subsidiaries. And so, all you're seeing is kind of the growth that we anticipate in top line kind of flowing through to statutory earnings generation.

[Jack Matten, Vice President Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Jamie Mueller from JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

[Jimmy Bhullar, Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan]

Hi, good morning. Most of my questions were answered, but maybe on the disability on the long term care block. What is it that and you've obviously expressed confidence in your reserves, but what is it from that we could monitor from the outside, whether it's just overall earnings or net premium ratio or something that

[Jimmy Bhullar, Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan]

gives

[Jimmy Bhullar, Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan]

us an idea if you're getting to a point where maybe you'd need to adjust your reserves again?

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Yes. I think, Jimmy, we've been pretty consistent that the metrics that we're going to be talking about would relate to just absolute earnings on the block and we will talk about that as we go quarter to quarter, just the claims dynamics that we're seeing within the block. Two would be the net premium ratio, which we continue to disclose that on a quarterly basis. And then just how we think about the hedging program and what we're able to achieve there and the protection that gives. And then I would just add to that the success that we've had on our premium rate program and we'll continue to disclose just the progress we've made there.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

So, that's kind of what we were able to put out there in the market in 2024 and that's what we'll continue to do and then obviously update on just the broader protections that we feel we have against the block. Ultimately, there's going to be gap dynamics as far as having best estimate reserves, but for us, the key thing there relates to capital needs of that business. And I think, looking at the protections that we think we have with our statutory or regulatory reserves is probably one of the best indicators to just think about capital requirements for that business.

[Jimmy Bhullar, Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan]

Okay. And then on your share buyback guidance, a fairly wide range. What besides earnings, what are the things that would make QB at the higher end closer to $1,000,000,000 versus maybe around $500,000,000

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

Yes. I think about the flexibility that we have and the dynamic repurchase we have over the course of the year. I mentioned M and A, so certainly that would be a use of capital. But even with the types of transactions we talked about, we'll have significant capital as we end the year. So it's going to be more judgment in terms of as we look at the pace at which we go at buying back our shares over the course of the year.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

And so I'm sure we'll talk about it on a quarterly basis, but we start the year in a really strong spot and expect that we'll be in the market right away buying back shares and we'll just have to see

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

the pace at which we do that.

[Jimmy Bhullar, Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your final question comes from Michael Ward from UBS. Your line is now open.

[Michael Ward, Analyst at UBS Group]

Thanks for squeezing me in guys. On back to just voluntary benefits, I know there's

[Michael Ward, Analyst at UBS Group]

been a lot of focus there and you're comfortable with earnings power, but I don't think we've actually discussed kind of the underlying claim activity or product lines in voluntary. Is it simply just a random incidence tick up, hospitalizations, indemnity payouts? Or is it severity or anything else?

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Yeah. And it's been kind of

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

a different story quarter to quarter. In some quarters, hospital indemnity, we've had higher levels of claims. In some, disability, we've had higher incidence of claims. I would say for each of those product lines, we haven't seen a consistent unfavorable trend that we kind of predict out into the future will continue. So, it's one of those things that we have a lot of different product lines kind of embedded in voluntary benefits.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

And over the last couple of quarters, we've just had some unfavorable claims experience that has hit multiple product lines. And, again, we just think that's some volatility that should play out over time.

[Michael Ward, Analyst at UBS Group]

Okay. And then, maybe are you able to sort of quantify the impact from recoveries and how that's helped group disability loss ratio maybe like for 24 or just in general over the last few years?

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Yeah. There's kind of a lot of moving parts to that. I mean, obviously, the benefit ratio within group disability is an indicator. If I go all the way back to kind of pre pandemic, that probably ran in the low 70s. Since that period of time, we've been on a bit of a ride for incidence trends, but those go back to more, I'd say, historic levels and probably are pretty consistent.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

There's obviously been different pricing that's occurred over that period of time. But I would say one of the main drivers of that change in the benefit ratio would be the improvement that we've seen in recovery trends.

[Michael Ward, Analyst at UBS Group]

That's helpful. Thank you, Steve.

[Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer at Unum Group]

Thanks, Mike.

[Operator]

We are now closing the Q and A session. I'd now like to hand back to Rick McKenney for final remarks.

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

Great. Thank you all

[Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer at Unum Group]

for joining us and thank you for all the questions. If you do have further questions, please do reach out to the team and we will also be active over the next few weeks as soon as Monday out there talking about what we're doing at different events and look forward to seeing a number of you from this call at AIFA at the March. And with that, operator, that concludes our call. Thanks, everyone.

[Operator]

Thank you for attending today's call. You may now disconnect. Have a wonderful day.

Participants

Executives

• Matt Royal, Senior Vice President-Investor Relations
• Rick McKenney, President and Chief Executive Officer
• Steve Zabel, Chief Financial Officer
• Christopher Pyne, Executive Vice President of Group Benefits

Analysts

• Tom Gallagher, Analyst at Evercore
• Elyse Greenspan, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities
• Wes Carmichael, Senior Analyst at Autonomous Research
• Joel Hurwitz, Lead Analyst at Dowling & Partners
• John Barnidge, Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies
• Ryan Krueger, Managing Director at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)
• Tim Arnold, Executive Vice President of Voluntary Benefits & President of Colonial Life at Unum Group
• Alex Scott, Insurance Research Analyst at Barclays
• Suneet Kamath, Senior Research Analyst at Jefferies & Company Inc
• Joshua Shanker, Research Analyst at Bank of America
• Mark Hughes, Analyst at Truist Securities
• Jack Matten, Vice President Equity Research at BMO Capital Markets
• Jimmy Bhullar, Equity Research Analyst at JP Morgan
• Michael Ward, Analyst at UBS Group