Hello, this is David Alexander, Deputy CEO of the Phoenix Holdings. Thank you for joining us today for the group's financial review for the Q1 of 2023. The call today will be led by Phoenix Holdings CEO, Eyal Ben Simon, and CFO, Eli Schwartz. The presentation for the call can be found on our website or on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange website. This presentation provides key points on the financial statements released this morning and should be read together with the full financials. At the end of the call, we'll answer questions that were discussed today on the Hebrew call. You can send any additional questions to us individually or to the email address ir@fnx.co.il. We'll also make ourselves available to meet with investors to schedule Zoom calls to discuss performance, strategy, or any questions you may have. Please note that this call will include forward-looking statements and that the actual future results may be different. In addition to the presentation and the call, the group's performance can best be understood together with the full financial statements available on our website. In terms of the agenda, Eyal Ben Simon, CEO, will highlight the key results and discuss our strategy and targets. Eli Schwartz, the group CFO, will review the financial results and segment breakdown in more detail. Hello, thank you for joining the call today. Phoenix is a leading Israeli financial group with broad insurance, asset management, distribution, and credit activities. The group has strong resilience and flexibility, especially in challenging times like these, with a strong balance sheet and solvency ratio. In the last five years, Phoenix has grown assets under management by 20% annually with an average ROE of 15%. We manage ILS 386 billion, which is over $100 billion. The Israel economy continued to grow in the Q1, with annual inflation at around 5%. The Bank of Israel continues increasing rates as recently as last week. Israeli capital markets were volatile during the Q1, impacting our investment performance, conditions have improved in April and May. Looking ahead, market volatility is expected to continue in the coming months. In the Q1, Phoenix created ILS 81 million in comprehensive income. This includes ILS 301 million from core businesses, less ILS 208 negative impact of capital markets and special items. This was driven by strong income from core businesses, both insurance and fee-based activities. Israeli capital markets underperformed in the Q1, April and May have been better for investors. Assets under management grew to ILS 386 billion due to continued inflows and assets from two acquisitions. Solvency increased to 211% as of December 2022 with transition measures. Last week, Phoenix became the 1st Israeli insurance group to obtain an international rating. Moody's initiated rating with an A2 rating, the same as the Israeli banks. Here we see breakdown of income. During the quarter, on the right-hand side of the slide, we reported ILS 201 million income from insurance core business and ILS 100 million from additional core businesses. At the same time, there was ILS 208 million negative impact from capital markets, which include investment returns below 3% real yields, offset by interest rate effects. Return on equity for the quarter was 3.3%, but when looking only at the income from core businesses, the normalized return on equity was 12.4%. An important driver of group performance in the last few quarters in the corporate account. This is actually the investment activity. During the Q1, returns were nominal at 1.9% on an annualized basis, well below the 3% real yields we use for planning and transparency. We have a significant allocation to Israeli investments, which performed poorly during the Q1 and better since then. Our accounting is mark-to-market. On the one hand, this creates quarterly volatility, like we see in this quarter. On the other hand, it creates better transparency internally and for investors than accounting based on hold-to-maturity, which has created problems for U.S. banks this year. You can see the broad allocation of our Nostro investments on the right, with roughly 70% in fixed income. We remain focused on dynamic investment and risk management, especially in this period, including regarding changes in the interest rates and balance sheet management. This year, we distributed a dividend of ILS 177 million from 2022 income. In addition, the group announced share buyback program from 2023 in the amount of ILS 100 million, which we started executing in the Q1. The group will continue to distribute dividends from its profits based on our dividend policy, building our track record while strengthening the group's capital. We will now review the implementation of the strategy and the progress toward our strategic targets. Excuse me. During the quarter, we continued to implement the strategy across all activities in all four growth engines: insurance, asset management, distribution, and credit. The strategy consists of four value drivers. The first accelerating growth is in high Return on equity activities and shifting our mix to more valuable capital-light activities. For example, we grew in P&C and asset management. Second, we continue to organize for improved client focus with innovation and efficiency, deepening our competitive advantage. Here, we are moving fast on the digitizing activities and have set up agile teams to bring product and technology closer together. Third, we actively manage the group and our business portfolio to unlock and create value. We made acquisitions in asset management, for example. Fourth, we're increasingly deploying capital efficiency against our priorities to reduce volatility and generate higher returns. For example, growing solvency and obtaining international ratings. We manage each of these value drivers across the group's activities. This strategy aims to create value with several catalysts, growing income and shifting the mix toward fee-based income, expanding margins and deepening competitive advantage, executing M&As and unlocking value across the group, and driving cash flow and excess returns. Regarding our targets, capital markets had an impact this quarter on income and Return on equity. Still, we're confident in the targets we set and our ability to achieve them in the long term. We can now look at each business separately. Insurance, we speak about continued growth. First, in the insurance businesses, we see a decline in total premiums and contribution. However, this is due primarily to savings policies, which are impacted by capital markets performance, where inflows were still positive, even if below last year. More importantly, overall premiums were stable with strong growth in the strategic P&C segment from ILS 1 billion, ILS 1.2 billion in the Q1, of course. Our insurance targets in terms of insurance business targets, P&C premiums continue to grow, and we expect to be on track for the medium-term target. Expense ratio were higher due to seasonality. Solvency increased to 211% with transition measures, and comprehensive income without capital markets effects grew to ILS 201 million during the Q1. On asset management, the second business as we defined is asset management. The second strategic business is asset management. As of the end of the Q1, our asset under management stood at ILS 386 billion, up from ILS 371 billion in December. The growth is due to both the continued inflows and also ILS 8 billion integrated from the acquisition of Epsilon and the portfolio management of activities of Psagot. There are additional Psagot assets that are subject to regulatory approval for acquisition and integration, not included here. The inflows across our activities are due to the group capabilities, track record, distribution service, and branding, of course. We are also progressing toward our targets for asset management. During the quarter, pension and provident contributions grew to ILS 3.6 billion, as well as continued growth in revenues from our investment house activity that grew to ILS 166 million. The third business is distribution. The Phoenix Agencies is the leading platform in Israel for insurance agencies and brokers, including benefits and payroll administration and financial planning. The agencies continue to grow, but with 6% market share, there is still a lot of potential. They are managed on a standalone basis with the goal of creating value, not just distributing Phoenix products. They generate strong cash flows, are capital efficient, and have attractive business models. We have started to assess options to attract a new international investor to the Phoenix Agencies. If we decide to do this, it would help accelerate value creation in the medium term and also unlock value in the short term, given the value at which they are held on the balance sheet. We'll update further if and when it is appropriate. The fourth strategic business is credit. The group portfolio was at ILS 5.3 billion as of the end of the quarter, growth was driven by project and real estate activities. Gama grew in some segments and proactively reduced exposure in other segments. This also does not yet include consumer credit, which we are building in parallel. Given the challenging macro trends and ongoing uncertainty, we continue to grow carefully, ensuring strong risk management and monitoring and controls. Going forward, we believe credit will be an important source of value creation in the years to come. Going forward, we continue to focus on resilience, growth, and value creation. We are positioned well for market volatility with a strong balance sheet and good liquidity. We're assessing opportunities and can make acquisition if they have a good strategic and economic fit. We continue to invest in capabilities as part of the strategy, including data and digital skills, as well as our organization and client-focused culture. In terms of sustainability, we are now rated by international rating agency S&P as above average for the sector globally. We'll publish our annual ESG report and provide more details of what we have been doing over the past year. I would now like to hand over the presentation to Eli Schwartz, the group's CFO, who will review the financial results and segments in more details. Please, Eli. Thank you, Eyal. During the Q1, group income was ILS 81 million after tax. We saw good growth in P&C investment service and credit compared to last year. Investment performance related in insurance had a significant negative impact, where income was driven essentially by additional core business. If we look at the breakdown by the income source, during the Q1, the total income before tax was ILS 132 million. On the left, the income from operation before tax grew to ILS 467 million, including ILS 304 million from insurance underwriting. This is significantly above last year. On the right, however, we saw a negative impact of investment income, partially offset by interest rate effect. Interest rate effect was significantly smaller than in the Q1 of last year. The strong balance sheet, the debt breakdown, and the solvency position provide financial strength to the group. The support of the group ability to capture business opportunities going forward. Currently, the debt is denominated in shekels. However, with the international credit rating, we expect in future to be able to raise capital internally in dollar. By doing this, we hope to further improve our capital position and to reduce exposure to exchange rate. Solvency for the end of December was 211 with transition measures and 149 without transition measures. The growth in the solvency ratio since June is due to primarily by raising interest rate. This strong solvency positions allow us the flexibility in strategic choices and investment allocations and give us a room for when interest rate come down. We will now review each segment in more details. The P&C segment continues to show improvement with ILS 112 million underwriting profit in quarter. We see that motor is still impacted by rising claims cost, but we can see the improvement in the loss ratio. The Health segment contribute ILS 150 million during the quarter. The difference compared to the Q1 in the last year is primarily the smaller positive impact of rising interest rate. The Life segment are the loss of before tax of ILS 77 million. Underwriting profit improved, but profit was impacted negatively by investment performance. Rising rates had smaller impact than last year. Other equity returns had significant negative impact of ILS 183 million pre-tax income. Moving to the asset management segment, in pension and provident funds income contribution was stable. The investment service segment include the Phoenix Investments House and Phoenix Advanced Investments. For the first time after structural changes last year, we break out the contribution from the different activities to provide more transparency on the business. The activities contribute ILS 51 million growing compared to last year. This growing was driven by the broker services, which are counter-cycle and benefit from volatile market and higher rates on credit. The Agencies segment delivered stable income contribution, which has a little exposure to capital market. Growth was limited during the quarter due to a lower rate new employees hiring in the Israeli market, resulting in lower one-time fees for agents. The Credit segment, which include Gama results, generated income of ILS 28 million in the quarter. Gama continued to grow in key business lending, guarantees, and credit card segment. However, Gama proactively reduced exposure to check clearing as a part of a cautious risk management approach given market trends. Loan expense were under ILS 3 million, of which ILS 2 million were provisioned for bad debts. Thank you, Eli. We'll now review the questions that were discussed in the conference call in Hebrew. First question about the capital market and its effect on the Group's performance. What are you doing to reduce the negative effect of the capital markets? Well, in the short term, investment management, we are actually taking care of hedging what we're doing and defensive positions. In the mid-term, growth in activity without market exposure, shifting business mix, and of course, eventually creating a more balanced Group. Second question about the Agencies. Why are you thinking about bringing an international investor to the Phoenix Agencies? Well, first, we learn from looking at the international big moves that agencies, it's a global trend of theme of activity, of investment activity. We at Phoenix, as we said, see agencies activity on a standalone basis. We believe that by integrating a leading investor, we'll be able to create much more value given the fragmented market we have here in Israel, given our market share, which actually is only 6%, and given the potential and opportunities we see in this market. We believe that integrating and working together with a leading investor that sees this activity globally can create much more value, and of course, in the short term, unlock a huge amount of value to Phoenix. Still, when things will become more close to execution, we'll be more informative in the future. Next question about the motor segment in the P&C. Motor results improved this quarter. Is this the end of the cycle in Israel? Actually, the cycle is not only in Israel, as far as we understand. In Israel, as we said before, it's a cycle of 18 to 24 months. We ended the 18 months, so it's actually at the end of the cycle, and we saw the numbers, which are much more reasonable, much more profitable. Still it's on the red zone, but still more reasonable than it was a year ago. What we did, we used, as we said in previous quarters, very detailed models of machine learning using big data tools to improve our activity, and we already implement it, so we do see improvement. Next question. What are the main drivers behind the growth in the profit from core activities? Phoenix Group set up four main engines or four main businesses to create value through. We committed to very challenging numbers. As we said, we intend to mitigate and maybe even to exceed those targets. We put a very strong and very detailed plan behind each and every activity to support those targets. We put lot of efforts, whether it's technology efforts, manpower, the best professional that we can bring to make these plans happen, and of course, allocation of our capital in the most sufficient way to meet those targets. As we said, we believe in those targets. We'll meet those targets, and definitely it's challenging, but doable. Next question. How do you manage credit exposures in this environment? From 2021, we strengthened our underwriting and risk management infrastructures. You can see from the slide of Gama that Gama have a proactive reducing exposure to check clearing, that is higher risk area. We are doing this activity risk and underwriting infrastructure in the insurance Gama and the brokerage. Next question. We've seen problems with balance sheets related to hold-to-maturity in the area of fixed income in the U.S. Is there such an issue in Israel, and specifically at the Phoenix? We in the Phoenix using a mark-to-market, so we are less exposed than the other European insurance. The Israeli bank is using the hold-to-maturity in some cases, and as I mentioned, many of financial institute in U.S. and EU. Mark-to-market produce a volatility that we see in the profit and loss, but also is more conservative and ensure transparency to investor confidence. Next question. How does the change in short and long-term yields affect Phoenix's performance? The Phoenix target is 3% real yield, future interest changes will help us to meet this goal. For the situation of reducing interest, we have the flexibility of the solvency and a very low leverage as Eyal mentioned. Next question, related. It seems that interest rates in Israel will be higher than the estimates that existed in the past. Will you change your return threshold for normalization, which is 3% real yields? Actually, no. In long run, our results are well over 3% on real basis, and we believe on the long-term, it will continue to be so. The last question about health insurance in Israel. There's discussion of a change that would reduce private policy overlapping coverage with HMO coverage. If such a change is adopted, how would it affect the industry in general and the Phoenix in particular? I'll start with the Phoenix in particular. Our strategy, as we said before, is to minimize the impact of health in our total group results. This segment, we have less exposure to this segment if you compare us to the industry. Generally, I believe the market will adapt to the changes, and in the long run, these new regulations won't be that dramatic on the results of the health businesses. These are the questions. Investors are also welcome to contact us directly at any time or via email at ir@fnx.co.il. We'll be happy to schedule meetings to meet with investors, to answer questions, to discuss our performance, or to talk about our strategy in more detail. Finally, we should mention that you'll find the presentation that was discussed on the call today, other materials, financial statements, and starting tomorrow, a recording of this call as well, all on our website. Thank you again for joining the call.
Loading workspace