It's a pleasure to be here with Equitable CFO, Robin Raju. We're going to talk about the company. I think I'll just jump into some questions. Maybe just starting out with the businesses, Robin. Individual retirement is the big piece, probably more than 50% of earnings. What's the long-term growth outlook for individual retirement and this business? How do you see that growing? Sure. Thanks for having me, Andrew. Really appreciate being here. It's probably one of my favorite businesses because I was running that business before I became CFO. I may be a little bit biased in my comments here. If you look at the U.S. retirement market, there's almost a $1 trillion opportunity gap there in terms of needs for folks, for Americans as they retire. 10,000 Americans retire every day. The opportunity is better than any other market in the world. I know that because when I worked for AXA and I was in Paris, we assessed every market in the world. This is the best retirement market to be in. Right? Now how we've positioned the business, especially that individual retirement business, repositioned it away from legacy VAs, which is now only 18% of the total retirement AUM in the business, created a new marketplace in the RILA. We were first in the RILA market in 2011. That's the buffered equity product. That serves a need for clients who want equity exposure but are concerned about downside protection. We tapped that market. It's now the fastest-growing market in the U.S. retirement market. We're number 1 in that. We had another record quarter in fourth quarter with over $2 billion of sales in that market. We continue to capture the need of U.S. Americans in that retirement gap and solve what they're looking for. It's not only SCS. That's just one element. It's an all-product portfolio. Pre-2008, we sold one product. Now we have four products within that market that solve different retirement needs. We continue to see growth. It's great momentum coming in through our Equitable Advisors distribution and also with select third parties. We're excited about that market. That's where we really make a difference and leverage our edge in product innovation. Robin, it was pretty stunning. In 2021, your total annuity sales were up 53%- Yeah In a year. It's amazing too because this buffered annuity product has, because of your success being a pioneer, it's invited a lot of competition. Do you think you can continue to grow total annuity sales? Maybe not 53%- Yeah but- Look, we ended the year over $11 billion in total annuity sales. That was our highest level since 2008 overall. I like to talk about it in the different pieces within. Within the RILA market, that's obviously the fastest-growing. We also have an investment-only annuity product. No guarantees, just tax-sheltered gains that doubled in volumes during the year. Our floating rate GMXB product, that increased 30% year-over-year. We just came out with a new VUL income product that takes the best of that SCS product and puts an income version on it across the board. We continue to see momentum. We continue to invest in innovation. We think innovation drives that need overall. More importantly, though, the value, the margin is still there. Despite it being in every competitor's product portfolio, we still see good value in the product, and that's because of our distribution with Equitable Advisors. We have 4,400 agents that focus and sell that product, and it continues to have strong momentum. I'm excited with all those products that I mentioned. I'm excited about the prospects going forward. The portfolio doesn't allow us to be grounded in one solution. We have solutions if people are worried about inflation. We have solutions if people need income now. We have solutions if people need income later. We have solution if people are trying to figure out what to do with their capital gains that they can harvest in an investment-only vehicle. Those solutions meet different needs for clients along their life journey, and that's why we're bullish on the retirement market. I think these are great products. I particularly do like this buffered product where I think at some point in time, investors will value that even more than a mutual fund, just given the stickiness and the Absolutely efficiency of the hedging. You get a lot of people who focus on that 18% of the retirement block Sure the legacy variable annuity. I know you did a transaction, gosh, it's been over a year now, with Venerable. It's a year and a half maybe, right? Yeah. We closed it in June of 2021. June of 2021 announced it in October, right? That's right. Earlier, right. Now you've got a big block left. It's a N.Y.-based block. What do you want to do with that? Is that a possibility that you might be able to offload it? Sure. Let me just go back to the Venerable transaction. Sure What that's designed to do. We took a third of our legacy VA policies, and we reduced the risk of our in-force by two-thirds. It was a concentrated block that had high risk to it, and we received a positive cede from Venerable. That validated our economic approach to how we manage those reserves. Now, the remaining legacy VA product, it's New York based, some outside of New York, different series as well, but there's less risk. It's two-thirds of those policies and a third of the risk is spread out overall. We'll continue to see outflows in that. We're not trying to retain that business. There's $3.3 billion of annual outflows in that. If we see another opportunity to do another transaction, we'd certainly look at it for that block of business. Are you getting I know you can't say what you're going to do, but are you getting a lot of interest from the private capital markets to talk? Absolutely. Yeah. The market's never been more robust in terms of the number of buyers, right? For us, it's about reinsurance. In reinsurance, you're not looking at just getting your best headline price. You're really looking at the counterparty protections that you have, your trust that you have, and then at the end of the day, for us, it's always about is it worth more in someone else's hands than it is in ours, right? That's our internal economic value that we put on different blocks. If someone is willing to pay more for a block than we value it internally, then it's accretive to shareholders. It would be a good transaction for us to look at. Those are the type of things that we look at when we think about different blocks and buyers in the marketplace. Robin, you do think that there's an appetite out there? There's a- It could be worth something more potentially than what you think it's worth. Yes. Well, we saw that in the Venerable transaction, right? Right. We got a positive cede on the Venerable transaction for. That's how we look at blocks, right? We look at all these blocks similar. I would expect over time when we get there that there would be an opportunity. That's awesome. Maybe shifting over to group retirement. Maybe thinking about the longer term growth of this business. We saw core earnings have bumped around a lot Yeah with equity markets and rates. They were up 25% in 2020. They were up nicely in 2021, up 6% in 2019. I mean, they've bounced a bit, and flows have generally been positive Yeah not massively positive. How does this business play out over time from an earnings standpoint, from a flow standpoint? Sure. Just the business itself, it's really a sweet spot for us. We're number one in the K-12 403(b) business, and we have 1,100 dedicated Equitable Advisors that go into that market. What are they doing? They're going into those 8,700 school districts that Equitable can service, and they're sitting down with teachers, municipality by municipality, and educating them on their pension plans that they have in their local municipalities, and how retirement solutions to supplement that can enhance their retirement. It's really a value-added business. It's a high-margin business. The Advisors work for their fee, because they're really adding value to teachers as they think about retirement and where they need to be as they go on through that journey overall. The market itself, it's a tremendous market, but our edge is the 1,100 Advisors on the ground. That's our edge that others don't have in the marketplace. You need to be on the ground in the 403(b) K-12 market. It's not an RFP market like the higher end 457(b) market or even 401(k). You need people on the ground. It's a big differentiator for us. Last year, we saw our policy counts increase 2% year-over-year. It's still one of those businesses where we're not operating yet above pre-pandemic levels, because a lot of the schools haven't been fully open. We're seeing that shift and stronger momentum in the second half. Renewals were up 7% year-over-year. I really focus on renewals because that measures client engagement. Are you engaging with the teachers to have them increase their contributions overall? For most of these accounts, it's not like traditional retirement plans where it's a percentage of your income. Teachers have to go in and put in the dollar amount. It's really client engagement that's occurring, and we're investing in digital tools, and the team's leveraging that. Once we're fully back on the ground and in the field, again, I'm excited about that market, but it's because of those 1,100 advisors on the ground. Just from a regulatory standpoint, you think that the regulators appreciate the value that these advisors bring to the teachers and are not going to put some regulations- Absolutely. At the end of the day, the teachers need that help and support. An advisor's going to the kindergarten class, sitting in the chair of a kindergartner with a teacher and sitting down and going through their plans. It's really advice-driven model, at the end of the day. They're providing good asset allocation advice. Within that business, about 70% of the Customer count is going to separate account, about 30% in a general account. It's good asset allocation advice too for teachers. Got it. 77% of the account value, this is going back, the end of 2000, that was 403, and I guess a little bit of 457. Yeah. You've got this 401 market that we hear about a lot, the private market. Interest there? Do you want to acquire? Do you want to grow it? What are you thinking on 401? Yeah. 401, it's an ancillary business, our advisors can help support small businesses. Together, a lot of our small businesses enable an advisor to go in, offer a corporate 401, offer COLI executive benefits for small businesses, and now we have employee benefits. It's really supporting a small business sale. It's not something that we look at from M&A. When I think of 401, what really excites me is with the SECURE Act putting guaranteed income in 401 plans. There we have unique partnership with BlackRock and with AllianceBernstein, and we're starting to see some traction. I would put that into horizon three for us. We'll start to see some traction this year, for me, that's the future of 401s, that's where we want to play, providing guaranteed income for clients, in big 401s, behind these asset managers like BlackRock and AllianceBernstein, who we have partnerships with today. That's interesting. That's something I read about a while back, and you said something like third what? Third horizon? It's like we think of what's horizon 1, that's your core edge, and horizon 2 as an emerging business that's generating profits. That would be like our wealth management business that has $83 billion of AUA. If I think of horizon 3, that's where we plant small seeds. That's this secure income market with BlackRock and with AllianceBernstein. That might be a few years out before we start to see anything meaningful. Yeah. We'll start to see premium this year. Okay. Really our meaningful earnings, that's going to be a few years out, for sure. A few years out. I think that is the future, Andrew, for the retirement market. 401(k)s like yourselves and mine, they're going to need these type of options within. Us being able to partner with BlackRock and AllianceBernstein to do so enables us to have a differentiator to going into that market. You said $83 billion with advice and wealth, right? Yeah. $83 billion in our wealth management business. That was $44 billion at IPO. Obviously benefited from positive equity markets, but we had $13 billion in good sales last year in that business as well. I think it goes back. If you think about Equitable Holdings and you take a step back, we have a retirement business, we have an asset management business, and we have affiliated distribution. What does that affiliated distribution do? They provide holistic advice. There's 4,400 advisors that are going down, sitting down with clients, and they're saying, "Do you need tax-oriented protection in a VUL contract? Do you need a buffered annuity contract as you're heading into retirement? Also, we can offer you a wealth-oriented fee-based product as well." It's really about providing not a one product, but an end-to-end solution to capture a larger share of the wallet, but delivering good client outcomes. That's what's most important. Sometimes I get phone calls from Equitable Advisors. I actually know former clients that have become advisors. It seems like a very effective channel. Yet, when I think about the profitability of it feels like a business where you're just feeding into individual retirement. You're feeding into group retirement. Do you envision a time when that becomes a very profitable channel? Yeah. Absolutely. It is profitable today. It is profitable. Number one. We have $83 billion in AUA sitting in corporate and other. We'd like to see that get to $100 billion-$125 billion. You'll break it out. We can break that out as a segment. It's a profitable business for us. again, but our edge there is providing holistic advice. Got it. The day of providing selling only life insurance or selling only retirement accounts or selling only wealth accounts, I really believe is over. Our differentiator is we can play in the wealth space but provide insurance as an asset class, because we know how to sell that within the market. Not everybody can do that. Some really nice opportunities in wealth and then group retirement. I guess group retirement is what? A little under 20% of earnings. That's right. You look at AllianceBernstein, it's around 20%. That's right. That's a really exciting business where you own 65% of the company. I think they did net flows last year of $26 billion. Yeah. Do you- $27.5 billion of active net flows, too. I mean, it's Amazing. Where do you see that going? Talk a little bit about performance, please. Yeah. What they're doing from a distribution standpoint. Look, it's our top-performing asset in the portfolio from a holding perspective, and it goes down to performance. 70% of their fixed income and 75% of their equity have outperformed their benchmarks over a five-year period. That's resulted in $27.5 billion of active net inflows last year and at a 5% organic growth rate. It's really incredible the results that we're seeing, and it's 100% distributable cash flow. As from an EQH perspective, it's a great source of cash, but it's performing well, really benefiting from their leadership positions in Asia. They're number one, for instance, in the Taiwan market. It's a market that they've developed for a long time. Good flows in Japan and in Europe. It's really positioned well, and behind everything we do within the insurance company is AllianceBernstein. When I talk about number one in the RILA product, those flows go into the RILA product, but our general account is investing those through AllianceBernstein. There's great synergies and leverage between the insurance company and the asset manager underneath our holdings, it makes a great fit for us. Sounds like you like it very much. I've got to ask you the question about this 65% stake. Is this a business that you want to take a bigger piece of, or do you want to divest down to 51%? What would you- Yeah. What would you like to do? It's part of our business model. Let me say that, number 1. It's a key part to enable us to capture the full value chain overall. Going from 65% to 100%, though, would be highly dilutive for shareholders, it's not something that we would do at the current price point of where they trade. At 65% and having it with currency, it's a great business that we have within the asset. We like our position there. We want to grow it. We want to help build more alternatives within that. That's probably an area in the product portfolio we can grow more. They started their alternatives business with seed money from us in 2012 to 2014. It was $4 billion. It's now $23 billion. That's external capital that they raised. Last year, the insurance company committed to an additional $10 billion of capital to AllianceBernstein's alternative business. That's capital and investments that align to the needs of the general account. If AB can go raise four times, that's huge Right value for EQH shareholders from the internal leverage of that. We love the business. We love how it sits with the insurance company, and the leverage between the two, and the synergies are very meaningful. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. Maybe shifting over to the infamous New York Regulation 213. It's a pretty onerous capital requirement. Yes. I really appreciated that you and your management team were quite optimistic that you could work out a solution with the regulators, and you did. You got that five-year Permitted practice Permitted practice, then you said, "Look, we're going to work to achieve transactions that'll help free up that capital." You did a Regulation XXX financing. Yeah. That took care of $1 billion of it. Now there's $1 billion left. What happens from here? Are you having a lot of talks? Can you get something done? Is it going to take a long time? Sure. Background, when we closed the Venerable VA transaction, we became subject to Reg 213, which required us to hold $2 billion of redundant reserves. As you mentioned, we received a permitted practice. We also restructured the cash flows within the entity to ensure that 50% of unregulated cash flows were coming outside the insurance entity. It was only 35% before we did that. That was a net win. Then we did the Regulation XXX reinsurance transaction, which allowed us to unlock $1 billion of value and offset $1 billion of redundant reserves. We have $1 billion left. You can assure the teams are full throttle addressing that, either through internal or external reinsurance. We don't need to because it's over time, it doesn't impact our cash flow capability, but it's not a question that we want to answer for the people to think that there's a wider issue, for sure. Addressing that is a top priority. External reinsurance is interesting because you're bringing capital into the system, so you're bringing value in if it could be accretive. Otherwise, we'll look at internal reinsurance. We still have that menu of options to play. It's just about what drives the most value for shareholders. Yeah. I liked on the fourth quarter conference call that you cited that you would want it to be an accretive transaction. Absolutely. That's why external reinsurance is interesting to me. Internal reinsurance is just value neutral. Right. External could be accretive. Right. Robin, as I think about your capital positioning, we estimate about $2.1 billion of pro forma excess capital. You've got a payout ratio of 50%-60%. As I think about- Yeah your businesses, your annuity business having shifted away from legacy has become a relatively capital-light- Yeah annuity business. You're not big in fixed annuities. You've got AllianceBernstein, which is 100% capital-light. Is capital-light, yeah. Group Retirement is somewhat capital light, right? Absolutely. I guess part 1 is, could you bump up this 50%-60% payout ratio? Part 2 is, you've got a lot of excess capital. What's going to trigger your willingness to unlock some of that? Yeah. I think your math's right on the excess capital. We've always held excess capital, though, because of the volatility within the New York dividend formula. If you recall, two years ago, we took out two dividends in one year. Last year, we didn't take out a dividend. This year, we expect to take out the $750 million. Because of that, we always have excess capital. We want to always be in the market for buybacks. We're one of the few players that have not slowed down or stopped their buyback program in the pandemic, because that's a commitment we made to shareholders, and that's one we're going to continue. We want to always be in the market. As a result, we'll be conservative with some of the cash flows that we have. We'll deploy it for good shareholder uses. Always being in the market, maybe there's a time when you might be more comfortable going above that 50%-60%. I think, look, over time, as the business mix continues to shift, as we get through some of the regulatory hurdles that are ahead of us in Reg 213, maybe we could see that increase over time. It's a function of time with the business shift, I would say. Okay. It's more of a timing issue, not potentially doing a Reg 213 transaction. No. It's more of a timing issue, I'd say. I see. Just in terms of M&A in general, is there an appetite to do deals? Are there blocks that you have an appetite outside of annuities to divest? Both sides, in and out. Okay. First, the best use of shareholder capital that we see today is buybacks. We like that wealth management business we talked about. We also really like alternatives in AB. Those would be areas where if they're bolt-ons that made sense, we'd certainly look at. Right now in the wealth management side, we don't see anything that justifies the prices that are out there, they're going between 20-30 times relative to what we can do to shareholders. It wouldn't be a good deal. Now, if something fell in our lap that we thought we'd get good synergies from, we'd certainly evaluate it. The alternative business, I think that's interesting for us because we could use AB's currency strategically. They have a higher multiple on their side. There you can make things work that are still accretive for EQH shareholders, potentially. You need assets that tie well with the general account, because that's where we get the synergy, if we can invest in the general account as you're bringing on an alternative manager. That's certainly an interesting opportunity. The third leg that we would look at is our small employee benefits business. We built that up organically. It's about 600,000 lives covered. You need 900,000 approximately to break even. That's the third leg of the stool that we'd look at. Are there little companies in that business or- No. The employee benefits business is a platform that we provide- Right for small businesses. Right. There are little companies that we could look at. That you could acquire. Yeah. Yeah. Again, they're still looking at 20 to 30x, so we need to make sure that it's accretive. Even in the smallest kind of level, you want it. Yeah. That's the mantra of shareholder capital, at least over a three to five-year period, you need to show accretion. Even if it's a smaller company, for us to believe that either it's going to bring more growth or it's going to bring synergies, we should see that come through for shareholders. That's important. Any blocks outside of annuities that you feel don't need to be on the balance sheet? No, I think that's the core. It's at 18%, and we want to continue to run off. We'd certainly look at the in-force, the whole in-force as it relates to Regulation 213, where we can get accretive external reinsurance, as I discussed. I think that's probably it. We like the blocks that we're in. We value them well. I think we're pretty comfortable with the in-force overall, I would say. Obviously, look, there are always opportunities. If someone came to us and there was a good price, good counterparty, we'd certainly take a look at it. Robin, sometimes I get a lot of questions about these products and your hedging. Yeah Interest rates and so forth. From an interest rate hedging standpoint, could you describe if we had a 100 basis point move up or down, what would happen to your risk-based capital ratio? Should be neutral. What we did, we fully hedge interest rates as a company. Let me just say, our overall design as a company with our hedging program is actually to fully neutralize the guarantees. Anytime we put the balance sheet at risk, we fully hedge it, the equity and interest rate exposure. The design is essentially for us to look like an asset manager. The only exposure we should have up and down in a market is fees, either in AB or in our separate account. The other risk we do have, to be fair, that we don't hedge is credit. We think an insurance company is a great place to take credit risk. We won't hedge that. We'll just make sure we're getting good risk-adjusted returns overall. The way we set up our RBC, we made some tweaks last year, just because our economic hedging was over-hedging RBC, we shifted some of the hedges to the general account. As a result, RBC tends to be neutral for up or down from an interest rate standpoint. That's great. That kind of leads into the new LDTI accounting that we're expecting to see next year. This works to Equitable's favor, right? I think on the conference call you talked about, without explicitly saying what it will be, I think you said up to $2 billion of effect on the liability, which would be within the unrealized- Yeah or AOCI on the asset side. It would take your mark-to-market book value- Yeah to a neutral, it would look more like your book value at cost, right? I think I said below the $2 billion. Yeah, below that, right. It would be. Below the $2 billion AOCI balance. Right, below it. I couldn't give an exact number because you want to get those audited. That's where we felt comfortable saying and giving the guidance to the market as of year-end. As I also said, I am excited about this accounting change. You're going to finally see Equitable's economic hedging approach align to a fair value accounting framework, and investors will see it in GAAP. I think some investors continue to struggle with the difference between our non-GAAP operating earnings and our net income. Yes. It pops up on their screen in one quarter. Markets go up 10%, Equitable has a negative net income. Investors are like, "It doesn't make much sense." Now it'll be transparent for the GAAP accounts. Why is that? Because we manage the business on a fair value basis. We only assume a forward curve at the end of the day. Our discount rate is very similar to the LDTI discount rate, and the assumptions that we set around our actuarial practices are closer to the fair value or current experience. As a result, this new accounting framework that comes in, which is designed to be more fair value, aligns well with how Equitable manages the business. I am excited for it, because it's going to show the value of Equitable to more investors that have questions of it. Cash flow is every company's right. Cash flow matters at the end for an insurance company. A lot of people look at the GAAP statements, and those GAAP statements matter. Absolutely. No doubt it'll help them appreciate when the market goes up and you have a big hedging loss, that there's something on the other side- Absolutely of that that's neutralizing it. Yeah, that should be good. From an earnings standpoint, Robin- You're not going to see that mark below the line anymore. It's going to be in the adjusted operating earnings number, the- That's right. Hedging effect. Do you think that earnings ultimately will be similar to what we're seeing in 2021, just with different accounting movements? Yeah. We haven't disclosed the earnings impact yet, frankly, because we haven't gone through the policy process. Okay to set it, because we wanted to get out early and have that transition balance impact as of year-end, the less than $2 billion number, to be clear, and now we have to do the work on operating earnings. Yes, in principle, now we're going to have liabilities that are fair valued above the line, and now the hedges that we're going to have below the line will move above the line to match those. As a principle, the gap between our operating earnings and our net income should materially decrease. Awesome. Anybody have any questions out there in the room? Yeah. I'll steal that. Go ahead. Go for it. You're talking about interest rates, and roughly, your RBC being roughly neutral, but if interest rates, say, the 10-year were to go up 300 basis points or whatever, would that directionally be a positive for Equitable? Yeah. Interest rates, when I was speaking about RBC, from an in-force perspective, we don't take key balance sheet exposures on interest rates. We're neutral there. On an ongoing basis on operating earnings, the guidance we gave is for 50 basis points, it's about $10 million impact on operating earnings. That's from the investment and the general account. In general, positive interest rates are good for Equitable as well because the client demand increases for the products that we have to offer in the retirement space. Generally, with those products, we retain some of the margin as interest rates increase. Over the long term, higher interest rates are very good for Equitable, what we offer for our clients. The general account gets the annual uplift from the reinvestment that it makes, but from an in-force perspective, we're neutral up or down because we don't take rate exposures on the balance sheet. Okay. Yeah, that's helpful. I guess, combine that with the equity exposure. If interest rates were to go up and the Fed caused the market to sell off and equity markets were down, how would up interest rates, down equity markets impact you? Yeah. Equity markets, it's same for the balance sheet. We fully hedge whenever we offer guarantees, we don't take any balance sheet equity exposure. It's not good in an insurance company. The hedging strategy is we only have exposure to equities through base fees, we look like an asset manager. Within our separate account in AllianceBernstein. The sensitivity we provided with 10% equity move is roughly $150 million of operating earnings on an annual basis. Okay, thanks. Maybe, Robin, you could talk a little bit about the stock. It trades at barely more than 5x 2022 estimated earnings. I don't get it. I actually rate this our top pick in the life space. What do you think some investors may be misperceiving regarding Equitable's business? Yeah. I think, generally, we don't comment on valuation, as you know, Andrew. Right. Yeah. If I take a step back and I look at our business, a leading retirement franchise in the individual and group space, a premier asset manager in AllianceBernstein, and an affiliated advice with Equitable Advisors across the board, I don't think investors fully appreciate that business model and how unique it is in the U.S. retirement space. We can capture the full value chain, and we can control margin and value. I think a part of that, though, is because of LDTI. It's difficult when it doesn't fully show up in your GAAP accounts, and you have this big gap between non-GAAP operating earnings and net income. LDTI will address that, I think that will help a lot of generalists out there that look at our name but say, "I don't want to spend time on this non-GAAP operating earnings and net income." I think that is a big catalyst for people seeing the true value of our cash flows. That business generates $1.5 billion of cash flows on an annual basis. We're going to continue to execute through our productivity, our general account rebalancing, and the growth within those franchises to improve those cash flows over time. If you take a step back, the business model is set up to capture that opportunity in the retirement market, and it generates strong cash flows. As we continue to execute, I really feel that markets are efficient over time. As for investors that have been with us since IPO, our TSR is about 87% since IPO. The S&P is 62%, and our peers are at 52%. We've proven we can execute, and I think over time, as we continue to execute and grow those cash flows and be visible in the GAAP accounts, it'll help us to continue improve valuation for investors. I agree. I fully agree. Robin, it's been great having you here. Really appreciate the insights, and we look forward to watching Equitable go up, at least from my view, anyway. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you.