Hi. Good morning, everyone. I'm Erik Bass, the U.S. life insurance analyst for Autonomous, and our next fireside chat is with MetLife. It's my pleasure to introduce Michel Khalaf, who's been the company's President and CEO since May of 2019. Michel joined MetLife in 2010 as the CEO of its Middle East, Africa, and South Asia region, through the company's acquisition of Alico from AIG. In 2011, Michel joined MetLife's executive leadership team, when he was named President of the EMEA business. In 2017, he took on added responsibility for the company's U.S. businesses, which are Group Benefits, Retirement & Income Solutions, and at that time, Property & Casualty. Welcome, Michel. Thank you. Thank you for participating in the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference. Also, thank you to investors both in the room and on the webcast. If you have any questions throughout the session, you can enter them through the Pigeonhole app. There's a QR code on either your computer screen or in the conference agenda book that will take you to the link, and I'll work those in throughout the conversation. Maybe to start off, MetLife today is a very different company than it was 10 years ago. Maybe if you could talk about the business transformation that's taken place and the strategic thought process behind the decision to reshape the company, both in your business mix and the focus. Sure. Thanks for having me, Erik. Really good to be here. You mentioned I came to MetLife through the Alico acquisition back in 2010, and I would say that acquisition really made MetLife a global company, or transformed MetLife into a global company. I believe the real transformation took place a few years later. In 2014, we made the decision to de-risk our liabilities, and that was a decision really grounded in risk management. The objective there was to drive down our cost of equity and to drive up our return on equity. We dialed back on long-dated, capital-intensive, interest-sensitive type products, and we focused much more on capital-light, higher return type products. At the time, we introduced a capital allocation tool. We called that initiative, at the time, Accelerating Value. The idea is that that tool was helpful to us in how we allocate capital, and how we make sure that our teams think about how that capital is being deployed and how we price and introduce new products. Over the years, that's had, I would say, a significant impact. Since 2016, we have deployed $26 billion in support of new business at mid-teen IRRs. That was important. I would say that we also had the courage to apply the same data and approach to our legacy business, and that was, I think, the game changer for us. That led to the separation and the spin-off of what became Brighthouse Financial, which is our retail business. If you think back to our history, that business was very much intertwined with that history because its beginnings were the beginnings of the company. Not really an easy thing to do, but something that was necessary and a very important step in that de-risking exercise. More recently, I would say that we've continued on the same path post-Brighthouse in terms of you think about Next Horizon and some the more recent risk transfer deal that we announced. Very recently, we celebrated 155 years, and had a global town hall where we reminded our associates of key moments in our history, and of course, a lot of pride in that. I think the overarching message was that the best way to honor our legacy is not to be beholden to it. I think that's the mindset and that's the approach that persists to this day. Thank you. You mentioned the Next Horizon strategy, which you rolled out when you became CEO in 2019. Can you briefly talk about the key elements of that, and your vision for the company moving forward? Yeah. I wanted to start my tenure by reaffirming our purpose as a company because it's important that we clearly articulate our North Star, and we actually anchored our strategy in that purpose as well. We also wanted to continue to evolve the culture at MetLife to one that is based on strong collaboration, alignment, and accountability. At the core, I felt that we were at an inflection point at the time. We needed to continue to focus, which is one of our pillars in terms of the discipline around how we deploy capital to its best and highest use. We had work to do to continue to simplify the company to meet customer expectations to drive efficiency as well. We had also a big opportunity to differentiate, especially in our key markets, to drive our competitive advantage. Those were sort of the three pillars of our strategy. As part of that strategy, we came out also with a clear set of commitments, five-year commitments. We committed to generating $20 billion in distributable cash over the five-year period to freeing up $1 billion in operating capacity to invest in growth in our business. We also committed to an operating expense ratio, at the time, which we have upheld. Our commitment from an ROE perspective was to be in the 12%-14% range, and of course, we've increased that to 13%-15%. I think the good news here is that thanks to the relentless execution of our teams, despite having a lot thrown at us. I would say we started off with very historically low interest rates. We had a global pandemic. We've seen interest rates rise at the fastest pace in history. Despite it all, we are sort of on, if not ahead of track in meeting all of those commitments. I attribute that to just the way that our teams have been executing on the strategy. Thanks. I think another thing that has been part of your strategy and that has been at the forefront, I would say, of leading the industry and investors to focus more on cash generation. Why do you think cash flow is the right metric on which to evaluate life insurers? How much of a culture shift was this for the company over the past few years? Yeah. I hear, I don't know if I agree or not, but that insurance is a complex business. To some degree that's true. At the core, we make promises and commitments to pay benefits at a future date or if certain events were to occur or in certain circumstances. The real sort of profitability of the business doesn't emerge on day one. It takes time for it to emerge. Our view is that cash is the great equalizer here because cash is tangible, is real, and is the way to assess and measure value as well. This was a cultural shift for us. If you look back at our history post demutualization, I think we were sort of running in a sort of 30% or around there free cash flow ratio. This has been a journey. Obviously, the de-risking action that I mentioned were very helpful to us here. It was also a cultural shift for our teams. I think the Accelerating Value initiative that I referenced helped. Explaining to our teams why this is the right way to sort of measure our value was extremely important. I think another factor here is that we based our sort of goals and objectives on cash metrics as well, and that's true for me and for my team, but it's true to all of our business leaders as well. All of those things, I think help bring cash to the fore as we think about our businesses. Thanks. You mentioned sort of historically being less than 50% cash conversion or free cash flow as a percentage of your operating earnings, and now it's consistently been 65%-75% of earnings. I guess you touched on it a little bit, but what are some of the things that have driven that ratio up, and why do you think that's the right ratio for the company going forward? Yeah. I think certainly the sort of deploying capital in support of new business at healthy returns, short paybacks, over time starts to sort of make an impact. Some of the de-risking that we've done over the years as well is helpful to us on that front as well. It's the cumulative impact of those factors I think that's brought us to this point. We like to sort of maintain a balance here as we think about sort of what's the appropriate ratio for MetLife. We think that 65-75 is the right sort of range for us because we would like to continue to invest in new business, especially that we're able to do it at very healthy returns and paybacks. We can always sort of say, "Okay, we can increase that ratio by dialing back on growth and new business." We don't feel that's sort of appropriate as we think about how we create long-term shareholder value here. That's a little bit sort of the background why we think that that ratio is appropriate. I would say that over the years, as we think about also cash flow, we've also made some divestitures that have contributed to the capital that we've returned to shareholders. I think since 2020 when we launched Next Horizon, we've returned $17 billion to shareholders and in the form of dividends and buybacks were quite significant. You mentioned one of the big things, obviously, you're using capital for is investing in growth. Maybe we can spend a few minutes going through each of the ongoing businesses, and I think it makes sense to start with your Group Benefits business, which is a market leader. Maybe you could talk about what is your strategy in group, and what gives you confidence that you can sustain above average growth when you're already the biggest player in the sector? We like to say that we like all of our children equally. I would say that, if I think about the most attractive segment of the life insurance industry, I would say Group Benefits would be that segment. The characteristics of the business in terms of it being capital light, healthy margins, and good growth opportunities as well. We're a market leader in that space. Obviously, scale matters in that business. We've talked in the past about the importance of continuously making investments, to meet customer needs and expectations. It's like a virtual circle, because the more you make those types of investments, the more you're able to grow the business, which enables you to make further investments. We've seen really good growth in that business, since 2020, again, we've added about $4 billion in PFOs to our Group Benefits business. There are a few reasons why we feel confident in sustaining our growth trajectory. We've sort of guided to the 4%-6%. We were sort of slightly above the midpoint of that range in the first quarter. We do think this is sustainable for a number of reasons. I would say the first one is we have great relationships in that business. On average, our national account customers have been with us for over 20 years. That's sort of the length of time that we've had these relationships. As we've added more product to our product suite, which was already the widest in the industry, we have the ability to introduce more products to existing customers. We're seeing the impact from that, the positive impact from that. Especially I think at a time when customers are choosing to do business with lesser providers. The second area that I would point to is around enrollment and re-enrollment capabilities. If you think about our take-up rates, especially for our voluntary products, those range from the low single digits to the high teens, depending on customer. A lot of that is due to enrollment and re-enrollment capabilities. The investments we've made in this area, we believe, will allow us to continue to drive those take-up rates higher. Voluntary is an area of focus for us. We've been growing that in the high teens for a number of years. We think that's sustainable. The third area I would point to is that whereas we have a dominant position in the large case segment of 5,000 plus, the under 5,000 segment is much more fragmented if you look at the market. The other characteristic there is that three out of five employers don't offer any type of voluntary benefit at all. A lot of white space as well. We've been able to grow in that segment of the market at two to three times the market average, so much faster than the market. The more we're able to bring our full suite of products down market, investments that we've made, for example, we have now an end-to-end admin platform for the under 100 market. Which is again, as we segment that under 5,000, is an interesting opportunity for us. I think we are going to continue to see strong growth there. For all these reasons, we feel confident in our ability to grow that business within the range and the guidance that we've provided. Thanks. Maybe if you could just quickly give some examples of some of the voluntary products and what you've added in recent years, and how you kind of have added to the toolkit and how you drive that into actually people's benefits enrollment. Yeah, absolutely. We acquired Versant a couple of years ago, that made us the third largest vision care provider in the market. That's an important capability, and vision tends to be bundled with dental, which is, we have a leading position in dental as well, especially as you go down market. That's an important capability that we've added. We also bought a small pet insurance company, we brought Snoopy back as well for that. Again, we see an interesting opportunity in the pet insurance space. We've added capability when it comes to our legal plans offering with digital wills. That was very helpful, especially during the pandemic, and we're seeing that persist. We don't necessarily acquire, we can also partner, and we've done that with an identity theft product that we introduced last year, and that's also doing really well. These are some of the capabilities that we think are going to help us continue to grow that business going forward. Perfect. Then maybe shifting to the Retirement & Income Solutions or RIS business. Can you just walk through what are the major products that you offer there and the key growth drivers for the segment? Sure. RIS is a well-diversified set of products and businesses that perform under various economic and market conditions. RIS is an important source of earnings and cash for the company. RIS has annuities. It's an institutional business, annuities, investments, and life insurance. On the annuities front, PRT gets sort of talked about the most, and it's an important business. Last year, we had a record year with $12 billion-plus in PRT sales. Here we continue to see really good opportunities. Funding levels are healthy. That's an early indicator of sort of business coming to market. We see a healthy pipeline. We focus on the jumbo end of the market, the billion-plus cases, fewer competitors. I think this is where also we can best leverage our credit rating, our balance sheet strength, our investment capabilities, and the like. We only sort of focus on retiree-only cases. That's the business where we can sort of match assets to liabilities. We like the risk profile there. Our expectation is that we're going to continue to win our fair share of that business going forward. Another business that's doing really well this year, also back end of last year, tends to do well in a rising interest rate environment is our structured settlement business. Those are annuities that we offer as a settlement option in a lawsuit. Think about a personal injury case, for example. Good traction there. We're a market leader in that space as well. We offer institutional income annuities, and the CARES Act sort of opened the door for that business. Those are offered as part of the defined contribution plans. We think that over time, we're going to be able to grow that business. In 2020, we entered the U.K. longevity market. From a standing start, this contributes now about $1 billion to our PFOs. We've done really well, and we continue to see good opportunities to grow that business. We have a stable value offering as well. That tends to do well in periods of high market volatility, and we saw that during the pandemic, where we had record sales. Last but not least, we have our CMIP capital markets business, where we offer funding agreement-backed notes to institutional clients. RIS is all of that. Like I said, we really like the diversification that we have because it allows us to perform under different scenarios. Yeah. You mentioned higher interest rates being a tailwind for certain products. How much has the RIS business overall benefited from the rise in interest rates, and how should we think about the sensitivity of earnings in that business to changes in interest rates going forward? Yeah. Higher rates are a positive for our RIS. Higher long-term rates are a positive. We also have exposure in our capital markets business to the shorter end of the curve. We hedge these exposures through caps and floors. Obviously, in this environment, the caps have performed really well for us. As we've said, our expectation is that we're going to continue to see the benefit from these caps for the next, I would say, 18 months or six quarters or so. Really, the caps are intended as a bridge as sort of the impact from the higher long-term rates kick in. That helps smooth that sort of trajectory, if you like. We did offer, as part of our outlook on our outlook call in February, some sensitivities to the short end and the long end of the curve. I would say those sensitivities still hold. Thanks. Maybe moving to international, you've done a lot of acquisitions, you mentioned Alico at the beginning being the big one, but also some disbursements over the past few years. Can you talk about how you've selected which markets you want to be in, and do you think you're now in the places globally that ultimately you want to compete in? Yeah. I think as part of our Next Horizon strategy, we characterized markets in terms of their cash contribution to the enterprise. Just by way of background, post the Alico acquisition, we were in close to 70 markets. Today, we're in around 40 markets. We've done a lot to reshape the portfolio, I would say, over that period of time. The way we've characterized our markets are in three buckets. The first are mature markets, mature businesses, typically in mature markets that are very strong contributors, cash contributors today. Japan RIS would fall into that category, for example. Markets that have very attractive growth potential and are strong cash contributors as well, or businesses and Group Benefits, LATAM would fall into that bucket. Then, longer-term secular growth markets that we expect will contribute cash-wise down the road, India, Brazil, China would fall into that category. That's sort of the view we take. We always consider a strategic fit, first and foremost, but then we look at each market from the perspective of, is that market meeting our minimum risk-adjusted hurdle rates, or do we see a path to it, a reasonable path to it accomplishing that? If the answer is no, then we would consider all options, including potentially divesting. That's a little bit the approach. We've also added, I mentioned Versant earlier. We increased our shareholding in India more recently. We also look at opportunities. We've done a few deals on the asset management front. Again, that's the view that we take to sort of how we consider the portfolio. It's, I would say, an ongoing exercise. Makes sense. It might be surprising to people that MetLife's actually the largest life insurer in Latin America. I think that has been an underappreciated business for you. Can you talk a little bit more about that business and your competitive advantages, and then the sustainability of the recent growth that you've seen? Absolutely. Mexico is our third-largest market globally, and Chile is our fourth-largest market globally in terms of earnings contribution to MetLife. We're the number one company in both of these markets. A very strong, well-established presence in LATAM. I was out there very recently, visited all three markets, including Brazil. What I will say is that we're seeing tremendous momentum in all of our markets. We have a very clear strategy that we're executing on. That's really sort of paying off for us. If you think about our approach in LATAM, I would say maybe three main pillars. One is to protect our moats, if you like. Think about worksite government in Mexico, which is a very sizable business for us. We have an 80%-plus market share there. Protecting doesn't just mean maintaining. I mean, it's also growing. We have to recognize that it's a mature business. Mid-single digit growth is a healthy growth with strong persistency, obviously. The second pillar, I would say, is really all around growth through diversification. Whereas we're very strong in agency in both Mexico and Chile, we see really tremendous opportunities in alternative channels, direct marketing, bancassurance, sponsorship-type partnerships. That's really fueling our growth, I would say, in both markets. The other thing we're seeing in LATAM, Brazil in particular, to some extent also Chile and Mexico, is the advent of digital banks and financial services. That's very interesting because in a heavily concentrated market like Brazil, this gives us a whole new outlet from a distribution perspective. We've invested in our ability to really sort of partner and integrate with these new distribution outlets. There, we're seeing really good traction. Brazil now accounts for about 20% of our sales in LATAM, it's growing. All in all, I'm really pleased about how we're positioned in LATAM. I'm sorry, and the third pillar is all about transforming and making sure that we evolve our capabilities so that we can deliver for customers and meet expectations going forward. We saw good momentum coming out of COVID last year, and that's being sustained in the first quarter, and I think things are looking good for the remainder of the year as well. Perfect. Maybe to wrap up on the operating businesses, you alluded to MetLife Investment Management- which has been a third-party asset management business that you've been building, and it's currently reported in the corporate segment. As you look going forward, what are things you can do to accelerate the growth of that business and make it a bigger contribution to the earnings and cash flow for the company? Yeah. We started MIM, or MetLife Investment Management, 10 years ago. In that period, we've grown it to $170 billion AUM, third-party in separate account assets. For the most part, that was organic. We did the Logan Circle acquisition back in 2017, and we've done more recently a couple of tuck-in acquisitions as well. We continue to see really good organic growth opportunities for MIM. As we've said before, we are open also to accelerating our growth trajectory should we find the right opportunity. We are very focused in terms of, if you think about MIM, we leveraged our expertise in the general account to start that business. Our focus is really on public fixed income, real estate, and private credit. Those are the areas that we sort of see good opportunities in continuing to develop. We're not going to veer far off from those areas. If we find adjacencies, we're open to that. New capabilities, we're open to that. That's a little bit the thinking around MIM. At some point, we would like MIM to be It's currently in Corporate and Other, but we'd like it to become a segment. I would say we're not there yet, but at some point we think that in the not too distant future, I think that would be the plan. Right. If we can move to MetLife Holdings, where you had a big transaction announcement last week with Global Atlantic, congratulations on getting that done. Thank you. I guess this is something, a process you've been going through for a while in terms of looking at potential risk transfer, a way to accelerate the runoff. Maybe if you could talk about why was this the right deal at the right time, then how do you think about managing that block going forward, is there interest in doing other transactions for things like your variable annuity portfolio, for instance? Sure. Yeah, MetLife Holdings is a sort of well-diversified, well-seasoned block of business. Obviously, it's a runoff business. I think we've done a really good job in managing that business over the years. It's the runoff business that has not really run off when you look at earnings. We've consistently said that we are open to a transaction that would accomplish a number of things. One, we obviously want to maximize shareholder value. Two, we want to sort of also reduce the risk for the enterprise, while making sure that we meet all our commitments to our customers. Three, we'd be interested in accelerating the release of capital so that we can take it from sort of a runoff business and deploy it elsewhere where it makes sense. This has to be a reinsurance deal. It's not a separate legal entity. You have to also find the right counterparty. This is a long-term relationship that you're entering into. This also means that we have to have the right protections and the right structure in place. It's a complex type transaction, and those things do take time. We have the advantage of being in a position of strength in terms of there's no burning platform. We don't have to do a transaction. We would only do a transaction if it made sense to do so based on the criteria I described. There's a lot of interest in some of the blocks that we have within Holdings. It's a question of finding the counterparty where sort of interests align, if you like, and we found that in Global Atlantic, That's why we went ahead and proceeded with the transaction. Perfect. There's a couple of. The only thing maybe I would add, Erik, is that if you think about the characteristics here, the transaction will add 60 points to our RBC. It's accretive to EPS. It supports our 13%-15% ROE. It ticks all the boxes, if you like, and that's why we did it. Perfect. There's a couple of Pigeonhole questions that sort of relate to this. One thing you brought up is kind of the use of proceeds. I think the deal is going to free ultimately about $3.25 billion of capital, and concurrent with the deal, the board increased the buyback authorization by $1 billion. I guess how much should we read into the increase in the authorization? Was one question, and then how are you thinking about deploying the rest of the proceeds? Yeah. I think the increase should give you an indication of the direction of traffic. I do think that we've also built a track record in terms of post-divestitures, how we would return freed up capital. I think we've done so deliberately, expeditiously in the past. Expect us to do the same. At the same time, in this environment, it's also good to have financial flexibility, I would say. I would say the approach doesn't change in terms of what we've done in the past, and that's how we would most likely proceed here as well. Thanks. Maybe building off of that, how do you think about excess capital, and how does your macro outlook play into that, and where you may fall in within sort of the target ranges that you've given? Yeah. We set the $3 billion-$4 billion buffer, cash and liquidity buffer at the holdco, back in 2016, I believe. The idea there is that it was based off of sort of, think about one year's worth of debt servicing, plus any other cash flows in a stress scenario, and holdco expenses. What we've said is that above and beyond that buffer, excess capital belongs to shareholders, and in the absence of accretive M&A, we would return it in the form of dividends and buybacks. The macro environment does play a role, and you've seen us really since the beginning of the pandemic, above the top end of that range. Again, I go back to just having the financial flexibility there. That's still the approach. I would say that we've done some significant de-risking since then as well. Over time, I would think that the direction for that buffer would be sort of, the bias would be downwards in terms of where that buffer should be. For the time being, we're still comfortable with the $3 billion-$4 billion. Got it. That's obviously looking at cash at the holding company. I would assume you would also view yourself as having some excess capital within the operating subsidiaries that becomes cash to the holding company. That's right. over time. Absolutely. Which I think in the U.S. is relatively easy to see. It's a little harder internationally, would you view those businesses as, I'm assuming they all put up, send cash up every year, so they have excess capital as well. Absolutely. I guess, last topic, certainly one that's been a lot of focus for investors is the asset side of the balance sheet, where there's certainly been some concerns given the fears that we're entering into a recession, potentially at some point. Maybe if you could talk about what's your outlook for credit, then what have you been doing within your portfolio to either prepare for a recession or adjust exposures? Yeah. I think the house view is that we're likely to see a downturn in the next quarter or two. I would say that really since before the pandemic in 2019, our view back then was that a downturn was likely anyway, we had already taken action to de-risk our portfolio. Reducing exposures to areas that we felt would be sensitive to a downturn. Bank loans, for example, other sort of areas that potentially could be impacted as a result of a downturn as well, like retail. We've remained sort of up in quality ever since. We feel really good about how we're positioned from a credit perspective, having taken that action and maintained an up-in-quality sort of stance ever since. Perfect. I do have to ask about probably your favorite topic. Of course Most topical one right now is commercial real estate, which is a significant exposure for MetLife, not just now, but throughout the history of the company. Maybe if you could provide a little bit of a background on Met's, I guess, history, for lack of a better word, with commercial real estate, and why it's been a good fit for the company over time, and why you're confident in your exposures today. Yeah. For us, sort of the way we invest in CRE is mainly through mortgages, commercial mortgages. We've been in this business for many decades, a lot of experience. The expertise extends to sort of a regional presence where we have teams on the ground. Knowing the owners, the sponsors, the focusing on long-tenured leases, those are all sort of important capabilities that we bring to bear. I would also say that our regional offices, we're also investors in real estate equity. I believe that is a differentiator for MetLife because when we underwrite a loan, we also underwrite the collateral. Having the ability to do that does a couple of things. One, it gives us leverage in any negotiation with the borrower. It also gives us the ability to take over the property, and we have $6 billion in unrealized gains on our real estate portfolio. Again, this is a business where we have a lot of expertise, and so this is an asset class that's a good match to our liabilities. We're able to structure commercial mortgages also to sort of help us from a cash flow perspective. Of course, real estate equity is an asset class that's a good sort of match to some of the longer tail liabilities. If you think over time, we've had very sort of meaningless losses in that asset class. If you think about the risk-reward, I would argue that this has probably been one of the best-performing asset classes for us over a very long period of time. Yeah. I think something investors may not always appreciate is kind of the benefit that life insurers have in terms of being able to hold, whether it's the loans or even direct real estate for long periods of time, also being able to extend loans or carry your properties on your balance if you need to. Can you talk a bit about what happens if there is a distressed situation or a loan where a borrower can't refinance or is underwater, kind of what happens and what flexibility do you have to kind of work through that situation where you might not incur a loss? Yeah. We obviously work with borrowers. We know borrowers well. We start conversations well before sort of a situation, I think, evolves into sort of a distressed type- scenario. A lot of the loans have extension options anyway. Where they don't, and it's a situation that requires an extension, we negotiate that with the borrower. Typically in those circumstances, one, any extension will be done at market rates and conditions. Two, there are fees associated, and typically, we get better collateral as a result of it. In most instances, an extension is going to enhance our sort of position. Plus, going back to sort of our approach to investing in this asset class, typically, our LTVs are quite low. For commercial real estate, in general, it's around 58%. We have also healthy DSCRs in the 2.4 range. A lot of flexibility on those fronts. As I mentioned, because borrowers know that we have the ability to take over the property, that gives us leverage in any negotiation. Last but not least, if we have to take it over, then we would, and in this instance, we would either hold it and wait for sort of the right timing to sell it, or we are also able to rehabilitate a property if that's appropriate, and then flip it. Thanks. One last question on this topic that came in is, on your first quarter call, you had given a stress test, I guess. Yeah Of talking about a 10-15 point impact on your RBC ratio. Yeah. I'll try to synthesize this. What are the underlying assumptions? Sure under that scenario, I guess, is the Yeah simplest way to ask. In that scenario, we're assuming that from current levels, valuations are going to depreciate by 35% over two years. 20% first year, 10%-15% second year. We're also assuming that the income from these properties is going to decrease by 15%, 10% first year, 5% second year. Even in that scenario, we think that the impact to RBC is going to be very manageable, 10-15 points over a three-year period. Just to put that into perspective, the transaction that we just announced adds 60 points to our RBC. Maybe to finish up, just as you look forward over the next three to five years, what do you think is the biggest reason why investors should feel good about the prospects for MetLife and for the life insurance sector overall? Adding on to that, what is one thing you think the sector could do better, to win investor confidence and garner higher valuation multiple? Yeah. One of the things I told the team, if I think about our first quarter, the underlying performance was probably the best I've seen during my time as CEO here. I think it speaks to just the precision with which we're executing on our strategy to the momentum we have in our key markets. Also to sort of the competitive advantage that we are seeing as well. That gives me great confidence in terms of our ability to continue to perform. I think that, for us, we continue to believe that we have the right strategy here. That this was the right strategy when we launched it. It continues to be the right strategy today. We're very confident in our ability to deliver, if not over-deliver on all of our commitments under that strategy. We're continuing to look for opportunities to continue to de-risk, to simplify our business, as well to deploy capital to its best and highest use. The environment is what it is. What I encourage our teams to do is to continue to raise the bar, to up our game, especially when it comes to all the things that we control. There's a lot of things that we do control. I sense that this message is well understood, well-embraced by our teams, and that's why I feel quite good about our trajectory and our prospects going forward. Great. Well, that's a perfect place to end it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Erik. Thanks for having me.