All right. Good afternoon, everybody. We're here with John McCallion, the CFO of MetLife. John, really appreciate your time. It's always great to chat about MetLife. Yeah, great to be here. Thanks. Yeah. Maybe let's start with just the overall broader environment, kind of just the level set, right? Today, obviously, data points have been uncertain, and it varies depending on jurisdiction, and you're in various parts of the world. What do you think would be MetLife's key advantage or competitive advantage here? Where are you most constructive versus where are you most mindful of risk, so to speak? Yeah, sure. Like I said, thanks for having us. It's good to see you again. Yeah, let me start with maybe the macro backdrop. I think a few things are important as you think about the environment. One is, unemployment remains low. Right? Two, inflation seems, I know we had some new data out today, but generally speaking, manageable. Wage growth seems to be keeping up. I think the third thing that we would highlight that's maybe a little more specific is, real estate cycle is coming through. Maybe it's on the back end and on the uptick, so you see that kind of improving, although it seems to be more of a U-shaped recovery than a V shape. Maybe the fourth thing in terms of backdrop I'd highlight is, credit remains stable, broadly speaking. I know private credit versus public credit, but in general, I would say credit still remains strong. Overall, we think that really kind of gives a constructive backdrop to our situation. For us, as we think about how we've built our business, and how we think about competitive advantage, it's been important for us to continue to build a market-leading level set of franchises across the globe that's diversified by not just geography, but product, risk, capability, and we think that's really a competitive advantage for us as we work through. Because different environments change, and you want to have the option to do well in a variety of different economic environments. We believe that gives us that sustainable growth component to our story. I think the other thing it does is it also, while it drives, in our view, it drives growth, it also provides us the opportunity to lower our cost of equity. All in all, we think it's a strong value proposition. I would probably point to two, broadly speaking, from a mix perspective, we think about that competitive advantage. About 50% of our business is in what we consider to be more capital-light businesses. There's another 50% in what we consider to be more capital-driven or balance sheet businesses, right? In that first category, think of higher ROE, lower capital-intensive businesses. You can think of our market-leading business in Group Benefits. You can think about us being a more life insurer in Latin America, and we've seen some outstanding growth in that region of late. EMEA has kind of emerged with a really strong growth story, another protection-oriented business. We have our asset management business, which while small now, is probably our highest growth segment. On the other side of the business mix, you have the retirement businesses, which really is our global retirement platform. That's covering the U.S., U.K., and Japan, where the first two are more institutional, and then Japan is more of a retail. All in all, we think that gives us a really unique value proposition and mix of business that allows us to perform well in good environments and to perform well in a variety of economic environments. We think that's a real structural advantage for us. Got it. I think that kind of segues nicely into the New Frontier strategy that you guys laid out previously. Right now, that is in its second year. You're clearly doing well against the targets you laid out at the time. Would just love to hear, as you think about executing your strategy going forward, any new updates or anything that you think would be interesting going forward? Yeah, thanks. First, I think we're very pleased with, we're off to a great start under that new strategy, under New Frontier. Let's just start with it. It's highlighted under four strategic pillars, if you will. One is, how do we extend our lead in Group Benefits? How do we leverage the global retirement platform we have and capitalize on that unique platform that we have? Third is, how do we accelerate growth in asset management? Fourth is expanding the growth in some of our higher-returning, higher-yielding growth markets in international markets, particularly in LATAM and Asia. Across the board, I'd say all are off to a great start, right? Group Benefits, we're at $27 billion of annual premium. In 2025, under the retirement platform, we had record sales in pension risk transfer. We closed the PineBridge acquisition, which is a great step forward in how we look to kind of grow and accelerate growth there. Thirdly, like I said, we've seen outstanding results in both Asia and LATAM from a growth perspective. I think both segments have shown some very strong top-line metrics. All in all, we think from an execution perspective, we're off to a great start. When you look at the numbers in 2025, we had some key commitments that we expected to hit over the five-year period. The first one is double-digit EPS growth. We hit that in 2025. The second one, we talked about an ROE range of 15%-17%. We're at 16% for 2025. Third was a free cash flow range of $65-$75 on an annual basis, $25 billion of distributable cash over five years. We're off to a great start. We had 80% free cash flow in 2025 on a two-year average. Thirdly, we expect unit costs to continue to get better. We use a direct expense ratio as a measure of that, which is our fixed cost divided by our revenue, so it's a growth metric, too. That came in 11.7, and we had a target of 12.1. I would say, 2025, we hit on all marks. When we looked into 2026, we saw that momentum continue, maybe even stronger. We had 23% growth in EPS in the first quarter. We had an ROE of 17%. While our direct expense ratio went up a tick to 11.9 from 11.7, that is a function of actually absorbing an asset management business that has a higher expense ratio. One thing we didn't do is we didn't come off our target of 100 basis point reduction in our unit costs over the five-year period. We think we'll continue to accelerate that improvement over the five years. Overall, we think we've really hit on all segments. Quite honestly, if you look across the businesses, each one of them has shown strong growth. That was another central theme of New Frontier is the growth aspect of our strategy. All in all, we're very pleased with the results. I think part of that exciting part, especially on the expense side. When you laid out the targets, the technology aspect probably isn't as capable as it is today. This wouldn't be a financial conference if we don't talk about AI. How is MetLife utilizing the technology side to really perhaps even accentuate the strategy that we just talked about there? Yeah, it's a great point. Like you said, several years ago when we were starting the strategy, that was probably not the central theme. It certainly is a central theme today for us. The good news is, I'll say technology modernization was an integral part of what we've been doing over the last five or so years. We've probably spent between $3 and $3.5 billion just on technology modernization. What that's really doing for us now, including data quality and things like that, is by us having focused on re-engineering our processes, we are setting ourselves up to implement and augment that modernization by embedding AI. This AI trend, which is remarkable, and we certainly see the power of that coming to fruition. We think it's going to be very beneficial. We think that the investments we made, coupled with what we've seen on AI, has given us the confidence to maintain, I'd say, a conviction around that 100 basis points of decline on the expense ratio. I think at the same time, what we've found is that while unit costs will be important, this is really a growth opportunity for us. This is about productivity gains. This is about how we can enhance growth. While we're doing things like in some businesses, we're able to auto adjudicate claims nine times what we used to because of some of this recent technology. We're also able to get four times the amount of RFPs out in the same amount of time. Again, that's a growth function there. I think lastly, where we really see the power of this is where you have an employee experience that's so important for take-up rates. Think about our Group Benefits business, employee-paid type products. That's going to be a real important aspect to that. I think when you have the scale and the breadth that we have, we have that much more opportunity to be able to leverage some of these new technologies going forward. We're really excited about it. Does sound like there's a lot to do from there, yeah. Yeah, there is. If we look at it from a segment perspective. For example, Group Benefits. Group Benefits has seen favorable mortality trends, especially for the working age population. Just how sustainable do you think this trend is, the favorable overall trend in Group Benefits? Is there a fear that maybe the industry might try to compete this away at some point in time? Curious your thought on just Group Benefits in general. Yeah, it's a good question. We haven't certainly seen any of the latter part of your point yet, but we certainly have seen some favorability in mortality. Q1, quite honestly, came in well below in terms of a benefit ratio our expectations, and certainly below a seasonal expectation for Q1. We saw much, much lower. Quite honestly, we probably think that's going to continue throughout the year. To your point about the sustainability of those margins, I think for us, the way we built our business and our portfolio, having the widest breadth of product, so being diversified across that product breadth. By the way, there are some other products that need to do better. When we think about margins, we don't think about any one product. Sometimes we actually think about customer profitability. These things are bundled as well. We think that there's actually, for our business and for the way we operate, we think there's a sustainability in profit margin. That would probably be the way that we think of it. You might have some margins in certain products doing better, but others having some more pressure. We saw that with Dental. We've repriced. That's coming back. I think our view is that it'll balance out. We do think profit margin will be sustainable. I'm not so sure life by itself would be. Got it. That's very helpful. Thank you for that. Non-medical health benefit ratio in 4Q 2025, you're setting that benefit ratio to somewhere between 70%-75%. Yeah. Can you maybe talk about that piece of the business? Especially performance in 1Q as well, if we think about the outlook, the balance of the year as well. Sure, yeah. It came in towards the top end of that. Yep. range that you referenced. In Q1, that's not necessarily outside of the normal variance that we would expect to see, right? There tends to be higher utilization when it comes to some of the products there, and we certainly saw that with Dental, although we're very pleased with the progress we've made around Dental in general. We saw a little bit of higher severity on Disability insurance in the quarter. That's probably a couple quarters now where we've seen higher severity. Not frequency as much as severity. The third one is we had some new states come in on paid family leave. It is a product that can have, in the first year, a little bit of higher strain. We're seeing that. We expect that to improve. I'm not so sure it's a Q1 and everything else improves after it, or it's a first half, second half. I think we still need to see how things emerge here. All in all, there's a wide variety and diversification in that benefit ratio as well, and we feel comfortable with the range that we're at least over a near-term basis. It feels like it's trending positive. I think so, but I'm not so sure you're going to, as we've seen in the last few years, actually, it's moved to almost a first half seasonality versus a second half. We have to monitor that, and there's nothing jumping out at us right now, but we're obviously paying very close attention to it. Thank you for that. Retirement and Income Solutions business. One thing the entire industry talks about is spread. The spreads here, 95 basis points in the first quarter, that was a 4 points of sequential decline, that was also within our expectation. Yeah. If we think about maybe just MetLife and maybe the industry, where do you see the trend is going in the current broader environment, understanding that we're constantly getting economic data? Yeah. I think one of the benefits of that business for us is we have products that cut across the yield curve. We have some shorter-term products, we have some longer-term products. In general, our view is that we came in at 95 basis points in Q1. By the way, if you include VII, we're at the top end of our range, about 120. I know we look at it ex-dividend, VII is important too, to our spread. The reality on the ex-dividend, as we said in Q1, we kind of expect to hover around this point until the yield curve steepens more. I think that's the one thing that came in so far this year, a little different and probably one of the things as a result of some of the positive macro factors that I referenced earlier. The odds of a Fed rate cut may be declining this year. If that's the case, we think hovering around where we are, the 95, give or take 1 or 2 basis points in any one quarter, is probably the sustainable spread for us. Got it. Okay. Thank you for that. If we move outside of the U.S., let's start with Asia, right? Sales have been very strong over the last few years, both in Japan and Asia ex Japan. If we think about what you've discussed earlier about the strategy, the macro, and everything, can you maybe talk about the opportunity here, especially given geopolitical and economic environment feels somewhat volatile there. Yeah. It's a good question. I think there's a lot of positive trends behind Japan, right? As well as our Asia business overall, demographics being one of them. We deliver products that are very supportive of the needs of that emerging and aging population. As you said, we've had some very strong results over the last year or so. In Q1, I think Asia sales were just above 20%. Obviously, Japan is a big component of that, given its size. Again, Japan fits into just the broader model I referenced earlier around what we try to do. We have a diversified set of products. We actually had some yen variable life product. We had a U.S. dollar product that we initiated in the quarter. Our A&H product performed very well. Again, just diversified by type of product, and we're diversified by channel, right? That allows us to leverage and allocate capital to its highest and best use, depending on what the competitive environment's like. Again, another very strong quarter for Japan. In addition to that, Korea, which is leveraging a lot of the learnings from Japan, particularly in the foreign currency products that we've seen. I think Korea was above 40% in terms of sales growth. We're seeing some real good momentum there as well, we're very pleased with what's ahead. There is some volatility. I actually think for our products and for the environment, given the, I'd say the higher rate, marginally higher rate environment, it's all relative, right? Higher rate that has emerged, coupled with that supportive demographic trend that I referenced. The setup's pretty constructive for Japan. Risk being better than what it was before. It's relative, yeah. Maybe looking at Latin America, you set a path to $1 billion of annual earnings, you are making progress towards that. Can you also maybe just help us think about the opportunities in that market? Obviously very different, but to a lesser extent, actually somewhat similar as well. Again, I put that in that category of capital light. Yep. Right? Lower capital needs in terms of the products that they deliver. Just a high ROE, high growth market. That's what we have, right? Right. It's very important. We're number one life insurer in Latin America, supported by some very strong structural trends. You have a rising wealth population still with low insurance penetration. The other thing which has been very fortunate for us, and again, a function of the scale that we have, we've been making investments in technology. It's the region that we're seeing the fastest uptick in embedding technology into the ecosystem and the process from end to end with the customer. We've seen tremendous results, and we have a product called Accelerator, which we leverage. It gives us the ability to enhance our agents. This technology that we're leveraging, Accelerate, is embedded with some of our partners, which embeds insurance and accelerates growth. We've seen in just the last year, we had $200 million of sales a year ago. We're already up to $700 million through that platform. We see a real big opportunity ahead of us in Latin America, a place where growth has been accelerating, and we see that continuing, and that path to $1 billion is real, and I'd say real for 2026. That should be pretty impressive. Earlier you mentioned EMEA has been a big grower for you. The growth there. Curious your thoughts on earnings sustainability. Also similar to Asia, if we think about the geopolitical risk there, just curious your view on that. EMEA is really remarkable, actually, just thinking about it. If you think about that segment, we actually have reduced our footprint over the last several years. Despite that, it's shown a structural growth trend and real durable growth trend that has emerged really over the last several years. If you take 2023 to 2025, sales have been growing in the 20% range, top line low double digits, and earnings close to 20%. It's really set itself up as a strong, durable growth engine with products that are protection-oriented, high free cash flow. It's actually a segment that generally gives us a dividend that's about equal to earnings every year. 100% dividend ratio. A growing and emerging part of our story, and I think also it's another region that's starting to leverage some of the learnings from Latin America in how insurance is starting to be embedded in the digital journey. We're seeing a lot of cross-learnings from those teams as well. Overall, we're very pleased with the progress, and we think this is really, like I said, a durable growth story now. That's a pretty impressive return profile there. MetLife Investment Management, your newest broken-out segment on the financials. Just curious how you think about the performance thus far. Obviously, there's still a lot more to go from there. Curious of your view on the long-term growth for this segment and your vision for the segment in general. I think it's important, like I said, it's one of the four priorities. Number three in the priorities, but one of the four priorities that we have under New Frontier. I'd say it's off to a great start. Our goal here is to scale our asset management business above and beyond where we are. We're already a scale player, but we want this to be a more material piece of our earnings mix as we go forward. Probably, like I said, probably our highest growth segment that we should see over time. The PineBridge acquisition that we just did was a check towards accelerating growth, added about $100 billion of AUM to our business, and I'd say we're off to a great start. The quarter, high growth relative to the last year, obviously we brought in PineBridge and I think the team's done a really nice job integrating, building a combined leadership team from both firms, and looking for ways to leverage some of the new capabilities we have. We built a leveraged finance platform through PineBridge. We have a new multi-asset solution. Our alternatives brand has basically tripled or quadrupled in size. We're very excited about what's ahead. Maybe on the point on PineBridge. You had very strong ROE during the integration in the first quarter. As we think about that integration, which you kind of alluded to, as we think about just the broader outlook for net flows for the investment management piece and for PineBridge, how should we think about the flow picture, but also how should we think about just that integrated firm, so to speak? Yeah. Capabilities. It's a great question. One thing that we've been fortunate to maintain is one platform, one MIM platform. Bringing PineBridge in and integrating that to become one MIM was very important to us. We've maintained that flush. We haven't gone out and done a boutique platform. We've built one platform that we believe we can scale, either through organic or complemented through inorganic acquisitions. From that perspective, we have a good backdrop for integrating. It's never easy, and it takes longer than you think. We got the teams already off and running. Net flows, like with any acquisition, you're always going to have in the near term, some normal variability in net flows. We also saw some market depression in the first quarter that has come back. The pipeline looks very constructive. As we think about this business, I think what's important to us is that three-year outlook and guide, and that's what we're really aiming for. You might see just some ebbs and flows in the first year. Integration, I would say, is off to a better start than we anticipated. Got it. Yeah, even though first half of the year- Yeah. market feels a little weird, things will be fine. That's right. Maybe on that is this nice kind of segue into the investment income piece, right? You had very strong variable investment income. You alluded to that a little bit earlier. Heading into second quarter, and then also rest of the year, just looking back 2026 thus far has been sort of a V-shaped market. How are you thinking about the broader impact to your variable investment income in 2026? Are there things around the edges that you might want to change here and there? Okay. Yeah. First, I think we entered the year, and we've talked about the benefit of having a well-diversified, well-seasoned portfolio. We saw that come through in Q1, over $500 million of pre-tax VII relative to call it, the $400 or so kind of quarterly run rate that we guided to. We think that was a good reflection of what we've been talking about, having that diversified seasoned portfolio and a very strong return in Q1. Yeah, we mentioned in the earnings call that given the way Q1 closed, we could see a little more pressure going into Q2. We'll deliver our 8-K disclosure in a couple of weeks, maybe two or three weeks, that shares, because they're all starting to come in now. With that, we actually think Q2 backdrop is setting up very well for Q3. Yeah. If you think about what's happening with the broader market in general and technology in general, then you throw in there the IPO market, and we have a nice allocation to VC portfolio. We actually think we're pretty well-positioned going into Q3. While we might see a little pressure coming into Q2, we think we're pretty optimistic about what we might see in Q3. Right. For sure. It's been in sort of V-shape going forward. Yeah. Now, part of the overall portfolio private credit. You provided some helpful disclosures on the first quarter. I think it's fair to say that a lot of investors can be influenced by fear from that perspective. Can you maybe help us think about the private credit portfolio for you, but also maybe just some commentaries about the broader industry, if that's possible? Sure. In terms of private credit, yeah. Yeah. Sure. I think for us, first, we use the term as part of our disclosure, private fixed income, to make sure it's all-inclusive. Right. I think terms get used very liberally out there these days. Let's use that as kind of the broad-based term that covers all private fixed income assets to start. From there, we've been doing this for decades, right? It's a core competency of us. We do it for our own balance sheet. We also do it for third parties. It's we believe a key competitive advantage for us. The fact that we do that and we apply that in a way that allocates the right assets to the right liabilities. That's very important when we think about our own balance sheet, is that ALM, asset liability management. Broadly speaking, the other thing that's very important from that disclosure, 95% of our private fixed income assets is investment grade. Again, we're generally on our balance sheet an investment grade shop with some smaller allocation to higher yielding assets and investments. Then if you move down from there, where people start to reference private credit, maybe with middle market direct lending, it's pretty small allocation in our balance sheet, less than 1%. We never had any exposure to some of the BDCs. I think our collective view right now is that credit remains pretty stable in general. Remember, we're coming from a set of environments and years where there was no credit losses. There might be some credit losses coming back in, I don't think that means credit's a challenge, right? I think it's just going to be more idiosyncratic versus a systemic issue. I think the other thing that came out with private credit of late is just the funding needs to be right for the asset. If you have liquid funding or funding that could move away from you put it into an illiquid asset or a less liquid asset, as we've seen with some of the BDCs in retail, it flows. That can be a challenge. Got it. Sometimes it feels like you're always fighting against a narrative, maybe commercial real estate or private credit, things like that. I think what's really important to your point is we're a high grade balance sheet, and you've seen that, like you said, with real estate and everything else that have come through. While we're going to all face some challenges, it hasn't had any impact on our capital management activity. Exactly. That the risk management is tight. Yeah. Maybe if we shift a little bit to the free cash flow narrative. Based on everything you have said so far, it should be a very free cash flow generative environment that you're in. It does feel like you should be on the higher end of that 65%-75% return rate profile, right? If that is the case, given the solid business momentum going forward, curious as to your thoughts on free cash flow going forward. Yeah, I think obviously that's very tied into capital management, things like that. Exactly. Right. 65%-75% on average feels like a good target. It's going to vary in any one year. By the way, last year we were 80%. Exactly. Right. Yeah. I get it. There may be some views that, "Well, why aren't you increasing it?" When we think of our business and we think of the opportunities for supporting organic growth and thinking about other things, maybe other uses of that. We think this is a good target for us. Could it vary from that target? Sure. I don't think we're going to move off the 65%-75% at this point. Okay. Remember, that's continuing with growth, right? Right. At the same time, you have very strong earnings. Yeah. That you should have very strong. That's right. In that case, the capital that you are generating in that case, if we think about just the current broader market valuation, if we think about just the amount of cash that you're getting, can you maybe discuss the capital deployment opportunities, your thoughts about buyback. Sure. potential other activities with the cash, things of that nature? Yeah. If you start with our philosophy, our first goal is how do we support organic growth with high returns, high IRRs, good payback, and you've seen that come through in our V&D disclosure. We would evaluate whether there's any complementary inorganic growth, the excess would be returned in share repurchases and dividends. If you take 2025, we had about $4 billion supporting organic growth, another billion or so from inorganic, with PineBridge acquisition and a few other things. Let's call that $5 billion of supportive growth. Yet another $3 billion for share repurchases or so, another billion and a half of shareholder dividends, so call that four and a half. $9.5 billion, going back to the point around the resiliency of our balance sheet, that we deployed in 2025 to drive shareholder return. I think that philosophy is really what should be focused on for us. That's the consistent philosophy for us. When it comes to 2026, from our perspective, we would say that the guide that we provided early last year of share repurchases generally in line with 2025, it's probably the best information we have at this point. Overall, we feel very comfortable around our capital position. All the operating entities and the projections we have around their solvency remain robust. We have significant amount of liquidity at the holding company, we feel very well positioned regardless of the environment. Got it. Thank you for that. We have a couple more minutes. If anybody have any questions you want to ask. Yeah, just please use the microphone. Hi there. Can you talk about the trends you're seeing in the long-term care risk transfer market, and if Met would have any appetite? Yeah. I think it's a market that, as we've said in other forums, that continues to get more attention. Over the years, I think other blocks and other products have taken a lot of the attention. I think now that a lot of transactions have occurred, you see more people reviewing LTC and being a bit more innovative around solutioning. I think for us, our viewpoint has been the same. We're constantly engaged with third parties, thinking about being solution-oriented. This tends to be a relationship because it's a reinsurance arrangement, so it needs to be a win-win. It makes us better, by the way, having those conversations, doing that analysis. From our standpoint, if it's value accretive, yes, we would be open to that. There's a lot of factors on determining the definition of that. In general, we see the conversations continuing. Yeah. Okay. I think we're at time. John, really appreciate your time. Great. Yeah, thanks. Thank you for being here. Thanks, Bob.