Prudential plc (PUK) Q2 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending June 30, 2022

August 10, 2022 3:00 p.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Prudential plc 2022 Half Year Results Call. My name is Seb and I will be the operator for your call today. There will be an opportunity for Q&A. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand the floor over to Mark Fitzpatrick to begin. Please go ahead.

Mark FitzPatrick

Thank you and welcome everyone to our 2022 half year presentation from our offices here in Hong Kong. I’m Mark FitzPatrick and I'm joined here in person by several members of our leadership team and by a number of our Hong Kong based analysts.

From the Prudential team, we have James Turner, our group CFO and Avnish Kalra, Group Chief Risk Officer and Compliance Officer. We also have the Managing Directors of our three Strategic Business Groups. Here with us in the room is Lilian Ng responsible for Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, as well as overall distribution capabilities. And then joining us remotely from Singapore is Dennis Tan, who heads up Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam; Solmaz Altin, who's responsible for the remaining country markets, including Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines and he also has responsibility for our digital and technology functions. And then also Seck Wai-Kwong, Chief Executive of Eastspring.

So I appreciate this is a very busy day for many of you, and we'll close the session just before top of the hour. But very briefly, before we go into Q&A, just a couple of key points I'd like to highlight from the half year. So firstly, it was a resilient set of results. APE sales were up 9% to $2.2 billion, reflecting diverse source of growth due to our geographic footprint, product mix and distribution channels. APE sales in Southeast Asia and in Greater China are now both at about $1 billion.

New business profit was flat year-on-year when you exclude economic effects. And it was down 5% to $1.1 billion following differences in country and channel mix, and the impact of higher interest rates, and the [jaws] could be attributed approximately a third to each of those factors.

IFRS group operating profit was up 8% to $1.7 billion. And our resilient operational performance is testament to our multi-channel, digitally enhanced distribution platform, and our strong franchise across Asia and Africa, where we are Top 3 player in 11 Asian life markets. And the quality of our business is strong, as evidenced by the high customer retention rate that we published today. And we are looking to drive growth through a focus on operational delivery, right in quality health and protection business and by investment in people. And therefore our management priorities are around distribution, digital, business quality, people.