Aegon N.V. (NYSE:AEG) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call May 12, 2022 3:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Jan Willem Weidema - Head, Investor Relations
Lard Friese - Chief Executive Officer
Matt Rider - Chief Financial Officer
Duncan Russell - Chief Transformation Officer
Conference Call Participants
Andrew Baker - Citi
Fulin Liang - Morgan Stanley
David Barma - BNP Paribas
Michael Huttner - Berenberg
Steven Haywood - HSBC
Robin van den Broek - Mediobanca
Nasib Ahmed - UBS
Operator
Good day and welcome to the Aegon’s First Quarter 2022 Results Conference Call for Analysts and Investors. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Jan Willem Weidema, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Jan Willem Weidema
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining this conference call on Aegon’s first quarter 2022 results. Before we start, we would appreciate it if you could take a moment to review our disclaimer on forward-looking statements, which you can find at the back of the presentation.
With me today are Aegon’s CEO, Lard Friese; CFO, Matt Rider; and Chief Transformation Officer, Duncan Russell. Let me now give the floor to Lard.
Lard Friese
Thanks, Jan Willem and good morning, everyone. We appreciate that you are joining us on today’s call and look forward to updating you on our first quarter results and the progress we are making against our strategic and financial objectives.
So, let’s turn to Slide #2. The first 3 months of 2022 have been unprecedented in many ways. Our Russian invasion in Ukraine has had a devastating impact on the lives of many people. It also further fueled inflationary pressures and volatility on the global financial markets at a time that many economies were opening up after relaxing COVID-19 measures. I am proud of our colleagues who continue to effectively support and service our customers in this turbulent environment.
Our results and the progress we made on our 2023 strategic and financial objectives are evidence of their great work. Despite the challenging environment, we have achieved higher sales in many of our strategic assets. We continued sharpening our strategic focus most importantly, through the completion of the divestments of our businesses in Hungary and Turkey to the Vienna Insurance Group. The closing of the sale of our Hungarian businesses resulted in a significant increase in cash capital at the holding. This enabled us to announce a share buyback program and to further reduce our debt. As a result, we have brought our debt into our target range while maintaining a capital position that allows us to distribute excess cash to shareholders.