MetLife, Inc. (MET) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending December 31, 2022

February 2, 2023 9:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the MetLife Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings and Outlook Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

Before we get started, I refer you to the cautionary note about the forward-looking statements in yesterday's earnings release and to risk factors discussed in MetLife's SEC filings.

With that, I will turn the call over to John Hall, Global Head of Investor Relations.

John Hall - Head of IR

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for MetLife's fourth quarter 2022 earnings and near-term outlook call.

Before we begin, I'd point you to the information on non-GAAP measures on the Investor Relations portion of metlife.com, in our earnings release and in our quarterly financial supplements, which you should review.

On the call this morning are Michel Khalaf, President and Chief Executive Officer; and John McCallion, Chief Financial Officer. Also participating in the discussion are other members of senior management.

Last night, we released a set of supplemental slides which address the quarter as well as our near term outlook. They are available on our website. John McCallion will speak to those supplemental slides in his prepared remarks if you wish to follow along. An appendix to the slides features outlook sensitivities, disclosures, GAAP reconciliations and other information, which you should also review. After prepared remarks, we will have a Q&A session. In light of the busy morning, Q&A will promptly end at the top of the hour.

With that, over to Michel.

Michel Khalaf - President & CEO

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. As I look back on 2022, I am pleased with the relevance of our Next Horizon strategy and how it positioned us to absorb the challenges presented in the year and to succeed going forward.

2022 was a year still affected by COVID, and we incurred an impact of more than $650 million pretax. For the year, we saw pretax variable investment income come in 19% lower than our outlook expectation on lower returns in our private equity portfolio. And from a macroeconomic perspective, we felt pressure from rising inflation, a falling equity market and a stronger dollar.

Yet despite these hurdles, MetLife performed. Our strategy proved its resilience and our consistent execution driven by discipline and determination paid off in 2022. We delivered an adjusted return on equity of 12.3% for the year, meeting our target for this important metric.