Good morning. My name is Jack and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the AXA Equitable Holdings Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Mr. Kevin Molloy, Head of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to AXA Equitable Holdings’ full year and fourth quarter 2018 earnings call. Materials for today's call can be found on our website at ir.axaequitableholdings.com. Before we begin, I would like to note that some of the information we present today is forward-looking and subject to certain SEC rules and regulations regarding disclosure. Our results may materially differ from those expressed in or indicated by such forward-looking statements. So I’d like to point out the Safe Harbor language on Slide 2 of our presentation. You can also find our Safe Harbor language in our 10-K. Joining me on today's call is Mark Pearson, President and Chief Executive Officer of AXA Equitable Holdings; and Anders Malmstrom, our Chief Financial Officer. Also on the line is John Weisenseel, AllianceBernstein’s Chief Financial Officer. During this call, we will be discussing certain financial measures that are not based on Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, also known as non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures and related definitions may be found on the Investor Relations portion of our website, in our earnings release, slide presentation, and financial supplement. I would like to now turn the call over to Mark and Anders for their prepared remarks. Mark

Thank you, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. Today we present our 2018 earnings and fourth quarter performance. I will also provide an update and progress against our strategic priorities and key financial targets. Before giving the numbers, I thought it would be helpful to provide a few highlights. Obviously the fourth quarter of 2018 saw a significant collection in equity markets with the S&P 500 falling 14%. We have a hedge program in place to protect against situation like this. This program offsets movements in economic liability of our living benefits due to changes in the market and interest rates and protects asset levels at CTE98 for our VA business. We have over decades of experience running this hedge program; however, this was the first occasion since our listing in May 2018 that we have seen the equity markets fall in the quarter. With the market fall, CTE98 requirements increased by $3 billion in the quarter. Our hedging program worked as expected and funded this increase. As a result, we end the year with VA capitalization levels in excess of CTE98 and a combined RBC ratio of approximately 670%. Anders will go in to more detail later in the presentation, but I’m pleased that we were able demonstrate our financial in volatile markets. Having said that and as I fully expected, our hedge program worked in the falling market, and I’m even more encouraged that the S&P has since risen by over 10% this year. Turning to the business; we continue to see strong operating earnings and delivery against our key financial targets. We remain confident that we will deliver the three years aspirational targets we set at the time of our IPO; that is non-GAAP operating earnings growing 5% to 7% annually to 2020. As a result of our…

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. We delivered solid financial performance on the first year, particularly in light of some of the macro headwinds Mark mentioned earlier. We have good momentum in all of our businesses and our results keep us firmly on pace to deliver on our 5% to 7% growth target and maintain the highest level of capitalization in the industry. On slide 6, I will review our consolidated results for the full year, before providing more detail on the fourth quarter including our hedging program performance, [decline] results and capital position. Overall, we reported strong full year results with non-GAAP operating earnings of 2.2 billion up 6% from 2017. Excluding significant favorable assumption update in both periods, operating earnings increased 28% to 2 billion or $3.59 per share. This growth was primarily attributable to an increase in fee type revenue reflecting higher average assets under management. Lower income tax expenses driven by the impact of tax reform and higher net investment income mainly due to the general account optimization and higher asset balances. GAAP net income was 1.8 billion for the year, contributing to this figure is the impact of our hedging program, which generated a large positive benefit to net income in the fourth quarter as a result of the decline in equity markets at year-end. These results were both in line with expectations and aligned with experience in previous quarters. As a reminder, the full variant between operating earnings and net income is a combination of primarily non-economic factors including hedging results and non-performance risk adjustment, which I will review in a moment. As a result of our performance and this hedging impact on net income, we saw a 13% year-over-year increase in book value excluding AOCI slightly depressing our pro forma non-GAAP operating…

Thanks Anders. Before we turn to taking your questions, I'd like to close by reiterating our strong results, our progress, and our momentum, as we step into 2019. 2018 was a remarkable year for our company, with a successful IPO, and a well-received secondary offering. We demonstrated our ability to deliver on our commitments, reported solid financial results, and made meaningful progress against our strategic initiatives. We have returned $1 billion since our IPO, and are announcing today a new share repurchase program of $800 million. Taken together, our performance, financial strength, momentum, and positioning for growth, give us confidence to announce an increased payout ratio target of 50% to 60% starting in 2019. With that we'll open it up for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] your first question comes from the line of Elyse Greenspan with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

My first question, you guys - hedging program performed pretty well in the fourth quarter, with obviously the sharp decline in equity markets. Could you guys give us a sense, how much would equity markets really need to drop for you guys to fall below that CTE98 target for your VA business?

This is Anders. Look I think as we've talked before, our hedging strategy is really to stay at the CTE98 for almost all scenarios. I think if we have a very severe scenario, we would go down to 95. So I think about the (inaudible) 40% equity shock that's when we would basically go down to CTE95. But in most scenarios, we actually stay at the CTE98.

And then in terms of the portfolio optimization, as we think about 2019, can you give us a sense of what could flow through earnings in '19, as you continue to kind of shift your investment portfolio?

Yes, sure. I mean if you recall, the overall outcome of the full program will be 160 million additional earnings coming out of the general account, we are about two-thirds through. The impact this year was $73 million. The program itself will be finished by the end of this year, so you can think about - if you make it a linear approach I think it will be I would say in between 120 and 140, somewhere there.

And then last question, the tax rate was a little bit lower in the fourth quarter. I'm assuming that was just kind of one-time, and you would expect it to kind of go back to your normal 18% target in 2019?

So look (inaudible) taxes always, you have sometimes true-ups and later in the year. So we had some true-ups on the (inaudible) and then state taxes. But I would say guidance again as we're going to see an effective tax rate of about 18% for the insurance segment and about 27% for the AB segment.

Your next question comes from the line of Tom Gallagher with Evercore. Your line is open.

First question is the $800 million new buyback authorization. Do you have the ability to accelerate that to the earlier part of the year, if you get opportunity with (inaudible) secondary? Would you be able to participate in a meaningful way again? That's my first question.

I think as we said in the call, we have the authorization for 800, and yes we have the ability to take a meaningful piece of that in case AXA goes out to secondary offering.

Would that be based on existing (inaudible) resources or would you have to use leverage or be willing to use leverage temporarily to do it, and can you talk a little bit about the timing of when you expect to get cash flows throughout the year in terms of dividends from subs?

I think first of all we have right now cash above our target level of 500 million at the holding company, so I think we have their ability to use some of that earlier in the year. We have the availability also during the year; we will not have to wait for second half of the year to take the money out of the operating entity. So we have a plan that we have continued cash coming into the holding company. And then just don't forget with the upstream of the AB units to the holding company, we now have meaningful cash coming out of AB on a quarterly basis. So we don't have to use any leverage to your question to participate

And then my final question, Brighthouse had some new disclosure on cash flows that showed a reduction from updated policyholder behavior assumptions from the new VA standard. Part of their cash flow reduction was based on a drag from its hybrid product, which is similar to your SCS product. Just question for you, I know when you had put out your (inaudible) you had the year end 2017 updated estimates for [MPV] of cash flows for variable annuities, are you going to provide an update for 2018 on those same cash flow estimates, and if so, would you expect to see a similar reduction as Brighthouse saw?

So first of all, I think remember we had this cash flows end of last year. We decided to wait for the final (inaudible) rule to come in, which I think we expect to be somewhere in April. Based on that we are going to update our cash flows going forward, because I don't think in our case it makes sense to do that before the (inaudible) rule is finished. Based on what I've seen today, I don't think it's going to have a material impact to the cash flows we provided a year ago, in particular you saw during the year we were actually able to take out cash out of the operating entity up to the holding company, and also I think we feel very confident also for this year that's why we changed the range from 40 to 50, 50 to 60. I think we feel very comfortable with the cash flows I think there's one point obviously that's the market, and we gave you sensitivities to the market, so you have that, but other than that I don't think there is a material change. One thing I want to highlight here is, our hedging program is really hedging first dollar, so I don't think we should see an impact than from hedging to the cash flow, because it really takes away the impact on the write-off coming from the market.

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Kligerman with Credit Suisse. Your line is open

Question on the individual retirement segment, you report a nice non-GAAP return on capital of 22.5%. So I'm curious, as the legacy business rolls off the GMxB, so what's the return on capital for that business versus your SCS products?

Mark here, so I don't think we've split it down for you. But what we can tell you is, as the legacy book runs off, remember we gave you that figure of 4 billion a year that will flow of capital because that's capital intensive business. We're adding business which is much lower in capital intensity, so it wouldn't surprise us to see the [ROC] improve as a result of those two dynamics

Pretty sharply Mark, several hundred basis points you think?

No I don't think pretty sharply. The momentum will be that way, but not sharp.

And then looking over to the group business, it looks like you had a negative flow in the quarter not the year of course, and it was a corporate account. Could you talk a bit about how your 401(k) business is performing, are there any pressures there?

I think you’ll rightly recall in Q4 we had this negative outflow from 401(k), which has much lower fee. I think overall the forward (inaudible) business is performing very well. But just keep in mind from a flow perspective, it's usually the case that first half of the year that's where you have the strongest flows. Third quarter you have usually negative, because some teachers don't get any salaries, and then fourth quarter it‘s usually mixed. This time we have this small outflow. But one thing if you go back, over the last six years, we actually had a positive flow on annual basis and this gives us confidence that we're on the right path here going forward

And then just real quickly, just following up on Tom's question about the buybacks, maybe I'm fishing a little bit, but could you give us a little color on discussions with AXA, how they're looking at timing. And then importantly, are you going to kind of hold off on any material buybacks until such time that they want to offer shares in the secondary?

Yes, it's Mark here. Obviously AXA doesn't talk to us too much about something like this, because we would have to disclose it to you, and so we don’t know. I think as you know the period which they gave undertakings not to come back to the market, that's about to lift or it’s just lifted. So it is in AXA's hands now as to whether they would like to make a third offering or not that's about all we know at this stage

And you want to just take it slow until you find out if they do I would assume right, you're not going to --.

Yeah, we've always said that we would use the majority of that buyback to support AXA, because obviously if we go into the market with it, we are actually increasing AXA's share which is (inaudible) to what they want. So we've always said that the majority will be to support a buy down if when one happens. And I think as Anders said to answering Tom's question, the money is there, so we can move without having to increase leverage.

Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Krueger with KBW. Your line is open

Following the adoption of NAIC VA reform, do you still anticipate, I'm talking about your VA capital target based on the CTE level, or would you potentially switch more to an RBC ratio after the new methodology it makes a bit more sense for RBC?

As you know one of the objectives of the VA reform is actually to harmonize, the way we can talk about the RBC. And you remember the way that set it up is that the CTE98 corresponds to an RBC of 400%. So our intent is once the rule is adopted that we actually then talk about an RBC target on a combined basis.

And then on group retirement in the last couple of quarters excluding items your earnings have been in the $100 million range, which is a decent step-up from where it had been previously. Is there anything in the results that would suggest a 100 million type run rate is in good to go forward with?

No, I think the run rate you see here is a steady growth. The Group Retirement business is one business that will actually benefit from the GA rebalancing. So I think you should see there a nice uplift coming there as well. Just recall about half and half of the revenues are coming from separate account and general account. So the uplift should help the group retirement nicely.

Your next question comes from the line of Josh Shanker with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

I've got two unrelated questions, the first is on the net investment income optimization. It came through nicely in the quarter, but we didn't really see it in the individual retirement segment, where most of your investable assets are. Is there something different going on in that segment versus the other two segments, did you complete that first, why is that growth rate stagnant on the NII but the other ones are growing quite swiftly?

I think the core general account and that's really where the program is focusing on, is really benefiting protection solutions and group retirement. That's where we have core business in the general account and that's where you see the benefit. It's less so at least today on the individual retirement, because the traditional VA's are really in the separate account, and then SCS has a separate program completely distinctive from the general account for the other segment.

And given the new way in the transfer of the ownership stake in AB, are there any tax implications for how you're holding that possession?

I think you’ll recall and we stated that we moved them up to the holding company. There is a small impact on the state taxes, and that's actually included in the guidance I gave you do about 27% and tax rate for the AB segment

Your next question comes from the line of Suneet Kamath with Citi. Your line is open.

I wanted to start with the capital return target of 50% to 60%. Just to unpack that a little bit, can you give us a sense of what the free cash flow is out of each of your businesses? I'm assuming that AB is pretty high close to maybe 90% 100%, which would imply sort of a 40% to 50% for everything else. I just want to understand maybe what that is at the segment level, if you could provide it?

Look I think it’s is an interesting question. We don't give the details by segment. I think what I can tell you is clearly on AB I think they pay out 100%, and as you know they have limited partnership, that's what they have to do. I think for the other businesses, we don't give the breakdown, but you recall when we think back the VA cash flows I think gave you a good indication on how we think about the cash coming out of the segments

And just to follow-up on the VA cash flows for a second, I think at the IPO you talked about being already at peak reserves for the VA business, obviously the market has been moving around a bit. So just want to get a sense if that's still the case, and is there any reserve release steady or inflexion wise that we should think about being embedded in your cash flows over the next couple of years?

I think one of the key points that we’ve mentioned at the IPO is really the (inaudible). And I can tell you we're still at (inaudible), I think for the core business. Obviously whenever you bring in new business, the new business in itself is not at (inaudible), but for the core business that is an in-force we are at peak (inaudible).

And then just the last one related, I think when you disclosed your update in the spring for your VA cash flows, have you or would you consider separating out the group retirement VA's from the individual retirement VA's, just so we can get a better sense of the risk profile of the individual business?

I think that's a question we get from time to time. The way I look at it is, because we manage the business together, we cannot really separate the cash flows between the segments. What we can tell you, and I think we told you that the majority of the CTE requirement is coming from the old accumulated business. So the newer business and the other segments have much less contribution to the CTE, but I don't think we're going to give a breakdown of that business. But when it comes to the cash flow outside of the CTE, you can really go and split it by the assets and asset base, because that's how the fees flow into the cash flows.

[Operator Instructions] your next question comes from the line of Alex Scott with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open

The first question I have is, just if you could provide any more color on sort of what elements of VA capital reform are already sort of included in the way you calculate CTE98 versus some of the elements you may still need them on them?

So right now we are using the old way to calculate CTE98, obviously we're working on the new one, but we’re still basically using what is right now the right way or let's say the official way to calculate CTE98, that's when I talk about CTE98. But I think as we said before, we don't think that it's going to have a material impact on our cash and capacity on a going forward basis. So otherwise we wouldn't have updated our cash protections today.

And then my second question is just around the expense efficiencies, it looked like there was a nice step down in expenses, just would be interesting to hear any update on how you'd expect the target expense efficiencies to earn in over the next couple of years. And also I think there are some higher costs associated with AXA SA selling down below a certain percentage that maybe were below the line. Can you just remind us about what those costs are, and how they all come in?

As you can imagine, the biggest benefits will really come in '19 and '20, that's when you basically earned the benefit of the efficient initiatives we undertook already and we are undertaking, I think that's clear. As you correctly mentioned the separation costs, they go below the line, they are really one-time. And then I think the way we look at it it's not just separation, we also want to make sure that we actually put ourselves in the best position going forward, that's why you might see a slight uptick there relative to the guidance we gave, but this should have been in the future to actually be more efficient.

There are no further questions at this time. This concludes the AXA Equitable Holdings fourth quarter earnings call. We thank you for your participation, you may now disconnect.