Good day and welcome to the Globe Life, Inc.'s Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Release Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mike Majors, Executive Vice President, Administration and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Joining the call today are Gary Coleman and Larry Hutchison, our Co-Chief Executive Officers; Frank Svoboda, our Chief Financial Officer; and Brian Mitchell, our General Counsel. Some of our comments or answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements that are provided for general guidance purposes only. Accordingly, please refer to our earnings release, our 2019 10-K, and any subsequent Forms 10-Q on file with the SEC. Some of our comments may also contain non-GAAP measures. Please see our earnings release and website for discussion of these terms and reconciliations to GAAP measures. I'll now turn the call over to Gary Coleman.

Thank you, Mike, and good morning everyone. I would like to open by saying that in this COVID environment, the company continues to conduct business effectively and our operations are running efficiently. In fourth quarter, net income was $204 million or $1.93 per share, compared to $187 million or $1.69 per share a year-ago. Net operating income for the quarter was $184 million or $1.74 per share, a per share increase of 2% from a year-ago. On a GAAP reported basis, return on equity was 9.5% and book value per share was $83.19. Excluding unrealized gains and losses on fixed maturities, return on equity was 13.5% and book value per share grew 10% to $53.12. In our life insurance operations, premium revenue increased 7% to $678 million. As noted before, we have seen improved persistency and premium collections since the onset of the crisis. Life underwriting margin was $164 million, down 8% from a year-ago. The decline in margin is due primarily to approximately $27 million of COVID claims. In 2021, we expect both life premium revenue and underwriting margin to grow 6% to 7%. At the mid-point of our guidance, we anticipate approximately $52 million of COVID claims. Health insurance premium grew 5% to $290 million and health underwriting margin was up 18% to $72 million. The increase in underwriting margin was primarily due to improved persistency and lower acquisition expenses. In 2021, we expect both health premium revenue and underwriting margin to grow around 6%. Administrative expenses were $63 million for the quarter up 3% from a year-ago. As a percentage of premium, administrative expenses were 6.5% compared to 6.7% a year-ago. In 2021, we expect administrative expenses to grow 7% to 8% and be around 6.7% of premium due primarily to higher pension costs, higher IT and Information Security cost and a gradual increase in travel and facilities costs. I’ll now turn the call over to Larry for his comments on the fourth quarter marketing operations.

Thank you, Gary. I am optimistic as I look ahead, I believe we'll emerge from the pandemic stronger than before as a result of the adjustments we've made during the crisis. We now have more ways to generate sales and recruiting activity. The ability to recruit agents and sell to customers both virtually and in-person in the future will enhance our ability to generate sales growth. Looking back at fourth quarter, we were pleased with the results as we continue to see strong growth in sales and agent count. I will now discuss trends at each distribution channel. At American Income, life premiums were up 10% to $327 million and life underwriting margin was up 7% to $105 million. Net life sales were $71 million, up 20%. The increase in net life sales is primarily due to increased agent count. The average producing agent count for the fourth quarter was 9,642, up 26% from the year-ago quarter, and up 4% from the third quarter. The producing agent count at the end of the fourth quarter was 9,664. We continue to see significant recruiting opportunity due to current economic conditions and our ability to recruit both virtually and in-person. At Liberty National, life premiums were up 3% to $74 million, while life underwriting margin was down 26% to $14 million, as lower underwriting margin is primarily due to COVID claims. Net life sales increased 24% to $18 million, while net health sales were $7 million down 1% from the year-ago quarter. The increase in net life sales is due to increased agent count, continued adoption of virtual sales methods and increased ability to conduct worksite sales activities. The average producing agent count for the fourth quarter was 2,705, up 7% for the year-ago quarter, and up 6% from the third quarter.…

Thanks, Larry. Excess investment income which we define as net investment income less required interest on net policy liabilities and debt was $61 million, a 2% decrease over the year-ago quarter. On a per share basis reflecting the impact of our share repurchase program, excess investment income was up 2%. For the year, excess investment income in dollars declined 5% and on a per share basis was down 1%. In 2021, we expect excess investment income to be flat, but up 1% to 3% on a per share basis. In the fourth quarter, we invested $359 million in investment grade fixed maturities, primarily in the municipal and financial sectors. We invested at an average yield of 3.54%, an average rating of A, and average life of 26 years. While we continue to invest primarily in fixed maturities, 17% of our total investment acquisitions in 2020 were in other long-term investments, primarily Limited Partnerships, investing in credit instruments. These investments are expected to generate incremental additional yield, while still being in line with our conservative investment philosophy. For the entire fixed maturity portfolio, the fourth quarter yield was 5.29%, down 12 basis points from the fourth quarter of 2019. And as of December 31, the portfolio yield was approximately 5.28%. Invested assets were $18.4 billion, including $17.2 billion of fixed maturities and amortized costs. Of the fixed maturities $16.4 billion are investment grade with an average rating of A- and below investment grade bonds are $841 million compared to $840 million at September 30. The percentage of below investment grade bonds to fixed maturities is 4.9%. Excluding net unrealized gain from the fixed maturity portfolio, the low investment grade bonds as a percentage of equity is 15%. Overall, the total portfolio is rated A- same as a year-ago. Bonds rated BBB…

Thanks, Gary. First, I want to spend a few minutes discussing our share repurchase program, available liquidity and capital position. The parent began the year with liquid assets of $45 million. In addition to these liquid assets, the parent company generated excess cash flows in 2020 of $388 million compared to $374 million in 2019. The parent company's excess cash flow as we define it, results primarily from the dividends received by the parent from its subsidiaries less the interest paid on debt, and the dividends paid to Global Life shareholders. Thus including the assets on hand at the beginning of the year, we had $433 million of excess cash flow available to the parent during the year. In the fourth quarter, the parent -- the company purchased 1.4 million shares of Globe Life, Inc. common stock at a total cost of $123 million with an average share price of $88.55. For the full-year, we spent $380 million of parent company cash to acquire 4.5 million shares, at an average share price of $85.24. As noted on our last call, the parent ended the third quarter with $435 million in liquid assets. As just noted, the parent used $123 million of cash for share repurchases in the fourth quarter. In addition, the parent reduced its commercial paper holdings by $25 million during the quarter. The parent ended the fourth quarter with liquid assets of approximately $290 million. Looking forward, the parent will continue to generate excess cash flow in 2021. While their 2020 statutory earnings have not yet been finalized, we expect our excess cash flow in 2021 to be in the range of $330 million to $360 million. Thus, including the assets on hand at January 1, we currently expect to have around $620 million to $650 million of…

Thank you, Frank. Those are our comments. We will now open the call up for questions.

[Operator Instructions]. And we'll take our first question from Ryan Krueger with KBW.

Hi, good morning. If I take your updated COVID guidance, it looks like there may have been a small amount of reduction to the EPS expectation outside of COVID. Can you provide any detail on what any additional drivers beyond just COVID mortality?

Sure. Yes, we've -- we are expecting a higher average share price in 2021, than what we had anticipated back in October, just reflecting our higher trading price right now. So it did have a reduction in the overall effect of the buyback maybe $0.06 to $0.07 ultimately. And then probably $0.03 to $0.04 better underwriting results, ultimately, really American Income and Liberty just a little bit better, slightly better than what we maybe anticipated back in October.

Got it. And then I continue on the buyback, can you provide any thoughts on your expectations for buyback levels in 2021, you obviously have some excess cash at the parent company, any thoughts there?

Yes, Ryan, right now we anticipate just using whatever excess cash flow that we generate at the parent company for the global buybacks. So again, in that $340 million to $370 million range, somewhere in there. Well, as far as the excess cash that's sitting there at the parent company, for right now we'll hold on to that to make sure of what levels of additional capital we might need and as we work our way through the year, then we'll see if we're able to redeploy those in some other fashion.

Thanks. And I just had one last quick one. Life persistency has generally been favorable and was favorable in 2020; it looks like some of that reversed in the fourth quarter in direct to consumer. So curious what you're expecting for persistency in 2021?

Ryan, we're -- in the mid-point of our guidance, we assume that the persistency over the year would eventually get back to or just prior to 2020. In that -- so what we're going to -- what we saw in the fourth quarter, even in the direct to consumer is that the persistency wasn't quite as good as it was in second or third quarter. But still it was better than what it had been historically. We're just -- I don't think we've ever had a pandemic. Well, I guess I don't, we're just not sure whether or when we'll return back to the prior historical levels. But as far as I got as we assume -- as we get toward the end of 2021 it'll be back to more what it was 2019 and prior.

We'll take our next question from Andrew Kligerman with Credit Suisse.

Good morning. I guess the first question, I'm looking at the life underwriting margins and as a percent of premiums in direct to consumer, it fell 860 basis points to 10.1%. But then when we look at American Income, it only fell 90 basis points to 32.1%. So I just kind of -- I think I have a sense of the answer but I'd like a little more color on what might be driving the disparity between these two channels?

And I think, did you say it well, in Liberty National has a little bit more exposure to some of the higher populations within their overall book of business. When you look at -- then American Income, American Income generally ensures a little younger portion of the population has less exposure to say those portions of the populations that are being most impacted right now. So just proportionally -- they are -- Liberty National is seeing a just a higher impact overall from the COVID.

Again in direct to consumer as well?

Yes, in direct to consumer it’s a little bit more of, their -- the nature of their simplified underwriting, especially as compared to American Income, American Income has little bit more underwriting processes being done in the field whereas with direct to consumer and their simplified underwriting, we anticipate higher mortality, we've always priced in and have higher mortality experience in direct to consumer. They also have as a percentage of their in-force a little bit older population -- or they do have an older population than American Income, it's not quite as --it's a little bit less than what Liberty National has. Overall for our book of business, it's about 4% of our policies in force are relate to insurers that are 70-year old and 70 years old and above. At American -- at direct to consumer, it's closer to 5%. And Liberty National, just a little bit higher than that and American income is about 3.5% or so.

I see. That makes sense. So that everything seems on track. So then, as I think about the sales trends and nothing short of phenomenal there. What percent -- just curious, some color around margins, what percent of sales would you say in your exclusive producer channels, what percent are being done virtually versus face-to-face?

We don't keep the data because all of our applications record electronically. Only distinguish, I would estimate at this point in time, probably 80% of the American Income sales are still virtual. I think it would be a much larger percentage than the other two agencies. Well, the reason we don't capture that data is to go forward and what was important is we're looking at closing rates, we look at activity, that's really a better measure where sales will be, it really comes down to consumer preference. We'll show you the virtually around person, depending on what the consumer prefers as a sales channel.

I see. I see. Makes sense. And then just again, maybe a little color around statistics or metrics for just demand for protection based products. Are there any metrics out there where you're seeing that pick up I know earlier, you said that you expect persistency will kind of revert back to where we were in 2019? Do you think demand will come down as well?

Well, I think we do expect to do life insurance demand for pandemic levels. However, we think demand should be greater than pre-COVID levels. Well, that's because I think that shows some benefit for the continued increase awareness of the importance of life insurance, of course, there's a possibility of future pandemic. Currently, the variants for the current pandemic, I think we'll see a consumer preference for the digital experience, which will help our direct to consumer. Only agencies are decreasing demand, I think it'd be offset by our ability to sell both virtually and in-person. And the growth in the agencies, both the agents and the middle management will also generate additional sales as we go-forward.

Andrew, I'd like to -- I mentioned earlier that we -- Andrew I mentioned that we have to assume that lapses would go back to historical trends by the end of the year. But I'll do a reference just not sure because we haven't been through this pandemic like this before, it well could do that because it impacted so many people, and so many families in this country that it turns out that the persistency and premise we've seen continue for a period of time. But just to be conservative, we assumed that they would go back to the historical averages by the end of this year.

And we'll now take our next question from Erik Bass with Autonomous Research.

Hi, thank you. I think your guidance is for health premiums and underwriting income to grow 6% to 7% in 2021, which implies flat margins, think before you had expected the margin to come down a little bit, given some of the benefits of lower claims in 2020. So are you changing that view at all, and do you expect some of the benefits to continue into 2021?

Well, Erik, I think we expect from a policy obligation standpoint that we'll probably be around the same in 2021, as we were 2020. But what we're seeing is because the improved persistency, we're seeing lower acquisition cost, lower amortization. And we had 19% of premium in 2019 to 18% in -- we're thinking it could be a little bit less than 18% this coming year. So that's -- that's helping keeping that margin.

So overall, kind of in the 24% to 25% range again, is that what you're expecting?

Yes, it should be -- I think at the mid-point of our guidance, this is right around 24%.

Got it. Thank you. And then I was just hoping you could maybe give a little bit more color on the long-term investments that you talked about the limited partnerships. Just hoping you could provide a little bit more detail on what these are in the credit profile and how they're treated in terms of required capital in the accounting for investment income?

Sure. Yes, most of these are long-term limited partnerships that primarily invest in credit-related investments. Some of them are -- have participation mortgages that are very short-term -- short-term mortgages that are made like three years in duration, and have very good loan to ratios. Ultimately, these are designed to be kicking out investment income on a periodic basis, as well as you'll have the potential for long-term gains, if you will, long-term target rates. The quarterly distributions generally on most of these range from 5% to 6% and ultimately have maybe a long-term return prospects of 8% to 10%. And really, that's the difference between those quarterly distributions that we obtain from these partnerships. And then some of those long-term returns are what flow through ultimately, it's capital gains, that flow through our realized gains of losses, over time. But the majority of those are in the nature of that. There's also some opportunistic credit partnerships that we've had on for on our books for a while. But we continue to look at some of those types of generally credit-related, structured type partnerships that get us into a little bit different type of exposure on the credit side than the normal fixed -- corporate fixed maturities.

Got it, thanks. That's helpful. So should we expect a little bit more volatility quarter-to-quarter in terms of the investment income from those? And is there a higher assumed capital charge as well?

Yes, there's a higher capital charge and so we take that into account, when we're taking a look into that, and evaluating the benefits of getting into that type of an investment versus the fixed maturity, given the higher yields that they have right now. It's worth a higher capital charge. It is a little bit -- from a risk perspective, they're definitely lower in risk than I'm going to say kind of the general alternatives or especially those that might be a little bit more equity based hedge fund type partnerships. The structure of these with getting some type of a quarterly distribution from them, from a statutory income, then we've got a steady stream and a predictable stream still of income, that's receivable from these particular partnerships. Long-term and on the balance sheet, there is a volatility just in the value of those on a quarter-to-quarter basis.

And we'll now take our next question from John Barnidge with Piper Sandler.

Thank you very much. With the increased level of COVID deaths, kind of embedded in revised guidance, can you talk about the corresponding claims tailwind offset we should be thinking about from lower utilization and health?

Yes, on the health side right now for 2020, we really see the utilization really coming back to a pretty normal level, especially on med supp type business, where we did see some benefits from lower utilization in 2020. We've really seen the trends toward the end of the year to get back to pretty normal utilization. And right now we're anticipating that same type of utilization in 2021. We're really not on the health side expecting any -- really any substantial benefits or costs, if you will associate with that. Does that answer the question?

Yes, it did, thank you. Maybe related to that. Can you talk about maybe telemedicine; do you feel that could long-term offer some claim savings for the health business?

I'm not sure I understood the question.

If telemedicine becomes a more permanent part of -- and if people using Medicare supplemental products, their claims utilization rates can maybe secularly decline possible?

Yes, potentially. I don't know off the -- I do not think that we've built into that into any type of our guidance. But it does seem possible that that could potentially have some cost savings in the long-term.

And we'll now take our next question from Jimmy Bhullar with JPMorgan.

Hi, good morning. So first, I just had a question on your sales, and you've obviously seen very good growth across all of your channels. Do you think there's some adverse selection going on as well? And what are some of the things that you're doing to potentially prevent that? And if you have any statistics on claims that you might have seen on policies that you've written since -- since the onset of the pandemic?

Jimmy, I'll touch on the kind of the last part of that, especially, we do continue to really monitor the sales, especially on the direct to consumer side, looking at, we think changes in the average age of new applications and the amounts that are being requested. And they're coming from higher risk geographies and looking at those, are seeing changes in those types of demographics, and we are not seeing any significant really changes in those over the course of the year. So we do, and of course with limited, some of our exposures, especially to the higher age segments of the population. So we've taken steps through the marketing and underwriting efforts to try to protect ourselves there. But with -- and with respect to the claims that we've paid so far, we paid 28 claims through the -- in 2020, on policies that were issued after 31, with a total face amount of about $178,000. In considering that we issued about, close to 2 million policies during the year, that's a pretty small number. Now, we had about 3,800, little less than 3,800 claims in total, in the year that we've actually paid, of course, there may be some of those that are in the process that's still getting that are in the process. But we're seeing about 85% of our claims are above age 60 and above. So we're still really seeing it in the high risk, it's consistent with what we're seeing, consistent to where one would think in those focus in the highest level. And then almost 70% of our claims are from policy being issued in 2010 or before and 97 are before 2019. So we're seeing a pretty good distribution from over that.

Jimmy, on the sales side, the company is monitoring the increased sales levels; to be sure [indiscernible] selection is not occurring. We haven't experienced a significant shift in product mix, apt age or location of the new sales. If you look at direct to consumer it's interesting that the sales increases across all channels. However, the juvenile sales have actually increased at a higher rate than adult life insurance. It gives us some further confidence there because the highest estimate is [indiscernible] with the older ages.

Thank you. And then do you have any better insight into sort of the impact of changes in accounting for long duration contracts going into effect in a couple of years?

Yes, I really don't have anything new from what we talked about in the last call. We do continue to work through that. It'll be something I think a little bit, maybe the latter part of this year that we'll have little bit more information to really share on that.

Okay. And just lastly on, if you think about your agent recruiting and retention, it's obviously benefited, I think from a softer labor market in the services area. If assuming COVID vaccines are successful, and we sort of get to normal later this year, and everything opens up, do you think you could suffer in terms of retention, as some of these guys have left other industries and come to your, become sales agents or leave or what are your views on your retention, if we sort of get to normalcy agent retention?

Call me back saying that the Fed was recruiting and retention. I pointed out that in terms of unemployment, we have been able to recruit successfully, we really focus on the under employed, not just the unemployed. You're correct. Unemployment does have a greater effect on retention and recruiting, has greater work opportunities. We think the ability to recruit both virtually and in-person and the sell version in person -- admin person will enhance our ability to grow the agencies. And I think retention will be at historical levels as we go-forward.

And we'll take our next question from Tom Gallagher with Evercore.

Good morning, a question on direct to consumer, you said I think I got this right, excluding COVID losses, the margin was 16% in the quarter. That's a bit lower than it's been trending on a normalized basis, I guess, full-year last year was 18%, 4Q last year was 19%. Are you expecting lower margins to persist in that business into 2021?

Yes, Tom. We did see in the fourth quarter, a little pickup in some of the non-COVID claims. Really especially in the -- in some of the areas that we've seen in the press, homicides and deaths due to drug overdose, whether that be drug or alcohol related type accidents, which some have kind of attributed, if you will, to some of those indirect COVID-related deaths and trends and, in fact, they're up over about 24%, those types of claims over the fourth quarter of 2019. And that was about 2% of the premium in the fourth quarter. Now, we do anticipate those staying a little bit elevated levels into 2021. So, overall, we're expecting margins for full-year of 2021 to be in that 12% to 16% range, probably three points of that is, due to COVID. And you probably add another 1% or 2%, that are just due to -- what we think are some of the higher other causes of death that are kind of a byproduct of the COVID environment that we think will subside over time and won't stick with us for the long-term. But right now, we're including some of that into 2021.

That’s not excluding the impact of COVID next year, the direct COVID claims is still going to be somewhere, it'd be in the 16% to 17% range.

Got you. So a little bit later, and any -- just given that expectation, any consideration or reason to reprice, are you still very comfortable with that level of margin from an overall return standpoint?

Well, we've always looked at possibility of repricing. But I think what we’ve been looking out we’ve only given guidance for 2021. But I think our feeling is that until we get past the amount of COVID claims we'll get past 2021. We think we'll get closer back to that 80% range that we were prior to 2020.

Okay. And then just on your on the excess cash, you expect for 2021 I guess it's about $30 million to $40 million lower versus your 2020 figure. Is that all just due to the expectation of credit risk and credit losses, or is there anything else affecting that?

Yes, that's predominantly the credit losses that we actually had in 2020, which impacted statutory income in 2020 and therefore the dividends that are available to the holding company in 2021. And there's probably another $10 million or so, we're kind of seeing and just looking at some of the other cash flows that the holding company has that looks like they maybe a little bit lower in 2021 versus 2020.

It appears there are no further telephone questions. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mike Majors for any additional or closing remarks.

All right. Thank you for joining us this morning. Those are our comments. And we'll talk to you again next quarter.

And once again, that does conclude today's conference. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.