Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the MetLife Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings and Outlook Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Before we get started, I refer you to the cautionary note about 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. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for MetLife's fourth quarter 2025 earnings and near-term outlook call. Before we begin, I 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 and Head of MetLife Investment Management. Also available to participate in the discussion are other members of senior management. Last night, we released an earnings call presentation, which addresses the quarter as well as our near-term outlook. It is available on our website. John McCallion will speak to this presentation in his prepared remarks. An appendix to the deck features outlook sensitivities, disclosures, GAAP reconciliations, and other information which you should also review. After prepared remarks, we will have a Q&A session, which will end promptly at the top of the hour. As a reminder, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. With that, over to Michel.

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. When we launched New Frontier a year ago, we introduced four strategic priorities, with a greater emphasis on growth. Over the past twelve months, we have advanced these strategic priorities, growing our business responsibly, deploying capital soundly, and operating with speed and discipline, all while navigating a dynamic market and economic environment. Reinforcing our market leadership, our best-in-class group benefits business added approximately $100 million of new adjusted premiums, fees, and other revenues in 2025, with higher margin voluntary PFOs rising 10% year over year. Scale, technology, and discipline continue to drive this attractive business forward. We capitalize on our unique retirement platform by seeding a sidecar, Chariot Re, tapping the US retail retirement space via flow reinsurance, and originating more than $14 billion of pension risk transfer sales, MetLife's highest ever annual PRT total. To accelerate growth in asset management, we closed on the acquisition of PineBridge Investments and established a new business segment, MetLife Investment Management. At year-end, MIM had $742 billion of assets under management, up from roughly $600 billion a year ago. And our high-growth international markets demonstrated their strategic importance with impressive growth rates. In 2025, Asia saw constant currency sales jump 18%, aided by a strong contribution from Japan, while Latin America saw constant currency sales rise by 12%, with Mexico leading the charge. Our business growth has been fueled by sound capital deployment and capital management. And 2025 was a seminal year for MetLife on this front. We expect to have deployed close to $4 billion to support organic new business in 2025, driven in part by the PRT origination and the Asia and LATAM sales production that I just mentioned. We returned roughly $2.9 billion to shareholders via common stock repurchase and another $1.5 billion…

Looking to Latin America, adjusted earnings excluding notable items came to $227 million, up 13% in the quarter. Business momentum in the region has been outstanding over the past several years, supplemented by the expansion of digital platforms such as Accelerator, and growing strategic partnerships. Given the segment's strength in the quarter, it is not hard to see a pathway to $1 billion in annual earnings over the near term. With EMEA, the segment continues to punch above its weight class relative to last year's outlook. The segment reported adjusted earnings ex notables of $97 million in the quarter, which is close to the run rate implied by our 2026 outlook. And to close out business highlights, in the fourth quarter, we transitioned to new segmentation with the introduction of MetLife Investment Management as a business segment. This aligns with our New Frontier strategic priorities, reflects the critical mass we've gained with the acquisition of PineBridge, and underscores our intent to grow and further capitalize on the increasing convergence of life insurance and asset management. Moving to cash and capital. The fourth quarter serves as an excellent reminder of MetLife's capital strength and flexibility. After retiring half a billion dollars of debt, buying back around $430 million of common stock, paying roughly $370 million of common stock dividends, and funding close to $1 billion of acquisitions and other investments, we ended the year with $3.6 billion of cash and cash equivalents. This falls firmly within our target liquidity buffer of $3 billion to $4 billion. A final note on capital: In the month of January, we repurchased another $200 million of our common stock. We expect 2026 repurchases to be in line with 2025. To wrap up, the strategic actions we took in 2025 set the table for the coming years of New Frontier and position MetLife to deliver on our financial commitments and our superior value proposition of responsible growth and attractive returns with less risk. We are entering 2026 as a stronger company with sustained business momentum and expanding market leadership. While the macro and market environments continue to evolve, we remain laser-focused on the levers we control and on relentless execution to generate responsible growth, deploy capital with rigor, and further drive operating efficiency. MetLife's financial strength feeds our ability to deliver for our shareholders as well as other stakeholders, including our customers, employees, and communities. In 2025, MetLife paid roughly $50 billion in policyholder benefits and claims and invested more than $90 billion to support our liabilities. The sheer scale of these numbers highlights the dedication of our people to MetLife's purpose—always with you, building a more confident future. I am energized by our team's commitment and look forward to the future. There is still much for us to achieve. Now I'll turn it over to John to cover our performance and outlook in greater detail.

Thank you, Michel, and good morning, everyone. I'll review our fourth-quarter results and refer to the fourth-quarter earnings call presentation for financial highlights, including our near-term outlook. Starting on Page three, we made significant progress in 2025 toward our five-year financial goals. Achieved 10% adjusted EPS growth and adjusted ROE of 16%, within our target range. A two-year average free cash flow ratio of 81%, surpassing our target. And a full-year direct expense ratio of 11.7%, also beating our target. Overall, an excellent first year, which establishes a strong foundation for our New Frontier strategy. Net income was approximately $800 million and $3.2 billion for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025, respectively. The difference between net income and adjusted earnings was mostly attributable to net derivative losses, primarily due to rising long-term interest rates, favorable equity markets, and a stronger US dollar. We use derivatives to hedge economic exposures where these offsets are either reported elsewhere in the financial statements or where the offsetting economic emerges over time. In addition, net investment losses were largely the result of normal trading activity on the portfolio, and credit remained stable. We had two notable items in the fourth quarter that reduced adjusted earnings by $61 million in the aggregate or $0.09 per share. The notable items were the Mexico VAT impact, we discussed in the third quarter, and higher asbestos litigation reserves recorded in corporate and other. Moving to Page four, this slide compares fourth-quarter year-over-year adjusted earnings, excluding notable items, by segment, and corporate and other. All my comments refer to figures excluding notable items. Adjusted earnings rose 18%, 17% in constant currency to $1.7 billion, driven by higher variable investment income, strong volume growth, and favorable expense margins, partially offset by lower recurring interest margins. Also, we have…

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press 1 on your telephone keypad. To raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your questions, simply press 1 again. As a reminder, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up to allow everyone an opportunity to ask a question. We'll take our first question from Jimmy Bhullar at JPMorgan.

Hey. Good morning. So first, just had a question on group benefits. For Rami. Just comment on what you've seen through renewal season in various product lines. I know you've been pricing up dental over the past year. How you're seeing your like, what you've done in terms of pricing in various product lines and whether you're seeing competition, pickup, or ease in any of the products in group benefits?

Thanks for the question, Jimmy. I would say we look at our one-one results, in particular, with respect to persistency and renewals, we're seeing pretty robust results. I would say increase in particular, in dental. As we've talked about, we did take actions in one-one of '25 with respect to the dental business. And responded quickly to kind of get back to our target margins. And I would say at this point, persistency is improving and is pretty robust. And, although we'll come back and talk to you about our full Q1 results, at this point, we also have good sales growth across our book of business and, in particular, would highlight disability here as an area of strength that we're starting to see based on our 01/01 results.

And then just another topic for Linden or maybe Michel. In Japan, you've seen pretty dramatic moves in some of the macro variables, it's currency or interest rates. How is that affecting your business in terms of persistency, maybe the sales mix and any comments on the competitive environment in that market? As well?

Hey, Jimmy. It's Lyndon here. So yeah, we have seen some macroeconomic volatility recently. Both in the FX as well as the rates up. But just if you think about it, the short-term impact on sales could be due to rates. Would we see a short-term impact during periods when we see significant macroeconomic fluctuations. And what happens here, our customers tend to wait for the markets to stabilize before going out and buying foreign currency products. So we see these temporary just fluctuations, but for the most part, our value propositions continue to remain solid with the customers. And given the breadth of our product portfolio and our distribution strength here, it really gives us puts us in a good position to meet the demand through these periods. Whether it's yen or dollar products.

And just with the issues at Prudential, obviously, they're more company-specific and don't have anything to do with you guys. But do you see any impact on your business just because of Peru and you both being American companies? In terms of sales, persistency, and recruiting?

Yeah. Look. We know, thanks for the question. We really don't have much to say about it. I mean, we're aware of the situation. We're very optimistic about our position in Japan as heard during Investor Day, we think it's a very attractive market. Given the higher rate environment as well as all these positive macroeconomic trends. There's a lot of capital coming into the market, and it continues to be a competitive market. But as I said, we've got a really good platform. Strong multi-channel distribution, a very diversified product portfolio. You can see our sales results have been very strong this year. They've been up 17%. So we're very optimistic about our position in Japan and optimistic about our potential and going into 'twenty-three.

Thank you.

We'll move next to Tom Gallagher at Evercore ISI.

Good morning. First question, John, just a question on this change in GAAP earnings. For real estate accounting. I think the $200 million benefit that you flagged, is this a GAAP-only impact? Any expected change in statutory or did statutory already have that adjustment? And why change this? Is this were you more conservative than peers? Or is that more reflective of what you think the economics are? Thanks.

Yes, thanks. Good morning, Tom. It's something we've thought about for some time and know, I think just the resegmentation and change kinda gave us an opportunity to rethink just the reporting, in adjusted earnings. And, you know, I think you know, relative to peers, we probably had a higher to real estate because of our expertise in the area, and so we tend to lean into this asset class. So we did a review as we thought about it, you know, quite honestly, the noncash cost accounting construct really is not ideal for representing kind of the annual cash flows and annual returns of this product. It also doesn't really align with, you know, the changes, the book value, and then you have a sale that goes below. And so we try to make this you know, this change create a little more alignment in know, kind of the overall economics of the asset class and just more reflective of our operating cash flow.

That makes sense. Hey. I thought I'd throw out a MIM question since it's the new bright shiny object this quarter. And it's a question that we've been getting recently, so I'm curious to what extent you can comment on Brighthouse, obviously, gonna be acquired by Aquarion. I know that they're a partner of yours. That's part you know, you have an investment management agreement with them. Any way you can sort of frame how meaningful that could be if that contract changes with the acquisition. And is that is anything for that baked into your '26 guide, or would that more likely be a '27 issue? Thanks.

Yeah. Let me start with first, we're very excited about just closing PineBridge at the end of the year. I think there's just been excellent momentum hitting the ground one-one as one team. And just to kinda highlight know, we have historically in MIM know, been kind of a one MIM platform. We really haven't built this boutique style. So there's a natural process for, you know, how these complementary businesses can come together and integrate. And we're really excited about what's ahead. You know, even looking at things from between sign and close, you saw kind of our flows in MIM were very strong, and PineBridge did great. And that's just as a testament to why this makes sense and how it's resonated in the market. And so we're really excited about you know, what's ahead. And it just gives us a bigger a full you know, a even further, expansion of our solutions that we can provide to clients and particularly insurance clients. You know, we can be a full-service provider to insurance clients not a product pusher, but just really kind of focusing on what's best for them, We serve their needs. And, you know, as you mentioned, Brighthouse is a know, great relationship for us. We have a long history. We take pride in that. You know, we're excited to have the opportunity to work you know, with the new combined firm that they have, and I know they're going through a process right now. So you know, we're here to help them. Look. At the end of the day, we have a diversified set of clients. Across, our MIM platform. You know, we have close to $150 billion of AUM, in insurance, and, you know, it's we have a diversified set. And to the, you know, I think when it comes to exposure, you know, while we are excited about keeping and growing our relationship with Brighthouse, that's kind of our expectations. Know, at the end of the day, you know, to the overall firm, this would be, you know, you know, worst-case scenario would you know, at the end of the day, would be a very modest impact to EPS.

Okay. Thanks for that.

We'll move next to Joel Hurwitz at Dowling.

Hey. Good morning. Michel, in your prepared remarks, you mentioned that you guys had tapped the US retail retirement space with low reinsurance. Can you just provide an update on what you've done to date and your outlook for that opportunity at this point?

Hey, Joel. It's Rami here. I'll take this one. You know, I would say, first, you just need to put this in the broader context of our retirement strategy in the US. That we talked about, as part of our New Frontier strategy, and at the highest level look. Our approach here is to compete in the retirement space in areas which play to our strength. And leverage our competitive advantage. And we looked at that, and as part of that, looked at a fast-growing US retail annuity market and identified an opportunity to participate in that market in a way that does leverage our competitive advantages. And in this case, the path that we have chosen is to participate in that market on an institutional basis as a reinsurer. And, look, testament to the discipline of execution here, in under a year, we executed against that strategy. We now have two partners with flow reinsurance deals in place that have kicked off over the past couple of months. We value these partnerships and our partners value what we bring to the table. In particular, in terms of financial strength, investment capability, capital flexibility. So this is exactly what we mean when we say we're looking for opportunities that play to our strength. And at the end of the day, this is gonna add to our ability to grow liability origination. And capture the momentum that we're seeing in the retirement market, in a way that works well for economics and plays to what we can bring to the table here.

Got it. That makes sense. And then just wanted to follow-up on Jimmy's question on Japan and the macro and on persistency. Did you guys see any increased surrender activity in Q4 thus far in Q1? And I guess, is there anything baked into your outlook for potentially higher surrenders given the FX and rates?

Yeah. Hey, Joel. It's Lyndon here. So yeah, we did see the surrender trend in the fourth quarter was a little bit higher than it had been in the third quarter, and that was primarily because we saw the yen had depreciated relative to the US dollar. For the full year in '25, our surrenders have come down relative to where they were in '24, and for '26, we're assuming that surrenders come back to our long-term assumption over there. And that is baked into our 2026 guidance.

Gotcha. Thank you.

We'll go next to Suneet Kamath at Jefferies.

Thanks. Good morning. I wanted to start with group. One of the questions we always get is, AI is coming in. It's gonna take out x percent of the workforce. That's gonna negatively impact group benefits companies. And if I look at your guidance, it looks like growth on top of pretty good growth this year. So it doesn't feel like you're building anything in related to that. Can you just talk about what you're seeing maybe at the customer level in terms of either hiring or layoffs just so we can kinda see what the scope is? In terms of where we are.

Thank you, Suneet. It's Rami here. So look, when we construct our PFO outlook, we look at a number of factors. We have certainly incorporated what we have been seeing in our book with respect to employment actions that some of our clients have taken be they AI-driven or otherwise. And the outlook assumes that this trend would continue in 2026. So we are taking a very grounded view of where that picture is heading. But look at the same time, in our outlook, we also incorporate what we're seeing in terms of growth. Be it in terms of adding coverages to existing employers, and new sales, increase in participation rates, via enrollment effort. And a piece of that is the very strong start to one-one, which I talked about earlier, and that's been a strong start both in terms of persistency in sales and really sales across the entire book inclusive of disability. So you put all of this thing together, we feel comfortable with the outlook range. The diversified nature of our book across the size of employers, and geography are all helpful factors, for us here. If we were to see more ebbs and flows in terms of the employment levels across economies as well as across sectors. So net-net, we feel comfortable with the outlook, and we are incorporating what we're actually seeing by way of employment actions in our book as well.

Okay. That that's helpful. And then I guess for John on capital, I wanted to ask about Japan because one of the things that we're hearing is that unrealized losses in Japan can influence the sort of dividend formulas in terms of getting capital out. So I just wanted you to maybe address that and kind of you think that could play out in 2026.

Thanks. Yeah. Good morning, Suneet. Yeah. Like you said, they're in Japan and elsewhere, quite honestly, you know, there's multiple factors when you think about dividend capacity. Right? You have your solvency ratios. You also need to look at kind of the retained earnings. And that is true. But, you know, there's other factors that go into that, from the balance sheet as well. So there's, there's multiple things that get in there. I think at the end of the day, for us, we're not seeing any constraints on our dividend capacity, in Japan. So there's really no change, and that includes, you know, as it relates to transition to the ESR. And we feel like we're in a healthy position when it comes to, you know, retained earnings as well.

Can you just size what percentage of the Japan book has been reinsured out of Japan?

We I don't have that off the top of my head. We've done but we've done reinsurance for quite some time. Over the course of, you know, the last probably decade, and, we've utilized mostly, you know, our Bermuda entity. When it comes to that. But it's a it's a portion, but it's, you know, it's not a it's certainly not a majority.

Okay. Thanks.

We'll go next to Wes Carmichael at Wells Fargo.

Good morning, and thank you. First question on group disability. I think you had a little bit less favorable experience the quarter. I think the nonmedical health loss ratio was kind of flattish sequentially. We've heard similar comments, I think, from peers. Just wondering if you could unpack a little bit what you saw in disability and if you'd expect that to kinda continue into 2026.

Yes. It's Rami here. So we did have some pressure in the quarter with respect to disability. Think about it as just slightly over a point in our nonmedical health ratio. There are a few moving parts here. So one, we did see a slightly higher average severity across our long-term disability book. We did see Social Security decisions come a bit down this quarter. Those tend to kind of fluctuate quarter to quarter. Recoveries and incidents, I would say recoveries were slightly down in the quarter. But for the full year, they were strong and above expectations. Incidents, slightly ticked up in the quarter. Again, for the full year, they were also largely in line with expectations. So if you think about how we were to trend this while this has been an unfavorable quarter, it certainly does not make a trend, and I wouldn't extrapolate from the outcomes in this quarter into 2026.

That's very helpful. And maybe, Rami, just sticking with you, but in terms of mandatory paid family leave and related products, I think a few states are rolling out new mandatory programs. But as I kind of look across the map of the US, with mandatory leave. It looks like there's a lot of white space. You know, there's no Texas, no Florida. A lot of Central US states don't have the programs yet. So I know the offerings maybe aren't as profitable as some of the other products in group, but do you see that as a big opportunity to take more market share from MetLife as more states come online?

Yeah. Thank you for the question. So maybe I'll just step back and talk about disability in general and then come back to paid family leave and really also bring you back to the context that we talked about at our investor day. We identified the disability space in general as an attractive growth opportunity. A lot of secular trends are driving that growth, of the state-based regulations that are coming through. We made investments in this space. Both to provide best-in-class capabilities to employers and employees. We talked about some of our digital capabilities as well, and that value proposition is resonating well in the market. And, look, as part of that strategy, we also talked about employers wanting to do more with fewer and talked about absence and disability as an anchor product for us. And the proof point in here is that the vast majority of our absence and disability sales are actually bundled with our overall suite of products. That's kind of the broader context around disability and absence in general. When you think about paid family medical leave, this has been a piece of that puzzle and one that has given us some nice tailwinds as more states have rolled out programs, including Minnesota and others. And we talked about the picture of that continuing. Because of the white space you've just mentioned. And our approach in this space leverages all the capabilities that talked about, but also leverages the breadth of our product portfolio. And just to give you another data point here, when I look at our one-on-one sales for PFML, on average, they came with four or five additional coverages that were bundled with those sales. So this is just a really classic example of us identifying an opportunity, formulating a strategy, and just executing really well against it, and we're very pleased with the outcome.

Thank you.

We'll go next to Alex Scott at Barclays.

Hi. Thanks for taking it. First one is on corporate. I just wanted to understand the five hundred and seven hundred. I mean, there's some different moving pieces there with the resegmentation. So is it there any I guess in particular, is there anything that more specific to 26 in that number? It just felt a little higher than I was expecting when I was sorta going back and understanding holdings and corporate and what the combination and MIM would mean.

Hey. Good morning, Alex. You're saying, you were assuming a higher would assume I was thinking it wouldn't be quite that high of a or I wouldn't loss. Expect it as big a loss, I guess. So I just wanted to understand if there was something more one-time in nature for 26 in the numbers. Sorry.

Yeah. I mean, maybe I'll use Q4 to maybe try to get you there. Right? So on an ex-notable basis, our loss was 38. And you have to take into account if there were some I'd say, nonrecurring items in taxes, expenses. We had some reserve releases. And, we had some excess quarterly NII. In that in CNO. That probably gets you up to a run rate of around a 100. And then when you translate that into the next year, you have to take into account, and I think this is important, so I appreciate the question, the you know, we did some reinsurance transactions in the fourth quarter. So the Talcott rent transaction we announced, you know, about a 100 million of lost earnings, and we did the Chariot one. So think close to 30. Of additional lower earnings from MLH, is now in corporate and other. And then the other thing you have to take into account just for seasonality is, remember, every first and third quarter, we have about $15 million more of cost for preferred dividend. So that should help you with your quarterly modeling, but that's a little bit of what you're missing.

Got it. Very helpful. Next one for you is just on the artificial intelligence topic, and I think you touched some on just employment sensitivity in group. Is there any other, you know, opportunities or risks that you'd point out in can you talk about even in just your investment portfolio, your exposure to software, etcetera, this is just a topic that we're beginning to get a lot more questions on, and it's very theoretical, hard to answer. But would be interested in your take.

Hey. Good morning, Alex. So maybe I'll just start. I mean, look, I think you know, one of the things that we pride ourselves in and not just in the investment portfolio, but across our firm is and we referenced this quite a bit at investor day is diversification. And whether that's diversification, geographically, we have in types of businesses. So we have, you know, healthy, balance sheet businesses, and then we have very healthy, capital-light businesses across the globe. On top of that, we have different risk profiles. And then if you go to the investment portfolio, I think it's fair to say, and we've seen other numbers of internal analyses that kind of prove we're probably the most diversified, across the industry in terms of our approach. We're able to do that because we have a fully scaled global asset manager where we are you know, because some people, if you say diversified, you say, well, how do you stay close? We're able to stay close to every credit that we underwrite and monitor because we have scale. So we're able to do this because of our scale and our competitive advantages. And, when it comes to the software point that you referenced, the end of the day, you know, there's a variety of different cycles out there. This is probably in places where I think in the industry, we're probably not that exposed just given our approach to kind of ingress investment-grade oriented investing. So I we've seen it. I'm not so sure it you know, I we really, you know, weigh in too much here because we don't think it's that much of an exposure to the industry or us.

Got it. Okay. Thank you.

And that is all the time we have for questions today. I will now turn the conference back over to John Hall for closing remarks.

Thanks, everybody, for joining us today, and have a good day. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation.

You may now disconnect.