Earnings Labs

Principal Financial Group, Inc. (PFG)

Q1 2012 Earnings Call· Sat, Apr 28, 2012

$99.77

-0.29%

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Transcript

Executives

Management

John Egan - Vice President of Investor Relations Larry Donald Zimpleman - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, President, Chairman of Executive Committee, Chairman of Principal Life, Chief Executive Officer of the Principal Life and President of Principal Life Terrance J. Lillis - Chief Financial Officer, Chief Accounting Officer and Senior Vice President Daniel J. Houston - President of Retirement, Insurance & Financial Services Luis Valdez - Chairman of Principal International Inc., Chief Executive Officer of Principal International Inc. and President of Principal International Inc. James Patrick McCaughan - President of Principal Global Investor

Analysts

Management

Joanne A. Smith - Scotiabank Global Banking and Market, Research Division John M. Nadel - Sterne Agee & Leach Inc., Research Division A. Mark Finkelstein - Evercore Partners Inc., Research Division Christopher Giovanni - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division Randy Binner - FBR Capital Markets & Co., Research Division Steven D. Schwartz - Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division Eric N. Berg - RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Research Division

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Principal Financial Group's First Quarter 2012 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference call over to John Egan, Vice President of Investor Relations.

John Egan

Analyst

Thank you and good morning. Welcome to the Principal Financial Group's first quarter earnings conference call. As always, our earnings release, financial supplement and additional investment portfolio detail are available on our website at www.principal.com/investor. Slides related to today's call are also available on our website. Following the reading of the Safe Harbor provision, CEO Larry Zimpleman and CFO Terry Lillis will deliver some prepared remarks. Then we will open up the call for your questions. Others available for the Q&A are Dan Houston, Retirement and Investor Services and U.S. Insurance Solutions; Jim McCaughan, Principal Global investor; Luis Valdez, Principal International; and Julia Lawler, our Chief Investment Officer. Some of the comments made during this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. The company does not revise or update them to reflect new information, subsequent events or changes in strategy. Risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied are discussed in the company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I'd also like to remind everyone that our 2012 Investor Day will be held Friday morning, September 21, in New York. Details to follow closer to the event. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Larry.

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · Scotia Capital

Thanks, John, and welcome to everyone on the call. As usual, I'll comment on 3 areas: First, I'll briefly discuss first quarter 2012 results. Second, I'll provide an update on the continued successful execution of our strategy, and I'll close with some comments about our capital deployment strategy. Then Terry will cover the financial results in more detail. As John mentioned, we provided slides related to today's call. Slide 4 outlines the key themes for the quarter. First quarter with was a solid start to the year as we saw a strong growth across all businesses, along with a strategic acquisition in Claritas and effective capital deployment. Total company operating earnings were $213 million, and we ended the quarter with record assets under management of $364 billion. First quarter 2012 total company net cash flows of $8 billion are higher than full year 2011 net cash flows. As we move through 2012, this record level of assets under management and momentum in net cash flows, along with stronger variable investment income, higher performance fees and less seasonality in claims, will combine to give a stronger earnings in the second half of the year. We delivered strong sales and net cash flows in the first quarter, demonstrating our competitive advantages namely: the strength of our distribution relationships, demand for our products and service and investment expertise. Key growth metrics from the quarter include: Full Service Accumulation sales were $3.2 billion, up 62% compared to first quarter 2011. Net cash flows of $2 billion are more than double from the year-ago quarter. Principal Funds had record sales of $3.7 billion, and record net cash flows of $1.5 billion. Principal Global Investors had record unaffiliated assets under management of $91 billion, and unaffiliated net cash flows were $3.3 billion, a strong improvement over…

Terrance J. Lillis

Analyst · Mark Finkelstein with Evercore Partners

Thanks, Larry. As Larry mentioned, first quarter earnings were solid and our growth metrics continue to show momentum. This morning I'll focus my comments on operating earnings for the quarter; net income, including continued solid performance in the investment portfolio; and the strength of our capital position and strong balance sheet. And as a reminder, we adopted new DAC accounting guidance on January 1, 2012, with retrospective application. All financial information presented, including the slides for this call, reflects these changes. The impacts were in line with what we previously communicated. First quarter 2012 operating earnings of $213 million were down 3% from a year-ago quarter. The decline is primarily due to lower variable investment income and higher distribution expenses in the first quarter. We reported earnings per share of $0.70 for the quarter. There were a few items impacting first quarter 2012 EPS. Bank and Trust Services was negatively impacted by $0.01 primarily due to a legal settlement in the Trust company. Principal International was dampened by $0.01 on a net basis from regulatory changes to assigned lives in the Mexican AFORE business, which was partially offset by delayed expenses in Latin America. Individual Life benefited by $0.01 from a change in prescribed accounting practice, and the Corporate segment was reduced by $0.01 from higher tax and legal expenses. Adjusting for these items, we consider the first quarter 2012 earnings per share run rate to be $0.72. Now let me discuss business unit results. Full Service Accumulation operating earnings at $70 million were down 4% on lower net revenue from a year-ago quarter. Pretax return on net revenue remained steady at 30% as we expected and previously communicated. Let me make a couple of comments related to Full Service Accumulation margins. Slide 5 summarizes the leading factors impacting profitability…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Joanne Smith with Scotia Capital.

Joanne A. Smith - Scotiabank Global Banking and Market, Research Division

Analyst · Scotia Capital

I guess, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the strong sales results in your FSA operation. They far exceeded my expectations, and I'm just wondering if you could talk about the trends there?

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · Scotia Capital

Joanne, this is Larry. I'll let Dan comment. But what I would say at a very high level is that we're really in a very nice sweet spot in terms of our retirement sales. And I say that based on, of course, having great distribution presence and continuing strong pipeline. We also have, because of PGI, we have very solid investment performance to present to clients. And of course, the unique bundling that we do around total retirement services, as well as a lot of or worksite activities, really does put us in a strong competitive position. I'll let Dan give you some of the specifics.

Daniel J. Houston

Analyst · Scotia Capital

Thanks, Larry. So Joanne, a couple of stats that you might find interesting. The growth really was across emerging dynamic and institutional, which is the way we like to see it. We did have 7 nice-sized institutional plans come in. Those were plans over $100 million but nothing over $1 billion. So again, this speaks right at that lower end of large and high-end of medium-sized marketplace. We had good traction again continuance and the third-party administration area. About 40% of the sales for the quarter were TRS or Total Retirement Suite some combination of DVDC or non-qualified or ESOP. And alliance sales were up roughly 120% from first quarter of 2011, as Larry mentioned in his earlier comments. We did add Edward Jones, which is a really great partner for PFG, and we're looking forward to working with the people at Edward Jones.

Joanne A. Smith - Scotiabank Global Banking and Market, Research Division

Analyst · Scotia Capital

Just as a follow up, just on the ROAs. You mentioned in the beginning of the call that the change in DAC induces a trade-off between good sales numbers and near-term earnings. Can you give us an estimate as to how much the increase -- or decrease in capitalized acquisition expenses impacted the ROA?

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · Scotia Capital

Joanne, this is Larry. I would say, it impacts at about $15 million to $20 million in terms of quarterly earnings, so you can sort of work it out from that.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of John Nadel with Sterne Agee. John M. Nadel - Sterne Agee & Leach Inc., Research Division: Larry, even if I apply a relatively strong ramp to your earnings for the remainder of the year, it appears pretty difficult to get to your guidance. But interestingly, your guidance had originally assumed, I think, an average S&P of about 1275, and that average is already year-to-date 100 points higher. I guess the question is, where is the weakness versus your original expectations when -- I would've expected your business model and leverage to equity markets to frankly be a nice tailwind.

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · John Nadel with Sterne Agee

Sure, John. This is Larry. Let me make a few comments. And what I would say here is a very general comment before I walk through a little bit of detail with you. What I would is say is that guidance is based on a full year. And I'd say, it would be very important to remember that things that happen over the course of a full year don't happen in 25% increments over each quarter, okay? So for example, a variable investment income, as an example. Last year, that was a little bit front-loaded. This year, we expect it to be a little bit back-loaded. You have seasonality in Specialty Benefits, as we've commented before. The general comment you might see specialty benefits first quarter earnings be 20% of the full year earnings, not 25%. So what I would say is if you sort of take Terry's normalized, the $0.72, you ramp it up to 2% to 3% that you'd expect so based in our assumptions of equity market growth. That gets you very near the $2.95 to $3 level. You then adjust for things like variable investment income, specialty benefits. You adjust for the change in share count. And you are, if you will, well inside our previously communicated guidance. Having said all of that, we obviously don't update that guidance, and it really doesn't take into account, John, at all, the very strong asset accumulation and net cash flow growth that we saw in the first quarter, which obviously hasn't yet fed through to financials because it's just received in the current quarter. And as the market stays steady and that continues to repeat itself in subsequent quarters, that's going to be a very significant tailwind on earnings as we go into the subsequent quarters of 2012. So like always, there's a number of assumptions in there. But the key thing, I would continue to remind everybody is things don't happen in 1/4 increments every year. There's front loads, there's back loads. All that's taken into account when we gave our guidance back in December. John M. Nadel - Sterne Agee & Leach Inc., Research Division: That's very helpful. I have one separate one, and that is, are you and the Board giving any consideration to changing your approach to setting your buyback authorization? I asked this, Larry, because obviously with your current approach, you were out of the market for the first 2 months of the year. And that clearly has at least, at the margin, a negative impact on your ability to generate EPS and ROE improvement at a somewhat faster pace.

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · John Nadel with Sterne Agee

Right. So that's an interesting question, John. And I suspect that every management team you talk to might have a little bit different view on share repurchase in the era post the financial crisis. I think we have tried to communicate over several different times, including at our earnings guidance for 2012 that we see share repurchase now as a more opportunistic lever for us. And we frankly see higher levels of common stock dividend as a more regular level -- lever for us to return capital to shareholders. So we see ourselves moving to higher payout ratios over time, and we see ourselves moving to somewhat lower levels of share repurchase over time because we do want to invest in the businesses. And to the extent we would do share repurchase, we would look at that based on sort of our view of the intrinsic value of the shares versus where they're trading at. So in the past, I think share repurchase for many companies has been more of a "automatic lever." And in our case, we're really trying to not see as much capital return in share repurchase and we're trying to be more thoughtful to make sure that we're doing share repurchase at the right times and that we're not doing it at the wrong times. So I hope that helps a little bit. John M. Nadel - Sterne Agee & Leach Inc., Research Division: That does. I guess, my only follow up to that, Larry, would be, I'm not necessarily asking you to put up an authorization that would be a giant number that covers the potential buybacks over a couple of years. But I'm not sure I understand why not just an authorization that would cover at least your expectations for a 12-month period, let's say?

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · John Nadel with Sterne Agee

Right. And again, a lot of that, John, is because I think we are trying to recognizing the changing nature of our business model with more fee-based earnings. I would argue that it's much more appropriate for us as a management team and a Board to think about returning capital to shareholders in the form of common stock dividends more than share repurchases. What you already know from things we've communicated is that somewhere between 65% and 70% of our operating earnings for the year are going to be able to flow through as capital deployed back to shareholders based on whatever amount of M&A we might do. So I don't have to sit and really give you a large share repurchase. I mean, investors already know that the vast majority of our earnings are able to be returned to shareholders. So we've shown in the past, we're good stewards of our capital. Again, the thing I would want to communicate is that it's going to be done more as common stock dividends and higher payout ratios. That's appropriate because we moved to a more fee-based business model, and that's very different than our competitors, where perhaps they're able to return 40% or 50% of their earnings back to shareholders. In our case, that number is closer to 65% to 70%.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Mark Finkelstein with Evercore Partners.

A. Mark Finkelstein - Evercore Partners Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Mark Finkelstein with Evercore Partners

I guess, I wanted to go back to Joanne's question, Larry. I think you give a number of $15 million to $20 million. I actually have the same question regarding what FSA would have looked like were it not for the high sales number. And I want to make sure that I understand your answer correct. So if I look at FSA as kind of pretax earnings of $80 million, are you suggesting that the number would've been $15 million to $20 million higher, were it not been for the change in the accounting or the extraordinary sales? Can you just give us a feel for exactly what you meant by that comment?

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · Mark Finkelstein with Evercore Partners

Yes. I'm sorry if I confused you, Mark. This is Larry. What I was trying to communicate and answer to Joanne's question was really a more generic question, not answering a question related to the level of sales in the first quarter. I was answering the generic question about what impact we would expect to see to FSA from the change in DAC accounting guidance. So that was the question that I was answering. Does that help?

A. Mark Finkelstein - Evercore Partners Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Mark Finkelstein with Evercore Partners

It does but I think it also kind of brings a follow up, which is obviously, you had strong sales in the quarter, good flows in FSA. But I think most of us, including myself, were a little bit surprised that in a market that rallied as much as it had, the ROAs were kind of maybe not as high as maybe we would've expected. So to the extent that there's some of that can be attributed to the change in the accounting and higher cost that occurred this quarter relative to what we would expect to be a normalized cost based on that flow level, it would be helpful to understand kind of how to quantify that number so we can think about that and how we think about ROAs..

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · Mark Finkelstein with Evercore Partners

Right. You're exactly right. While there was some positive benefit FSA in this quarter, it wasn't as great because of the DAC accounting as it would have been under the prior set of rules. So maybe I'll see if Terry wants to comment a little bit about that.

Terrance J. Lillis

Analyst · Mark Finkelstein with Evercore Partners

Mark, this is Terry. As you look at the change in the accounting rule, there's less capitalization that's going on, and there's also less amortizations because of the $3.2 billion of sales, you're also seeing more of the expense incurred in the current period than you had in the previous accounting. Now what we gave as guidance for the year was an impact of around $35 million to $45 million of operating earnings impact due to the change in the accounting rules. Now we said a little bit over half of that was due to Full Service Accumulation. So that's basically in line. So if you look at the upper end of that range, $40 million to $45 million impact, you would expect about $20 million or $24 million or $25 million due to FSA alone. Now you take 1/4 of that, but as Larry says, it doesn't always occur throughout the year. So you're probably getting a number that's more in the $5 million, $6 million after-tax impact on this quarter because of, once again, lower capitalization and lower amortization.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Chris Giovanni with Goldman Sachs.

Christopher Giovanni - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Chris Giovanni with Goldman Sachs

First, I guess, following up on an John Nadel's question. I guess, the focus really is on generating greater pre-cash flow and capital. Why not have a larger outstanding buyback program to be in the market more opportunistically? So I guess, today's kind of the perfect example where you have $20 million left and the stock is off 6%. I think we now need to wait until mid-May to get another authorization?

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · Chris Giovanni with Goldman Sachs

Right. Chris, this is Larry. Again, what I would say is that and certainly, we're well aware of some other companies that will announce the potential, the potential for a large multi-year share repurchases. And what I would say is, first of all, I don't think that that's necessarily an approach that as a Board that they necessarily gotten comfortable with. We've tried to take an alternative, which is to recognize that there is a substantial free cash flow generation capability here. And we've now again tried to refine that further by recognizing that there are times that your shares are outside of what you would consider to be the intrinsic value. If we saw an extended period where that was the case, not one day but if we saw an extended period where that were the case, we'd certainly be in position to be able to execute a share buyback. But our focus in terms of capital deployment, our focus really is more on moving to a higher payout ratio over time and continuing to invest in the business as we need to. So again, the fact that we've done 4 acquisitions in the last year exactly in the spot we want and there's always some level of sort of pipeline around M&A that you'd want to be in position to execute on I think makes them, and I completely agree with this, would make me cautious about wanting to promise too much, too far into the future. So that's the reason that we've gone the way we have. And I think that's definitely the route that we'll continue to operate with.

Christopher Giovanni - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Chris Giovanni with Goldman Sachs

Okay. Understand that. I guess, as volatile as things still are today, sometimes the opportunities are there at a present time and if you just can't be in the market when things maybe are a bit more rational, just sometimes can be confusing for investors, but I'll leave it there. And the next thing just in terms of, I guess, the trends in terms of number of plans with NDC? You had some pretty good momentum there on a sequential basis. I want to see kind of what your thoughts are around that moving forward?

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · Chris Giovanni with Goldman Sachs

Sure. Dan, you want to comment?

Daniel J. Houston

Analyst · Chris Giovanni with Goldman Sachs

Yes. We feel good about that. Thanks for noticing that, Chris. So up a couple of hundred plans, and this is to the credit of the team primarily run that the emerging and dynamic area, may take the necessary steps the better job retaining business. There's also fewer plans being terminated. So we're holding onto those plans and then there's actually been some movement towards startup plans again. So we all keep our fingers crossed that we've kind of bottomed out here in terms of the economic fallout and the negative impact it's had on qualified retirement plan. Pipeline is up double-digit for both emerging and dynamic. It's a little bit flat for institutional but that tends to be a little bit lumpy to begin with. So again, the pipelines are very good and close ratios are very solid. So to your point, we feel good about our ability to grow these plans going forward.

Christopher Giovanni - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Chris Giovanni with Goldman Sachs

Okay. And then just one last quick one on foreign exchange. I guess with international growing as quickly as it is, Terry, you made the comment around some is some FX headwinds here in 2Q. Can you just talk about how you're thinking about potentially hedging of foreign currency?

Terrance J. Lillis

Analyst · Chris Giovanni with Goldman Sachs

Chris, this is Terry. We've looked at the possibility of that. But you'll see volatility in any hedging that you do, as well as the volatility and the exchange rate. And there's an additional cost associated with that, that at this point in time, we don't know if we're getting that much more value out of it, but we'll continue to look at it. As in the past, what we've seen is PI as a smaller percentage of our earnings but now it's in that 17%, 18% range and moving up to a larger range. We'll take that into consideration in the future, but at this point in time, we're not providing that hedging of that currency, but we are providing in the financial supplement more detailed as to what the average we're using on a quarterly basis, as well as the spot yield at the end of the period of time. So it gives you more insights as to what the impact will be based upon the different currencies and the different locations that we're doing business.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Randy Binner with FBR. Randy Binner - FBR Capital Markets & Co., Research Division: A question on capital deployment. You disclosed that you allocated $220 million in the quarter and $56 million of dividend, $50 million to buyback. Can we assume the rest is for Claritas?

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · Randy Binner with FBR

This is Larry. I think the Claritas was roughly $65 million.

Terrance J. Lillis

Analyst · Randy Binner with FBR

Randy, this is Terry. The $220 million includes the full authorization of $100 million, and if you actually look, what was deployed was $50 million of it. Randy Binner - FBR Capital Markets & Co., Research Division: Okay. So Claritas is around $65 million? And can you disclose what level of assets under management you acquired in the deal? It said it was majority stake. We're just looking for a little more clarification on what was acquired for that $65 million.

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · Randy Binner with FBR

Sure, I'll let Luis comment.

Luis Valdez

Analyst · Randy Binner with FBR

Okay. The size of that operation is about $2 billion total AUMs, and we acquired 60% of that, the total ownership of that.

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · Randy Binner with FBR

Does that help, Randy? Randy Binner - FBR Capital Markets & Co., Research Division: It does. Just one last one on that is, what is the -- is it fixed income, more equities, or just asset type?

Luis Valdez

Analyst · Randy Binner with FBR

It is much more equity and balance funds rather than fixed income.

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · Randy Binner with FBR

Balance funds. One of the reasons that we had specifically identified Claritas was because they actually had a slightly -- they had a different portfolio than most mutual fund managers in Brazil. As you probably know, most mutual fund managers are, as you said, invested in not only fixed income but primarily sovereign debt. So again, Claritas is relatively unique because they've demonstrated competency across several different asset classes within the Brazilian sort of security space. So it was very attractive from that perspective.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Steven Schwartz with Raymond James. Steven D. Schwartz - Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division: I want to revisit one more time the FSA -- the effect of sales on FSA without discussing ASU 2010-26, just forget about that. Are we looking at the situation similar maybe to some asset managers where a high level of sales leads to very high expenses before earnings can really come in off of the assets? Is that the situation that we're looking at here?

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · Raymond James

Okay, Stephen, this is Larry. I'm going to stay away this time and I'll let Dan clean it up for you.

Daniel J. Houston

Analyst · Raymond James

Yes, I think that's exactly right. As we've changed they come to methodology, our Full Service Accumulation, even for group annuity contracts, which has separate accounts as well, will start to reflect -- look more like our mutual fund sales our Principal Advantage product, and that's actually from our perspective a good thing. So we're certainly seeing higher expense as a result of acquiring those. But as long as I'm on that same topic, I was kind of looking closely at where else are we making the investments over and above last year. So what would cause these expenses, where aer we making investments? One is around mobile applications. One is around expense and fee disclosure, which was a significant investment here in the first quarter. Increasing the size of our sales and service teams. We're continuing to build out the size of that ESOP practice and defined benefit capabilities. We're making additional investment in our product development areas as Larry and Terry both commented about the growth in those diversified real asset and real income mutual fund solutions. Allianz Management, we're continuing to build out that team as we added additional Allianz partners. We've got to build out relationship managers to go along with that. Income solutions, this isn't just about the accumulation business so we've got to continue to make those investments around how we're going to help those in nearing retirement and then retirement, draw down those funds. And again, there's a lot of time and resources being spent there. We still think that the workplace is a great place to educate plan participants on the need to save for retirement. And where some of our competitors have pulled back, we've actually bulked up on our deployment of our workplace efforts. And then lastly, you keep hearing us talk about the TPA initiative. That also requires a lot of resources. Some of the expense lines are up only modestly, and at the same time, you can see we've got a lot of work to do. And that's partially to offset some of the erosion that you've all witnessed in the past on changes that are taking place relative to mix of business, as well as this economic headwind that we continue to fight. The other line worth noting there was the recurring deposits are really showing now a nice solid comeback. They're not back to that pre-crisis level, but again, we think that's going to be a nice contributing factor to operating earnings going forward. Hopefully that helps. Steven D. Schwartz - Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division: That was good. That's really what I wanted to get at with that question. Just a follow up, since you mentioned it, fee disclosure. Any new thoughts on that and how that might affect the company and the business?

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · Raymond James

Yes. So the 408(b), which is a component relative to notification to the plan sponsors, we started back in November of '11. That's effectively completed at this point in time. The 404(a) is the part that goes to the plan participant. That'll happen after July 1 within those first 60 days. And where the majority of our education specialists and relationship managers are spending their time right now isn't on the absolute dollar of the fees. Those decisions have been made. That's water on the bridge. Now the discussion is pointed towards how does Principal help the plan sponsors go about educating plan participants on behalf of the plan sponsors on what those fees are. So there's a little bit of work. Some employers are making decisions to start paying some of those fees separately. Some of them are revising the investment lineup, that they're making available. So that's where a lot of our time is spent. And I would tell you that certainly by the fall time, we will have fee disclosure really in our rearview mirror at that point. Steven D. Schwartz - Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division: Okay. But on existing plans at current customers that you currently have, the plan sponsors, their change in behavior has neither been negative or positive for the company. Is that...

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · Raymond James

That's correct. There's a few on the edges where as long as we're reviewing expenses, they might put it out for a check bid. But I would say, for all intents and purposes, this discussion has now migrated to how we go about rolling it out to the participant more so than the employer going back and forth with PFG. Steven D. Schwartz - Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division: Okay. And then one for Terry, if I may. Terry, the historical kind of guidance had been for every 2% move in the S&P 500, it was probably 1% move for EPS for Principal. Is there a relationship that we could look at maybe for that net revenue number?

Terrance J. Lillis

Analyst · Raymond James

Steven, just to clarify, we talked about a 10% shock in the equity market, up or down and then followed by a 2% increase on a quarter-by-quarter basis from there would have a 4% to 6% impact on operating earnings. And that was a pre-DAC change guidance. And we think it's very comparable, but we'll give you more clarity on that as we see it play out. In terms of the net revenue growth, the net revenue growth, I think, is probably -- will lag the growth in the assets under management a bit because of the types of assets that don't all have the same net revenue. But we monitor the net revenue growth on each of our different businesses. And that's why we look at margin, a return on that net revenue by each of the businesses. Now if you look at, and what we've said in Full Service Accumulation, for example, we think that the net revenue growth will trend pretty stable, and the stability is in that 30 to 32 basis points -- excuse me, 30% to 32% range for that. But we also look at it the total company and it's really a relationship between the net revenue and the expenses that we really monitor very closely by each of the different product types.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Eric Barth with RBC Capital Markets.

Eric N. Berg - RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Research Division

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets

I realized that there was a lot going on here. That's apparent. Between return on assets, return on net revenues, return on revenues, the DAC accounting, you'd have to be a partner at Deloitte to understand what's going on here. All I know is that for a business, any businesses earnings to grow sustainably at a healthy rate, there's got to be revenue growth. There has to be in any business revenue growth. At least this is my view. And so my question is this, even if you add back, absent the variable income that you didn't have, it looks like there wasn't much revenue growth or net revenue growth. Again, even if you add back the variable income to the -- business, this despite the fact that you have respectable asset growth. And so while I do have a second question for Jim on PGI, what I'd like to know is, what is holding back, putting aside all this other stuff about margins and accounting changes, what is holding back the revenue growth even if you adjust for the absence of that variable income given the strong asset growth that you had? And when can we expect the revenue growth and why?

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets

Yes. Well, Eric, this is Larry and again, I'll take a shot at this and look at Dan and Terry to clean it up. But for what I would say is if you just focus on sort of first quarter over first quarter, the net revenue would look relatively flat despite the AUM growth, okay? The average account value would be up about 6%. The net revenue would be about flat. The reason that you don't see more net revenue growth, and again, I want to emphasize, this just a very short look quarter-over-quarter. The reason that don't see the revenue growth equal to the asset growth for that particular comparison is for 2 things: One is the variable income that we've talked about before in first quarter '11, we had a fairly substantial amount of variable investment income in the form of real estate sales that was distributed out to the business units as additional investment income that was there in 2011, not there in 2012. The second factor that impacts the revenue is that again, if you will, investor sentiment, investor choice is moving away from guaranteed accounts and is moving towards fee-based accounts. From an investor perspective, that's a good thing. That's a good thing. That is moving towards fee-based accounts. So ROA can be down, okay, ROA can be down but free cash flow is actually up. And again, the primary reason, if you just took quarter-over-quarter, which I would encourage everyone not to do because that's too short a period to determine trends, but that is more tied to the issues around the variable investment income. So you will see net revenue growth. We've said before, we sort of expect at this point, net revenue growth will be in that 4% to 6% range. And so now the question about seeing growth in FSA earnings will come down to that point that I talked about in my comments and that Dan commented on in the earlier question. It's a point of, do we still feel we need to selectively invest in the business because we have an opportunity to grab substantial market share and we're investing for the long-term health of the business. So how many of those investments do we have to make in 2012? Or would we rather put all of that into your earnings growth and the answer is, it will be some of both. So we'll see net revenue growth, we'll see some earnings growth, but net revenue is going to trail assets under management because of these investor shift differences.

Eric N. Berg - RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Research Division

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets

A question to Jim. Jim, I certainly understand, congratulations to you on what looks like one of the quarters in sometime in terms of net flows. I know you're making these acquisitions, growing your business very successfully but here to, we didn't see earnings growth and I understand that you're investing in your business. How long will these investments sort of last? Will some of these costs go away? And are you -- relatedly, are you dependent on these performance fees to show earnings growth?

James Patrick McCaughan

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets

Okay. Thank you, Eric. There's quite a few pieces to this, to the answer to that question. As we've said, there are number of accounting issues in the first quarter that make the earnings look worse than I think the underlying performance of the business. We've talked about the tax charge being anomalously high. There was a catch up of a few hundred thousand dollars in incentive comp pull in the first quarter, whereas the previous year, there have been a release for the PFG overhead and security benefits. If you take those things out, though, the numbers for Principal Global Investors underlying are that first quarter 2012 versus 2011 saw a 6% increase in assets under management with a 10% increase in revenue. So revenues in the institutional business actually is slightly richer, very slightly richer relative to assets and with expenses up 7%. And that increase in expenses in a way is higher than you think it would be if you were looking at the operational leverage in the business. That's where the investment is. And Terry mentioned Amsterdam and Dubai. There's also other areas. Those are not the only places we're investing. We have put more people in China, for example, this year compared with last. These are looking to the growth over the next 3 to 5 years. And really, I think what I'm saying here is by putting on significant assets under management at a time of change in the investment management business, when a lot of other players are seeing big outflows, we can build a lot of long-term shareholder value. Now as to your question or when will this really show through to earnings, 1.5 years ago, at Investor Day, I really talked about improving the pretax margin on Principal Global Investors towards 30%, which I regard as a really sort of good industry benchmark over a 5-year period. It may look with the growth we've seen and with margins continuing to be a little bit laggard as if we're a bit behind schedule on that. We're probably ahead of the schedule that we set 1.5 years ago in terms of flows in AUM. But I think all in all, I feel that, that 30% pretax margin remains the target. And I'd really like to try and achieve that 5 years from the initial time that we set it, which was 1.5 years ago. I hope that puts it in context for you, Eric.

Eric N. Berg - RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Research Division

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets

It does. It helps a lot.

Operator

Operator

We have reached the end of our Q&A. Mr. Zimpleman, your comments, please.

Larry Donald Zimpleman

Analyst · Scotia Capital

Well, thanks, everybody, for joining us for the call today. And as always, we appreciate your continuing interest. As I said in my opening comments, the momentum behind our business remains very, very strong and I do believe that our fee-based business model, along with the improving credit losses, will allow us to continue to return significant amounts of capital to shareholders while still investing for our future. So thanks again for listening. I look forward to seeing many of you on the road in the coming quarter.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for participating in today's conference call. This call will be available for replay beginning at approximately 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time until the end of the day, May 4, 2012. The access code for the replay is sick 6987871. The number to dial for the replay is (855) 859-2056 for U.S. and Canadian callers or (404) 537-3406 for International callers.