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Prudential Financial, Inc. (PRU)

Q4 2010 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 10, 2011

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Prudential Fourth Quarter 2010 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Eric Durant. Please go ahead.

Eric Durant

Analyst

Thank you, Cynthia. Good morning, and thank you for joining our call. Representing Prudential on today's call are John Strangfeld, CEO; Mark Grier, Vice Chairman; Bernard Winograd, Chief Operating Officer of Domestic businesses; Ed Baird, Chief Operating Officer International businesses; Rich Carbone, Chief Financial Officer; and Peter Sayre, Comptroller and Principal Accounting Officer. In order to help you to understand Prudential Financial, we will make some forward-looking statements in the following presentation. It is possible that actual results may differ materially from the predictions we make today. Additional information regarding factors that could cause such a difference appears in the section titled Forward-Looking Statements and Non-GAAP Measures of our earnings press release for the fourth quarter of 2010, which can be found on our website at www.investor.prudential.com. In addition, in managing our businesses, we use a non-GAAP measure we call adjusted operating income to measure the performance of our Financial Services businesses. Adjusted operating income excludes net investment gains and losses as adjusted and related charges and adjustments as well as results from divested businesses. Adjusted operating income also excludes recorded changes in asset values that are expected to ultimately accrue to contract holders and recorded changes in contract holder liabilities resulting from changes in related asset values. Our earnings press release contains information about our definition of adjusted operating income. The comparable GAAP presentation and the reconciliation between the two for the quarter and year end December 31 are set out in our earnings press release on our website. Additional historical information relating to the company's financial performance is also located on our website. John?

John Strangfeld

Analyst · Jimmy Bhullar with JPMorgan

Thank you, Eric. Good morning. Thank you for joining us. Now that we've closed the books on 2010, I'll kick things off with some high-level comments regarding the year as a whole. First, earnings. Earnings per share for 2010 increased 14% from 2009 based on after-tax adjusted operating income of the Financial Services businesses. Return on equity was 11%. Excluding from earnings the items we consider discreet or market-driven, the full year result would equate to just under a 10% return on equity. These returns reflect the drag from significant capital capacity, roughly half of which was redeployed on February 1 when our acquisition of Star/Edison closed. Net income for the year amounted to $2.7 billion, down from $3.4 billion in 2009, which included a $1.4 billion gain on our sale of our investment in Wachovia Securities. Second, capital. As Rich will share with you in a moment, our capital position remains exceedingly strong. We are well positioned to pursue business opportunities, and we have capacity to remain strongly capitalized even in severe stress environments. Book value per share on a GAAP basis increased by 22% during the year and amounted to $63 at year end. Excluding unrealized investment gains and losses and pension and post-retirement benefits, book value per share increased 10% to $59.48 at year end. Next our commercial momentum has never been stronger. Strong sales and flows in our key U.S. Retirement and International Insurance businesses attest to their market leadership. In Individual Annuities, gross and net sales were both at record levels. In Prudential Retirement, which includes our Full Service business, as well as our institutional investment products activities, we had a 24% increase in net flows for the year. In Asset Management, net institutional long-term inflows exceeded $28 billion for the year, a record high…

Richard Carbone

Analyst · Mark Finkelstein with Macquarie

Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. As you've seen from yesterday's release, we reported common stock earnings per share of $1.78 for the fourth quarter, and that's based on adjusted operating income for the Financial Services Businesses. This is an increase of nearly 50% from the $1.20 per share in the year ago quarter. ROE for the quarter was 12% based on annualized after-tax adjusted operating income. I'll start with some high-level comments on the quarter, and then discuss the impact of some discrete items. Our enhanced competitive position has driven strong sales and net flows over the past year in Annuity Retirement and Asset Management business, leading growth and account values and assets under management and in turn higher fees. In our Annuity business, significant recovery of account values and our inflows block has led to lower benefit cost and contributed to higher fees as well. In the Asset Management business, credit-related charges were modest in the current quarter in contrast to a year ago when declining commercial real estate values had a significant negative impact on our results. In our U.S. Protection businesses, results were down modestly from a year ago, reflecting a lower benefit from favorable mortality and Individual Life. Our International Insurance businesses turned in a strong performance, Gibralter Life benefited from a greater contribution from fixed annuity, serving the retirement market in Japan along with the expansion of the Life Insurance business sold through the Bank channel, which is beginning to make a noticeable contribution to reported results. Continued growth of our Life Planner business also contributed to the increase in International Insurance results for the quarter. The list of significant items this quarter affecting the quarter is short. In Annuity business, we had a benefit of $0.15 per share from the release of a…

Mark Grier

Analyst · Sanford Bernstein

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. Thank you all for your interest in Prudential during what I know is a very busy time for insurance company earnings. Let me start with the U.S. businesses. Our Annuity business reported adjusted operating income of $345 million for the fourth quarter compared to $197 million a year ago. The reserve true-ups and back unlocking that Rich mentioned had a favorable net impact of $146 million on current quarter results. This includes a benefit of $100 million from the release of a portion of our reserves for guaranteed minimum death and income benefits and a further benefit of $46 million from reduced amortization of deferred policy acquisition and other costs, in both cases reflecting favorable market performance. Results for the year ago quarter included a net benefit of $79 million from a favorable back unlocking and reserve true-ups. Stripping out the unlockings and true-ups, Annuity results were $199 million for the current quarter compared to $118 million a year ago. The $81 million increase in what I would consider underlying results reflects higher fees due to an increase of more than $20 billion in average account values over the past year driven by over $14 billion in net sales coupled with about $10 billion of market appreciation over the past year, bringing total account values to $106 billion at year end. The recovery of account values for our earlier vintages of business has also contributed to profitability by lowering the cost of guaranteed benefits. All of the variable annuity living benefit features we offer today come packaged with an auto-rebalancing feature, where customer funds are reallocated to fixed income investments to support our guarantees in the event of market declines. Given the popularity of these features over the past several years, driven by…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from the line of Suneet Kamath from Sanford Bernstein.

Suneet Kamath - Bernstein Research

Analyst · Sanford Bernstein

I have two questions. The first is on the variable Annuity business. Just wondering if you can talk a little bit about how the changes that you made between HD 6 and HDI have impacted the ROE of the new business that you're writing?

Bernard Winograd

Analyst · Sanford Bernstein

This is Bernard Winograd. Let me try to be clear about this. When we think about the pricing and given the pricing flexibility that our model gives us because of our relative lack of risk and compared to the competitors, we are trying to balance our objectives for return on equity with the market environment. And at each time that we restrike the mix here, we are aiming for a return that is in the high-teens. We have in this business market cycles that are reasonably short but nevertheless typically six months between price adjustments. And sometimes the markets in the interim, in the initial period, move in ways that were not contemplated by our initial pricing. But we're taking a long-term view of this while we're simultaneously trying not to ignore that. So when we adjusted from HD 6 to HDI, what we tried to do was to relook at what it would take at the environment as it had evolved over the following six months since our last price adjustment in order to get back to, in today's market, an expected return over a long-time horizon that's in the high-teens and that's what we did.

Suneet Kamath - Bernstein Research

Analyst · Sanford Bernstein

But if we went back to the HD 6 business that you added, I guess, in 2010, what would be the sort of the ROE differential? If your new product has high-teens, kind of where do that HD 6 end up shaking out?

Bernard Winograd

Analyst · Sanford Bernstein

Well, it's too early to tell is the answer to that question. Based upon the market environment it encountered, it obviously earned below that market return for the first six months of its existence, but it's well short of the period of time in which we can really know what the ultimate result will be.

Suneet Kamath - Bernstein Research

Analyst · Sanford Bernstein

And then I had a separate question either for Mark or for John on capital. At the end of last year, you increased your dividend pretty significantly. And I think if I think about your capital redeployment, precrisis, it seem like the mix between buybacks and dividends sort of skewed to buybacks with maybe 15% to 20% of total capital return, representing dividends. Should we think about maybe a different capital return philosophy going forward where it's a little bit more of an even mix between share repurchases and dividends? Or should we use that historical kind of relationship as a guide?

Mark Grier

Analyst · Sanford Bernstein

Suneet, it's Mark. Thanks for that question. That's a very good and interesting question in this environment. Our sense, as we contemplated dividend actions last year, was that there had been a shift in the market in favor of dividends. And I don't want to talk about what we may do going forward beyond telling you that we'll continue to evaluate what we believe is the market sentiment and the market view and the market sensitivity to the mix between dividends and share repurchases, in addition, obviously, in the context of our own capital position and capital redeployment thoughts. So that's kind of a long way of saying it's an open issue about which we continue to be very thoughtful.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Finkelstein with Macquarie.

A. Mark Finkelstein - Macquarie Research

Analyst · Mark Finkelstein with Macquarie

I guess just on the capital outlook. $1.8 billion to $2.3 billion was the number back at the Investor Day. Equity markets are pretty strong. You've tended to be reasonably sensitive to rises in equity markets and freed up capital. I guess why wasn't the capital a little bit higher given the environment we're in?

Richard Carbone

Analyst · Mark Finkelstein with Macquarie

Mark, this is Rich. That effect is going to be felt inside of PICA. And as we look at the 2011 dividend from PICA, any benefited from that will come in that dividend in 2011. And it is also reflected in the number now as capital in PICA where the RBC ratio and PICA improved, but it won't get up to the holding company until 2011.

A. Mark Finkelstein - Macquarie Research

Analyst · Mark Finkelstein with Macquarie

Just on Asset Management, I start a little bit to figure out kind of what the core earnings numbers in this area are. The earnings actually kind of went down sequentially despite relatively consistent at PICAM earnings, and AUM was up pretty strongly. So the ROAs were obviously down sequentially. Was the third quarter an anomaly? Were there other weaknesses in the fourth quarter, like, how should we think about Asset Management earnings adjusting for PICAM?

Bernard Winograd

Analyst · Mark Finkelstein with Macquarie

Well, it's Bernard. I would say that the right way to think about our Asset Management earnings is to focus on the breakdown that you have in mind, which is the PICAM component to the revenue and then there is the Asset Management fee component to the revenue. I think if you focus on the Asset Management fees and apply reasonable industry standards to the margins that should be expected on that kind of revenue and then you can get to a pretty good understanding of what's going on. And the noise in the fourth quarter, which is just basically the true-up of bonuses at the end of the year, is just that, it's noise. So I think that if you're trying to do annual analysis of what's going on in the business, I think what you've seen since 2007 is a dramatic shift in the mix, where the Asset Management fees are growing quite strongly along with all the net inflows from clients, compounding the effect of improving markets. That's the most reliable annuity like part of a revenue stream that's reasonably easy to model what the earnings impact of that growth are. And then you can just, as you now know, if PICAM is a much shrunken share of the business and it therefore makes it, I think, much easier than it used to be when it was a larger share to estimate the earnings from an annual or even a quarterly basis.

A. Mark Finkelstein - Macquarie Research

Analyst · Mark Finkelstein with Macquarie

So just to clarify, the fourth quarter had higher bonuses which kind of distorted the ROAs in how we look at them?

Bernard Winograd

Analyst · Mark Finkelstein with Macquarie

Yes. Inevitably, if you get to the end of the year and you have a strong surge in the business as we did, in the end of the year, particularly in the items where that drives some of the bonus pools, we'll have some catch-up in the fourth quarter. It won't happen every year. But every year that ends strongly, that can happen in the fourth quarter.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Nigel Dally with Morgan Stanley.

Nigel Dally - Morgan Stanley

Analyst · Nigel Dally with Morgan Stanley

So if market conditions today are a lot better than when you shared guidance, I know you're not going to update your guidance or view them, so it is an accretion. Is it possible to revise them a bit at APS sensitivity, market conditions, and for example, how does that 10% change in the equity market impacted core EPS? Second, with the Retirement outflows, I understand that sales can be lumpy, but also it just can give you that how competition has changed in that business as well.

Mark Grier

Analyst · Nigel Dally with Morgan Stanley

Nigel, it's Mark. I appreciate your sensitivity early in the question to our reluctance to update guidance based on the policy that we've established. And that applies to also talking about some of the very complex and non-linear kind of sensitivities that you asked about. So we will not be addressing those kinds of line item sensitivities. And I'll ask Bernard to comment on the Retirement business.

Bernard Winograd

Analyst · Nigel Dally with Morgan Stanley

I think that the lumpiness in the fourth quarter is just that. But I would also say that in general, what's going on in that business that's relevant to the top line is we are seeing improvements in consumer or, if you will, beneficiary behavior, people saving more again. And we are beginning to see a meaningful trend towards increased company matches, the end of the suspensions of company matches and things of that kind. The pipeline is still quite thin. I don't think that the competitive environment against others is really driving what's going on there.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Kligerman with UBS.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS Investment Bank

Analyst · Andrew Kligerman with UBS

A few questions. First, with regard to the Star/Edison transaction, I think the last time you did give any sort of guidance around the earnings impact was early November. And of course, interest rates have come up a fair amount since that time. So I guess you don't want to give guidance, that's clear. But what was the unrealized gain in Star/Ed's investment portfolio at the time of the last time you gave guidance? And where is that unrealized gain now? And I'll try to do the work myself in terms of figuring out what the improvement is since interest rates have risen quite a bit since then?

Mark Grier

Analyst · Andrew Kligerman with UBS

Andrew, I get to respond to your question as I think was the case last quarter, you're on your own. We're not going to update you on realized gain on the Star/Edison portfolio.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS Investment Bank

Analyst · Andrew Kligerman with UBS

We'll face it, but the question then would be, we're probably looking at some meaningful improvement in what we were thinking back in November, is that fair?

Mark Grier

Analyst · Andrew Kligerman with UBS

When we say we're not going to update guidance, that means we're not going to update guidance, Andrew. I'm sorry.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS Investment Bank

Analyst · Andrew Kligerman with UBS

All right, that's brutal, but I'll move on. Asset Management area. Per the press release, it states that the net credit valuation charges of roughly negative $10 million versus approximately $110 million in the prior quarter. And you mentioned improvement in commercial real estate. Why not a net gain there? What are you -- just give maybe a little color around that area.

Bernard Winograd

Analyst · Andrew Kligerman with UBS

Andrew, it's Bernard Winograd. Let me try to shed some light on that. I think that we have, as I think you know, a portfolio not in the general account, but on the balance sheet of Mortgage business that was originally supposed to be in support of the now discontinued conduit business. And that portfolio has been one where we've had reserves, added reserves throughout much of 2009. The overall trend is very much down there from $240 million in 2009 to $50 million in 2010. But we do still have periodically an individual loan or in this case it was a portfolio of loans that get to the moment of realization and you find that there's a discrepancy between what you expected and what you actually recovered. So I think what you got here, and we've had some -- I should say, we've had some discrepancies in the other way, too, where on final liquidation we've had a little bit of gains in this line. So I think what you got here is just sort of the statistical noise of the individual loans working their way through. Overall, as I've said before, we feel like we've got this portfolio well reserved for at this point.

Andrew Kligerman - UBS Investment Bank

Analyst · Andrew Kligerman with UBS

Last question around Gibraltar. Do you think this pick up in bank sales is sustainable? I mean, the momentum was phenomenal, and I'm wondering if you can kind of sustain that with the banks continuing to grow in Japan.

Edward Baird

Analyst · Andrew Kligerman with UBS

Yes. Andrew, this is Ed Baird. The bottom line answer is, yes, I think it's sustainable. Let me give you a few observations and facts to support that point of view. First, as you know, we're still relatively new to the Bank Channel business compared to a number of our competitors. So at this stage, we're still only selling through about 30 banks. That number will increase substantially quite soon as a result of the Star and Edison acquisitions. Both of those companies have been in the business of bank distribution quite a bit longer, and they have more than twice as many 70-plus relationships with banks. So I think from a point of distribution perspective, there's a lot more that we can gain. Secondly, even within the 30 or so that we currently have, we're not even actively selling in all of them yet. So there's still, I think, upside growth opportunity as a result of deeper penetration into those organizations. The additional factor that, I think, will be into this is that the most productive relationships we have continues to be our original one with the Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi. At one point, that constituted virtually all of the bank sales. It's now down into the low- to mid-70%. And the reason it's been so successful because it's growing in absolute terms, it's just that the percentage is not as concentrated as with these other banks. But the reason it's been so productive is because, as you know, from earlier discussions, we were able to use a different business model than the typical insurance company. We send not just a product, but we send a product along with the Life Planner, which makes this model, I think, virtually unique. The success of that particular approach with BTMU has been noticed by other banks, and we're now starting to get inquiries to whether we could expand that model with them as well. The reason I cite that is that that particular model produces an unusually high average premium. So for example, even our highest producing Life Planner model of POJ sells about $3,000 per policy, through the BTMU, that average premium is $10,000. So to the extent that we're able to get this compounding growth through expanded points of distribution, deeper penetration, that can be further supplemented by the utilization of Life Planners and other bank relationships, which to date again is extremely limited. If you put that whole package of factoids together, I think it's fair to say that we think we can continue what is already eight consecutive quarters of steady growth.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Darin Arita with Deutsche Bank.

Darin Arita - Deutsche Bank AG

Analyst · Darin Arita with Deutsche Bank

Just wanted to focus on Star and Edison here, and your Prudential has been very successful with Gibraltar and was wondering if we could compare your various productivity and profitability metrics of Star and Edison versus where Gibraltar is today?

Edward Baird

Analyst · Darin Arita with Deutsche Bank

Sure. But first, just to remind you, the valuation, the model that we use for the pricing did not focus or weigh to any measurable degree, revenue growth. I just want to contextualize that issue, nonetheless, as based entirely off of the value at the in-force book and expense synergies that will come from the scale effect that's intrinsic to this Life Insurance business. Nonetheless, in support of the point that John made, which I think is a trigger of your question, we think there is indeed revenue expansion opportunity here. Let me give you a couple of examples. Unlike Key Language was a bankrupt company, these two are not bankrupt, so they don't suffer to a comparable degree. On the other hand, they have undergone severe market stress in the last two years as a result of the overhang of the AIG reputational issues. That's especially true in the arena of third-party distribution, which in those companies is more significant than it has been inside of our Gibraltar organization. So we believe and have some degree of confidence that with the reputation enhancement that will come about through the restabilizing of these companies now that they're closed, we can get considerable improvement. So for example, whereas in our independent agency system, which was pointed out earlier, started at zero at the beginning of the quarter and produced a little over $20 million in the fourth quarter, we do that with just a couple of hundred independent agents. They have well over 4,000 independent agents. That channel in particularly in the last two years had substantial drop-off in productivity. So there's an area where we think we can, even if we just get it back to the productivity levels they were at precrisis, offers considerable opportunities. The other is, as you know, when you're managing a proprietary distribution system, you always have this balance between scale and productivity. And that's why you see quarter-to-quarter the size of our sales force will fluctuate. Now that we will be growing the size of more than doubling the size of the distribution force in Gibraltar, which is a little over 6,000, we'll be adding over 7,000, it gives us a rich set of opportunities to decide how we want to calibrate between expanding the reach geographically around the country or tightening up through standards to a higher level of quality and productivity. So that doesn't lend itself to a precise number, it just shows it gives us an array of options that I think is quite promising.

Darin Arita - Deutsche Bank AG

Analyst · Darin Arita with Deutsche Bank

And then just going back to the Bank Channel, can you give us the number of the kind of Life Planners that has gone over to the banks and where do you think that could go? I'm wondering if the limiting factor is the number of Life Planners that can go over or it's the number of banks that are willing to take these Life Planners.

Edward Baird

Analyst · Darin Arita with Deutsche Bank

Yes, it's a little bit of both. It's more of the number of banks at this point. We've sent well over 300 in total. Currently, there are about 170 that are active inside the system. Now because they go for a period of time, one, two years and then they rotate back and either become Life Advisors or serve somewhere else within the organization, they serve multiple roles, I should point out. Some of them act as trainers. Some of them act as active player coaches, whereby they not only train, but they actively sell. And so we give set of options to the bank as to what role they would like our re-distributed Life Planners to play. And again at the moment, that's primarily within the BTMU relationship, that these other banks are now in active discussion with us as to how they can utilize them either as wholesalers, trainers or as active personal distributors. So I think an opportunity there, as you say, is we have within the Life Planner model, a steady source from which we can pull to feed into the bank system.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jimmy Bhullar with JPMorgan. Jamminder Bhullar - JP Morgan Chase & Co: I had a few questions. First, just a clarification on Andrew's point on Star/Edison PICA adjustment. When we look at the change in PICA adjustment versus your guidance, we should be comparing the end of January of this year to the end of June last year, right, not September? Does your guidance was based on their rate for as of the end of June, right?

John Strangfeld

Analyst · Jimmy Bhullar with JPMorgan

You should be comparing it from the end of June last year to February 1 this year. Jamminder Bhullar - JP Morgan Chase & Co: Yes, because the corporate bond yields are actually lower in some cases, even though government bond yields are higher. So that's the reason I was asking.

Mark Grier

Analyst · Jimmy Bhullar with JPMorgan

This is Mark. Let me just stick in one point which is, there are a lot of moving parts in this. There's the portfolio, there's VOBA, there are reserves, so just be careful about oversimplifying based on what you see in specific asset markets. Jamminder Bhullar - JP Morgan Chase & Co: No, that's true. And the reason I was asking is because in Richard's comments, I think, he mentioned a couple of positives, which is Japanese government bond yields rising and the U.S. government bond yields rising. But he didn't mention any offset and the 35% of the portfolio is actually corporate or non-Japanese government corporate, which some of them are U.S. corporate. U.S. corporate bond yields are actually lower now or lower at the beginning of February than they were at the end of June. So that would actually be an offset. So that's the reason I was asking.

Mark Grier

Analyst · Jimmy Bhullar with JPMorgan

If that is the case Jimmy, you're correct. Jamminder Bhullar - JP Morgan Chase & Co: But anyway, a couple of questions I had. The first one was on POJ Life Planner growth. It's been slower recently than it's historically been, even adjusted for the transfers to Gibraltar. So just wondering what your long-term expectation or aspiration is for growth in the POJ Life Planners? Obviously the base is a lot larger than it used to be, but what's your growth and growth expectation and then I have another one.

Richard Carbone

Analyst · Jimmy Bhullar with JPMorgan

Yes. it's an interesting issue you raised. Did you know that number has been slowing down steadily over the years. But I want to observe the following to you. It's increasingly less relevant, and let me explain why. First of all, you'll notice that the year-over-year is a very small, it's essentially flat and if you give credit for the transfers to the banks, it's about 3.5%. And yet, you'll see that sales are up in POJ about 25%. So that reveals what I think is an important lesson for us to keep in mind rather than focus to singularly on headcount. And that is that headcount is one of the drivers but frankly, of equal if not at sometimes greater significances, we want to also look at productivity measured both the number of policies sold per person which has gone up. The retention, which is improving, the related persistency, which has been improving and most importantly of all relative to the business, is the average premium, which in the case of POJ has gone up about 10% quarter-over-quarter from a little over 2,700 to a little over 3,000. Frankly, those are the factors that we tend to look at more than just the headcount. So again, I think tracking headcount, that's fine. But I don't weight too much on it. As long as we can see sales going up 25%, even though headcount is flat, from my perspective, that's a positive result. Having said that, we always will push to steadily grow Life Planner account as long as we don't have to sacrifice the quality. Jamminder Bhullar - JP Morgan Chase & Co: And lastly, just on your Annuity sales in the U.S. I'm assuming there was a little bit of prior fire sale element in your production since the new feature was a little less generous than the older one was. And I think the new one was rolled out in January or at end of January, so should we expect the same phenomena because part of the quarter, you were selling same phenomena in the first quarter this year since part of the quarter you were selling the previous HD products?

Bernard Winograd

Analyst · Jimmy Bhullar with JPMorgan

Jimmy, it's Bernard Winograd. I think you know that applications for the old product has to be in our hands by the end of January to be honored. So we will have some of this, but not a lot of it. And we don't really know with precision what percentage of our fourth quarter sales were driven by this. But we did make efforts to make the filing with the specifics of the changes in the projects as latest as possible in the quarter didn't actually happen until December 6. And we estimate, best guess, it's probably no more than $200 million or $300 million of the sales experienced in the fourth quarter.

Operator

Operator

And we do have time for one final question, and that will come from the line of John Nadel with Sterne Agee. John Nadel - Sterne Agee & Leach Inc.: John, I guess, I was hoping you could give us an update on the overall M&A environment and your appetite for additional deals, especially just in light of the fact that obviously your international team is busy and you've got some transition going on in the leadership with the U.S. businesses. So I was wondering if you could give us an update.

John Strangfeld

Analyst · Sterne Agee

Sure, John. Well, a couple of thoughts on this. I mean, first, as you correctly identify, in our eyes, successes in announcing a deal, successes in closing a deal, success in the making it work. And we have a lot of people and a lot of resources focused on ensuring that the Star/Edison experience is reflective of our own expectations and of the potential that we see. So we're feeling very confident about that, but we don't underestimate the importance and the resource commitment necessary to make that happen. Now having said that, as we referenced before, let's also recognize that Star as it is entirely a one-country situation in a market environment that we've been in for 30 years and with the management team that's done this in the past. So our feeling is that we're not taking anything for granted, but we're feeling very good about our capacity to execute, and it also makes us feel that we do have the management capacity as well as the financial resources to consider other alternatives. When we think about other alternatives, it's a nice to do, not have to do. Because you look at the success we're having in our organic lines of business, in the opportunity cost, in the intrusion and the likes, so we believe we have the capacity, but we don't feel like it's something we have to do. It has to be darn compelling to be prepared to do it. We recognize to leave that question a little bit that our ability to achieve our aspirations and our ROE have to do with how we deploy the capital either in the business are getting it back. And so we keep that in our mind as well. But we also recognize we're still in an environment where the quality of the counter-party in terms of the financial capacity throughout the business and so forth is still very, very relevant as it relates to some potential franchises influx. So it's a situation where it hasn't fully played out yet. We're keeping our options open. But at the end of the day, we'll either deployment the capital in the business or we'll give it back and we'll just let it stay on the course. John Nadel - Sterne Agee & Leach Inc.: And then just finally, if I could just go back to Nigel's question around EPS sensitivity, and Eric please, don't cut me off immediately. I guess I'm wondering what makes your businesses so difficult to quantify that sensitivity to macro-factors when so many of your peers are able or at least willing to try to do so for us. I mean, during the crisis, you guys were able to give the sensitivities despite the non-linear issues on your risk-based capital ratios at lower SMP levels. And I guess I'm not sure how this would be so different from that exercise.

Mark Grier

Analyst · Sterne Agee

Well, John, this is Mark, and thanks for that question. One thing that we've emphasized in the past is that non-linear nature of the impact of markets on us and that continues to be true for a variety of reasons related to the nature of the calculation of DAC, for example, and unlockings and some of the other aspects, particularly of the insurance products. But the other thing is that we're focused on the holistic outcome and don't want to get particularly tangled up in a line item influence when there are many other things going on to produce the financial results that we report and talk about. John Nadel - Sterne Agee & Leach Inc.: Yes, if I can interject, I'm thinking about it holistically, too. I'm thinking about it from the perspective of not necessarily can I get my first quarter 2011 earnings estimate right on target. I'm trying to figure your company is worth more when market conditions are better, and I'm trying to figure out how much more your company is worth.

Mark Grier

Analyst · Sterne Agee

Yes, again, I appreciate that view, and our sensitivity to this relates to both the narrower issue around non-linear moves and getting it right and, secondly, the broader context.

Operator

Operator

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