American Equity Investment Life Holding Company (NYSE:AEL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Anant Bhalla: Hi Wilma, good morning. No new update. I think at the last call, I said we are looking at in the third quarter timeframe. Obviously, good progress on it. We are working with a banking partner. We are in the market talking to counterparties. We like the initial response we have got from really pristine counterparties that we brought into this as we have defined them. And we are focused on executing it and moving forward. I am very much focused with the leadership team here on growing our AUM and having the right mix of spread and fee-related earnings. And so that will get executed over the course of the year. And then we want to continue to focus on growing because that BAU will get executed. And then we are focused on growing sales and growing AUM and growing the mix of earnings.

Wilma Burdis: Got it. Thank you. And then maybe a little bit of color on the buyback in 4Q, which seems were a little bit lower.

Axel Andre: Yes. Hi Wilma, this is Axel. So, in the fourth quarter, we repurchased a little bit to over 1 million shares, close to $40 million. So, we set a grid for buyback, we kind of reset the grid every quarter after the earnings call. Of course, we did not anticipate the events of middle of December, which resulted in the stock price kind of jumping up to $45 and above. So, it’s just a function of really of how the grid was set ahead of that, that we ended up being out in the market for a portion of the quarter. But as Anant said, we remain buyers of our stock, and we intend to complete the 2022 share buyback program in 2023. So, that’s the $130 million that remains and at least $250 million for 2023.

Anant Bhalla: Yes. Maybe I will just add a little €“ there is a little noise around our name in the quarter, as you are well aware. So, they can fit in the way of us being able to buy stock on a regular basis. We hope to refresh our buying grids and how those 10b5-1 plans and all those things work well so that we should be back in the market pretty soon here.

Wilma Burdis: Okay. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from Mark Dwelle from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Mark Dwelle: Yes. Good morning. You mentioned the new flow reinsurance agreement with 26North effective during February. Could you just comment a little bit more on sort of which assets are being ceded under that? And if you have any kind of general targeted range of how much flow is expected to go across that?

Axel Andre: Sure. Yes, happy to take it. For flow reinsurance, there are no assets transferred, right. What happens, it’s a new business that we issue. So, the premium cash basically gets transferred to the reinsurer there. There is no time for HP invested in that transfer. So, it’s really the reinsurers use risk and invest at this pace to back the liabilities to assume.

Mark Dwelle: I missed, I meant was premium, not assets.

Axel Andre: Right. So, we flow €“ with flow reinsurance, it’s premium comes in, premium goes back out to the reinsurer just directly. It’s really that simple.

Anant Bhalla: And in terms of your other part of your question, I will start in. It’s $525 million a year. I may have mentioned this in the last call, that’s the size of the treaty with them, and that’s what we would expect it to be.