Aflac Inc. 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Please go ahead. Good morning, and welcome.

Thank you for joining us for Aflac Incorporated second quarter 2026 earnings call. This morning, Dan Amos, Chairman, CEO of Aflac Incorporated, will provide an overview of our results and operations in Japan and the U.S. Then Max Brodén, Senior Executive Vice President and CFO of Aflac Incorporated, will provide more detail on this quarter's financial results, including our capital and liquidity. These topics are also addressed in the materials we posted with our earnings release, financial supplement, and quarterly CFO video update on investors.aflac.com. For Q&A today, we are also joined by Virgil Miller, President of Aflac Incorporated and Aflac U.S., Charles Lake, Chairman and Representative Director, President of Aflac International, Masatoshi Koide, President and Representative Director, Aflac Life Insurance Japan, Shunsuke Morimoto, Deputy President and Director, Aflac Life Insurance Japan, and Brad Dyslin, Global Chief Investment Officer, President of Aflac Global Investments.

Before we begin, some statements in this teleconference are forward-looking within the meaning of federal securities laws. Although we believe these statements are reasonable, we give no assurance that they will prove to be accurate because they are prospective in nature. Actual results could differ materially from those we discuss today. We encourage you to look at our annual report on Form 10-K for some of the various risk factors that could materially impact our results. As I mentioned earlier, the earnings release with reconciliations of certain non-U.S. GAAP measures and related earnings materials are available on investors.aflac.com. I'll now hand the call over to Dan.

Dan? Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone.

We're glad you joined us. The second quarter added to the first quarter solid financial start. Aflac Incorporated reported net earnings per diluted share of $1.63 and adjusted earnings per diluted share of $1.75. These results reflect the focused execution of our strategy, thus creating long-term value for the shareholders. Starting with Aflac Japan, as we told you, we were up against a strong second quarter in 2025 sales comparison following the launch of Miraito Cancer Insurance. As a result, sales declined 5.6% to JPY 11 billion in the quarter, but sales were up 7% for the first half of the year. This reflected strong sales results of Tsumitasu and bring sales in line with our expectations for the first half of the year.

As part of our ongoing strategy, we continue to promote the importance of third sector protection to new and younger customers with our innovative first sector savings-type life insurance product, Tsumitasu. During this quarter, both the refreshed Tsumitasu product and Anshin Palette medical insurance product, which we launched in December 2025, delivered strong sales growth year-over-year. As a result, we continue to expect Aflac Japan sales to exceed 2025. For the quarter, premium persistency was 92.7%, which was in line with last quarter. By maintaining strong persistency while adding new premium through sales, we seek to offset the impact of lapses and reissue, as well as policies reaching paid-up status. Our wide-ranging network of distribution channels, including agencies, alliance partners, and banks, continually leverage opportunities to help provide financial protection to Japanese consumers.

We view each channel as a distinct avenue to reach Japanese consumers in different demographics and stages of life. With this in mind, we evaluate and support each one with unique opportunities to help provide Japanese citizens with financial protection. Turning to Aflac U.S., we continue to focus on pursuing profitable growth with an eye on maintaining strong underwriting discipline and premium persistency. We generated a 2.6% increase in year-over-year sales in the second quarter. We are seeing momentum within our group business, especially our group voluntary products and network dental and vision. We generated a 2.3% increase in net earned premium for the quarter and maintained strong premium persistency of 79.4%. At the same time, Aflac U.S. has continued its prudent approach to expense management and maintained a solid pre-tax margin of 20.9%.

As public insurance companies, our primary responsibility is to fulfill the promises we make to our policyholders while being responsive to the needs of the shareholders. We continue to be pleased with our investments producing solid investment income. Our operations generated strong capital and cash flows on an ongoing basis as we remain committed to prudent liquidity and capital management. This financial strength is the foundation that backs up our promise to the policyholders, balanced with financial flexibility and tactical capital deployment. I am pleased with the company's financial strength, which supports our capital deployment. We treasure our 43 consecutive years of dividend increases and remain committed to extending this record in 2026. Combining share repurchase and dividends, we delivered $1.3 billion back to the shareholders in the second quarter and $2.6 billion for the first six months.

In doing so, we have maintained our position among companies with the highest return on capital and lowest cost of capital in the industry. We continue to pursue more profitable growth and the tactical opportunistic deployment of capital. The Japanese and U.S. insurance markets are two of the best insurance markets in the world. Both share characteristics that make them well-suited to the products we offer. Across Japan and the United States, consumers are feeling the strain of increasing out-of-pocket medical expenses. That's exactly where our products can help. As you have heard me say many times before, I believe the need for our products is actually more compelling in this type of environment because the financial risk to the household becomes more pronounced and more impactful.

As a pioneer in cancer insurance and leader in the industry, our employees, sales teams, and sales partners show up every day to help ease that burden, providing financial protection with genuine compassion and care. The ongoing foundational strength of our business and our capacity for continued growth support our leading position and build on our momentum. I'll now turn the program over to Max to cover more details of the financial results.

Max? Thank you, Dan. For the second quarter of 2026, adjusted earnings per diluted share increased 1.1% year-over-year to $1.80, excluding effect of foreign currency in the quarter.

In this quarter, remeasurement gains on reserves totaled $46 million, reducing benefits with $7 million or $0.01 per diluted share below plan. Variable investment income ran $72 million or $0.11 per diluted share below our long-term return expectations. We also released a $26 million expense contingency with lowered expenses in our U.S. segment, benefiting results by $0.04 per share. Adjusted book value per share, excluding foreign currency remeasurement, decreased 4.1%. The adjusted ROE was 12.7% and 16.6%, excluding foreign currency remeasurement, a solid spread to our cost of capital. Overall, we view these results in the quarter as solid. Starting with our Japan segment. Net earned premiums in JPY terms for the quarter declined 3.7%.

Aflac Japan's underlying earned premiums, which excludes the impact of reinsurance, paid-up policies, and deferred profit liability, declined 1.4%. Japan's total benefit ratio came in at 64% for the quarter, down 250 basis points year-over-year. We estimate the impact from reserve remeasurement gains were under plan by approximately 60 basis points. We continue to have favorable trends in cancer and hospitalization. Recognizing that the year-to-date benefit ratio is 63.4%, we now expect to be at the high end of our guidance range of 60%-63% for the full year of 2026, excluding the annual actuarial assumption review in Q3. Persistency remains solid and in line with our expectations at 92.7%. We have continued to experience somewhat elevated lapse and re-share activity on recently launched products as we have expanded coverage options and competitiveness on our new products.