Axa Sa Ord (AXAHF) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good afternoon and welcome to AXA's full year 2024 results presentation. The results will be presented today by our Group CEO, Thomas Boubel, Group Deputy CEO, Frederic de Courtois, and Group CFO, Avant de Mainel. For the Q&A session, we will also have Scott Gunter, CEO of AXA Excel, Guillaume Bory, CEO of AXA France, and Patrick Cohen, CEO of AXA Europe. With this, I turn it to Thomas for the results. Thank you, Anu, and good afternoon to all of you. Very happy to see you in London here and to present to you as my colleagues a good first year of our three-year plan, Unlock the Future. When you look at the key highlights, you see that the business is in very good shape. We have achieved an 8% growth on revenue across all lines of business, across all geographies, and this has also translated into an 8% underlying earnings per share growth, which is, as you know, at the top end of our range of this plan. Very importantly, the solvency is 216%, so a very solid balance sheet, a strong capital position, which has led the board to decide that the delivery for shareholders based on these results is very positive. The dividend per share will increase by 9%, which also is a clear indication of the confidence we have in the business and also being able to deliver for the remaining two years. And an annual share buyback, a new program of $1.2 billion, which represents a 75% payout ratio. So you see that the excellent operational performance is underpinned by an attractive return to shareholders. If we go a little bit deeper, we see that AXA today is simple, is balanced and is focused on insurance. Today, we are only an insurer and it's good that we are only an insurer because that's the business we know best. That's the business we focus on. We are simple in a way that we are ...