Legal & General Group Plc (LGEN) Q2 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, and a warm welcome, both to those of you in the room and to those joining online. I'm Michelle Moore, Group Strategy and Investor Relations Director. To start, a few housekeeping points. To those of you in the room, please make sure you've turned your devices to silent. And in the event the fire alarm sounds, colleagues will guide you to the nearest exit, and the normal forward-looking statements apply. So our running order for today will be as follows. Antonio will open with a summary of our first half results and an update on the progress we are making in delivering against our strategy. Jeff will cover the financial results in more detail, and then Antonio will make closing comments before opening to Q&A, at which point he will be joined on stage by Jeff and the CEOs of our free businesses to take your questions. Antonio, over to you. Thank you, Michelle. Good morning. So welcome, everyone. It's great to have you here with us. We've had a great first half of the year with strong, good earnings and growth and continued momentum in the execution of our strategy. So let me first take you through the headline numbers. Our core operating EPS is up 9%. That's at the top end of our 6% to 9% range. Our core operating profit is up 6% at £859 million. Our OSG is up 3% to £279 million. And we continue to have a very strong balance sheet with a solvency to coverage ratio of 217%. We are delivering more to shareholders with a 2% increase in our interim dividend per share, and our 500 million share buyback is now nearly complete. Look, these are great numbers, but the progress on our strategy is even more encouraging. Last year, we outlined a strategy to be a growing, simpler, better connected LNG, which becomes more capital light over time. We've been busy execut...