Earnings call transcript: AXA sees 8% revenue growth in Q4 2025

AXA reported an 8% revenue growth for the fourth quarter of 2025, demonstrating solid performance across its business lines and geographies. The company’s underlying earnings per share also increased by 8%. Meanwhile, CSP International, a separate entity, experienced a 2.34% drop in stock price, closing at $0.299. According to InvestingPro data, CSP trades at a notably low Price/Book multiple of 0.24 and maintains strong liquidity with a current ratio of 2.16. AXA’s strong financial results were accompanied by a new €1.2 billion share buyback program and a 9% increase in dividend per share.

Key Takeaways

• AXA achieved 8% revenue and earnings growth in Q4 2025.
• The solvency ratio stood robust at 216%.
• A new €1.2 billion share buyback program was announced.
• Dividend per share increased by 9%.
• CSP International’s stock dropped by 2.34%.

Company Performance

AXA’s strong performance in Q4 2025 was marked by an 8% growth in both revenue and underlying earnings per share. This growth was consistent across all lines of business and geographic regions. The company’s return on equity reached 15.2%, reflecting its efficient capital management and robust operational strategies. AXA maintained its position as a leading multi-line insurer in Europe, with significant market presence in Japan and Hong Kong.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: 8% growth year-over-year
• Earnings per share: 8% growth year-over-year
• Solvency ratio: 216%
• Dividend increase: 9%
• Share buyback program: €1.2 billion

Outlook & Guidance

AXA aims to maintain a growth target of 6-8%, with expectations for continued margin improvements in Property & Casualty (P&C) and Life & Health segments. The company is focusing on expanding its mid-market commercial insurance and rejuvenating its long-term life and savings business. AXA projects potential high single-digit growth in 2025.

Executive Commentary

Thomas Buebel, Group CEO, stated, "We are simple, balanced, and focused on insurance," emphasizing AXA’s strategic focus. Frederic de Courtois, Group Deputy CEO, highlighted the importance of pensions, saying, "Pension will be the big topic for us over the next twenty years." Avond de Main Nel, Group CFO, remarked on the disciplined approach to improving margins.

Risks and Challenges

• Political uncertainty in the US and Europe could impact market stability.
• Diverging interest rates across major economies may affect investment returns.
• The competitive landscape in pension products poses a challenge against asset managers.
• Managing natural catastrophe exposure remains a priority.
• Sustaining growth in a potentially volatile economic environment.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts questioned AXA’s mid-market strategy and its potential impact on growth. Discussions also centered on the development of pension products and the effects of investment income on overall performance. Executives reiterated their commitment to the current growth range and highlighted strategic initiatives to drive future success.

Full transcript - CSP International (CSP) Q4 2024:

Anu, Moderator/Presenter, AXA: Good afternoon, and welcome to Access full year twenty twenty four results presentation. The results will be presented today by our group CEO, Thomas Buebel, group deputy CEO, Frederic de Courtois, and group CFO, Avond de Main Nel. For the q and a session, we will also have Scott Gunter, CEO of AXA XL, Guillaume Bory, CEO of AXA France, and Patrick Cohen, CEO of AXA Europe. With this, I turn it to Thomas for the results.

Thomas Buebel, Group CEO, AXA: 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 rest remaining two years and an annual share buyback, a new program of 1,200,000,000.0, 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 serving enterprises from the small SME to the large global commercial. And we are on the retail side, top three multi line insurers in Europe and we have leading positions in Protection and Health in Japan and Hong Kong. Balanced because both of it is 50% to 50%. And certainly, when you think about diversification and the different dynamics of these businesses over time, it’s important to be balanced and to have within this balance very high quality businesses with leading positions because that gives you attractive and scaled businesses and then certainly also predictable earnings growth, which we have shown over the last years. If we look at the top line development, the last years were always a little bit blurred because we had many disposals, we had business rightsizing, but the underlying dynamic was always 6% organic growth.

From 2023 to 2024, we were not and the numbers were not disturbed by any disposals and large rightsizing. And you have seen the power that is amounting to eight percent. It’s very consistent across all the lines of business, plus 7% in P and C, plus 9% in Life, plus 8% in Health and is also very consistent across all the geographies. So the attractive positioning we have in growing markets helps us to develop these and to generate these numbers. This is very much based on a high customer satisfaction.

When you look at our NPS numbers, you see that they have steadily grown over time and have reached very high standards. And what we are very proud about as well, a very high customer retention in almost every market. We are also very happy to see that the investments in growth initiatives that we have been mainly focusing on 2024 start to pay off. And we’ll hear later on from Frederic more detail around it, be it in mid markets, be it in employee benefits, but also be it in expanding our distribution footprint. So what you look, what you see here is the very disciplined execution of the plan that we have presented to you about a year ago.

As I said, this top line growth also translates into very strong bottom line growth, the underlying earnings per share being plus 8%. And so when you look at the time line, there is again, you see that AXA has been delivering consistently earnings year after year in very different environments that have, over time, become more and more volatile. And if you go even further back to 2016, when I started as a CEO, the increase in profit and underlying earnings is north of 40%. So what is nice to see is that top line is translating into bottom line, that we have consistent earnings. And if you look at these numbers, billion revenue and billion of profits, these are numbers that we have never seen in the history of AXA.

What is it due to? As I said, it’s due to the very disciplined execution that we have on clear strategic priority. It’s our focus on excellent technical profitability. And as you know, the year 2024 was very focused around getting the German operation, the German retail business and getting The U. K.

Retail business and health business right. And you have seen that we have delivered on it. And certainly, the investment in technology and AI, as I said earlier, has shown its first effects, has also been a drag on our earnings in 2024, which will not repeat in the remainder of the plan, but will enable us to continue this dynamic going forward. So we’ve built a business over the last years that is now in good shape, that is global, that is performing well, that is giving steady and consistent returns and that is a reliable profit generator for the future. When I talk about the future, we need to also look what are the catalysts for near term growth in the last in the next two years, but also beyond that.

And on the Commercial Insurance, you clearly see that mid market is an area where we see significant growth. We’ve already delivered good growth numbers in the high single digit. The energy transition is still a growth factor for us. But also when you think about companies, they want to more do more for the well-being of their employees. They want to care more about their employees in terms of talent retention, there is an area to capture growth with our digital capabilities and the global pricing assets that we have.

On the retail side, and it’s important as well of because of our balanced model to have a strong and large retail presence, we can certainly do more and want to benefit more from a new pension and savings area where people think more about retirement. If you look, for example, in France, the public debate is very much again around retirements. And so revamping our product offerings, making sure that we are becoming even more present in this area. And this has already started last year, in particular, in France and Italy. We want to benefit from this.

And certainly, when you think about the retail P and C environment, we are now at a level where we have done all the necessary work to be at the technical level that is necessary, and now we need to use our large franchise to also gain more market share across, all the countries. We have achieved that already in those countries where we didn’t have this significant restructuring to be done, so The U. K. And Germany. But if you look at the net new customers or net new contracts across all the other markets, you see that we have been very successful already.

So we are very confident that we will sustain this momentum also for the years going forward. What does it mean in terms of shareholder return? We are, the Board of Directors, is proposing to the shareholders a dividend of which is an increase of 9%. And when you look at the total yield, it’s about 7% dividend and share buyback based on a very clear capital management policy. And what does that mean if you again look over the last four years?

AXA will have returned 40% of its market cap to the shareholders. Seventy five percent is paid out to shareholders. What happens to the other 25%? The other 25% is invested in our business at attractive returns. And when you look at the book value and the compounding book value per share over time, you see that it’s very attractive as well.

So our strategy will continue exactly what you have seen in 2024, continue to generate sustainable and predictable earnings while making sure that this value is also being created for our shareholders. And when you look at where we are along the key KPIs of our plan, we see that we have had a strong start of our plan on the underlying earnings per share area at the top of the range, on the return of equity in the middle of our range, and certainly, when you look at the cash bang on, if you look at the three year plan. So we have high confidence that over the next two years, we will also deliver the plan. We need to remain focused on our execution, which we have proven in 2024 and which we are dedicated to do with my whole team. And that’s why I will now hand over to Frederic, who will go more into details what 2024 looked like, but also what the outlook will look like.

Thank you.

Frederic de Courtois, Group Deputy CEO, AXA: Thank you, Thomas. Good afternoon. First, a few words on the context. It is clear that we are operating in a changing context. But we believe the context is positive.

If I look on the left part of the slide, first, we have political uncertainty in The U. S. And in Europe. We haven’t seen any impact on our business, and we believe it will remain so. Subsequent element, inflation in Europe is receding.

And this is good news for insurance companies. Third, you know that we have diverging interest rates, US, Europe and Japan. We are exposed to these three areas. But overall, interest rates remain at a good level, which is good for the insurance industry. On Nat Cat, you’ve seen that our exposure to Nat Cat has decreased in ’twenty four.

This is a mix of good underwriting of geographical mix, but we remain cautious. We believe that cat will keep increasing, the severity and the frequency will keep increasing. So we will manage this in a very disciplined manner. Last element I wanted to highlight on AI. We are absolutely convinced that AI will have deep positive consequences for the insurance industry, be it on technical excellence, be it on productivity, be it on the customer experience.

So we are convinced that it will have very positive impact. And this is all a matter of execution. On the right part, on the business performance, so we’ve delivered in line with our plan on all dimensions. First, on Commercial Lines. So we’ve seen good growth in P and C Commercial Lines with margins at an attractive levels.

On retail, we’ve been delivering on margin recovery in The UK, in Germany Motor, and we’ve been growing where we wanted to grow, so in other key markets. Life business, on short term protection and health, we are seeing higher profitability and good growth coming especially from the recovery of The UK health business, but not only. And we see improving net flows in savings. Last but not least, we continue to be extremely focused on cash with an 82% remittance ratio in 24%, which is in line with our targets. So what is the overall message?

First message is we are done with the fixing. All our business units are on track and in good shape. Second message, this is, we believe, a strong start, and it reflects discipline execution. Let’s look at the commercial line business. So you know that we have a leading franchise on commercial lines with $35,000,000,000 premiums, with a good balance between SME and mid market, mainly in Europe, and big corporates at, at AXA XL.

Margins are in a strong place with a 91 combined ratio, and we see good opportunity to grow. We see good opportunity to grow, and I will highlight especially three areas. Overall, in our commercial and business, retention is increasing. And you see the figures here at AXA XL, which are very good. And this is especially important for commercial and business to keep your profitable clients.

Second opportunity area for us, which is the mid market area, you know that we have a specific initiative mid market. We have a specific initiative to grow in areas where we are not strong. And be it in The U. S, be it in Italy, be it in The UK and Ireland, we are really happy with the results, both on the top line and on the bottom line. Third area, we believe that there is a good economic momentum in The U.

S, and we are investing there to grow more on big commercial lines, on mid market and on E and S. But at the end, our focus is on sustaining our good profitability and our good margins. And as you see on the right side, this is all about cycle management. This is all about the mix and the cycle is different according to the business lines. So we are keen to grow in some business lines where the profitability is good.

We are less keen to grow in some other areas. This is what we call portfolio management, and we think we are doing it well. And we do not hesitate to decrease our business where we don’t like the profitability level. Last but not least, as you know, the cost of reinsurance is moderating and it is supporting margins for commercial and business. So what is next on this P and C commercial line business?

We expect to see good top line growth in ’twenty five and some improvements in margins in ’twenty five, which will drive earnings growth. If I look at retail now, so we have a good franchise on retail, especially in Europe with 19,000,000,000 premiums. You know that some of our peers are including SMEs in the retail line, which we don’t. So if we included SME in SMEs in the retail lines, it would be a 30,000,000,000 business. So we could do both.

We’ve decided not to include it, but this is important for you to know. So this business benefits from first, a good customer satisfaction, and we are very proud of this. And you see here the figures. It also benefits from a strong proprietary distribution. We had said last year when we communicated our plan that we would grow our physical distribution channels.

This is what we are doing in, especially in all Europe and in France. And we also have a very good direct franchise in some markets in Europe and in Asia, which is doing well. We’re also happy about our execution in ’24. I’ve said it already, we have delivered on the turnaround in The UK retail and Germany motor, and this is good. This has led to a two points improvement of our retail technical margins.

This turnaround has been based, of course, on underwriting, on pricing, on claims initiatives. But overall, I would say that we have been more courageous than the market. We’ve increased our prices more. We’ve been tougher on the underwriting. And this is good because we are now in a good position.

Second area on which I would like to insist on the good execution, which is that we’ve grown in some markets, which we like. And we have not grown in some other markets where we believe that margins were not adequate. Overall, the balance has been zero. So if you look at our retail portfolio, overall, the balance has been zero. But you see that we had good growth in France, in international markets, in Italy and Switzerland.

And we’ve accepted to decrease our portfolio in Germany and in The UK, but also in Ireland and in Spain because the prices were not adequate. You will see positive growth of the portfolio in ’20 So what is next on the retail business? First, we believe that margins will continue to improve in ’25 because pricing will be earned through and inflation is moderating. So in this context, we are focused on growing our portfolio and growing our volumes. Let’s move to our life and health business.

So first, this is important to understand that our life and health business is made of two different parts. The first part is what we call the short term business. So if this is pure protection business, P and C like, annual repricing, manage like P and C business with a combined ratio. And here, we had a good growth last year. We had a 10% growth of this business with a good profitability.

This is overall a 17 a 16,000,000,000 premium business, and it includes our very good and very profitable employee benefit franchise. We had told you, I think, last year that the EB business was growing fast in a post COVID environment. And this is again confirmed. Our EB business has grown by 12% last year, and we are very happy about this. This EB business is really a priority for us.

We have a good franchise. We have a very good platform that we have rolled out now in 14 countries. And we continue also to invest in the individual protection business, especially for professionals and self employed. In health, I would like to highlight the good job done in The UK, the good turnaround done in The UK, which was well executed with a 7.5 improvement of our combined ratio. You haven’t seen everything yet.

In other words, you will continue to see improvements in ’25. And all of this has helped to deliver half of the three points margin improvement that we had announced for our plan, and this is good. So going forward, what do we expect? We expect that our margins will continue to grow in The UK, as I’ve just said. We will recapture the, Laia premium for the first time in Ireland in ’twenty five, and the Laia premium in ’twenty five will be around €1,000,000,000.

And you will see overall further margin expansion as we systematically leverage our global capabilities on health care pathways, data set and pricing model. So in a nutshell, what is next on this business? First, we have a good potential to grow, to grow the top line. And we believe that we have also the capacity to grow the margins on this business. And the growth of the margins of this business will drive the earnings growth of our life and health business.

Last business I would like to mention, which is our long term life and health business. So long term life and health business is mainly a savings business, but this is also the health business in Japan and in Germany. We have a total of $36,000,000,000 premiums. So this is a CSM driven business. This is why we manage this business, the short term and the long term in a different way.

So the short term is P and C like. This one is is, again, a long term business driven by the CSM. And I think this is important here to look back at the history. The history for us in this business is that we’ve been extremely disciplined over the past years in a very low interest rate environment. And absolutely no regret on this.

We believe we’ve done well. Now the objective is to regain momentum, to regain sales momentum, knowing that in contrast to the short term business, here, you regain sales momentum, but it takes some times to see it in the bottom line. But again, now that the context has changed, of course, we remain disciplined, but the priority is to regain momentum. In addition, you know, if I look again at the history, that we had outflows over the past two years linked to high short term interest rates, the strong competition from short term bank banking products. This negative effect is now disappearing, and you will see that it will gradually disappear.

So to be more specific, where do we see the momentum? We start to see the momentum on premiums, and you see that be it on unit linked or on capital light general account business, we have a good sales momentum, especially in our proprietary distribution network. The good news is that we are also seeing a strong improvement of surrenders as I’ve seen. So we had strong surrenders in ’twenty three. We again had significant surrenders in ’twenty four, but you’ve seen that over the quarters, all of this has gradually improved towards a much better situation.

Having said that, we are clear that we can do better on this business. Again, we have to regain momentum. For a few years, the priority was to be disciplined, to be disciplined on the mix, to be disciplined on what we sell, to be disciplined on the volume. Now that the context has changed, we can do better, and we know what we have to do. We believe that we have a strong competitive advantage, especially against asset management companies.

We can offer lifelong whole life annuities, which is good in the moment in which pension are growing. We can offer protection riders. We can offer guarantees when it makes sense. So we believe that we have a good competitive advantage, and we believe also that the partnership with underperforming asset classes at AXA, and we believe that with this new partnership, it will boost our live business. So in a nutshell, what is next on this business?

From now on, we will invest and focus more on this long term business and especially on pension. I had said it already at the plan when we communicated our plan. To put things in perspective, a 1% increase in life and health earnings requires a 0.3 improvement in the short term combined ratio or 1.5 points of change in long term CSM release growth, which gives order of magnitudes. So on this life business, we are very confident with the business. We are very confident with the potential, and we are very confident that we can do better than what we are doing now.

It’s all a question of focus. One sentence to conclude on this first year, we are fully on track with the execution of our plan. Thank you.

Avond de Main Nel, Group CFO, AXA: So good afternoon to all. Let’s go now to the details of our earnings for 2024. Yes. And I’ll start with P and C, which is our largest line. What’s remarkable about P and C in 2024 is that we had both very good top line growth and margin improvement, and we had also a good balance between volumes and price.

So if I start with Commercial Lines. So it was another good year for AXA XL, which benefited from good volumes, either from new business in lines where pricing was dynamic and better retention in the other lines where the pricing was more stable. And you saw in Frederic’s slide how retention improved at AXA XL. On the price side, you know that overall, it’s not one cycle at AXA XL, but different lines. When you look at Casualty, prices were still up quite significantly, 4% in Europe, 10 Percent in The U.

S. When you look at Property, still it was also more than sufficient with plus 4% in Europe and 7% in The U. S. But as we said also last year, on the financial lines and notably in The U. S, the market remains soft.

But overall, prices were up 2% for the whole year for AXA XL. In the SME admin market, we saw absolutely no sign of a cycle. Pricing conditions remained favorable overall and demand remained strong. AXA XLRE plus 10%, half from pricing, half from volumes. And finally, in Retail Lines, so it was up 7%.

When you look at it this way, pricing was plus 10% and volumes was minus 3%, but it’s obviously due to the very strong repricing and turnaround that we executed in Germany and in The U. K. You know that in The U. K, we increased prices in retail by more than 30% and close to 15% in Germany. If you adjust for those two countries, we were at plus 6% in the other countries, half from volume and half from prices.

And we grew, as Frederic showed, in those countries where margins were good. So very good mix and very good top line growth in P and C. As I said that we were also able to improve our margins. And I think what matters most is the undiscounted loss ratio, excluding nat cat, that improved by 1.1. That came, obviously, from the retail lines.

And again, Germany and The U. K, but not only Germany and U. K, because we also saw improvements in retail in the other countries. And we also saw margin improvement in Commercial Lines, XXL. If you remember one year ago when we were here presenting our plan, we told you that we saw potential for margin expansion in Commercial Lines x XL, and that’s what we saw.

And margins remained stable at XL in 2024. So we managed to improve our margins with sorry, the attritional loss ratio. On nat cat, we had a good year. We had a cat load of 3.8 points, below our annual cat load of budget of 4.5 points, partly because of the exposure management, partly probably also because some nat cats were not in the geographies we’re in. So we cannot always take credit for everything.

And we remain cautious for our nat cat load for 25%, and we keep our 4.5 points budget for 25%. Expense ratio was slightly up, 30 bps. That’s exclusively due to acquisition costs, commission and that’s a business mix point. And finally, on PYDs, it slightly increased. That’s simply a proof of prudent reserving.

I don’t think there is much more to say about it. But as Frederic pointed out, we had planned for a two points improvement in our margins in P and C in the over the planned period. We delivered more than half in the first year of that plan, and we see room for further improvement with the pricing dynamic that we see this year. So how does that translate into earnings? So you see the very significant amount of additional margins in euros, close to billion coming from higher volumes and the better margins.

On the financial result, you remember that last year, we told you that we would have a significant increase in the unwind effect, million, and that’s exactly what we have here. I think what is good to notice is that we could offset most of it, thanks to higher investment incomes. We are very pleased with the with our performance on the investment income. And I just want to spend also a minute on our taxes. The in 2023, we had a positive one off in P and C and taxes, notably because Bermuda introduced new taxes, and that allowed us to recognize a DTA in ’twenty three in Bermuda at XL.

Conversely, in ’twenty four, we have the first year of the OECD tax pillar two, and that’s a negative. So between the two, it’s a shift of million of profits and less profits. And so we had the unwind, we had the taxes. Nevertheless, despite all this, we managed to increase underlying earnings in P and C by 10%, and that’s a clean base to grow from now on. Life and Health.

So on volumes, as Frederic and Thomas pointed out, we have very good growth in volumes, 9%. That’s 3% in protection coming mainly from Japan as often and from Switzerland. It’s unit linked plus 18%. That’s driven very much by Italy, where unit linked growth was above 40%. But also France, where through new products, new campaigns, unit linked volumes growth was 12%.

So we see good momentum here. And same on Capital Knight general account, 15%, again, driven by Japan with the single premium whole life product, which, by the way, we’ll probably sell a bit less of it in 2025. We need to be a bit cautious. But nevertheless, a good year end volumes for Life. Same on the Health side.

We had growth of 5% on the individual part, that’s mostly pricing, and 10% on the group part, and that’s a mix, probably onethree, twothree of pricing volume, sorry, and pricing. Net flows, as Fred said, that matters a lot to us. Now that we have cleaned our in force and that we want to grow our savings business, it’s important to have positive inflows. That’s what we have, billion. If you exclude health and just focus on savings, it’s not yet positive, but we are confident that it should become positive in 2025, and that will help us grow our CSM.

One word on the unit linked, billion negative is obviously not something that we want from a business which is capital light. One thing to keep in mind in our French business is that we have an automatic rebalancing in what we call for our customers. When markets reach a certain level, we automatically move part of their savings, the client savings from unit linked to general account to secure some of their capital gains. If you that was exactly million in 2024. PVEP and new business.

So on PVEP, really, the story is the same as for premiums. I would just comment on the new business margin, which is down slightly from 5% to 4.4%. That’s really a matter of business mix or geographic mix. We sold less of a high margin health product in Japan, and we sold more of a lower margin but still profitable protection product in France. At the end of the day, what matters to us is the fact that we grow our NBV, and that’s what you see, we grow NBV by 2% in 24%.

CSM. So you remember that we did two in force transactions last year, one in France, the other one with Axle Life Europe. That had an impact of minus million on the stock of the CSM. Our normalized CSM growth is 2%, the which is a bit below our expectations. Economic variance was negative by billion.

That’s entirely due to the widening of government bond spreads. And you will see the same in our our solvency numbers. But as you know, there is a pull to par on this. And as we get closer to maturity, we will recoup that amount. And operating variance was positive, million.

So as you know, we don’t put it in our normalized CSM growth, but nevertheless, it’s future better margins because of better mortality, better lapses or whatever that will be a positive for our CSM going forward and our CSM release. Earnings. So we like to think about our Life and Health earnings in three parts. The first one is the short term part, which is P and C like. And you saw that there, sorry, that we increased revenue very significantly, 10%, but we also massively increased profitability by 149%.

It’s obviously due to the turnaround that we operated in U. K. In The U. K. On the Health business, but not only.

It’s also a good performance in France in protection and it’s a good performance in Health in other countries than The U. K. Thanks to that, we have already delivered half of the combined ratio improvement that we wanted to have in Life and Health over the planned period. CSM release, minus 1%, but plus 2% if you exclude the two in four transactions that I mentioned. And last, net financial result on non participating business, plus 10%.

Same story as in P and C. We had good investment income in Life that more than offset the increase in the unwind. So it’s a good set of results in Life and Health. But very importantly, we see the potential for more growth in earnings from that basis. Trying to move to the next slide.

Yes. Here, it’s just the summary of what I’ve just said. Just want to highlight the fact that Health earnings grew by 24% for the reasons I said. Life earnings were stable or plus 2% if you exclude the impact of the enforced transactions. You remember that, obviously, that loss of earnings was compensated through buybacks done last year.

Asset Management. So the closing of the AXAIM transaction should take place at the end of Q2 or beginning of Q3. Until then, we keep on consolidating AXIIM’s earnings. The AUM are up 4%. That’s a mix of good market conditions.

And net inflows, billion coming from third parties. We had good management of our expenses at AXA I’m stable management fees, slightly up, which allowed us to have underlying earnings grow by 11%. So in this table, we have the summary P and C Life and Health Asset Management. I haven’t commented on holding costs, including debt expenses, obviously, yet. So it increases by million.

Again, that’s in line with what we told you last year for our plan. That’s due to investments in technology and investment for growth. Very importantly, this will remain flat for the other years of the plans of the plan, I. E, 2526%. So underlying earnings grew by 7%.

If you add to that the benefit of the share buyback and the deduct the fact that ForEx was a negative, our underlying earnings per share grew by 8%. One word on net income, it grew by 11% compared to underlying earnings. It’s always the same difference. We had capital gains on real estate, but we also had the traditional amortization of intangible assets, and that explains the difference between underlying earnings and net income. I come back to taxes.

There were, as I said, a number of one offs in the past, and there were significant variation in the in our taxes in 2024. The effective tax rate that you can take into account going forward, excluding any one off, is 24%. That’s what you should have in mind, which is the consequence of the changes notably of the pillar two tax. If I move to shareholders’ billion. The when we look at true shareholders’ equity, excluding undated subordinated debt and excluding OCI, it’s billion, up 6%.

And that reflects, as was said before by Thomas, the fact that we want to distribute 75% of our earnings, but we want to keep 25% and grow our book value. ROE was 15.2%, in line with our target range of 14% to 16%. And debt gearing was 20.6%, slightly above 2023 number, not because we increased debt, it remained flat, simply because the OCI, which is a negative amount, increased by billion. So it’s a denominator effect, not a numerator one. That’s why we are debt gearing, increased slightly.

So 7% underlying earnings growth, 8% underlying earnings per share growth, 9% dividend per share growth, to which we will add billion of annual share buyback, and that brings us to the 75% overall payout that we are now used to. We will do a billion share buyback to offset the loss of earnings of XIM. We will start that share buyback as soon as practicable after the closing of the transaction given the amount at stake. Part of it will be done in ’25, part of it most probably will be done in ’26, which means that the full compensation of the loss of AXI M earnings will be achieved at the end of ’twenty six. A word on cash.

The cash remitted by our subsidiaries was billion, so an excellent year. That billion organic remittance or ordinary remittance, which means an 82 percent remittance ratio. And in addition to that, we got million, which was the materialization of the in force transactions and the release of capital that we did in France and in Ireland. And you know that last year, we paid billion of dividend and we did billion of share buybacks, annual share buyback and million, again, to offset those enforced transactions. Holding costs, interest expense, I already commented on, and I insist on the fact that they will remain flat.

Last word on solvency. We generated 28 points of solvency, so within our range of 25 to 30 points. And that is despite the fact that we grew all our lines of business between 78%. So we managed to do that by being very strict on the management of our required capital. We give 22 points back to our shareholders, and that is the dividend and the share buyback to be done.

That excludes, obviously, at this stage the share buyback that we’ll do for AXAIM. We have a economic variance that cost us 13 points. That’s what I mentioned earlier on the widening of government bond spread. And finally, three points less of solvency due to the fact that we substituted senior debt to the subordinated debt that we redeemed or repaid in 2024. And going forward, that’s something that we can do.

I mean, we will use all sorts of debt to replace the subordinated debt, which will lose its solvency status by the end of twenty twenty six. So overall, solid growth everywhere, growing earnings in line with our plan, with our expectations. You remember that we said we would grow our P and C earnings and Life and Health earnings between four percent and six percent. So Life, we are exactly in line. P and C, we did better than that in 2024.

And still a very strong level of

Thomas Buebel, Group CEO, AXA: of a of a couple key priorities. Third topic, the high growth that we have shown has translated into predictable earnings growth. Fourth one, this has related this has resulted in a attractive share of the return with, as you’ve seen, plus 9% dividend per share and a new program of share buybacks of billion. And lastly, we are confident to deliver our plan, Unlock the Future for the remaining two years with focus on the one hand, further improving our technical profitability and on the other hand, increasing our dynamic on the Life and Savings business. Thank you for your attention, and we’ll now go to your questions.

And we’ll be joined by Scott, Guillaume and Patrick. Let’s start with Michael here in the front.

Michael, Analyst: I basically wanted to ask for more. So you’ve delivered and it’s nice, but the 8%, and I’m kind of thinking, so you set this time last year 6% to 8%. We’ve got today, we’ve got 8%. And I’m just wondering, is there a chance that you might reset the plan to say maybe seven to nine like some of your peers or even eight to 10 like some other peers? So that would be my first question.

And then the second question is with all this cash coming in and I know you’re doing buy backs and stuff, but if I were CEO, I’d always be thinking I want to buy something. What are you have you stopped buying anything? Have you kind of given up and said, no, no, no, this is we’re done? That’s it.

Thomas Buebel, Group CEO, AXA: So it’s interesting that you only have two questions today. I’ll try and answer them both. So on the plan, I mean, obviously, there is this question is a very normal one. If you end your first year at 8%, the upper range, but as you know, we are a prudent company. So we are now going into the second year and see what is coming and have decided to remain at 6% to 8%.

If we go into year three and we still see high numbers, we should have a look again. But as of now, let’s stick to what we said to you last year. On the second question, it’s true that cash is coming in and I think that should always be seen as a positive sign because we always said that cash at the holding should be somewhere around billion. You’ve just seen from Alban that it’s at the end of last year at billion. We are very much focused on implementing our strategy, on delivering on those priorities.

And you’ve seen the operating and organic machine works very well. Yes, we do look at deals here and there, but we don’t spend twenty four hours a day on this. And I think keeping a good balance between core focus on the operations and occasionally looking at what’s out there is important, not forgetting the clear priority that we have, dividend, share buyback first, and then we can have a look if there is anything interesting coming. Let’s stay at the same table, Fauch. And we have to wait for the mic.

Farooq Kenny, Analyst, JPMorgan: Hi, everybody. Thank you very much. Farooq Kenny from JPMorgan. So it sounded, Frederic, when you were giving your presentation that you’re basically saying high single digit growth would not be a stretch next year. Just digging into some of the segments, so you talk about mid market.

In mid market in P and C, is that a higher margin business for you? Because you talk about pricing still being very strong versus inflation or stronger. So do would we expect some positive mix effect if you grow more in mid market in P and C? And similarly in employee benefits, it feels like the momentum there is very strong. You’ve got some special skills.

Again, is that a good mix effect? So that’s question area number one. And question two, for Alban is, I remember the guidance you gave in P and C about the difference between investment income and Iffy. At your CMD, you talked about, I think, a 500,000,000 hit net. Given what you’ve seen in markets, would you be I mean, what are the trends that could revise that?

Thomas Buebel, Group CEO, AXA: Good. Thank you, Farooq. I would suggest, well, if you start with the first question, and maybe we also let Patrick and Scott talk because you have two people there that are very much Scott in the mid market in The US, Patrick in the mid market in Europe. That has been strong in Spain, Italy and in The U. K.

And you also are responsible for mPlay Benefits, Patrick. And then Alban, if you could do the second question. Frederic?

Frederic de Courtois, Group Deputy CEO, AXA: Yes. So I’ll start with mid market. So as you know, we have experience on mid market because we have big businesses in France, in in Germany, in Switzerland, in Belgium. And they are excellent businesses and we are often market leaders in these various countries. And yes, our experience is that we have on mid market business higher margins that we have on big corporates.

Now the new phase is to continue to grow on these historical countries, historical business units, and to grow the mid market But first, we are absolutely on track with our plan on the top line, which means that there is appetite from brokers to have a new player on this business. And second, the first signals are that, yes, margins are higher than on the B corporate business. That’s a bit early, but the first signals are positive. On EB, so we have, as I’ve said, we have a very strong franchise. Protection and health, margins are pretty similar.

Pretty similar because when you negotiate with these big players on EB, they have a strong procurement department, if I may say. And the negotiations are tough. But on both businesses, so be it EB, EB health, EB protection or EB pension and Individual Protection and Individual Health margins are fine.

Thomas Buebel, Group CEO, AXA: So maybe let’s zoom into The U. S, Scott, and then we go to Patrick on the continent and The UK.

Scott Gunter, CEO of AXA XL, AXA: Yeah. Just a Can you is it working? Okay. Good. It works.

Yeah. Just, on The US, we’ve launched mid market about a year and a half ago. And that similar to what Frederic said, the reason we’re in the mid market business is the large account business is a little more cyclical, so the margins can get better when the market’s rock hard, but also under more pressure when it goes very soft. So either ends of the marketplace, it’s a little better. Mid market for us helps is a little more less susceptible to the cycle.

It still is, but the highs aren’t as high, but the lows aren’t as low, if you want to look at that way. And it’s adjacent to our expertise. So we’ve got the distribution, the underwriting talent, the capability, so it makes a ton of sense for us to be in that business, adjacent to what we currently do. So we’ve been building it out. We’re very excited by it.

And as Frederick said, so far, it has performed very well for us over the last eighteen months. We expect to continue to build it.

Thomas Buebel, Group CEO, AXA: Thank you, Scott. Patrick?

Patrick Cohen, CEO of AXA Europe, AXA: Yes. So in Europe, mid market is also in Continental Europe, a very strong opportunity. It’s 45% of our business. It’s a growing business. It’s a profitable one.

We got very strong position in The UK. We got very strong position in Germany, where we are top three. We are growing that business with a very, I’d say, organized go to market strategy that is paying off, being very close to our customer through market facing underwriting, bringing the right expertise, transferring also our risk engineering and it shows in the growth of the number and also positioning ourselves on lines and segments who are high growth. So for instance, in Germany, we are leading position on renewables. We’ve been growing that book of business 15% CAGR in the outer years and we got similar place in The UK.

So a strong model and a growth opportunity and we have a no drop ball strategy with Excel, where we are making sure that we’re managing jointly the pipeline to serve those customers.

Thomas Buebel, Group CEO, AXA: Joao, do you also want to say a word because mid market is also key in France? And then we go to

Guillaume Bory, CEO of AXA France, AXA: Yes. So mid market, good afternoon first, everyone. And mid market is indeed a critical business for the French operation, where we are the leading insurer of French companies on the market. And where we had in 2024 yet another year of solid performance, both on top line developments, mostly driven by the increase in our average price and in the combined ratio that further improved starting from already a very low basis. So I’m confident in the current trends.

And for 2025, we see the same strong commercial dynamic.

Frederic de Courtois, Group Deputy CEO, AXA: Alban?

Avond de Main Nel, Group CFO, AXA: And so on investment and So there’s probably another million of unwind of if ye to come, which is in line with what we had told you last year for the full plan. I mean, overall, we would have million. But so that’s mechanical and that’s easy to determine. We did, as I said earlier, we did better than we thought on the investment side. We thought we would get million to million.

We got million, which are there to stay. And we will probably offset at least half of the additional million that are coming with additional investment income.

Thomas Buebel, Group CEO, AXA: Dominic?

Tom O’Mahony, Analyst, BNP Paribas (OTC:BNPQY), Exane: Messi, Tom O’Mahony, BNP Paribas, Exane. Just two questions for me. The first is, Frederic, you talked about reinvigorating the pensions proposition. I wonder if you might just give us another layer down on what that looks like in practice, both on the product side and the distribution side. This time last year, there was an emphasis on expanding the agency force.

How is that running out? The second question just on XL. It looked like casualty is an area of growth. Curious to hear your views on the debate, I guess, in the market about whether pricing is adequate and I guess which bits of casualty you’re looking at. Thank you.

Thomas Buebel, Group CEO, AXA: Good. Frederic, do you want to start with the first question and then also bring in Guillaume and Patrick because you have launched in France with the Gestion Pilots and Patrick in Italy in particular this movement? And then Scott, if you can take the second question around casualty and is the pricing adequate?

Frederic de Courtois, Group Deputy CEO, AXA: So on pension, there is only one certainty, which is that pension will be the big topic for us over the next twenty years for sure because of the demographics. And because governments become more open on this topic. I mean, you should see the debate, and Thomas mentioned it in France today, what we call is again on the table. So for sure, it will be a big topic. This is a market on which insurance company compete with asset managers and we don’t have the same assets, if I may say.

As I’ve said before, insurance companies can offer whole life annuities, which asset manager can cannot. We can offer protection riders that are especially useful for pension products because for instance, you can commit to paying the remaining premiums if somebody has died or whatever. These are regular premium products. And we can offer some kind of capital guarantees when it makes sense. So again, it will be a harsh competition.

You can offer these products in an individual way or in collective group way, if I may say. If I look at the French example, which is a good recent example, so the plant was launched few years ago, and I will let Guillaume comment. And at the end, insurance companies did take all the market. Now 15,000,000 people in France have a Plant Des Pines road trip, and we expect to see the same trend in some other markets. So this is about having good products, having good distribution and having a good asset management company as a partner, knowing that in pension products, you can have also passive asset management.

Thomas Buebel, Group CEO, AXA: Guillaume?

Guillaume Bory, CEO of AXA France, AXA: So maybe a word to complement first on what Frederic just said on the retirement market in France, where we are the leader both in group retirement and in individual retirement. So in group retirement, we provide retirement solutions for companies working both on Pillar two and Pillar three. And in individual retirement, it’s a market that recently opened, as Frederic indicated, and on which we are by far the leading provider. It’s only Pillar three, but with strong growth on the market. In both cases, we have a bit more than 20% market share developing consistently over time.

On top of that, the structure of the French market is leading us to also work a lot on this topic with the life insurance product because today, it’s a fact that most of the French consumers are also using life insurance to prepare for their retirement and long term savings needs. So on that market, we have, in 2024, managed really to reaccelerate with very good commercial dynamics in ’twenty four. So you see that in our figures, more than 5% growth on the savings and retirement business ultimately. And there, the good news also is that we managed to reduce persistency on the existing portfolio. So lapse rates went down by approximately one point tight agent and salaried sales force that we did increase during 2024, a bit more than two fifty additional distributors on the market.

Second, revamped offers, that’s where come the Gestion Pilote. So it’s a discretionary portfolio management solution that we provide to all customers on the market, extremely helpful with mass market and affluent customer. Of course, for high net worth individuals there, we need to put in place more wealth management solution through a dedicated team that is also working very well. And on persistency, we also worked on really training our distribution workforce in order to reduce the lapse rate that we saw in ’twenty two and ’twenty three. All in all, it led us to strongly improve the net flows in our savings business by a bit more than billion in ’twenty four.

And all of this will drive for us future CSM release. So this year, we managed to have a growth of the CSM release of 5% when you adjusted for the in force operation we did last year. And going forward, we see very much the same trend due to this new dynamic on the net flows. So I’m positive on the prospect of this activity. And to put that in perspective with the group figures, it’s more or less half of the group savings activity.

So you will see that as a material effect on our release going forward.

Thomas Buebel, Group CEO, AXA: Patrick?

Patrick Cohen, CEO of AXA Europe, AXA: So same dynamic in Europe. Is this working? Yes, it is? You can hear me. Okay.

So life is back in Europe, and we are really positioning ourselves on long term savings and pension. I’d start with the numbers

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