MURGF - Münchener Rückversicherungs-Gesellschaft Aktiengesellschaft in München (MURGY) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

2025-02-27 01:40:14 ET

Münchener Rückversicherungs-Gesellschaft Aktiengesellschaft in München (MURGY)

Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

February 26, 2025 05:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Christian Becker-Hussong - Head, Investor & Rating Agency Relations

Joachim Wenning - Chief Executive Officer

Christoph Jurecka - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Andrew Baker - Goldman Sachs

Kamran Hossain - JPMorgan

James Shuck - Citi

William Hardcastle - UBS

Iain Pearce - Exane

Ivan Bokhmat - Barclays

Darius Satkauskas - KBW

Shanti Kang - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Faizan Lakhani - HSBC

Henry Heathfield - Morningstar

Chris Hartwell - Autonomous

Vinit Malhotra - Mediobanca

Michael Huttner - Berenberg Bank

Aliénor Fender - ODDO BHF

Presentation

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Analyst Investors Call on Annual Results and January Renewals Conference Call and Live Webcast. I'm Moritz, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in a listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Christian Becker-Hussong. Please go ahead, sir.

Christian Becker-Hussong

Thank you, Moritz. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to our call on the full year 2024 earnings and 2025 January renewals. I think I don't have to introduce today's speakers. Joachim Wenning, our CEO; and Christoph Jurecka, our CFO of Munich RE.

Same procedure as every year. Joachim and Christoph will kick it off with their remarks afterwards. There's plenty of opportunity for Q&A. So Joachim, please.

Joachim Wenning

Thank you very much, Christian, and, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our conference today. 2024 was again a very successful year for Munich RE. Thanks to strong operating performance across all segments and a pleasing investment return, we have clearly exceeded our profit target with a net income of 5.7 billion Euro. Uncertainty triggers demand for solutions making our clients more resilient. As we have not been observing any significant inflow of new capacity or new capital into the reinsurance space so far, we remain confident that the attractive market environment will continue to prevail and we want our shareholders to participate in our strong financial performance, so we decided to substantially increase the dividend per share by 33%, proposing a dividend of 20 Euro. In addition, we continue with share buybacks, also on a larger scale of 2 billion Euro, until the AGM next year.

Looking at the achievements of our current ongoing Ambition 2025 so far, we delivered or even over delivered on all our targets. In terms of return on equity, we are noticeably ahead of our target range of 14% to 16%. This is well above our cost of capital, so we create substantial value for our shareholders. And we have of course, seized opportunities of an attractive market environment. Our Solvency II ratio continues to be well above the optimal range. Now, while this is a happy problem and protects us against adverse developments, we don't want to sit on excess capital. Therefore, we are committed to further deploying capital into attractive markets, yes, but in addition to repatriating a substantial share of our earnings to bring excess capital down over time. ...

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