Traders Cooperative

[Joe Stocks]

BHF looks a lot like JXN. BHF does not pay a dividend. Their preference is to buy back shares. And they buy back a lot.
This from the last conference call. Someone asked about the buybacks.

Eric Steigerwalt

Look, let me just start out by saying we are laser focused on the strategy that we laid out a couple of years ago, and that has not changed at all. So you’re trying to get a sense of what we’re going to do going forward, and Ed will jump in here on dividend capacity. We have returned a lot of capital to shareholders, as you’re very well aware. And we still have over $700 million of buyback authorization. I think it’s fair to say either today or any time in the future, when we get buyback authorization, we intend to carry out the buyback. Now you are mentioning 4% to 6%. In 2021, we accounted for roughly 8%, so slightly more than that. Yes, I understand the stock price is higher. We still think it’s undervalued. And as a result, we are buying back stock. You see what we bought back so far in 2022. So while I’m not going to give an exact number, 4%, 6%, 8%, and it was 8% in 2021, sounds like a reasonable guide. And of course, that excludes any time that we think there is an opportunity to purchase even more. I know Ed wanted to say this, but I guess I’ll say it. We bought back 17% of our shares in 2020 at around $26 a share. So I think all of what I just said gives you a good – some guidance on what we intend to do going forward. Ed, I know you want to add.

Ed Spehar

Yes. Hi, Tracy, the only thing I would add is we don’t target a percentage of average daily volume. The reason that we have quoted those statistics today and in the past is just to give you a sense of how much we’re buying back and how active we are. So we bought back 12% of our shares outstanding last year. We’ve – as I think Eric said, we bought back 35% – shares outstanding have declined by 35% since we separated. Obviously, we take capital return very seriously, and we’ve been very active. And it’s our strategy, and I don’t really see our strategy changing.