EQH

Hennessy Fund’s Q2 2026 investor letter for the Hennessy Equity and Income Fund. The letter can be downloaded here. The letter discusses portfolio changes, emphasizing opportunities in equity and fixed income markets that can withstand economic uncertainty. The portfolio held businesses with a 23.0% pre-tax return on invested capital versus 16.1% for the S&P 500. The letter notes a reversal in U.S. equities, driven by AI spending and strong earnings, despite cautious sentiment among lower-income households. The focus on high-quality firms with durable advantages is expected to yield positive outcomes as valuation pressures mount, indicating that future market performance may hinge on fundamentals rather than speculative trends. The portfolio aims to capitalize on the overlooked valuations of quality companies, presenting significant investment opportunities. Also, check the fund’s top five holdings to see its best picks in 2026. In its second-quarter 2026 investor letter, Hennessy Equity and Income Fund highlighted Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH), a leading diversified financial services company focusing on life insurance, annuities, asset management, and retirement solutions. The Fund disclosed that it sold its position in Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH) during the quarter. On August 31, 2026, Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH) closed at $50.13 per share. Over the past month, Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH) returned 3.90%, but its shares are down 4.97% over the past year. Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH) has a market capitalization of $13.67 billion, and its stock has traded within a 52-week range of $35.19 to $55.15. Hennessy Equity and Income Fund  stated the following regarding Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH) in its Q2 2026 investor letter: Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH) is not on our list of the 40 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 49 hedge fund portfolios held Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH) at the end of the second quarter, which was 42 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH) as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. In another article, we discussed Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH) and noted that Oakmark Fund added the stock in its portfolio during Q2 2026. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 2026 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors. READ NEXT: 33 Stocks That Should Double in 3 Years and 15 Stocks That Will Make You Rich in 10 Years. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.

Equitable Holdings’ second quarter was marked by strong adjusted earnings growth, resilient net flows across its core segments, and notable progress on its pending merger with Corebridge. While the company’s sales declined year over year and missed Wall Street’s revenue expectations, non-GAAP operating earnings per share came in ahead of consensus, reflecting disciplined expense management and healthy business fundamentals. CEO Mark Pearson highlighted that, in addition to positive net flows in Retirement, Wealth Management, and Asset Management, the company returned a substantial amount of capital to shareholders, stating, “We ended the quarter with record assets under management and administration of $1.2 trillion, up 10% year-over-year, driven by positive net flows and uplift from favorable equity markets.” Is now the time to buy EQH? Find out in our full research report (it’s free). Revenue: $3.73 billion vs analyst estimates of $3.80 billion (1.9% year-on-year decline, 1.9% miss) Adjusted EPS: $1.70 vs analyst estimates of $1.64 (3.4% beat) Market Capitalization: $14.38 billion While we enjoy listening to the management’s commentary, our favorite part of earnings calls is the analyst questions. Those are unscripted and can often highlight topics that management teams would rather avoid or topics where the answer is complicated. Here is what has caught our attention. Ryan Krueger (KBW) inquired about integration planning progress and distributor feedback. CEO Mark Pearson emphasized organizational structure advances and positive distributor engagement so far. Suneet Kamath (Jefferies) asked about the timeline for selling Corebridge products through Equitable Advisors. CFO Robin Raju clarified this would begin post-merger close, with planning underway for immediate execution. Tom Gallagher (Evercore ISI) questioned the source and fee rate of the $12 billion commercial mortgage loan transfer to AllianceBernstein. AB’s Onur Erzan explained the fee rate is lower than firm average, with revenue recognition beginning in Q4. Wesley Carmichael (Wells Fargo) asked about net interest margin trends and the impact of pre-2020 RILA runoff. Raju cited disciplined pricing and book maturity as factors for spread stabilization. Tracy Benguigui (Wolfe Research) pressed on AllianceBernstein’s competitive advantages and private credit sub-allocations. Management pointed to differentiated insurance asset management and diversification within private ABS and direct lending. In future quarters, the StockStory team will be monitoring (1) the completion and integration milestones of the Corebridge merger, (2) sustained organic net flows in Retirement and Wealth Management, and (3) execution on expense and revenue synergy targets. Additional focus will be on the redeployment of capital from the Employee Benefits divestiture and improvements in alternative investment returns, which could influence overall profitability. Equitable Holdings currently trades at $52.12, up from $48.25 just before the earnings. At this price, is it a buy or sell? See for yourself in our full research report (it’s free for active Edge members). ALSO WORTH WATCHING: Top 5 Momentum Stocks. The best time to own a great stock is when the market is finally noticing it. These aren’t just high-quality businesses. Something is happening with them right now. Elite fundamentals meet near-term momentum — both boxes checked at the same time. Find out which stocks our AI platform is flagging this week. See this week’s Strong Momentum stocks — FREE. Get Our Strong Momentum Stocks for Free HERE. Stocks that have made our list include now familiar names such as Nvidia (+1,460% between June 2020 and June 2025) as well as under-the-radar businesses like the once-small-cap company Comfort Systems (+1,154% between June 2020 and June 2025). Find your next big winner with StockStory today.

Image source: The Motley Fool. Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026 at 8:00 a.m. ET Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Investor Relations - Erik Bass President and Chief Executive Officer - Mark Pearson Chief Financial Officer - Robin Raju President, Equitable Financial - Nick Lane President, AllianceBernstein - Onur Erzan Chief Financial Officer, AllianceBernstein - Tom Simeone Operator: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to Equitable Holdings, Inc. Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Erik Bass, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Investor Relations. Erik, please go ahead. Erik Bass: Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Equitable Holdings Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. Materials for today's call can be found on our website at ir.equitableholdings.com. Before we begin, I would like to note that some of the information we present today is forward-looking and subject to certain SEC rules and regulations regarding disclosure. Our results may differ materially from those expressed in or indicated by such forward-looking statements. Please refer to the safe harbor language on Slide 2 of our presentation for additional information. Joining me on today's call are Mark Pearson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Equitable Holdings; Robin Raju, our Chief Financial Officer; Nick Lane, President of Equitable Financial; Onur Erzan, President of AllianceBernstein; and Tom Simeone, Chief Financial Officer of AllianceBernstein. During this call, we will be discussing certain financial measures that are not based on generally accepted accounting principles, also known as non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures and related definitions may be found on the Investor Relations portion of our website and in our earnings release, slide presentation and financial supplement. We will also refer to the pending transaction with Corebridge. Any statements about the transaction made during this call are not an offer of securities. A registration statement containing a prospectus will be filed with the SEC in connection with the transaction. I will now turn the call over to Mark. Mark Pearson: Good morning, and thank you for joining today's call. During the second quarter, Equitable made significant progress in advancing our transformational merger with Corebridge, while also delivering strong growth in earnings and positive net flows across each of our segments. Last week, the shareholders of both companies approved the merger, and we remain on track to close by year-end. Slide 4 highlights why we are so excited about the opportunity for the new Equitable and our strategy for accelerating growth and driving shareholder value. We will win with customers by being the easiest company to do business with, while leveraging our scale advantages and formidable distribution to deliver a full range of attractive product solutions across multiple channels. We compete in attractive growing markets across U.S. Retirement, life insurance, institutional and asset and wealth management, and the merged company will have the capabilities, distribution breadth and scale needed to be a long-term winner in each of them. The new Equitable will deliver at least 10% accretion to earnings and cash flow per share by the end of 2028 and produce a 15% plus ROE on a capital base of over $30 billion. We are confident that as we execute the merger and validate our competitive advantages, it will translate into a higher valuation over time. Turning to Slide 5. I'll start by providing an update on the progress we have made on achieving merger approvals and beginning to integrate the 2 companies. On July 30, shareholders of both Equitable and Corebridge approved the merger, with over 97% voting in support of the transaction. We have also completed the federal antitrust review process and have filed for all required regulatory approvals. We continue to expect the transaction to close by the end of 2026. During the quarter, we established the organization structure for the new company, including the first 3 levels of management. This has enabled us to commence integration planning and map out how we will achieve meaningful expense, revenue and capital synergies. We remain confident in delivering on all of the financial targets provided at the time of announcement. While looking forward to day 1 for the new Equitable, we remain focused on achieving our 2026 financial targets and are not treating this as a gap year. In the second quarter, we reported non-GAAP operating earnings per share of $1.70 or $1.75, excluding notable items. This represents a 24% year-over-year increase, consistent with our guidance of EPS growth of greater than 15% in 2026. We ended the quarter with record assets under management and administration of $1.2 trillion, up 10% year-over-year, driven by positive net flows and uplift from favorable equity markets. During the quarter, we returned $449 million of capital to shareholders, including $366 million of share repurchases. This represents a 92% payout ratio as we took advantage of our attractive valuation to accelerate buybacks after being in blackout for a portion of the first quarter. As Robin will discuss, we expect to achieve our targeted 60% to 70% payout ratio in 2026. Turning to our businesses. We continue to see healthy organic growth trends with each of our businesses delivering positive net flows in the second quarter. Starting with Retirement, we reported $1.7 billion of net inflows, driven by 10% growth in RILA sales and increased institutional volumes. These flows do not include the impact of our spread lending business, which had $2.6 billion of net issuance in the second quarter. In Wealth Management, we had $2 billion of advisory inflows in the quarter. The business has a trailing 12-month organic growth rate of 11%, which compares favorably with peers. Finally, organic growth at AllianceBernstein returned to positive territory with net inflows of $0.8 billion. Retail flows benefited from a $9 billion sub-advisory mandate win from Equitable separate accounts, which is another example of the flywheel benefits between Equitable and AB. Institutional flows were also positive in the quarter, and we expect the momentum to continue in the second half of the year. In July, AB onboarded $12 billion of commercial mortgage loans from Equitable, and it has an additional unfunded pipeline of $14 billion. Private markets remains a bright spot with AUM up 18% year-over-year to $91 billion at June 30, reaching the $90 billion to $100 billion target level over a year ahead of schedule. Moving to Slide 6. I will provide some more details on how we are executing on our growth strategy. As a reminder, this entails defending and growing our core Retirement and asset management businesses, scaling adjacent businesses like Wealth Management and AB Private Markets and seeding future growth in high potential new markets. Our Retirement business has produced positive net flows every year since our IPO, and the annualized organic growth rate in the first half of 2026 was 4%. If we include our spread lending business, which is producing very attractive IRRs in the current spread environment, the organic growth rate increases to 6%. In Retirement, we also continue to invest in fast-growing new institutional markets like in-plan annuities and HSAs. We expect over $500 million of institutional flows in 2026 with potential flows to accelerate meaningfully over the next few years. We are excited that the Corebridge merger will expand our presence in institutional markets, adding capabilities like pension risk transfer and structured settlements and the combined company's larger balance sheet provides additional capacity for future growth. Turning to Wealth Management. The business delivered 10% annual organic growth in the first half of the year. Adviser productivity increased 13% and total AUA is up 27% to $141 billion. We closed on the Stifel Independent Advisors acquisition in the first quarter, and the Corebridge merger will add an additional $20 billion of AUA, helping to scale our platform. Finally, AB has strong momentum in target growth areas like private markets, insurance and active ETFs. Equitable has invested nearly $25 billion of capital in AB's private market strategies above our initial $20 billion commitment, and AB is making good progress in scaling these with third-party investors. As I mentioned earlier, total private markets AUM ended the quarter at $91 billion and is on track to exceed the original target of $90 billion to $100 billion by the end of 2027. Insurance continues to be a strong source of flows with 7 new relationships added year-to-date and total third-party insurance AUM of $61 billion is up 16% year-over-year. While most of the new flows relate to general account wins, as this quarter showed, AB and Equitable can also work together to drive additional separate account flows. AB also continues to drive inflows in its active ETF platform, which now consists of 31 strategies with over $20 billion of AUM and generates approximately $100 million of annual fee income. On Slide 7, we show progress towards achieving the Investor Day targets laid out in 2023. We remain committed to delivering on our stand-alone growth targets so that the new Equitable can hit the ground running in 2027. We are on track to generate approximately $1.8 billion of cash flow to the holding company in 2026 and $2 billion in 2027. During the quarter, we received approval to pay up to $0.9 billion of insurance subsidiary dividends during the second half of the year, giving us clear line of sight to achieving our targets. Our payout ratio was 70% in the first half of 2026, consistent with our 60% to 70% target. The cumulative payout since Investor Day has been 68%, highlighting our commitment to returning capital to shareholders. Finally, we delivered 25% growth in EPS in the first half of the year. This puts our cumulative growth rate at 10%, slightly below our 12% to 15% target range. Based on our business momentum and outlook, we expect to be at the low end of the range by the end of 2026. Putting it all together, we have good momentum and are entering the merger with Corebridge from a position of strength. I will now turn the call over to Robin to discuss Equitable's second quarter results in more detail. Robin Raju: Thanks, Mark. On Slide 8, I'll provide some more detail on our second quarter results. On a consolidated basis, non-GAAP operating earnings were $488 million or $1.70 per share. We reported a net loss of $453 million, driven by noneconomic impacts from our hedge portfolio resulting from strong equity markets. We had 2 notable items in the quarter, $49 million of below-plan alternative investment returns, which was partially offset by a $35 million benefit from favorable tax items. Adjusting for these, non-GAAP operating earnings per share was $1.75, up 24% year-over-year. Our alternative investments portfolio, which is about 2% of our total general account, produced an annualized return of slightly over 1% in the quarter as results were pressured by the lag impact of first quarter market declines on our private equity holdings. Looking to the second half of the year, we expect returns to be higher than the first half, but we will be in a position to better provide guidance later in the quarter. Our consolidated tax rate of 15% benefited from some opportunistic tax planning. We forecast returning to a more normal tax rate of approximately 20% in the third quarter. For the first half of 2026, earnings per share, excluding notable items, increased about 25%, putting us on track to achieve our guidance of earnings per share growth of greater than 15% for the full year. Adjusted book value per share ex AOCI with our AB ownership stake at market value was $30.92. As a reminder, at the close of the merger with Corebridge, our GAAP shareholders' equity will reflect the fair value of assets and liabilities. This will result in a more meaningful book value, return on equity and leverage ratio. Finally, before going deeper into the drivers of our results, I want to provide a few comments on the recently announced sale of our Employee Benefits business to The Hartford. We entered the Employee Benefits business in 2015 as a greenfield build, focused on serving small businesses with a unique technology platform. We have grown to over 800,000 customers and approximately $500 million of premiums to date, but the business is not yet profitable due to the lack of scale. Given our focus on executing a successful merger with Corebridge and allocating capital to our at-scale businesses, we felt this was the right time to reevaluate our strategy. When we were approached by The Hartford, it was clear that they were a more natural owner for the business and would be a good home for our customers and employees. The transaction will have a neutral to slightly positive impact on near-term earnings, and we will use the proceeds to invest in growing our other at-scale businesses. Turning to Slide 9. I'll provide some more details on our segment level earnings drivers. In Retirement, second quarter earnings, excluding notable items, were $408 million. Net interest margin or NIM increased 11% year-over-year and 1% sequentially despite lower alternative investment income. Core spreads, excluding alternatives, increased by 1 basis point sequentially to 174 basis points. While there can be some quarterly volatility, we expect core spreads to remain near the current levels moving forward. Fee-based revenues also increased on a year-over-year and sequential basis, helped by strong equity markets. We expect additional improvement in the third quarter based on higher average asset levels. Turning to Asset Management. AB reported earnings of $158 million, up 21% year-over-year. Assets ended the quarter at a record $906 billion, which bodes well for fee earnings moving forward. While the average base fee rate of 37.7 basis points has declined modestly due to mix shift, we continue to produce an attractive incremental margin on new revenues. We also raised our forecast for the full year 2026 performance fees from $95 million to $115 million to $115 million to $135 million, with most of that benefit expected in the fourth quarter. Moving to Wealth Management. Earnings increased 26% year-over-year as the business continues to deliver strong organic growth and increased adviser productivity. As a reminder, wealth management advisory fees get calculated on a 1 quarter lag, so the benefit on the equity market rally will show up in the third quarter results. We continue to expect double-digit annual growth in Wealth Management earnings. Finally, in Corporate and Other, we reported a loss of $106 million in the quarter after adjusting for notable items. This is slightly higher than the range implied by our full year guidance of $350 million to $400 million loss. In the quarter, we had a larger-than-normal accrual for long-term compensation expense due to the 19% increase in our stock price. In addition, mortality was modestly elevated in the quarter due to a few large claims. For the first half of the year, the corporate loss ex notable items was $204 million, close to the expectations. On Slide 10, I'll highlight Equitable's strong balance sheet and cash flow, which enables us to be a consistent returner of capital to shareholders. We ended the second quarter with $800 million of cash and liquid assets at the holding company, and our estimated combined NAIC RBC ratio was well above our target operating level of 400% as of midyear. We are on track to achieve our 2026 cash generation target of approximately $1.8 billion, which includes about $900 million of insurance company dividends that would be paid in the second half of 2026. We have received the required regulatory approvals from Arizona for all planned extraordinary dividends. During the second quarter, we returned $449 million of capital to shareholders, including $366 million of share repurchases. Our payout ratio was 92% for the quarter as we took advantage of our attractive valuation and caught up on foregone purchases from earlier in the year when we were in blackout due to the pending merger announcement. We had a 70% payout ratio for the first half of 2026 and expect to have a full year payout ratio of 60% to 70%. Now that shareholders have approved the merger, we have no restrictions on share repurchases outside of standard blackout periods and the return on buybacks continues to be compelling. Overall, we feel good about the growth trends across our businesses and remain confident in our cash generation and earnings per share growth guidance for 2026. As Mark discussed, we are laser-focused on delivering our 2026 commitments so that we enter the merger with strong momentum. I will now turn the call back over to Mark for some closing comments. Mark Pearson: Thanks, Robin. I want to end this call where I started, which is by looking ahead to the tremendous opportunity for the new Equitable. As shown on Slide 11, we have made significant progress in defining the go-forward organization structure, getting approvals from key stakeholders and starting the integration process. We are on track to close the merger by year-end and hit the ground running in January. The combined company will be uniquely positioned to win across the Retirement, Insurance, Asset Management and Wealth Management markets. After the merger is complete, we will have scale, distribution and flywheel benefits that few others possess. This will drive value for customers and strong financial results. We are confident it will also translate into compelling returns for shareholders. We now look forward to taking your questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Ryan Krueger from KBW. Ryan Krueger: I know it's still early in the process, but have you started to advance the integration planning and also continue to talk to external distributors about the merger. Can you just provide an update on any key learnings so far, reactions and maybe any surprises that you've come across to date? Mark Pearson: Ryan, thank you very much for the question. Firstly, on the merger, we're very pleased that we have shown that we're able to both progress the merger approvals and at the same time, keep focused on the 2026 results. I mean I think that's the key takeaway from this quarter. In terms of the merger itself, a lot of work underway in establishing the organization structure. We're down to the third level of management now. So that's like the top 500 positions in place and really advancing on the tech stack as well, which will be the next big decisions that we make. I think what I'd say there is a lot of hard work, but we remain very, very confident on being able to achieve those expense synergies. On the revenue side, that's obviously a key focus for us. I think as we've said many times, the benefit of this merger is not just in the expense synergies. It's going to be in the revenue synergies as well. More to come on that at the Investor Day in the first half of 2027, but the reach out to distribution partners today has been positive and really our partners were leaning in to say, how can we make this work and how can we move forward with you there. So, so far, so good, Ryan. We're very pleased with the progress on the merger and what it signs for going forward. Ryan Krueger: And then I have a quick question on Wealth Management. Your margins have been in the mid-teens recently. As you look out longer term, where do you see the margin potential of that business at Equitable? Nicholas Lane: Yes. This is Nick. First, look, we're very encouraged by the momentum in the business as our value proposition is resonating with advisers and clients. The strong growth in advisory assets, $2 billion in net flows for the quarter and an 11% trailing 12-month organic growth rate. As we continue to look forward and scale the business, we would expect that to translate to growth in margins. You've seen continued improvement over the last 2 years as we built up that business and would point to, as Mark noted, the growth in earnings, which are up 26% and the fundamental underlying growth drivers in both productivity advisers, which are up 13% and the growth of advisory assets. So we would expect that the growth in margins to translate with the growth of assets as we continue to build scale within the business. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Suneet Kamath from Jefferies. Suneet Kamath: So I wanted to ask on Equitable Advisors and the ability to add the Corebridge product to that channel. Is that something that you need to wait until close to do? Or can you start flipping that switch now? And if it's something that you have to wait till close, is that going to take some time even after the close to get that going? Or is that something that you could -- when you use that phrase hit the ground running that can start on day 1? Robin Raju: Thanks, Suneet. So as Mark mentioned earlier, we're definitely focused on the revenue synergies and how to come to fruition and the planning across them. Overall, we're pretty confident on the expense synergies, but the revenue synergies is what will lead to a faster growth rate and higher multiple for us going forward. We've laid out several initiatives on them, one of them being -- having the opportunity to distribute Corebridge products through Equitable Advisors. As you mentioned, Equitable Advisors, they sell approximately $2 billion of fixed annuities today, and we expect to capture some of that volume's. In addition, our advisors will also be able to sell the Corebridge Term Life and IUL products as well. So that's a good thing. Remember, the merger isn't closed yet, so the both companies have to operate independently from now to close. But the planning behind the scenes in terms of all the revenue synergies, whether it's selling through Equitable Advisors, moving assets to AllianceBernstein or scaling at AB's platform more and commercializing some of Corebridge's asset capabilities, that's a big focus for us now, and we'd expect to hit the ground running come the first quarter of next year. But more to come at Investor Day, but we still have to operate as independent companies from now to close. And then once the close comes in, then we can execute against all the planning that we're doing through the integration that Mark spoke about. Suneet Kamath: Okay. And then I guess on the investment portfolio, it looks like private credit is 19%, 20% of total assets at this point. Is there a practical limit in terms of how big that can get to? Just curious how much more runway you have. Robin Raju: Sure. Look, we're disciplined in terms of asset allocation across the investment portfolio. We're really looking at risk-adjusted returns and also the liquidity required from underlying products that we have. I think at the -- we're at 19% now in the general account. When you look into that -- of that 19%, it's highly investment grade, almost 50% of that is in private placement. So it's in high-quality oriented private credit as well. That can certainly increase a bit from here, but it really depends on the liability of the portfolio that we source. So if you think of the RILA product, where we're #1 in and we've had record sales in the quarter, there, we probably want to have more liquidity than an FABN issuance, where if you look on our spread lending business, we wrote $2.6 billion of liabilities in this quarter. So there, we can have a little bit more liquid. So it's really dependent on the liabilities that we write, and we want to make sure that we're ALM unmatched. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Tom Gallagher from Evercore ISI. Thomas Gallagher: First question, the $12 billion of onboarding of CML mandates to AB in July. What's the source of the $12 billion? Where is that coming from? And also, how does that compare to the fee rate on the CMLs? How does that compare to the average fee rate at AB of 37 basis points? Robin Raju: Sure. I'll start, and I'll pass it to Onur and Tom who are on the line. Look, I think one of the big successes and why you should feel confident in the revenue synergies that we have in the merger is the flywheel effects that we have between Equitable and AllianceBernstein. If you look in the quarter on the separate account side, we're able to move $9 billion of fixed income assets from the separate account to AllianceBernstein. And then in July, as you mentioned, we moved $12 billion on the commercial mortgage loan portfolio to AllianceBernstein in the general account. So that's over $20 billion in two quarters. So when we talk about moving $100 billion over the next few years from Corebridge and general account and separate accounts, to AllianceBernstein. That brings us a lot of confidence. The CML specifically were managed by a third-party manager that we've historically used due to some of our historical ownership that we had prior to IPO. And now that's been successfully moved over to AllianceBernstein. And it was done in a pretty smart way because we've had -- we built this capability in AllianceBernstein. We've been investing in that capability, and we got to the point where we knew that they can handle the $12 billion flow of the CMLs prudently and continue to deliver good returns. I'll pass it to Onur, Tom, on the fee rates. Onur Erzan: Yes, I'll take that one, Robin. Thank you. And thank you for the question, Tom. The book came over in the high single-digit fee rate. So that does compare at a lower rate than our firm-wide fee rate that we reported in 2Q. I'd also want to highlight that it doesn't attract fees until 4Q because Equitable is still paying the third party that was holding the book prior to this. So they're paying for 3Q, but we do pick up the fees and start turning those on in 4Q. Also, even though we took on the book in the high single digits, that excludes origination fees, so that fee rate will pick up as we start to originate new business going forward. Thomas Gallagher: Got you. And then -- my follow-up is just on the ramp-up of institutional spread sales. How should we think about that? That's -- we also saw something similar from Corebridge this quarter? Is there kind of a broader view that now is a good time to be really putting the pedal to the metal on that business? And how should we think about that part of the business progressing over the next couple of years? Robin Raju: Sure. Look, we're really happy we're able to source $2.6 billion in spread-based liabilities through FABN and Farmer Mac. We were pretty active in this space. And I think Marc Costantini I imagine will mention it later today in their call, like both firms are very disciplined in capital allocation. If you look, spreads were wider in the first quarter, so we were disciplined. So we're light in that space. Spreads tightened this quarter, so we're able to source liabilities at a low cost of funds and both companies leaned into the market. And that's a place where IRRs are very attractive where we can source funds at a low cost and then leverage our investment capabilities to generate an attractive spread. And I think going forward, this is another area where we can continue to grow at a faster clip. The combined balance sheet is going to be much bigger. And so we'll have much more capacity to grow spread lending oriented and overall institutional markets businesses but it really focused our discipline in capital allocation and looking to see where we can get the lowest cost of funds, match it with attractive assets and generate a good return for shareholders. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Wes Carmichael from Wells Fargo. Wesley Carmichael: My first question is just on Retirement. I wanted to touch on your commentary about NIM and core spreads. I think, Robin, you mentioned core spreads remaining around this level, and I think that's probably a little bit better than your original guidance for stabilization in the second half of this year. So just any thoughts on what you've seen since you set guidance, anything that could also move that core spread around over the next couple of quarters in your mind? Robin Raju: Sure. Thank you, Wes. So just taking a step back, we evaluate profitability on our spread-based Retirement products by looking at net interest margin, or NIM. And that increased 11% year-over-year. And excluding the impact of alternatives, our core NIM improved by 5% sequentially. Over time, we expect that core spread income to roughly track the growth in general account assets, excluding the embedded derivatives. If we look at core NIM as a percentage of average general account assets, which is the best proxy of spreads, we did see a 1 basis point spread improvement in the quarter. And we look at -- compared to when I gave the original guidance, we were watching the runoff of our pre-2020 RILA block, which is very profitable, as you recall. Remember, we were at first, we created that market. We had 100% market share for a long time. And as a result, you can have very profitable business above your normal return hurdles. And as that business has run off, at the same time, we've been very disciplined on the new business that we put on enabling us to, one, manage the run off of that business, but write new business at attractive IRRs as well that led to that spread stabilization. So I think it's the maturity of the book now and also give -- have to give the teams on the frontline credit there discipline in pricing is leading us to deliver good core spreads that should continue to grow now as the general account increases. Wesley Carmichael: Got it. That's helpful. And just switching gears. You had a peer this quarter a bit big in the retail annuity space that was talking about some developments at the NAIC, I think around regulatory arbitrage very recently, and particularly, Cayman. Just curious for your view there, if you're thinking regulatory change can be meaningful in the near term, are you thinking that could be a positive for Equitable as well? Robin Raju: Well, look, I think Equitable has been at the forefront of advocating for a healthier industry over time. We were the first one to advocating to eliminate the reversion to the mean interest rates to be in '21 that we started at in like 2017, 2018. It took a long time, but it's in effect now, and that leads to a more economic framework. We were advocates of making sure that regulators understood what we moved offshore as well. And we were very happy as well. As you saw last year, we moved to Bermuda where it allowed us to manage economically. And we think if you're going to move offshore, I mean, our perspective is Bermuda is the best place and most economic regulatory regime to do so, and we are very impressed with their regime as well. So there continue to be work done on the asset side, as well on CLO charges that the NAIC has done. They've moved much faster on that front, which is a good sign and that will help ensure that we have a healthier industry overall. So we think the progression and regulation is a positive -- it's hard to keep up with the innovation for the regulators, but I think it's positive that they continue to look to strengthen the industry and make sure it's healthy over time. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Pablo Singzon from JPMorgan. Pablo Singzon: So actually just one for me. It's about competition in the annuity market. So it seems like some of your peers are sort of deemphasizing more vanilla products like MYGAs and FIAs. Do you think that motion will ultimately push more insurers into the RILA market, and I think it's just even more competitive than it is? Nicholas Lane: Yes. This is Nick. Look, overall, we had another strong quarter of both sales and volumes with RILA sales up 10% year-over-year. And $1.4 billion of net flows, translating to a 5% trailing 12-month organic growth rate. We're always mindful of competitive trends as we mentioned last quarter. We saw a majority of new entrants revert back to more rational pricing. So we've seen no material change in competitive activity in this quarter. Looking forward, we continue to see strong demand for RILAs driven by the favorable demographics and the heightened macro instability. So the pie is continuing to grow. And we believe we have a durable edge to capture it, which is hard to replicate. First, we generate attractive returns through AB. Second, we have differentiated distribution with Equitable Advisors and shelf space and third party that we've built over the past decade, which attracts lower cost liabilities. And finally, we have deep relationships and scale, and the merger should further extend the edge of product breadth, as Mark said, as well as build additional scale to extend our edge. And so over the last 3 years, we've more than doubled our RILA sales as the pie continues to grow. And as we look forward, we believe we're in a privileged position to capture a disproportionate share of the value being created in the space. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Yaron Kinar from Mizuho. Yaron Kinar: Going back to Retirement and the base spreads there. Maybe less about the spread income, more about the spread itself. Is there a reason why we wouldn't -- we shouldn't expect that to continue to improve from here given what we've seen in the first half of the year? And given that spreads have come in a little bit better, is there maybe increased appetite to grow in Retirement? Robin Raju: Sure, Yaron. Look, a few things on spreads. Excluding alt, the way I look at it, and that's where you saw us improve 1% sequentially. You know, that could move 1 or 2 basis points that's going to be noise in any given quarter. But there's nothing I see now that would say that spread should differ in terms of remaining stable over the next year as the business runs off and we continue to write profitable business. As Nick just mentioned, I mean, the Retirement market is a great market for us and we continue to excel in capturing that opportunity through Equitable Advisors and our retirement offerings. And so there's no reason to believe that the general account won't continue to grow as new business and organic growth rates continue to come in. And that'll continue to improve our earnings on the business as well. Yaron Kinar: Right. No, I understand that there's definitely an appetite to grow. I guess my question is, has that appetite increased? Or is it still stable relative to your expectations at the beginning of the year? Robin Raju: That appetite continues to increase every quarter that we can print IRRs that are above -- well above our cost of equity. So we think it's an attractive move for shareholders. Yaron Kinar: Got it. And then in Wealth Management, the margin there, I appreciate that you expect that margin to expand on scale and based on improved advisor productivity. But I guess, why did we not see that this quarter or this year -- or first half of the year? Nicholas Lane: Yes. So we did see an increase in margin quarter-over-quarter. Year-over-year, there's some seasonality. We would expect that to continue to improve as we continue to scale the business over time as we've done in the past. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Tracy Benguigui from Wolfe Research. Tracy Benguigui: On the $100 billion of AUM, you're targeting for AB through the merger, what asset specialties and fee advantages does AB bring that make in-sourcing the new liabilities, the right call? BlackRock is tough to beat on public fixed income fees. And Blackstone is known for private credit, structured credit, real estate lending. And Corebridge has an internal team that keeps the alts like PE and CRE in-house. So where is AB's edge? And is it fair to assume that AUM will come from new liabilities and not a shift in current asset allocation? Robin Raju: Sure. So I'll pass to Onur in a second. He can talk about AB's investment capabilities that they build up. And I think you've heard Mark mention AB's growth in managing insurance assets for other partners as well as that continues to grow. And I think that's another proof point of their edge and capabilities outside of just equitable. But a reminder, we're going to move $100 billion of general account and separate account AUM to AllianceBernstein. And it will be a combination of shift in assets but also new flows as well will support that. But Onur, I'll pass it to you or Tom, sorry, you can take it. Thomas Simeone: Yes. I think, Robin, you summed it up well. We're going to be able to service every asset class though. We don't know what asset classes are going to be coming over to us just yet. But we believe that we have a right to win and compete in every asset class and strategy that we employ here. And I think our fee rates are just as favorable as our peers. And also some of that will flow back to the new equitable through our distributions as well. So there's a lot of synergies here. Nicholas Lane: Yes. And on the private side, I would just add that AB is a really differentiated insurance asset manager. Obviously, Blackstone is a market leader in real estate equity in a lot of segments, but AB brings in a differentiated offering on the insurance asset management side as with evidenced with the growth in third-party insurance. Tracy Benguigui: Great. Actually, a follow-up on private credit. It looks like private credit and the general account rose sequentially with lower allocations to private placements and higher allocations to private ABS, I think, on the new team ramp. So what's the target allocation from here? And particularly as you look at the sub classes in private credit? And what's driving private ABS preference, how does it spread in ratings profile compared to the private placements it's replacing? Robin Raju: Yes. Again, I wouldn't read too much into it. Quarter-over-quarter, it increased 1%, and it's probably rounding if anything, as I mentioned, the asset allocation that --the asset allocation that we have is a function of the liabilities that we source, so we sourced about $2.6 billion. We really leaned into the spread lending market, which leads to more stickier private credit oriented assets. So really think of it as the liabilities we source will dictate the assets that go behind it. And if you have spread lending assets, which are essentially bullets in the marketplace, you can have more illiquid assets along with their high quality around them that generate good risk-adjusted returns. So that's where it sits. Tracy Benguigui: Okay. But do you have sublimits in the types of private credit, like direct lending, infrastructure, ABS? Robin Raju: We do -- I mean, you could see it in the portfolio, you're not going to see major shifts and direct lending, for instance, represents 3% of the private credit portfolio, less than 1% in the general accounts. So it's pretty immaterial from that perspective overall. Within private ABS, private ABS is a big category. So you're going to look within the individual names, and we do have limits on, of course, as you would expect, limits by individual name to assume -- to make sure that we're diversified across sectors include aircraft lease and music royalties, data centers, oil, gas, everything. We want to make sure we're diversified, but we do have sublimits and also diversification and single name limits as well. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Wilma Burdis from Raymond James. Wilma Jackson Burdis: Regarding the outlook for spreads, just wondering if you've been actively rebalancing. I think Corebridge noted some actions to lean in during wider spreads in 2Q '26. So just wondering if that was something that was involved and how much that may have helped? Robin Raju: Sure. Thanks, Wilma. We didn't have any big active rebalancing in the quarter. The spreads itself, the improvement was just a function of -- to run off the pre-2020 RILA block continue to be very almost immaterial now in terms of as a percentage of account value and then the discipline in pricing of new business. And in addition, as I mentioned earlier, we wrote -- we printed very good IRRs on the spread lending business in the quarter, which helps. Wilma Jackson Burdis: Okay. And I realize this may be a question for next year. But how do you think about the opportunity to expand institutional business once you have a larger balance sheet when combined with Corebridge? Robin Raju: Sure. This is a big growth area for -- going to be a big growth area for the business going forward. And their Corebridge's institutional business is much bigger than Equitable's with being a leader in the PRT space along with GICs and stable value. And then if you combine that with a bigger balance sheet, Equitable in-plan annuities, I think we're well positioned to be a fast grower in terms of earnings and growth in the business going forward. Operator: Your last question comes from the line of Maxwell Fritscher from Truist. Maxwell Fritscher: I'm calling in for Mark Hughes. Just one quick one from me. You noted that you expect the returns on the Alt portfolio to improve in the second half. What's giving you confidence in that? And what kind of line of sight do you have there? Robin Raju: Sure. Thank you for the question. The Alt portfolio, just as a reminder, is about 2% to 3% of the total general account. It had a 1% annualized return in the quarter, and that was really hampered by the first quarter market returns, which impacted the private equity returns this quarter, because you have that lag in terms of the private equity portfolio. Real estate equity continues to have valuation challenges there, and so that still hasn't recovered. In the third quarter, though, what gives us confidence in terms of improvement is the second quarter return. So we'd expect that private equity portfolio to grow from here with real estate equity lagging. But we'd expect the private equity portfolio to still have good growth from here. We have insight about a quarter of our funds today for the quarter, so that's why I mentioned on the call, we'll get better guidance at the conferences in September as we'll have more insight into the underlying funds by then. Operator: There are no further questions at this time, and we have reached the end of the Q&A session. This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect. Before you buy stock in Equitable, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Equitable wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut are built for long-term growth and could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $411,427!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,335,252!* That performance is why people listen. With a track record of beating the S&P 500 by 4x, Stock Advisor offers a distinct advantage. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built for the long haul. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of August 11, 2026. This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Equitable Holdings (EQH) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool

Interested in Equitable Holdings, Inc.? Here are five stocks we like better. Second-quarter operating earnings rose: Equitable reported $488 million in non-GAAP operating earnings, or $1.70 per share, while assets under management and administration reached a record $1.2 trillion. The company returned $449 million to shareholders, including $366 million in buybacks. Business momentum remained broad-based: Retirement generated $1.7 billion in net inflows, Wealth Management delivered $2 billion in advisory inflows, and AllianceBernstein returned to positive organic growth with $800 million in net inflows. Corebridge merger planning is advancing: Shareholders approved the transaction with more than 97% support, and Equitable remains on track to close by the end of 2026. Management is planning integration, cost and revenue synergies, with targets including at least 10% earnings and cash-flow-per-share accretion by the end of 2028. 3 Major Buybacks Just Dropped—Here’s the Signal Investors See Equitable (NYSE:EQH) said second-quarter operating earnings rose as the company advanced its pending merger with Corebridge and reported positive net flows across all of its business segments. Shareholders of both companies approved the transaction on July 30, and Equitable said it remains on track to close the merger by the end of 2026. President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Pearson said the company has established the first three levels of management for the combined organization and begun integration planning, including work on expense, revenue and capital synergies. More than 97% of voting shareholders supported the transaction, and federal antitrust review has been completed, according to the company. → Meta’s Earnings Drop Shows Wall Street Wants More Than Ad Growth 3 Dividend Stocks Just Hiked Payouts 10%+ and Beat the Market “We remain focused on achieving our 2026 financial targets and are not treating this as a gap year,” Pearson said. Equitable reported non-GAAP operating earnings of $488 million, or $1.70 per share, for the second quarter. Excluding notable items, operating earnings were $1.75 per share, up 24% from a year earlier. The company reported a net loss of $453 million, which Chief Financial Officer Robin Raju attributed to non-economic hedge portfolio impacts resulting from strong equity markets. → Sandisk Just Delivered a Blowout Quarter—Here's Why the Stock Is Falling Notable items included $49 million of below-plan alternative investment returns, partly offset by a $35 million benefit from favorable tax items. Equitable’s alternative-investment portfolio, representing about 2% of its total general account, generated an annualized return slightly above 1% during the quarter. Raju said private-equity results were affected by the lagged effect of first-quarter market declines. The company expects alternative-investment returns to improve in the second half, though it plans to provide more detailed guidance later in the quarter. Equitable’s consolidated tax rate was 15% in the second quarter, aided by tax planning, but management expects a more typical rate of about 20% in the third quarter. → 4 Oil and Gas ETF Plays as Prices Stay Sky-High Assets under management and administration reached a record $1.2 trillion, up 10% year over year, supported by favorable equity markets and net inflows. Equitable returned $449 million of capital to shareholders during the quarter, including $366 million in share repurchases. Its quarterly payout ratio was 92%, while its first-half payout ratio was 70%. The company continues to target a full-year payout ratio of 60% to 70%. Equitable ended the quarter with $800 million of cash and liquid assets at the holding company and said its estimated combined NAIC risk-based capital ratio remained well above its 400% target operating level. Management reaffirmed its goal of generating roughly $1.8 billion of holding-company cash flow in 2026. In Retirement, Equitable recorded $1.7 billion of net inflows, led by 10% growth in registered index-linked annuity, or RILA, sales and higher institutional volumes. Its spread-lending operation generated $2.6 billion of net issuance during the period. Retirement earnings, excluding notable items, were $408 million. Net interest margin increased 11% from a year earlier and 1% sequentially, while core spreads excluding alternatives rose by one basis point from the first quarter to 174 basis points. Raju said management expects core spreads to remain near current levels, although quarterly volatility remains possible. Wealth Management generated $2 billion in advisory inflows and posted an 11% trailing-12-month organic growth rate. Total assets under administration increased 27% to $141 billion, while advisor productivity rose 13%. Segment earnings increased 26% year over year. Nick Lane, president of Equitable Financial, said the company expects margins to increase as the business adds scale and assets. AllianceBernstein returned to positive organic growth with $800 million in net inflows. Its assets ended the quarter at a record $906 billion, and earnings rose 21% year over year to $158 million. The asset manager’s retail flows benefited from a $9 billion sub-advisory mandate from Equitable separate accounts, while institutional flows were also positive. In July, AllianceBernstein onboarded $12 billion of Equitable commercial mortgage loans that had previously been managed by a third party. AllianceBernstein Chief Financial Officer Tom Simeone said the transferred book carries fee rates in the high single digits and will begin generating fees for AllianceBernstein in the fourth quarter. The company also cited a $14 billion unfunded commercial-mortgage-loan pipeline. Private-markets assets under management at AllianceBernstein rose 18% year over year to $91 billion, reaching the company’s $90 billion-to-$100 billion target range more than a year ahead of schedule. Active ETF assets surpassed $20 billion across 31 strategies and generate about $100 million in annual fee income, according to Equitable. Equitable has said the merger with Corebridge is expected to generate at least 10% accretion to earnings and cash flow per share by the end of 2028 and produce a return on equity above 15% on a capital base exceeding $30 billion. Management said it remains confident in the financial targets announced with the deal. Pearson said the company is now working through technology-stack decisions and integration planning. He said outreach to external distribution partners has been positive, with partners seeking to identify ways to expand their relationships with the combined company. Raju said the companies must continue operating independently until the deal closes, but planning is underway for potential revenue initiatives. These include distributing Corebridge fixed annuities, term life insurance and indexed universal life products through Equitable Advisors. Equitable Advisors currently sells approximately $2 billion of fixed annuities, he said. Management also expects the merger to expand its institutional-market capabilities through offerings such as pension risk transfer, guaranteed investment contracts, stable value and structured settlements. The larger combined balance sheet is expected to provide more capacity for institutional and spread-lending growth. Equitable also discussed its planned sale of its employee benefits business to The Hartford. The business, established in 2015, has grown to more than 800,000 customers and about $500 million in premiums but has not yet become profitable because of insufficient scale, Raju said. The transaction is expected to have a neutral to slightly positive near-term effect on earnings. Equitable plans to use proceeds to invest in its larger-scale businesses as it prepares for the Corebridge merger. Equitable Holdings, Inc (NYSE: EQH) is a leading provider of life insurance, annuities and retirement plan services in the United States. Through its insurance subsidiary, AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company, the firm offers a broad range of permanent and term life insurance products designed to help individuals and families manage risk and build wealth. In addition, Equitable provides fixed, variable and indexed annuity solutions to support income planning in retirement, as well as a suite of group retirement and pension plan services for employers and plan sponsors. The company also maintains an asset management arm that delivers investment strategies across equities, fixed income and alternative asset classes for both retail and institutional clients. This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected]. The article "Equitable Q2 Earnings Call Highlights" was originally published by MarketBeat. View MarketBeat's top stocks for August 2026.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Non-GAAP Operating Earnings per Share (EPS): $1.70, or $1.75 excluding notable items, a 24% year-over-year increase. Net Loss: $453 million, driven by noneconomic impacts from the hedge portfolio due to strong equity markets. Assets Under Management and Administration (AUMA): Record $1.2 trillion, up 10% year-over-year. Capital Returned to Shareholders: $449 million in the quarter, including $366 million of share repurchases, representing a 92% payout ratio. Retirement Net Inflows: $1.7 billion, driven by 10% growth in wireless sales and increased institutional volumes. Spread Lending Net Issuance: $2.6 billion in the second quarter. Wealth Management Advisory Inflows: $2 billion, with a trailing 12-month organic growth rate of 11%. AllianceBernstein (AB) Net Inflows: $0.8 billion, returning to positive territory. AB Private Markets AUM: $91 billion, up 18% year-over-year. Retirement Segment Earnings (ex-notable items): $408 million. Net Interest Margin (NIM): Increased 11% year-over-year and 1% sequentially. Core Spreads (ex-alternatives): Increased by 1 basis point sequentially to 174 basis points. Asset Management (AB) Earnings: $158 million, up 21% year-over-year. AB Assets Under Management (AUM): Record $906 billion. Average Base Fee Rate: 37.7 basis points, declined modestly due to mix shift. Performance Fees Forecast: Raised to $115 million to $135 million for full year 2026. Wealth Management Earnings: Increased 26% year-over-year. Corporate and Other Loss (ex-notable items): $106 million in the quarter. Holding Company Cash and Liquid Assets: $800 million at quarter end. Adjusted Book Value per Share (ex-AOCI with AB at market): $30.92. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 6 Warning Signs with EQH. Is EQH fairly valued? Test your thesis with our free DCF calculator. Release Date: August 05, 2026 For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript. Equitable Holdings Inc (NYSE:EQH) reported strong second-quarter 2026 results with non-GAAP operating EPS of $1.75, a 24% year-over-year increase, and is on track to exceed its 15% EPS growth guidance for the full year. The company achieved record assets under management and administration of $1.2 trillion, up 10% year-over-year, driven by positive net flows across all business segments and favorable equity markets. Shareholders of both Equitable Holdings Inc (NYSE:EQH) and Corebridge approved the merger with over 97% voting in support, and the company remains on track to close the transaction by year-end 2026, which is expected to be at least 10% accretive to earnings and cash flow per share by 2028. AllianceBernstein (AB) returned to positive organic growth with $0.8 billion in net inflows, and its private markets AUM reached $91 billion, hitting its $90-$100 billion target over a year ahead of schedule. The company demonstrated strong capital return, with a 92% payout ratio in the second quarter, including $366 million of share repurchases, and expects to achieve its targeted 60%-70% payout ratio for the full year 2026. Equitable Holdings Inc (NYSE:EQH) reported a net loss of $453 million in the second quarter, driven by noneconomic impacts from its hedge portfolio resulting from strong equity markets. The company's alternative investments portfolio produced a weak annualized return of slightly over 1% in the quarter, pressured by the lagged impact of first-quarter market declines on private equity holdings. The Corporate and Other segment reported a loss of $106 million, which was slightly higher than the range implied by full-year guidance, due to a larger-than-normal accrual for long-term compensation expense and modestly elevated mortality. The company's cumulative EPS growth rate since its 2023 Investor Day stands at 10%, slightly below its 12%-15% target range, and it expects to be at the low end of the range by the end of 2026. Equitable Holdings Inc (NYSE:EQH) decided to sell its Employee Benefits business to The Hartford, acknowledging that the business is not yet profitable due to a lack of scale, which represents a strategic divestiture and a shift away from a previously pursued growth area. Q: Can you provide an update on the progress of the Corebridge merger integration, including any key learnings or surprises, and the reaction from external distributors?A: Mark Pearson (President and CEO) stated that the company is pleased with its ability to advance merger approvals while staying focused on 2026 results. The organization structure is established down to the third level of management (top 500 positions), and they are advancing on the tech stack. The company remains confident in achieving expense synergies. On the revenue side, feedback from distribution partners has been positive, with partners leaning in to make the merger work. More details on revenue synergies will be provided at the Investor Day in the first half of 2027. Q: Can Equitable Advisers start selling Corebridge products before the merger closes, or will this require waiting until after the close?A: Robin Raju (CFO) explained that the companies must operate independently until the merger closes. However, significant planning is underway for revenue synergies, including distributing Corebridge products through Equitable Advisers, moving assets to AllianceBernstein, and scaling AB's platform. Equitable Advisers currently sells approximately $2 billion of fixed annuities, and the company expects to capture some of that volume for Corebridge products. The company expects to "hit the ground running" in the first quarter of next year, with more details to be shared at Investor Day. Q: What is the source of the $12 billion of commercial mortgage loans (CMLs) onboarded to AllianceBernstein in July, and how does the fee rate compare to AB's average?A: Robin Raju (CFO) noted that the CMLs were previously managed by a third-party manager due to historical ownership structures. The move to AllianceBernstein was a strategic decision, as AB had built the capability to manage the $12 billion prudently. This is part of the broader flywheel effect, with over $20 billion moved to AB in two quarters. An unidentified company representative added that the book came over at a high single-digit fee rate, lower than the firm-wide average, and fees will not be recognized until the fourth quarter. The fee rate is expected to improve as new originations begin. Q: How should we think about the ramp-up of institutional spread sales, and is there a broader view that now is a good time to accelerate this business?A: Robin Raju (CFO) highlighted that the company sourced $2.6 billion in spread-based liabilities through FABN and Farmers Mac in the quarter. The company was disciplined in the first quarter when spreads were wider, but leaned in during the second quarter as spreads tightened, allowing for low-cost funding and attractive IRRs. The combined balance sheet with Corebridge will provide more capacity to grow spread lending and institutional markets businesses, but the focus remains on disciplined capital allocation and matching low-cost funds with attractive assets. Q: Can you provide more detail on the core spread outlook and what has changed since your original guidance?A: Robin Raju (CFO) explained that core spreads, excluding alternatives, improved by 1 basis point sequentially to 174 basis points. The improvement is attributed to the runoff of the pre-2020 block, which was very profitable, and disciplined pricing on new business. The company expects core spreads to remain stable near current levels, with growth driven by an increasing general account. The maturity of the book and disciplined pricing have led to spread stabilization, and the company expects core spread income to track the growth in general account assets. Q: With some peers deemphasizing vanilla products like MYGAs and FIAs, do you expect more competition in the RILA market?A: Nicholas Lane (President of Equitable) stated that RILA sales were up 10% year-over-year, with $1.4 billion of net flows and a 5% trailing 12-month organic growth rate. The company has seen no material change in competitive activity, as most new entrants have reverted to rational pricing. Equitable believes it has a durable edge through attractive returns generated via AB, differentiated distribution with Equitable Advisers, and deep relationships and scale. The merger with Corebridge should further extend this edge through broader product breadth and additional scale. Q: Is there a reason why base spreads shouldn't continue to improve from here, and has the appetite to grow in retirement increased?A: Robin Raju (CFO) noted that spreads could move 1 or 2 basis points due to quarterly noise, but he sees nothing indicating spreads should differ from remaining stable over the next year. The appetite to grow in retirement continues to increase each quarter as the company prints IRRs above its cost of equity, making it an attractive move for shareholders. The general account is expected to continue growing as new business and organic growth rates remain strong. Q: Why didn't Wealth Management margins improve this quarter or in the first half of the year, despite expectations for expansion on scale and productivity?A: Nicholas Lane (President of Equitable) explained that the company did see an increase in margin quarter-over-quarter. Year-over-year, there is some seasonality. The company expects margins to continue improving as the business scales, supported by strong growth in advisory assets ($2 billion in net flows) and an 11% trailing 12-month organic growth rate. Earnings in the business are up 26%, and adviser productivity is up 13%, which should translate to margin growth over time. Q: What asset specialties and fee advantages does AB bring to in-source the $100 billion of AUM from the merger, and will this come from new liabilities or a shift in current asset allocation?A: Robin Raju (CFO) noted that the $100 billion will be a combination of shifted assets and new flows. An unidentified company representative added that AB can service every asset class and believes it has the right to win in every strategy, with fee rates as favorable as peers. Mark Pearson (CEO) added that AB is a differentiated insurance asset manager, as evidenced by its growth in third-party insurance AUM. The move will also benefit the new Equitable through distributions. Q: What is the target allocation for private credit, and what is driving the preference for private ABS over private placements?A: Robin Raju (CFO) stated that the asset allocation is a function of the liabilities sourced. The company leaned into spread lending, which leads to stickier private credit-oriented assets. The 1% increase in private credit quarter-over-quarter is likely rounding. The company For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript.

Equitable Holdings, Inc. (EQH) came out with quarterly earnings of $1.7 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.66 per share. This compares to earnings of $1.1 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items. This quarterly report represents an earnings surprise of +2.41%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this company would post earnings of $1.6 per share when it actually produced earnings of $1.62, delivering a surprise of +1.25%. Over the last four quarters, the company has surpassed consensus EPS estimates three times. Equitable Holdings, which belongs to the Zacks Insurance - Multi line industry, posted revenues of $3.73 billion for the quarter ended June 2026, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 1.92%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $3.8 billion. The company has not been able to beat consensus revenue estimates over the last four quarters. The sustainability of the stock's immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's commentary on the earnings call. Equitable Holdings shares have added about 0.7% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's gain of 11%. While Equitable Holdings has underperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock? There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company's earnings outlook. Not only does this include current consensus earnings expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately. Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock movements and trends in earnings estimate revisions. Investors can track such revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-tested rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of earnings estimate revisions. Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for Equitable Holdings was mixed. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to perform in line with the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. It will be interesting to see how estimates for the coming quarters and the current fiscal year change in the days ahead. The current consensus EPS estimate is $1.87 on $4.05 billion in revenues for the coming quarter and $7.11 on $15.66 billion in revenues for the current fiscal year. Investors should be mindful of the fact that the outlook for the industry can have a material impact on the performance of the stock as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, Insurance - Multi line is currently in the bottom 29% of the 250 plus Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1. TWFG, Inc. (TWFG), another stock in the same industry, has yet to report results for the quarter ended June 2026. The results are expected to be released on August 5. This company is expected to post quarterly earnings of $0.25 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of +25%. The consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has been revised 1.1% higher over the last 30 days to the current level. TWFG, Inc.'s revenues are expected to be $75.03 million, up 24.4% from the year-ago quarter. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Equitable Holdings, Inc. (EQH) : Free Stock Analysis Report TWFG, Inc. (TWFG) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Our analysts just identified a stock with the potential to be the next Nvidia. Tell us how you invest and we'll show you why it's our #1 pick. Tap here. Achieved 24% year-over-year EPS growth, driven by strong equity markets and record AUM of $1.2 trillion across all segments. Advanced Corebridge merger integration by establishing the first three levels of management and completing federal antitrust reviews, remaining on track for a year-end close. Retirement segment net inflows of $1.7 billion were supported by 10% growth in RILA sales and disciplined pricing that stabilized core spreads despite the runoff of legacy blocks. Wealth Management delivered 11% trailing 12-month organic growth, benefiting from a 13% increase in advisor productivity and successful platform scaling. AllianceBernstein returned to positive net flows, aided by a $9 billion sub-advisory mandate from Equitable, demonstrating the 'flywheel' benefits of the integrated model. Strategic exit from the Employee Benefits business via sale to The Hartford allows for capital reallocation toward at-scale businesses with higher profitability potential. Private markets AUM reached $91 billion, hitting target levels over a year ahead of schedule due to accelerated capital commitments and third-party scaling. Management expects the Corebridge merger to deliver at least 10% accretion to earnings and cash flow per share by the end of 2028. Full-year 2026 EPS growth is projected to be at the low end of the 12% to 15% target range, supported by business momentum and higher average asset levels. Cash flow generation targets remain at approximately $1.8 billion for 2026 and $2 billion for 2027, with clear visibility following regulatory approval for $0.9 billion in dividends. Post-merger strategy focuses on capturing revenue synergies by distributing Corebridge products through Equitable's advisor network and migrating $100 billion in AUM to AllianceBernstein. Alternative investment returns are expected to improve in the second half of 2026 as the lag effect of previous market volatility subsides. Reported $49 million in below-plan alternative investment returns, primarily due to the lag impact of first-quarter market declines on private equity holdings. Corporate and Other segment losses were impacted by higher-than-normal long-term compensation accruals following a 19% increase in the company's stock price. The sale of the Employee Benefits business is expected to have a neutral to slightly positive impact on near-term earnings while removing a non-profitable, sub-scale unit. Net loss of $453 million was attributed to non-economic impacts from the hedge portfolio resulting from strong equity market performance. One stock. Nvidia-level potential. 30M+ investors trust Moby to find it first. Get the pick. Tap here. Management has finalized the top 500 management positions and is currently making critical decisions regarding the combined company's technology stack. Distributor feedback has been positive, with partners actively engaging on how to transition to the combined entity's expanded product shelf. While companies must operate independently until close, planning is underway to allow Equitable's advisors to sell Corebridge fixed annuities, term life, and IUL products starting in Q1 2027. The goal is to capture a portion of the $2 billion in fixed annuities currently sold by Equitable advisors through third parties. AB's edge lies in its differentiated insurance asset management capabilities, particularly in private credit and commercial mortgage loans, rather than just competing on public fixed income fees. The recent onboarding of $12 billion in commercial mortgage loans serves as a proof of concept for the larger $100 billion migration planned post-merger. Core spreads are expected to remain stable as the company replaces high-margin legacy RILA blocks with new business written at attractive, disciplined IRRs. Management's appetite for growth in spread-based retirement products increases as long as they can print IRRs well above the cost of equity.

For the quarter ended June 2026, Equitable Holdings, Inc. (EQH) reported revenue of $3.73 billion, down 2% over the same period last year. EPS came in at $1.70, compared to $1.10 in the year-ago quarter. The reported revenue compares to the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $3.8 billion, representing a surprise of -1.92%. The company delivered an EPS surprise of +2.41%, with the consensus EPS estimate being $1.66. While investors closely watch year-over-year changes in headline numbers -- revenue and earnings -- and how they compare to Wall Street expectations to determine their next course of action, some key metrics always provide a better insight into a company's underlying performance. Since these metrics play a crucial role in driving the top- and bottom-line numbers, comparing them with the year-ago numbers and what analysts estimated about them helps investors better project a stock's price performance. Here is how Equitable Holdings performed in the just reported quarter in terms of the metrics most widely monitored and projected by Wall Street analysts: Retirement - Net flows: $1.68 billion versus the two-analyst average estimate of $1.57 billion. Retirement - Total asset value end of period: $188.77 billion versus $179.58 billion estimated by two analysts on average. Asset Management - AUM, Balance as of end of period: $905.50 billion versus $873.61 billion estimated by two analysts on average. Wealth Management - Total AUA: $140.59 billion versus $137.74 billion estimated by two analysts on average. Revenues- Wealth Management- Net investment income (loss): $3 million versus the two-analyst average estimate of $3.5 million. The reported number represents a year-over-year change of +50%. Revenues- Wealth Management- Investment management, service fees and other income: $541 million versus the two-analyst average estimate of $569.38 million. The reported number represents a year-over-year change of +15.4%. Revenues- Corporate and Other- Policy charges, fee income and premiums: $366 million versus $343.5 million estimated by two analysts on average. Revenues- Corporate and Other- Net investment income (loss): $86 million versus the two-analyst average estimate of $116.46 million. Revenues- Corporate and Other- Investment management, service fees and other income: $118 million versus the two-analyst average estimate of $122.5 million. Revenues- Retirement- Investment management, service fees and other income: $190 million compared to the $185.91 million average estimate based on two analysts. The reported number represents a change of +126.2% year over year. Segment revenues- Wealth Management: $544 million versus $572.88 million estimated by two analysts on average. Compared to the year-ago quarter, this number represents a +15.5% change. Segment revenues- Corporate and Other: $548 million versus the two-analyst average estimate of $579.96 million. The reported number represents a year-over-year change of +142.5%. View all Key Company Metrics for Equitable Holdings here>>> Shares of Equitable Holdings have returned +1.1% over the past month versus the Zacks S&P 500 composite's +1.7% change. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), indicating that it could perform in line with the broader market in the near term. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Equitable Holdings, Inc. (EQH) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Merger with Corebridge Financial approved by shareholders on July 30th and on track to close by year-end 2026 Positive organic growth across all businesses with net inflows of $1.7 billion in Retirement; $2.0 billion in Wealth Management and $0.8 billion in Asset Management Net loss of $453 million, or $1.68 per share Non-GAAP operating earnings1 of $488 million, or $1.70 per share; Adjusting for notable items2, Non-GAAP operating earnings of $501 million, or $1.75 per share Returned $449 million to shareholders in the quarter, on track to deliver a 60-70% payout ratio target in 2026 NEW YORK, August 04, 2026--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Equitable Holdings, Inc. ("Equitable Holdings", "Holdings", or the "Company") (NYSE: EQH) today announced financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026. "During the second quarter, we made significant progress on the merger with Corebridge while also delivering strong financial results. We reported Non-GAAP operating earnings per share of $1.70, or $1.75 excluding notable items, up 24% from the prior year quarter. Our businesses delivered healthy organic growth, highlighted by $1.7 billion of net inflows in Retirement, $2.0 billion of advisory net inflows in Wealth Management and $0.8 billion of net inflows for AllianceBernstein. Positive flows, coupled with favorable market conditions, drove assets under management to a record $1.2 trillion in the quarter," said Mark Pearson, President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Pearson concluded, "We remain focused on executing our growth strategy and delivering on our 2026 financial targets so that we enter the merger with strong momentum. Shareholders overwhelmingly approved the merger on July 30th and we remain on track to close by year-end 2026. Our joint integration efforts are well underway, and I am confident that the New Equitable will have the scale, distribution reach and business model to be a winner in growing markets and deliver long-term value for our customers and shareholders." As of June 30, 2026, total AUM/A increased 10% year-over-year to $1.2 trillion, driven by positive net flows and higher markets over the prior twelve months. Net loss attributable to Holdings for the second quarter of 2026 was $453 million compared to $349 million in the second quarter of 2025. Non-GAAP operating earnings in the second quarter of 2026 were $488 million compared to $352 million in the second quarter of 2025. Adjusting for notable items3 of $14 million, second quarter 2026 Non-GAAP operating earnings were $501 million or $1.75 per share. As of June 30, 2026, book value per common share including accumulated other comprehensive income ("AOCI") was $(6.79). Book value per common share excluding AOCI was $16.89. Both of these measures reflect the Company’s 68% ownership stake in AllianceBernstein ("AB") at book value. Book value per common share excluding AOCI but with AB reflected at fair market value was $30.92. Business Highlights Second quarter 2026 business segment highlights: Capital management program: Delivering shareholder value: Business Segment Results Retirement Assets increased by 15%, driven by market performance and net inflows over the prior twelve months. First year premiums of $6.2 billion increased by 13% while net inflows of $1.7 billion were lower than the prior year quarter. Operating earnings of $402 million increased versus the prior year quarter, primarily due to higher fee-based revenue and a lower tax rate. Operating earnings adjusted for notable items7 increased from $368 million in the prior year quarter to $408 million. Notable items of $6 million in the current period reflect lower net investment income from alternatives, partially offset by a benefit from tax credits. Asset Management AUM increased by 9% due to market performance over the prior twelve months. Net inflows were $0.8 billion in the quarter, driven by net inflows of $0.9 billion in Retail and $0.6 billion in Institutional, partially offset by net outflows of $0.7 billion in Private Wealth. Operating earnings adjusted for notable items increased from $131 million in the prior year quarter to $139 million, primarily due to growth in base fees. Notable items of $19 million in the current period reflect a non-recurring tax benefit. Wealth Management AUA increased by 27% over the last twelve months due to market performance, net inflows and acquired assets from the Stifel transaction. Advisory net inflows were $2.0 billion in the quarter, supported by a 13% year-over-year increase in advisor productivity. Operating earnings adjusted for notable items increased from $50 million in the prior year quarter to $60 million, primarily due to growth in client assets and advisory fees. Notable items of $3 million in the current period reflect a non-recurring tax benefit. Corporate and Other ("C&O") The operating loss of $135 million in the second quarter decreased from an operating loss of $183 million in the prior year quarter. After adjusting for notable items8, the operating loss was $106 million versus a loss of $103 million in the prior year quarter. Exhibit 1: Notable Items Notable items represent the impact on results from our annual actuarial assumption review, approximate impacts attributable to significant variances from the Company’s expectations, and other items that the Company believes may not be indicative of future performance. The Company chooses to highlight the impact of these items and give Non-GAAP measures less notable items to provide a better understanding of our results of operations in a given period. Certain figures may not sum due to rounding. Impact of notable items by segment and Corporate & Other: Impact of notable items by item category: Earnings Conference Call Equitable Holdings will host a conference call at 8 a.m. ET on August 5, 2026 to discuss its second quarter 2026 results. The conference call webcast, along with additional earnings materials, will be accessible on the company’s investor relations website at ir.equitableholdings.com. Please log on to the webcast at least 15 minutes prior to the call to download and install any necessary software. To register for the conference call, please use the following link:EQH Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call After registering, you will receive an email confirmation including dial in details and a unique conference call code for entry. Registration is open through the live call. To ensure you are connected for the full call we suggest registering a day in advance or at minimum 10 minutes before the start of the call. A webcast replay will be made available on the Equitable Holdings Investor Relations website at ir.equitableholdings.com. About Equitable Holdings Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: EQH) is a leading financial services holding company comprised of complementary and well-established businesses, Equitable, AllianceBernstein and Equitable Advisors. Equitable Holdings has $1.2 trillion in assets under management and administration (as of 6/30/2026) and more than 5 million client relationships globally. Founded in 1859, Equitable provides retirement and protection strategies to individuals, families and small businesses. AllianceBernstein is a global investment management firm that offers diversified investment services to institutional investors, individuals and private wealth clients. Equitable Advisors, LLC (Equitable Financial Advisors in MI and TN) has approximately 4,600 duly registered and licensed financial professionals that provide financial planning, wealth management, retirement planning, protection and risk management services to clients across the country. Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of terms such as "believes," "expects," "may," "will," "shall," "should," "would," "could," "seeks," "aims," "projects," "forecasts," "intends," "targets," "plans," "estimates," "anticipates," "goals," "guidance," "formidable," "preliminary," "objective," "continue," "drive," "improve," "superior," "robust," "positioned," "resilient," "vision," "potential," "immediate," and similar expressions or the negative of those expressions or verbs. Forward-looking statements are made based on management’s current expectations and beliefs concerning future developments and their potential effects upon Equitable Holdings, Inc. ("Equitable") and its consolidated subsidiaries. "We", "us", the "Company" and "our" refer to Equitable and its consolidated subsidiaries, unless the context refers only to Equitable as a corporate entity. These forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and there are certain important factors that could cause actual results to differ, possibly materially, from expectations or estimates reflected in such forward-looking statements, including, among others: (i) the ability to repurchase shares (if Holdings decides to do so) within the expected timing or at all; (ii) the ability to complete the proposed transaction between Holdings and Corebridge (the "Proposed Transaction") on the timeframe or in the terms currently anticipated or at all, including due to a failure to obtain requisite stockholder, stock exchange, regulatory, governmental or other approvals; (iii) risks related to difficulties, inabilities or delays in integrating the parties’ businesses; (iv) the ability to realize the anticipated benefits of the Proposed Transaction, including estimated run-rate expense synergies and projected cost savings at the times, and to the extent anticipated, as well as expected, operating earnings and cash flow generation; (v) the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstance that could give rise to the right of either or both parties to terminate the merger agreement; (vi) the potential impact of the announcement or consummation of the Proposed Transaction on Holdings or Corebridge’s stock price and on their respective business, contractual and operational relationships (including with regulatory bodies, employees, suppliers, clients and competitors); (vii) risks related to business disruptions from the Proposed Transaction that may harm the business or current plans and operations of either or both parties, including diversion of management time from ongoing business operations; (viii) the risk that the Proposed Transaction and the announcement thereof could have an adverse effect on the ability of either or both parties to hire and retain key personnel; (ix) the parties’ ability to raise debt on favorable terms or at all; (x) the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against Holdings, Corebridge, their new parent company or their respective directors; (xi) restrictions on the conduct of Holdings and Corebridge’s respective businesses prior to the closing of the Proposed Transaction and on each of their ability to pursue alternatives to the Proposed Transaction; (xii) the possibility that the Proposed Transaction may be more expensive to complete than anticipated, including as a result of unexpected factors or events, or unforeseen or unknown liabilities; (xiii) the potential impact of a downgrade in Holdings or Corebridge’s insurer financial strength ratings or credit ratings or of the new parent company of Holdings and Corebridge following completion of the Proposed Transaction; (xiv) conditions in the financial markets and economy, including the impact of geopolitical conflicts, changes in tariffs and trade barriers, the impact on Holdings of a shutdown of the U.S. government, and related economic conditions, equity market declines and volatility, interest rate fluctuations, impacts on our goodwill and changes in liquidity and access to and cost of capital; (xv) operational factors, including reliance on the payment of dividends to Holdings by its subsidiaries, protection of confidential customer information or proprietary business information, operational failures by us or our service providers, potential strategic transactions, changes in accounting standards, and catastrophic events, such as the outbreak of pandemic diseases; (xvi) credit, counterparties and investments, including counterparty default on derivative contracts, failure of financial institutions, defaults by third parties and affiliates and economic downturns, defaults and other events adversely affecting our investments; (xvii) our reinsurance and hedging programs; (xviii) our products, structure and product distribution, including variable annuity guaranteed benefits features within certain of our products, variations in statutory capital requirements, financial strength and claims-paying ratings, state insurance laws limiting the ability of our insurance subsidiaries to pay dividends and key product distribution relationships; (xix) estimates, assumptions and valuations, including risk management policies and procedures, potential inadequacy of reserves and experience differing from pricing expectations, amortization of deferred acquisition costs and financial models; (xx) our Asset Management segment, including fluctuations in assets under management and the industry-wide shift from actively-managed investment services to passive services; (xxi) recruitment and retention of key employees and experienced and productive financial professionals; (xxii) subjectivity of the determination of the amount of allowances and impairments taken on our investments; (xxiii) legal and regulatory risks, including federal and state legislation affecting financial institutions, insurance regulation and tax reform; (xxiv) risks related to our common stock; and (xxv) general risks, including strong industry competition, information systems failing or being compromised and protecting our intellectual property. Forward-looking statements, including any financial guidance, should be read in conjunction with the other cautionary statements, risks, uncertainties and other factors identified in Holdings’ filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Further, any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which the statement is made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as otherwise may be required by law. Forward-looking Non-GAAP Metrics The Company has presented forward-looking statements regarding Non-GAAP operating earnings, and Non-GAAP operating earnings per share. These non-GAAP financial measures are derived by excluding certain amounts, expenses or income, from the corresponding financial measures determined in accordance with GAAP. The determination of the amounts that are excluded from these non-GAAP financial measures is a matter of management judgment and depends upon, among other factors, the nature of the underlying expense or income amounts recognized in a given period. We are unable to present a quantitative reconciliation of forward-looking adjusted operating earnings per share and payout ratio targeted to non-GAAP operating earnings to their most directly comparable forward-looking GAAP financial measures because such information is not available, and management cannot reliably predict all of the necessary components of such GAAP measures without unreasonable effort or expense. In addition, we believe such reconciliations would imply a degree of precision that would be confusing or misleading to investors. The unavailable information could have a significant impact on the Company’s future financial results. These non-GAAP financial measures are preliminary estimates and are subject to risks and uncertainties, including, among others changes in connection with quarter-end and year-end adjustments. Any variations between the Company’s actual results and preliminary financial data set forth above may be material. Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures In addition to our results presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP, we report Non-GAAP Operating Earnings, and Non-GAAP operating common EPS, each of which is a measure that is not determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP. Management principally uses these Non-GAAP financial measures in evaluating performance because they present a clearer picture of our operating performance and they allow management to allocate resources. Similarly, management believes that the use of these Non-GAAP financial measures, together with relevant U.S. GAAP measures, provide investors with a better understanding of our results of operations and the underlying profitability drivers and trends of our business. These Non-GAAP financial measures are intended to remove from our results of operations the impact of market changes (where there is a mismatch in the valuation of assets and liabilities) as well as certain other expenses which are not part of our underlying profitability drivers or likely to re-occur in the foreseeable future, as such items fluctuate from period-to-period in a manner inconsistent with these drivers. These measures should be considered supplementary to our results that are presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP and should not be viewed as a substitute for the U.S. GAAP measures. Other companies may use similarly titled Non-GAAP financial measures that are calculated differently from the way we calculate such measures. Consequently, our Non-GAAP financial measures may not be comparable to similar measures used by other companies. We also discuss certain operating measures, including AUM, AUA, AV, Policy Reserves and certain other operating measures, which management believes provide useful information about our businesses and the operational factors underlying our financial performance. Non-GAAP Operating Earnings Non-GAAP Operating Earnings is an after-tax Non-GAAP financial measure used to evaluate our financial performance on a consolidated basis that is determined by making certain adjustments to our consolidated after-tax net income attributable to Holdings. The most significant of such adjustments relates to our derivative positions, which protect economic value and statutory capital, and the variable annuity product MRBs. This is a large source of volatility in net income. Non-GAAP Operating Earnings equals our consolidated after-tax net income attributable to Holdings adjusted to eliminate the impact of the following items: Items related to variable annuity product features, which include: (i) changes in the fair value of MRB and purchased MRB, including the related attributed fees and claims, offset by derivatives and other securities used to hedge the MRB which result in residual net income volatility as the change in fair value of certain securities is reflected in OCI and due to our statutory capital hedge program; and (ii) market adjustments to deposit asset or liability accounts arising from reinsurance agreements which do not expose the reinsurer to a reasonable possibility of a significant loss from insurance risk; Investment (gains) losses, which includes credit loss impairments of securities/investments, sales or disposals of securities/investments, realized capital gains/losses and valuation allowances; Net actuarial (gains) losses, which includes actuarial gains and losses as a result of differences between actual and expected experience on pension plan assets or projected benefit obligation during a given period related to pension, other postretirement benefit obligations, and the one-time impact of the settlement of the defined benefit obligation; Other adjustments, which primarily include restructuring costs related to severance and separation, lease write-offs related to non-recurring restructuring activities, net derivative gains (losses) on certain Non-GMxB derivatives, net investment income from certain items including consolidated VIE investments, seed capital mark-to-market adjustments, unrealized gain/losses and realized capital gains/losses from sales or disposals of select securities, certain legal accruals; a bespoke deal to repurchase UL policies from one entity that had invested in numerous policies purchased in the life settlement market, which disposed of the risk of additional COI litigation by that entity related to those UL policies, impact of the annual actuarial assumption updates attributable to LFPB when the majority of the impact relates to the non-core business; and Income tax expense (benefit) related to the above items and non-recurring tax items, which includes the effect of uncertain tax positions for a given audit period and changes to the deferred tax valuation allowance. In the third quarter of 2025, the Company updated its net investment income ("NII") segment reporting to better align with our GAAP segments, as well as the reporting of our spread lending programs' income and expenses. Previously, direct and allocated segment NII were recorded based on assets tied to statutory asset tagging and net statutory liabilities for allocation. To better align with our GAAP segments, the Company changed the recording methodology for direct NII. It is now based on the book yields of assets tied to specific segments, considering General Account values plus reserves, net of embedded derivatives. Indirect NII, which was previously allocated based on net statutory liabilities, is now allocated based on General Account values and reserves, net of embedded derivatives. Additionally, revenues and expenses from our spread lending programs are now primarily recorded within the Retirement segment. Previously, spread lending revenues and expenses were recorded in Corporate and Other, with the excess of revenues over expenses allocated to the insurance segments based on net statutory liabilities. Prior periods have been revised to reflect these changes. Because Non-GAAP Operating Earnings excludes the foregoing items that can be distortive or unpredictable, management believes that this measure enhances the understanding of the Company’s underlying drivers of profitability and trends in our business, thereby allowing management to make decisions that will positively impact our business. We use the prevailing corporate federal income tax rate of 21% while taking into account any non-recurring differences for events recognized differently in our financial statements and federal income tax returns as well as partnership income taxed at lower rates when reconciling Net income (loss) attributable to Holdings to Non-GAAP Operating Earnings. The table below presents a reconciliation of Net income (loss) attributable to Holdings to Non-GAAP Operating Earnings for the six months ended June 30, 2026 and 2025: Non-GAAP Operating EPS Non-GAAP Operating Earnings per common share is calculated by dividing Non-GAAP Operating Earnings less preferred stock dividends by diluted common shares outstanding. The table below presents a reconciliation of GAAP EPS to Non-GAAP Operating EPS for the six months ended June 30, 2026 and 2025. Book Value per common share, excluding AOCI We use the term "book value" to refer to total equity attributable to Holdings’ common shareholders. Book Value per common share, excluding AOCI, is our total equity attributable to Holdings, excluding AOCI and preferred stock, divided by ending common shares outstanding. Other Operating Measures We also use certain operating measures which management believes provide useful information about our businesses and the operational factors underlying our financial performance. Account Value ("AV") Account value generally equals the aggregate policy account value of our retirement products. Assets Under Management ("AUM") AUM means investment assets that are managed by one of our subsidiaries and includes: (i) assets managed by AB, (ii) the assets in our general account investment portfolio and (iii) the separate account assets of our Retirement and Life businesses. Total AUM reflects exclusions between segments to avoid double counting. Assets Under Management ("AUA") AUA means advisory and brokerage investment assets included in the Company’s Wealth Management segment. Segment net flows Net change in segment customer account balances in a period including, but not limited to, gross premiums, surrenders, withdrawals and benefits. It excludes investment performance, interest credited to customer accounts and policy charges. Consolidated Statements of Income (Loss) (Unaudited) Earnings Per Common Share Results of Operations by Segment Select Balance Sheet Statistics Assets Under Management (Unaudited) View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260804013141/en/ Contacts Investor Relations Erik [email protected] Media Relations Laura [email protected]