“The underlying growth of our international businesses, which has been partly masked by the strong dollar could start to emerge as a tailwind.”

In context

“the impacts presented by this uncertain backdrop, we are confident we have the right businesses and the right strategy to meet the moment. At our core, MetLife is a recurring revenue business model. In any given year, the vast majority of the revenues and earnings we generate are a function of renewal premium or investment income from assets and liabilities that are already on our books. While the slowing economy can dampen growth for our group benefits business, we've not yet seen cracks in the job market. Further, the primary profit driver mortality for our largest group product line, Group Life, is largely uncorrelated to the economy. For our Retirement and Income Solutions business and our Investment Management business, higher long-term interest rates are helpful on the demand side. The underlying growth of our international businesses, which has been partly masked by the strong dollar could start to emerge as a tailwind. And standing behind it all, our investment portfolio has been risk off for several years and is well situated to absorb recessionary stress. Our positive track record on this front is well established. Over the course of our 157-year history, we have seen challenging times before and has succeeded in driving long-term value for our shareholders and other stakeholders, and we are well positioned to do so again. Let me now turn to our first quarter results, which we reported last night. I believe they reflect the resilience of our business model and underscore many of the points I just made. We reported adjusted earnings of $1.3 billion or $1.96 per share, up 7% from the same period a year ago. We saw favorable underwriting, good volume growth and better variable investment income in the qu”