Talanx AG

XETRA:TLX

Earnings Call Analysis

Strong Q1 Performance Boosts Confidence for 2024

The company delivered an outstanding Q1 with notable earnings and revenue growth. Insurance revenues rose by 9% to €11.6 billion, while net income surged by 35% to €572 million—both records. A robust Solvency II ratio of 217% and a 21.2% return on equity underscore the strong financial health. Industrial Lines earnings grew by 51%, and Retail International revenues soared by 45%. The company is confident of exceeding its €1.7 billion net income target for 2024 and maintaining a return on equity of at least 15%. Additionally, they aim for double-digit revenue growth in Retail International and single-digit growth in Industrial Lines.

Introduction of Talanx

The latest earnings call for Talanx, led by CEO Bernd Sablowsky and CFO Jan Wicke, highlighted a remarkably strong first quarter of 2024. This report dives into the numbers, showcasing significant growth in both earnings and revenue, a strong capital base, and positive future outlooks.

Financial Highlights

Talanx reported a Solvency II ratio standing at 217%, an increase of 2 percentage points from the year-end. The group's insurance revenues grew by 9%, or 10% when adjusted for currency movements, reaching €11.6 billion. Net income soared by 35% to €572 million, marking a record-breaking quarter. The company recorded a return on equity (ROE) of 21.2%.

Segment Analysis

The primary insurance sector grew its profits by 45%. Reinsurance saw a 24% increase in profits. The Industrial Lines segment reported a 13% growth in insurance revenue, reaching €2.3 billion, with an impressive 15% ROE. Retail International showed remarkable performance with a 45% boost in insurance revenue, and net income growing by 60% to €120 million. The Retail Germany segment also performed steadily, with net income reaching €43 million and an ROE of 13.2%.

Resilience and Risk Management

Talanx’s resilience metrics showed a €3.7 billion buffer, which is 6.3% of its booked net reserves. This strong buffer provides Talanx with confidence in its ability to manage unexpected risks and underscores the solid financial health of the company.

Forecast and Guidance

The Industrial Lines segment aims to achieve single-digit revenue growth and keep the combined ratio below 93%. Retail International expects double-digit revenue growth, a combined ratio below 95%, and an ROE of 8.5%. The company anticipates exceeding its €1.7 billion net income target for the year and projects a dividend of €2.50 per share.

Strategic Acquisitions

Recent acquisitions are already contributing positively, especially in Latin America. The acquisition of Liberty entities in Chile, Ecuador, and Colombia, along with consolidations in Brazil, have boosted revenues significantly. Retail International now has a 50-50 revenue split between Europe and Latin America.

Operational Efficiency

The earnings call highlighted Talanx’s ongoing efforts in maintaining cost leadership. With continuous focus on cost management and prudent risk assessment, the company aims to sustain its underlying profitability while managing exposure to various risks, including natural catastrophes (NatCat).

Conclusion

Talanx's robust start to 2024 and its strategic initiatives indicate strong future performance and confidence in meeting financial targets. The company’s diversified portfolio and strong capital base position it well to navigate future challenges and capitalize on growth opportunities.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Bernd Sablowsky, executive]

Good morning to everyone. Good morning from Hannover. This is Talanx results call for the first quarter of 2024. I am here together with my CFO, Jan Wicke, who will take you through the results and where we currently stand. And as usual, after the presentation, Jan, we'll be happy to answer your questions, which you can raise as usual, either by phone or via the webcast, All the documents, the complementary documents, including but not limited to our financial data supplement, you can find in the IR section of our web page and with a short delay. A replay of this webcast will be posted there too. By the way, speaking of webcast, for our Q2 earnings call in August, we are considering to test a video called format, as we thought it would be nice to see each other while discussing our numbers. For those who cannot or will not participate via video call, we provided a dial-in and we'll take out whether it works, if you like that, we will stick to it if the phone format works better, we will stick to that. So let's see how that works out. And with this, I hand over to Jan Wicke to give you a deep dive on our number. Jan, the floor is yours.

[Jan Wicke, executive]

Thank you, Bernd, and good morning, everybody. And it's a real pleasure to run you through our Q1 results. We had an outstanding first quarter, which I can present to you. Nevertheless, it's just a quarter. Let me mention this right at the beginning. To start with, we can show both earnings growth and top line growth where the earnings growth is much bigger than the revenue growth. And on top of it, we have a very, very strong capital base. We can report that the Solvency II ratio stands now at 217%, which is 2 percentage points up from the year-end, and this is despite the fact that we have already consolidated the Liberty entities in Chile, Ecuador and Colombia now in the figures so which is a good number. But on top of that, in this call, we are also releasing our resiliency numbers, which are embedded in our balance sheet. As you know, once in a year, we have set our reserving policy in P&C by external actuaries. They tell us what they feel is adequate for our reserving and if the booked reserves are higher than what the external actuaries tell us then we have a resiliency. And we were able to increase this resiliency by 1.4 percentage points, which seems to be pretty little. But if you translate that to EUR 60 billion of net reserves, then we are talking that in 2023, we were able to strengthen our balance sheet by more than EUR 1 billion, which is a strong number and which provides us with confidence that we can deliver on both earnings and dividend growth in the future. But now let me please switch to the traditional format of our earnings presentation to start with the revenue development, we were able to grow our insurance revenues by 9% to EUR 11.6 billion for the first quarter 2024. If we adjust it for currency movements, it's even 10%. Bottom line grew even faster by 35% to EUR 572 million which is a record in Thailand's history for the first quarter. Return on equity stands at outstanding, it's above 20%, 21.2% is a number to report on the first quarter. Where is this very good performance derived from? On the next page is that you can see everybody is contributing to growth. And in particular, we are happy about the development in primary insurance where we can show a growth of 23% and adjusted for currency, even 25%. A major part of it is related to the acquisition in the revenues. We have already consolidated the acquisitions in Brazil, Liberty and Sompo. If we were to exclude the M&A-driven growth, then the organic growth would be just but which is still a strong number. On a group level, we have overall 9% growth, which is good. And coming to the bottom line, where we also see that primary insurance or so that everybody is growing with very good numbers, but that we are, in particular, happy about the development in the primary insurance. So profit is up 45% in the first quarter. Reinsurance is up 24%, and this then combines to a group increase in the net income of 35% as a whole. Looking at the diversification of the earnings streams this reflected in this chart, you can see that primary group now stands for 47% of group net income, a very strong number. And on the right side, you see that the split of the earnings streams indicates a very good diversification within the group. And it also reminds me to point out that the part of Germany is getting smaller and smaller. But this is by intention. This is why we have acquired something in Latin America. We want to make use of global diversification because this increases capital efficiency and you see the progress which we are able to achieve in those numbers. We have been a little bit lucky in the first quarter. I also want to mention that with the development of NatCat, large losses. You have to go 10 years back to find a quarter which was equally good. So we were lucky with regard to the large loss development in NatCat. On the next page, you see that, nevertheless, we have booked in the first quarter the full large loss budget, which we have calculated for the first quarter. So you see that we have roughly EUR 450 million unused budget, which will support the development in the quarters to come. Within this EUR 450 million, obviously, we have to account for also for the Baltimore bridge. It's not 100% clear how the coverage is here. And therefore, this is also the reason why we have this process of large loss booking that we always wait a little bit until we have a little bit clearer picture on the claims here. So this is something where you have to deduct a certain amount from this EUR 450 million additional buffer for the quarters to come. But nevertheless, we will start with tailwind in the next quarters with regard to the large loss development, which is a good news.On the next page, a question how does it translate to our guidance? So with regard to the guidance, we have guided you with regard to the top line growth that we expect to achieve a high single-digit growth with 10% currency adjusted for the group as a whole. We are well on the path to deliver on that one. With regard to the group net income, we have set out the target that we want to be above EUR 1.7 billion. I will change the word slightly here, I would say, we have rising confidence to significantly exceed EUR 1.7 billion for the full year. You may perceive this as being very cautious given the first quarter, then yes, you're right. But as you all know, we are much more exposed to NatCat than some others. And therefore, the third quarter is the hurricane season. So we are waiting for the hurricane season. And therefore, I want to set out the expectation that the first time to change the guidance will be after the third quarter to consider a change in the guidance after the third quarter on that one. Second, you have seen in our numbers that we also had a very benign investment income in the first quarter. We are considering to make use of higher yields in the future by shifting a little bit in the fixed income portfolio in order to stabilize the earnings growth for the future. And so this is the second which needs to be mentioned here. With regard to the return on equity, we had a fantastic first quarter with above 20% return on equity. The outlook stands at 15% or I would at least 15% should be the return on equity for the current year. So we are very bullish with regard to the development and very happy about the start we had in the first quarter. But let me now dig a little bit more into the details of the segments that you can see why are we so happy. So to provide you with an overview about the primary group, Industrial Lines in the first quarter was able to show an earnings growth of 51%, a very, very strong development. In Retail International, the acquisition in Latin America or being in Latin America really already started to pay off significantly. And Retail Germany decide some challenges and the return on equity, including the relative contribution we are on Ampega Asset Management fees on top of it, it stands at 13.2%, which is a strong number for return of Germany. To start with in detail with the segment. In Industrial Lines, we are growing 13% to EUR 2.3 billion insurance revenue in the first quarter, in particular, strong in property and liability. If we adjust the 13% for currency movement, it's even 13.9%. The group net income is up 51% to above EUR 100 million in the quarter, and this is despite an ongoing pretty conservative bookkeeping here. And return on equity stands at a very nice 15% or 15.1%. And what you can really see here that over the years, Edgar and his team have improved the underwriting and this has led to a portfolio which is now very well diversified, very stable in the underwriting performance. And therefore, this 15% is really what they earned with a very good work during the course of the last year. Coming to the outlook. Given the growth in the first quarter, we are very confident that Industrial Lines will deliver at least a single-digit revenue growth number in currency adjusted that the combined ratio will stand below 93%, maybe even significantly below 93%. We will watch the further development. And return on equity is 13% towards the outlook, the guidance should be at least 13% also for industrial lines. We overall for industrial lines, given the very strong performance of the team, what we see there. We have rising confidence that they are able to outperform their target for 2024. Going to our growth machine, Retail International, there you see fantastic growth in the insurance revenue of 45%, very strong number here. And even if we were to adjust it for all the acquisitions, it's still a very strong 12%. If we were to adjust it for currency movement, it's 51% growth. And you see also the revenue split. It already has reached the 50-50 split in between Europe and Latin America. One thing is I would like to draw your attention to we have had the closing of the Andes countries in March, but we have made use of an exemption under IFRS that we have just booked in the first quarter, the balance sheet also in the solvency account, the balance sheet, but not the revenues related to Chile, Colombia and Ecuador of the newly acquired companies. So in the next quarter, there will be a retroactive adjustment for Q1 on that one. The overall effect on the P&L, we expect it to be small given that it's just related to one month. But you should know that, so in the next quarter, you will then see the full revenue impact of the acquisition of Liberty from last year. Next to the revenue growth, Retail International has shown a fantastic strong earnings development that we're able to grow the group net income by 60% to EUR 120 million. And in particular, the development in South America, in Chile, in Mexico and in Brazil contributed to this overall very benign result. And this also translates into a very good return on equity of 15.6% for the first quarter, which will give them tailwind for the full year 2024, where the main task, obviously, is to get the integration of the Liberty entities in Latin America on track. So next page, given that they had such a very good strong Q1, we are very confident with regard to the outlook of Retail International. So with regard to the revenue growth, we expect double-digit growth here given the first quarter, I think this is not-- doesn't come as a surprise. Combined ratio, we have a strong focus on technical excellence should be well below 95%. Return on equity, there, you have seen here the outlook above 8.5%. This was due to the fact that we have injected quite a lot of equity into the segment that they can acquire the Liberty entities. And we do not expect 15% return on equity for the full year, but we see now a good chance that Retail International will be able already to achieve a 10% return on equity in the first year of the acquisition where you have a lot of restructuring to be covered and so on. So it's a very good start of the year. And in the Capital Markets Day, end of December. Wilm and his team are doing a fantastic job here. They will report on the progress, which they made with regard to the integration of the Liberty entities in Latin America. So next page is on Retail Germany. It was a rather uneventful start in 2024. They are growing. Group net income is up with the same rate to EUR 43 million. Return on equity, including Ampega Asset Management result is 13.2%. It's a very-- and if you were to exclude it, it's also above 10%, clearly above, it's above 11% return on equity. So very stable numbers. With regard to the outlook, we are focusing our P&C book rather on profitability because we still have some challenges there with regard to the German motor market. But nevertheless, we expect return on equity to be clearly above-- to be above 10%. So stable results. Life is doing well, which is also reflected here in the outlook. Coming to reinsurance. Most of you, I assume, have heard Clemens and JJ yesterday. They are still delivering fantastic results, return on equity is above 20%. Insurance service results, up 27%. That is pretty, pretty strong and the insurance revenue also up. And in particular, also the substance, which they've built, which is reflected in the development of CSM and risk adjustment was very, very strong. So we are very happy shareholders here. The outlook for reinsurance is that they expect to grow the insurance revenue by more than 5%. Combined ratio should be below 89% and return on equity, long-term target is 14%. It will be clearly above 14%. If you do the math numbers, around 19% could be expected. So now I would like to give you the usual deep take in capital management, and I will also explain the development of the resiliency results. To start with, the solvency ratio is up to 217% despite the first consolidation of the Andes countries, which accounts for roughly 3, 4 percentage points. So it's a nice development, which also reflects a good development of own funds during the course of the first quarter. The sensitivity, which as shown on the next place, show no major deviations from previous year. So we continue to be rather less exposed to capital market exposure as we are an insurance group. And as we believe that with our global diversification, insurance risk really matters to us because from a capital efficiency point of view, we can diversify this very well within our group. On the next page, you see what we're just publishing once in a year, which is the development of the resiliencies which are embedded in our best estimate reserves. So what do we do here? For those of you who attend this core for the first time, once in a year as a part of our governance, we assess the reserving in all countries where we are operating in more than 90% of our booked net reserves. And we are an external actuary, Towers Watson to provide us with what they believe is an adequate reserving if their number of adequate reserving is below what we've booked. We call the different resiliency. And this resiliency provides us with an additional buffer to deal with whatever is there to come. And in 2023, we were able to increase this additional buffer to very strong EUR 3.7 billion for the group as a whole. All this translates into 6.3% of the booked net reserves. These are undiscounted figures. We decided to show you the undiscounted figures given that last year, under IFRS core, you also had undiscounted figures. If you were to adjust it for discounting effect, you can subtract something in between 10% to 12%. So just to give you a little bit color on what that one, but the overall development with a strong increase during the course of 2023 is true for both discounted and undiscounted numbers. On the next slide, we reflect a little bit on what you can see in our balance sheet under the new accounting standard. The development of equity is a very good indicator for the value creation. We were able to increase the equity in the first quarter by more than EUR 700 million, which shows a very strong performance. Keep in mind, we have booked the full large loss budget on top of it. And if you then look on the shareholders' capital components, you're aware this is a favorite part of-- the favorite slide here in the presentation from my point of view. We have added to the shareholders' equity, the CSM reduced for taxes and minority and the risk adjustment and what you can see here is if you add everything from a shareholders' perspective, together, we are standing at EUR 19 billion for the group as a whole. And if you then do it by share, the substance of Talanx has grown to above EUR 73 per share, which is a strong number and which is clearly supporting our share price. Next page is nothing new. We continue to be conservative with regard to our investment portfolio, more than 80% is allocated to fixed income. Yes, we have areas where we have more attention on that one, which is with regard to real estate, our U.S. book. We have roughly EUR 1 billion of our investments is invested in U.S. real estate. The reinvestment yield for the portfolio as a whole stand at 4.7%, which is a nice number. Please keep always in mind that already 44% are invested outside the Eurozone where we have usually higher interest rates than in the Eurozone. On the next page, we have some insights with regard to our sustainability strategy. We have set out the target for 2025 that we wanted to invest more than EUR 8 billion in sustainable investments. Currently, we are standing at EUR 11.3 billion. So we have clearly exceeded this target. I have to mention here that we have changed the definition of sustainable investments slightly in order to allow for better auditability, so that it can be clearly audited. If we were to use the old definition which we had before, which was a little bit narrow, we would be above EUR 9.5 billion, so also exceeding the initial target for 2024. So we are well on track with regard to that one. So what does it mean overall for the group for the outlook for 2024? We had a fantastic start in the first quarter. The substance of the group is really very, very strong. We are very confident that we can deliver a return on equity at least of 15%. We are very confident that we will be significantly above EUR 1.7 billion net income. We intend to pay a dividend per share of EUR 2.50, which will be then paid out in 2025. So another increase in the dividend. So all in all, it was a very good start in the year, and we are driving confidence that we can deliver on both earnings and dividend growth. So and now Bernd, I would be happy to take the questions.

[Bernd Sablowsky, executive]

Yes. We have questions in the queue. And can the operator take over and channel it?

[Operator]

Yes, of course. Thank you very much. [Operator Instructions] And our first question today comes from Ismael Dabo from Morgan Stanley.

[Ismael Dabo, analyst]

Just wondering what drove the really strong performance in Retail International. I know it was the LatAm business. But just wondering if there's any seasonality in the business, given that you mentioned it should normalize throughout the year, but you also said in your comments that the combined ratio should come well below the 95%. So just wondering if you could give us an indication of essentially where we should end up for the year-end between the 91.2% that you reported in the first quarter and the 95% guidance that you have for the full year? And the second question is, I'm just wondering how full your current reserve resiliency is. And given the strong performance in Industrial Lines and the strong performance in Retail International and you expect that to be well within the budget this year. Just wondering if we got to the end of the year and your large losses were also below the budget, essentially, would you let it flow through to the bottom line?

[Jan Wicke, executive]

Thank you, Ismael. First question with regard to LatAm, you're absolutely right. The technical performance in the LatAm countries in the first quarter were outstanding good. But we know that in LatAm, there are very short cycles. There's a high seasonality in the market. The markets adapt very fast for certain things. What we currently see is, first of all, we have the big flood event in Brazil. On the other hand, we had a fantastic first quarter in Brazil, but we are now in a position to cope very well with the additional burden and all the people who are working for us in Brazil are currently focused on helping the people in the most direct way they could help. And so this should be covered with our guidance very well. Overall, we have to take into consideration that for the full year, some restructuring work needs to be done in Latin America for the integration and the setup of the new entities, which are combinations from the Liberty and our own operations in the country. And therefore, there will be some additional reserve reviews and so on. This is why, okay, we are a little bit conservative, you stick to well below 95% combined ratio. Maybe we will end up a little bit better but this is then to be reported by Wilm on the Capital Markets Day in December after all this work has been done, which is currently performed.So second, with regard to the resiliency in particular, in Industrial Lines. So first of all, a few words about the concept of resiliency. Resiliency, if you book conservatively, you have always to manage the trade-off between capital efficiency and management of volatility for the future and being safe towards regulators on the other hand. And therefore, we have set out limit those lower limits and upper limits for resiliency. And if a company or a segment is close to the upper limit, we asked for higher dividend payments and returns in order to, we call it internally money-to-money, money is a holding, then we asked for higher returns. And currently, your assumption that you can ask for some higher returns in Industrial Lines is pretty right. Given that they can really look back on a fantastic management over several years now. After Edgar and his team took over, they are now in a position that they are able to show slightly higher results than those what you have seen in the past. But we have this really for all entities. So capital efficiency really plays a role, and it's not our target to build up resiliency and resiliency and resiliency. Our objective is to have adequate with regard to resiliency and this adequate is also related to the size of the business, and we are a growing company. So we want to grow, obviously, also resiliency in line with the growth of the company so that we can deal with volatility in a better way and with the unexpected. I hope I could answer both of your questions is my... Could I?

[Ismael Dabo, analyst]

Yes. It was just-- I guess, in regards to the second question, it was more so of if we got to the end of the year and the large losses came in well below budget and the underlying profitability in the rest of the book was good. Just wondering given that the reserve resiliency seems relatively full, would you let the gap between the large loss budget basically flow through to the bottom line at the end of the year if it came in below budget.

[Jan Wicke, executive]

Yes. First of all, yes, the systematic of the large loss budgeting is the following. We are booking the higher of budget or incurred losses during the quarters. But at the year-end, we always book what was incurred. So if there will be never a buffer in the year-end figures, on the large losses. So there, we always report what I think credit is just in between the years. And if you take this Baltimore Bridge as an example, when we do not know exactly, given that there are different reports on the claims situation and so on and what is covered, then we book here budget in the quarter, but at the year-end, it's incurred. And we will then, yes, we will let that flow through the bottom line.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Michael Huttner from Berenberg.

[Michael Huttner, analyst]

Wonderful results. Just a little question. So on the Baltimore Bridge, you seem to have some kind of idea of what the loss profile might look like. I just wonder if you could share as much as you can. I understand there's uncertainty. But do you remember actually gave us a figure of EUR 1.5 billion, you said that's not [indiscernible] under EUR 100 million. Maybe you've got some kind of your share or whatever it is would be very helpful. And the second on the Brazil floods, something similar, I know it's really early days, and you're saying they're helping as much as possible. I think my colleague estimated for Mexico somewhere around EUR 10 million is the figure-- would your figure be very, very different from that? On the other point, the return on equity in Germany is incredible, given that German Motors is clearly still a challenge. Clearly, the Life business, which is where all cash is, is doing really well. I just wondered whether you can give a feel for how much more cash you can distribute out of that and what was the figure last year? And then on the-- 2 last questions, sorry. The solvency is extraordinary, 217% you've done deals and everything. What's the deal kind of expectation? I remember a year ago, you were kind of thinking Mexico is still not top 5 or maybe specialty in the U.S., and maybe you can give some view for it? And then my final question, could you give us the split of capital the SCR between market risk and product?

[Jan Wicke, executive]

And Michael, we didn't quite catch your second question because there was no...

[Michael Huttner, analyst]

Sorry, yes, it's me. I think it was on the cash flow. So the Retail Germany is very good despite Life not being fantastic. So my guess is the Life is beating. And I just wondered what the cash coming from Life is at the moment annually and how much it could go?

[Jan Wicke, executive]

Okay. Michael, I will try to answer your question to the best of my knowledge, yes. With regard to the Baltimore Bridge, we are a little bit reluctant to send out numbers here. Given that there are discussions first about the size of the damage and second about what is covered here. But we are very, very confident that this will be covered within the large loss budget of Hannover Re. So we are a little bit reluctant here, and you can also read that in the press that in particular, discussions about what is covered are ongoing as a reinsurer or Hannover Re as a reinsurer of P&C clubs and so on will take its part out of this discussion. I think the second question, which are not 100% understood was related to the floods in Brazil. Was that right?

[Michael Huttner, analyst]

Yes.

[Jan Wicke, executive]

So we do not know yet. Wilm and I, we had a discussion with the local management yesterday, the situation there is really very critical for the people because there's still more rain expected. So it's not yet over. What we see there. Currently, our expectation would be, at least for the primary group, a double-digit million claim. We do not know how much will then be in our group balance sheet via Hannover Re. So this process not yet finished. Currently, our focus is there, in particular in Brazil, we are #2 in Brazil to help the people and to provide for support. Also, we did some donations there because it's a very critical situation. With regard to Retail Germany, you're pretty right. The dividend contribution to the holding is very good. Last year, we had some extraordinary effect. Therefore, the contribution was above EUR 200 million. This year, we would expect something in between EUR 150 million and EUR 175 million to be contributed from Retail Germany to the local GAAP results of the holding company, also a very strong development, and we are happy with the development, what we see there with regards to the Life entities. And we also pointed out with regard to Motors, you're right, the combined ratio still stands above 100%. So there are additional activities underway in order to profitabilize the portfolio, but our local team, they have taken actions on that one. With regard to the solvency development, which is indeed very pleasing, and you have asked a little bit for our growth appetite for the future for external growth. If I got that right, then it's still true. Mexico would be something where we would like to add something to the portfolio. And the other areas where we are always looking is whether we can strengthen Industrial Lines even a little bit more, but the organic development is quite outstanding. So there is no need for it. But if there is an opportunity, we would at least have a look at it on that one Finally, you had a question with regard to the SCR development. And so the share of market risk is around 43% of the overall risk capital usage. So it's well below 50%, which is the internal.

[Michael Huttner, analyst]

Just one clarification. The cash figures. These are over EUR 200 million is just the figure receivable in '24? Or was it a figure received in 2023?

[Jan Wicke, executive]

No. Above EUR 200 million was the figure of 2023 and paid out in 2024. So cash wise in 2024 booked in the balance sheet is 2023. And the EUR 170 million-- up EUR 150 million to EUR 175 million is for 2024, which will be then cash relevant in 2025.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Roland Pfänder from ODDO BHF.

[Roland Pfänder, analyst]

Two questions from my side, please. Coming back to Industrial Lines. If I look at the combined ratio improvement, this is more or less driven by the expense ratio and not the loss ratio. Maybe you could explain what are the drivers on this? Secondly, how much of the discount tailwind in Industrial Lines did you put into reserves? And maybe you could explain a little bit the trends in your specialty insurance business and Industrial Lines in terms of revenue growth, technical profitability, pricing environment, all these things? And last question on German Motor. You mentioned there are some new initiatives going on to fix it. Could you maybe elaborate what they're doing here?

[Jan Wicke, executive]

First of all, Industrial Lines developments, we are really very, very strong. And you are right. We have a continuous focus on cost management, which is in the DNA of our group. We want to be a cost leader. This is our key value proposition here because this provides for better growth opportunities also in this business and will provide also for stability if the markets get softer, Currently, we have no signs for that one. So with regards to the reserves, we have continued quite conservative bookkeeping in the first quarter. I cannot give you a number or some color on how much resiliency it is because that would require a full analytical review on that one. But the overall mindset there is pretty conservative. And I would expect that in line also with the growth of Industrial Lines, overall book, you will see also an increase in resiliencies in the next year. With regard to the specialty business, there, it's really a little bit of discussion line by line. You have to have a look on which line how the profitability in the lines are. In the last year, we have a little bit reduced our appetite towards NatCat because not all of the MGA. So in the specialty business, we have 2 lines with the single line business, and we have the delegated authority business. And in the delegated authority business, there was some MGAs, the mixed performance in getting the price increases to the level where we wanted to see it. And this is why we have reduced a little bit our exposure to NatCat in the years. Currently, we see in some lines, also some D&O was mentioned quite often some pressure on prices. And obviously, we have a focus on profitability. And so as long as we perceive this as being profitable, we are part of the coverage, and we will reduce that also in case of when we perceive it to be not profitable. The profitability will remain key. But nevertheless, we are growing specialty business overall. And with regard to the cost development also in specialty businesses. We want to be a cost leader. And given the growth, what we've seen in the past years, the asset degression of fixed costs in this business also, which also contributes to a very good cost position, which we can see there. So I hope that I have given you some color to the questions you have raised, Roland. Can you hear me?

[Roland Pfänder, analyst]

Yes. [Technical Difficulty] just on the motor book…

[Jan Wicke, executive]

Sorry, I forgot about the motor book. I'm sorry. Sorry, you're right. Sorry, the line seems-- I hope I can be understood very well, but it's difficult to listen to your question. Yes, the motor book in Germany. So in Germany, we have increased the prices with a double-digit rate already. We perceive this as being even the first price increase, which was due in the renewal at the beginning of this year, not enough. So there will be additional price increase on top. We do a tougher segmentation so the spread-- a more differentiated pricing, which will lead to the situation that in some parts of the book, the price increases will be higher double digit than in other parts. So what does that mean? We are ready to give up some volume for the benefit of better profitability. And this is why the outlook with regard to the revenue growth in the P&C book for Retail Germany is just flat or stable. And maybe, Roland, we have difficulty in hearing you if maybe you can rejoin if we haven't properly answered, but I think we covered the questions And I will now turn to the webcast questions. There are 2 raised by Hadley from Deutsche. Hadley has 2 questions. One is related to industry lines business. Going back to the full year '23 call, the impression was that Industrial Lines combined ratio could be closer to 90% on an underlying basis, particularly given resiliency but now full and therefore, more should feed through the bottom line. Even though the full budget was booked in Q1 is normal. Why are we not yet seeing a better reported combined ratio here? Are there any nuances or seasonality effects we should be aware of? So that was question one. Let me start with question one right away. Please note that we have a gross net combined ratio here for Industrial Lines. If you compare that to peers, you very often-- our Industrial Lines business is compared to net-net combined ratios, which pretty much makes sense given that your IRFS captive business in Industrial Lines. And the net-net combined ratio of industrial lines for the first quarter is 87.4%, which is at least for me, not a bad number, and we are very happy with the nice margins, which we see here. That was question one. Question two is related to our M&A strategy going forward. What is your appetite for M&A wait from LatAm now that Liberty secures have been closed. Can you talk about the health of your current pipeline in Europe and how we should think about excess capital deployment more broadly? Talanx will continue to grow its business first organically, but also we are open for doing acquisitions, but all the acquisitions have to fulfill certain profitability yardsticks. So I will not explain our M&A pipeline in detail. I just want to mention that a further strengthening in Retail International and also in Industrial Lines would be well perceived. We would also love to strengthen our business in Germany if there would be an opportunity. But unfortunately, we haven't seen any opportunity in the German market for the past years. So I would like to keep it with that one.

[Operator]

We have a follow-up question from Mr. Huttner. Mr. Huttner, please go ahead.

[Michael Huttner, analyst]

Just on the CSM I know it's a bit of a technical subject. Any discussion or any explanation. The thing I noted, for example, is the value of new business sell quite a bit, so from EUR 78 million to million something, but who knows what [indiscernible] this first year you reported last year. But also, to understand what is the kind of normalized growth of CSM and how you see it progressing?

[Jan Wicke, executive]

Okay. Michael, I have to admit that we seem to have some technical problems here, which make it difficult to understand. We have seen that also with Roland. If I understood you correctly...

[Michael Huttner, analyst]

So on the CSM, can you give us a little bit more color on the growth there and the value business sale? But the CSM did rise. Any color on the expected growth and would be helpful.

[Jan Wicke, executive]

Yes. Sure. I need to-- one second, I have to look into my numbers, this regard to this. So overall, the CSM development is heavily influenced by Hannover Re given that CSM development in the GMM is much more prominent compared to the PAA approach, which we use in the primary group for our P&C business. So we have a CSM development on the one hand side, P&C business, Hannover Re second side is a Life business, Hannover Re, Life reinsurance. And finally, we have some minor parts in the in the Life business of Retail Germany and Retail International. So the majority of the CSM development is derived as the increase of 10% is derived from the new business, which is EUR 1.4 billion during the course of the first quarter. And with regard to the structure, where does it come from, the majority is coming from Hannover Re about EUR 1 billion, and the rest is derived from the other part of the group.

[Michael Huttner, analyst]

And then last question. What's happening in Turkey? I think you or maybe it was [indiscernible] at the full year, said Turkey in its own currency is doing fine, translated into euros terms. Is there any update here?

[Jan Wicke, executive]

Yes. So we have seen fantastic progress in a very, very difficult market. So high inflation markets for insurance business is really a challenge. So we have now turned to profitability in Turkey, also in euro terms, yes. And I think it was really a great job of our team of our team in Turkey. Nevertheless, the profitability, if you look into the details, we still see combined ratios above 100%. But the investment income benefit leads to a situation that the overall result is a positive fund.

[Operator]

That was our last question, and I would like to hand back to Bernd Sablowsky.

[Bernd Sablowsky, executive]

All right. Thank you very much. So this was our Q1 results call. Be reminded, we check out a video format next time. And with that, a final word from Jan to conclude on a set of numbers. I guess we are pleased with it, right Jan?

[Jan Wicke, executive]

Yes. We are very pleased with the first quarter. I have to add is just a quarter I would love to have every quarter like this, given that we could show both earnings growth and even better bottom-line growth. The substance of the capital base of the company is very, very strong. So we can cope with the unexpected. And so, we are very confident with regard to delivering on our guidance. And thank you for your questions, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day.