MetLife to miss CEO’s profit target

(AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

(Bloomberg) — MetLife Inc. will probably miss its target of having a 12 percent return on equity next year, Chief Executive Officer Steve Kandarian said.

The ROE will probably be about 11 percent in 2016, Kandarian said Thursday in a conference call held by the New York-based company.

“The 10-Year Treasury yield has been hovering around 2 percent, the regulatory environment remains uncertain, and it is unlikely that M&A will contribute as much to earnings as we had hoped,” Kandarian said. “With only eight months to go until 2016, we believe that it is appropriate to reflect these realities in the ROE.”

MetLife projected in 2012 that ROE would climb to a range of 12 percent to 14 percent by 2016, in part by expanding through mergers and acquisitions. The scale of deals has been lower than planned, Kandarian said, adding that the insurer will be a “disciplined buyer.”

Interest rates have been near record lows, limiting income from the company’s portfolio of more than $500 billion in investments, mostly in fixed-income holdings.

The insurer has fought against a designation as a potential too-big-to-fail risk, which could lead to tighter capital and liquidity requirements.

MetLife has authorized $2 billion of share repurchases since the ROE goal was announced in 2012, a quarter of the total that the company had forecast through 2016.

“We have been cautious on share repurchases because capital requirements remain unknown for non-bank systemically important financial institutions,” Kandarian said on the call. “We’ve not yet seen draft capital rules, and there is no clarity on when those rules will be issued.”

MetLife slipped 1.9 percent to $50.78 at 9:38 a.m. in New York, extending its drop for the year to 6.1 percent. The company reported yesterday that first-quarter net income advanced 63 percent to $2.16 billion on derivative gains.

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