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Earnings Calls: 
CIGNA Earnings Call, Second Quarter 2008
Author: Rozalina Destanova
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Last Update: 4:24 AM ET August 06 2008

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Revenue rose to $4.86 billion from $4.38 billion a year ago. Excluding one-time gains and charges, the company earned $1.08 per share in the latest quarter, a 10% increase over the same period in 2007. Aggregate medical membership increased by 19% year-to-date, primarily because of 1.8 million members related to the acquisition of Great-West Healthcare earlier this year for $1.5 billion.


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Justin Lake (UBS): Does the $3 billion number include all the ancillary?

Mike Bell: That is correct.

Douglas Simpson (Merrill Lynch): In the Health Care segment profit if we look at the $715 million the mid-point of the range for this year directionally if we then said Great-West is going to add about $100 million incremental from 2008 to 2009 that gets us to an $815 million number that would be about 15% growth year over year. Is that a reasonable starting point?

Mike Bell: The components that you are talking about are in fact reasonable again just to reiterate we prefer not to give specific numbers at this point. We do expect to give specific numbers on the third quarter call. To flush out your list more the list of plusses and minuses are longer than what you described. You are right on Great-West; we are modeling $100 to $125 million of earnings growth 2008 to 2007 for Great-West. We do expect continued specialty earnings growth to increase ASO earnings just like we have seen this year. We do expect better margins in ER than what we have gotten so far this year. I would rather no try to dimension the number there but we do expect better there. Remember we are going to get the benefit of the transformation amortization rolling off and as we have talked about previously that is approximately $30 million or so after tax. The final part I would list here is the segment expansions. This year we expect a drain of $15 to $20 million of after tax we have invested in individual, small group and seniors. Next year we expect that to be modestly accretive so that would be a positive. Going the other way though it is important to note two things. One would be that we do expect higher IT expenses. Our entire sector is investing in additional technology capabilities to capitalize on this market need for additional consumer engagement, help advocacy. This requires additional technology than what we have had or the sector has had historically. In addition, the other wild card is the challenging economy and the competitive pricing environment which will particularly have an impact on guaranteed costs. We have got some work to do in terms of the sizing out the various plusses and minuses but that is at a high level on our plus, minus for Health Care for 2009.

David Cordani: If you look at 2009 we do view the marketplace is going to continue to be challenging both competitively the economy, etc. Having said that we have a wonderful growth catalyst in Great-West with the diversity of the earnings stream beyond that from the Disability and International businesses, we expect to continue to stay strong. I would reiterate Mike’s point that presents the opportunity for us to have attractive earnings growth and invest back in ourselves and technology, further segment expansion and so we are well positioned for 2009 and beyond.

Douglas Simpson (Merrill Lynch): In the prepared remarks there was a comment that the plusses and minuses was we have the operating expense up tick for the HIT but on the other hand you expect operating expense reductions. Could you help us think out netting the two of those?

Mike Bell: At this point I prefer not to be specific there. We have got some important work to do over the next 60 days. I do believe that directionally there is going to be increased pressure for us to spend more on IT. This year we would expect to spend more on the segment expansion. Next year I believe that will turn into accretive earnings. You are absolutely right, we do expect that we need to reduce operating expenses further. We know we need to improve our competitive operating expense position in 2009 that is likely going to require additional reductions here in 2008.

Charles Boorady (Citigroup): Can you talk about your network re-contracting progress On Great-West and what your assumptions are in your 2009 Great-West guidance that you gave for net loss ratio improvement in the degree to which that come from pricing versus re-contracting the network?

David Cordani: I will start with the networking contracting and medical cost improvement. First, as we think about the total medical cost improvement it is important to note that we are looking at that as the improvement of the total medical costs. Network optimization, clinical model optimization, provider service model optimization and it is built on both Great-West and CIGNA having a good track record of servicing the doctors and hospitals so we are able to build off that. Second, as we suggested in the past, it is not going to transpire over night we we are on a methodical path to see improvement in 2008 and 2009. Our expectations are to see some improvement in 2008 in order magnitude of the total opportunity that we expect we can improve medical costs around 20% of that we will incur in 2008.

Mike Bell: Regarding the MLR for 2009 to give some additional background we expect that stop loss premiums next year ball park will be approximately $800 million for the full year. What we are modeling is an improvement in earnings contribution from an improved MLR in the $50 to $65 million after tax range. That is what is embedded in the $150 to $175 million projection for 2009 that I gave in the prepared remarks. We are about to embark on literally market to market plans to sort out our product strategy, our pricing strategies here for 2009 so we have got some important decisions to make around the pricing and membership trade off here for 2009. We believe that the $50 to $65 million is achievable. It would improve the MLR but not to the level actually that we have historically run at CIGNA. Therefore, while there is more work to come and we will update this again at third quarter. We do expect this to be achievable.

Charles Boorady (Citigroup): Is the fourth quarter still when you expect the most noise in the ER results?

Mike Bell: I do not expect that there would be a tremendous amount of noise in the fourth quarter results. I do think that we will see additional improvement in the third quarter from the pricing and underwriting actions that we have targeted. We do expect net yields for the second half of the year for ER to be in the 8.5% to 9% range compared to the 6% to 7% that we achieved in the first half of the year. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head that would specifically impact fourth quarter would be that given the increase in the percentage of the book that is now in high deductible plans. I could conceive of an up tick in medical costs sequentially third to fourth but we have modeled that in terms of the full year. We expect the full year medical costs for just he ER book to be approximately 8% and that is picked up the phenomenon I just described is included at a higher level in the fourth quarter estimates.
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