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F500-2021-175-Marsh & McLennan

The global professional services firm, which in April rebranded to Marsh McLennan, has businesses in insurance brokerage, risk management, reinsurance services, talent management, investment advisory, and management consulting.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

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This professional services giant oversees businesses including risk management companies Marsh and Guy Carpenter and consulting firms Mercer and Oliver Wyman Group.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

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This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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Marsh &amp; McLennan is a professional services company that provides advisory and insurance solutions to clients in the areas of risk, strategy, and people. Founded in 1871, Marsh &amp; McLennan operates across four major businesses—Marsh, Guy Carpenter, Mercer, and Oliver Wyman—serving clients in more than 130 countries.

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Marsh & McLennan (MRSH): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Marsh & McLennan

marsh & mclennan

Welcome to Marsh McLennan's Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. Second quarter twenty twenty five financial results and supplemental information were issued earlier this morning. They are available on the company's website at marshmaclennan.com. Please note that today's remarks may include forward looking statements.

Forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and a variety of factors may cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by such statements. For a more detailed discussion of those factors, please refer to our earnings release for this quarter and to our most recent SEC filings, including our most recent Form 10 ks, all of which are available on the Marsh McLennan website. During the call today, we may also discuss certain non GAAP financial measures. For a reconciliation of these measures to the most closely comparable GAAP measures, please refer to the schedule in today's earnings release. If you have a question, please press 11 on your touch tone phone.

If you wish to be removed from the queue, please press 11 again. If you are using a speaker phone, you may need to pick up the handset before pressing the numbers. Once again, if you have a question, please press 11 on your touchtone phone. I'll now turn this over to John Doyle, President and CEO of Marsh McLennan.

Good morning and thank you for joining us to discuss our second quarter results reported earlier today. I'm John Doyle, President and CEO of Marsh McLennan. On the call with me is Mark McGivney, our CFO and the CEOs of our businesses: Martin South of Marsh Dean Klasour of Guy Carpenter, Pat Tomlinson of Mercer and Nick Steuter of Oliver Wyman. Also with us this morning is Jay Geld, Head of Investor Relations. Marsh McLennan had a solid second quarter.

As we said coming into the year, we anticipated impacts from a changing macro environment and our performance continues to track well with our expectations. Overall, we grew revenue 12% in the quarter, reflecting continued momentum in our business and contributions from an active year of acquisitions in 2024. Underlying revenue increased 4% for the quarter. I was pleased with our execution, especially given the impact of lower fiduciary interest income, declining P and C pricing and market uncertainty affecting our clients, especially here in The U. S.

Adjusted operating income increased 14% from a year ago. Our adjusted operating margin increased 50 basis points compared to the second quarter of twenty twenty four, and adjusted EPS grew 11%. Turning to the macro environment, the global economic outlook remains uncertain as we move into the second half of the year. Ground wars, culture wars, trade wars, extreme weather, and the opportunities and risks from the rapid development of AI are creating complex operating conditions. Oliver Wyman recently teamed up with the New York Stock Exchange to see how CEOs are thinking about and responding to the challenges they face.

165 CEOs responded on topics ranging from managing geopolitical instability and supply chain disruption to capturing value from AI. In all, 89% of CEOs rated geopolitics, along with trade and industrial policies, as a risk to their company, up 20 percentage points from 2024. CEOs are focused on extracting growth in a slowing economy and a more complex geopolitical environment, while tightly managing costs and spending more time on near term issues. While the environment presents challenges for our clients, it also provides Marsh McLennan with an opportunity to support them. We are advising clients on near and long term strategies and guiding them on growth and building resilience during this dynamic period.

This includes analyzing supply chain risks and helping them consider the impacts of AI on their workforce. Together, we can transform these challenges into opportunities. I also want to take a moment to address the current litigation environment in The US. Excessive litigation and the abuse of our legal system are effectively imposing a tax on our economy and causing a surge in US liability insurance costs. US already has the highest liability insurance rates in the world, and escalating costs will only make it harder for companies to decide to invest and grow here.

And for those that do, they will ultimately have to pass along these increased costs to consumers. Our tort system is intended to provide fair compensation to injured parties who have been wronged. But too often, we see tort litigation backed by a vast and growing industry with outside investors. The result in many cases is that aggrieved parties see less than half of the settlement awards. Our clients are feeling the effects of this growing problem.

Consider the rise of so called nuclear verdicts. Cases exceeding $100,000,000 have grown 400% over the past decade, according to the US Chamber of Commerce. This trend is encouraging more lawsuits and blockbuster verdicts, which drive up insurance costs. In fact, in 2024, US liability insurance experienced the most severe adverse reserve development of any single line of coverage since the two thousand and eight global financial crisis. This was more than double the amount from the previous year.

And over the past decade, US excess casualty insurance rates have increased by a cumulative 150. Addressing these tort abuses will be challenging and take time. We are committed to working with the business community and policymakers to tackle this challenge. Now turning to insurance market conditions, overall rates continue to decrease, particularly in property insurance and property cat reinsurance. According to the Marsh Global Insurance Market Index, commercial insurance rates decreased 4% in the second quarter, driven by property, despite a surge in cat losses in the first six months of the year.

This follows a 3% decline in the first quarter of twenty twenty five. As a reminder, our index skews to large account business. Overall, rates in The US were flat. Latin America, Europe, UK and Asia were all down mid single digits and Pacific was down double digits. Global casualty rates increased 4%, with US excess casualty up 18%, reflecting the previously mentioned liability environment.

Workers' compensation decreased by 4%. Global property rates decreased by 7% year over year, compared to a 6% decrease last quarter. Global financial and professional liability rates were down 4%, while cyber decreased 7%. In reinsurance, mid year renewal rates decreased by 5% to 15% for non loss impacted programs. A moderate increase in client demand was offset by reinsurers increasing capacity, as well as increased cedent cap bond issuance.

The cap bond market is on pace for a record year of issuance, with over 50 new bonds in the first half involving approximately $17,000,000,000 of limit. In U. S. Casualty reinsurance, renewals were largely stable with sufficient capacity, reflecting the underwriting actions of primary carriers. As always, we continue to help our clients navigate a range of market conditions.

Now let me turn to our second quarter financial performance and outlook, which Mark will cover in more detail. Consolidated revenue increased 12% to $7,000,000,000 and grew 4% on an underlying basis, with 4% growth in RIS and 3% growth in consulting. Marsh was up 5%, Guy Carpenter grew 5%, Mercer three percent and Oliver Wyman was up 3%. We had adjusted operating income growth of 14% and we generated adjusted EPS in the quarter of $2.72 which is up 11% from a year ago. We also announced a 10% increase to our quarterly dividend to $0.90 and completed $300,000,000 of share repurchases during the quarter.

Turning to our outlook for 2025, we continue to expect to deliver mid single digit underlying revenue growth, solid growth in adjusted EPS, and our eighteenth consecutive year of reported margin expansion. Of course, this outlook is based on conditions today and the economic backdrop could turn out to be materially different than our assumptions. In summary, we are pleased with our first half performance in a complex and dynamic macro environment. We're confident that the enduring value we provide to clients makes our business resilient even during times of economic uncertainty. Our collection of capabilities is unique and there are strong client demand around the world for our advice and solutions.

We believe we are the best positioned company in our markets, and we've earned our leadership position through one hundred and fifty four years of innovation and growth. Our discipline to invest for the future while delivering consistent results is not new. It's a fundamental philosophy that guides our planning and capital allocation. With that, let me turn it over to Mark for a more detailed review of our results.

Thank you, John, and good morning. Our second quarter results were solid, reflecting our strong position and execution, despite a more challenging environment. Consolidated revenue increased 12% to $7,000,000,000 with underlying growth of 4%. Operating income was $1,800,000,000 and adjusted operating income was $2,100,000,000 up 14%. Our adjusted operating margin increased 50 basis points to 29.5%.

GAAP EPS was $2.45 and adjusted EPS was $2.72 up 11% over last year. For the first six months of twenty twenty five, underlying revenue growth was 4%, adjusted operating income grew 11% to $4,300,000,000 our adjusted operating margin increased 20 basis points, and adjusted EPS increased 8% to $5.78 Looking at Risk and Insurance Services, second quarter revenue was $4,600,000,000 up 15% from a year ago or 4% on an underlying basis. Operating income in RIS was 1,400,000,000.0 Adjusted operating income was $1,600,000,000 up 16% over last year, and the adjusted operating margin expanded 30 basis points to 35.6%. The first six months of the year, revenue in RIS was $9,400,000,000 with underlying growth 4%. Adjusted operating income increased 12% to $3,500,000,000 and adjusted operating margin was 36.9%.

At Marsh, revenue in the quarter was $3,800,000,000 up 18% from a year ago or 5% on an underlying basis. This comes on top of 7% underlying growth in the second quarter of last year and was a good result given the softening rate environment in property, as well as uncertainty in the economic outlook, especially in The U. S. In U. S.

And Canada, underlying growth was 4% for the quarter. In international, underlying growth remained excellent at 7%, with EMEA up 8%, Asia Pacific up 4%, and Latin America up 3%. For the first six months of the year, Marsh's revenue was $7,300,000,000 with underlying growth of 5%. US and Canada grew 4% and international was up 6%. Guy Carpenter's revenue in the quarter was $677,000,000 up 7% from a year ago or 5% on an underlying basis.

Growth remained solid despite softer reinsurance market conditions and came on top of 11% growth underlying growth in the second quarter of last year. For the first six months of the year, Guy Carpenter generated $1,900,000,000 of revenue and 5% underlying growth. In the consulting segment, second quarter revenue was $2,400,000,000 up 7% or 3% on an underlying basis. Consulting operating income was $456,000,000 and adjusted operating income was $479,000,000 up 9%. Our adjusted operating margin in consulting was 20.2%, up 40 basis points from a year ago.

For the first six months, consulting revenue was $4,700,000,000 reflecting underlying growth of four percent. Adjusted operating income increased 9% to $970,000,000 and the adjusted operating margin increased 40 basis points to 20.7%. Mercer's revenue was $1,500,000,000 in the quarter, up 9% or 3% on an underlying basis. Health grew seven percent, reflecting continued solid growth across all regions. Wealth was up 2% led by Investment Management.

Our assets under management were $670,000,000,000 at the end of the second quarter, up 9% sequentially and up 36% compared to the second quarter of last year. Year over year growth was driven by our acquisitions of Cardano and C Corp, positive net flows and the impact of capital markets and foreign exchange. Career was down 5% in the quarter, reflecting continued softness in project related work in The U. S. And Canada.

For the first six months of the year, revenue at Mercer was $3,000,000,000 with 3% underlying growth. Oliver Wyman's revenue in the second quarter was $873,000,000 up 5% or 3% on an underlying basis, led by solid growth in The U. S. For the first six months of the year, revenue at Oliver Wyman was $1,700,000,000 an increase of 4% on an underlying basis. Fiduciary interest income was $99,000,000 in the quarter, down $26,000,000 compared with the second quarter last year, reflecting lower interest rates.

Looking ahead to the third quarter, based on the current environment, we expect fiduciary interest income will be approximately 105,000,000 Foreign exchange had a de minimis effect on adjusted EPS in the second quarter. Exchange rates have been volatile, making it challenging to predict their impact looking forward. However, based on current rates, we anticipate FX will have a minimal impact on adjusted EPS in the third quarter and will be a modest benefit in the fourth quarter. Turning to our McGriff transaction. Our integration continues to go well and we are pleased with McGriff's year to date performance.

We continue to expect that McGriff will be modestly accretive to adjusted EPS for full year 2025, becoming more meaningfully accretive in 2026 and beyond. We still expect noteworthy charges associated with McGriff of approximately $450,000,000 to $500,000,000 in total through 2027, with the vast majority of these costs associated with retention incentives, a significant portion of which was put in place by the seller. As is our convention, we are excluding McGriff from our underlying growth calculations for the first year. Total noteworthy items in the second quarter were $88,000,000 the majority of which were acquisition related Interest expense in the second quarter was $243,000,000 up from $156,000,000 in the second quarter of twenty twenty four. This increase reflects higher levels of debt associated with the McGriff transaction.

Based on our current forecast, we expect interest expense will be approximately $240,000,000 in the third quarter. Our adjusted effective tax rate in the second quarter was 25.3%. This compares with twenty six point two percent in the second quarter last year. Excluding discrete items, our adjusted effective tax rate was approximately 25.5%. We continue to expect an adjusted effective tax rate of between 2526% in 2025, excluding discrete items.

Turning to capital management. Our balance sheet, we ended the quarter with total debt of $19,700,000,000 Our net scheduled debt maturity is in the first quarter of twenty twenty six, with $600,000,000 of senior notes mature. Our cash position at the end of the second quarter was 1,700,000,000.0 Uses of cash in the quarter totaled $776,000,000 and included $4.00 $5,000,000 for dividends, 71,000,000 for acquisitions, and $300,000,000 for share repurchases. For the first six months, uses of cash totaled 1,600,000,000 and included $810,000,000 for dividends, 166,000,000 for acquisitions, and $600,000,000 for share repurchases. We continue to expect to deploy approximately $4,500,000,000 of capital in 2025 across dividends, acquisitions and share repurchases.

The ultimate level of share repurchase will depend on how our M and A pipeline develops. Last week, we announced a 10% increase in our quarterly dividend, making this our sixteenth consecutive year of dividend increases. This reflects our solid earnings growth and confidence in our outlook. Overall, we are pleased with our second quarter results. For the full year, we continue to expect mid single digit underlying revenue growth, margin expansion, and solid growth in adjusted EPS.

However, as John mentioned, this outlook is based on conditions today, and the economic backdrop, especially in light of continued uncertainty around global trade policies, could turn out to be materially different than our assumptions. With that, I'm happy to turn it back to John.

Thank you, Mark. Andrew, we're ready to begin Q and A.

All right, wonderful. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to be removed from the queue, please press 11 again. If you're using a speaker phone, you may need to pick up the handset before pressing the numbers. Once again, if you have a question, please press 11 on your touch tone phone.

And in the interest of addressing questions from as many participants as possible, we ask that participants limit themselves to one question and one follow-up question. One moment, please. Our first question comes from the line of Gregory Peters with Raymond James.

Good morning, everyone. So my first question, in your comments, John, you talked about the pricing index being down 4% in the second quarter on top of being down 3% in the first quarter. Are you seeing anywhere in the system upward pressure on pricing? Or if we look forward over the next twelve to eighteen months, are we going to continually see these low single digit rate decreases in the broader market?

Yes, good morning, Greg. Thanks for the question. Insurance and reinsurance markets for the most part continue to soften a bit in the second quarter. We talked or I mentioned at least a little bit of the reinsurance market, it's pretty stable or consistent price decreases through the first half of the year, largely driven by property. Where we're seeing more rate pressure on the retail side of course is in property as well.

The big exception, and I spoke to it, is in excess casualty. And it's in part why I keep talking about The US litigation environment. It's a high cost of risk to operate here in The United States. The liability environment is one part of it. We have more of our economy, more of our population here in The US exposed to extreme weather events and that's been disruptive to our economy.

Healthcare related risk continues to escalate quite a bit as well. All are among the most, if not the most expensive in the world. And so, at a time when our country is focused on investing in infrastructure and investing in technology. These are meaningful costs on clients. And we see them in our own business too.

And so, I think it's important for us to talk about it. The liability comments were in part driven by the recent legislation in the one big beautiful bill. There was a proposed amendment by Senator Tillis to change tax policy around litigation financing. I mentioned right now many cases, an injured party gets less than 50% of the outcome of a settlement. That injured party, by the way, pays ordinary income tax in The United States.

A lit funder pays capital gains, a foreign investor pays zero tax. So it was a missed opportunity, it wasn't the only thing, there's other things that need to happen, and we're focused on this for our clients. So I expect casualty pricing to continue to be under pressure for our clients and rates to continue to grow. I also spoke to the active first half of cats, right? While prices are down now over time, pricing is gonna track along with the growing cost of risk here in The United States.

And so it's difficult to predict over six months or twelve months period, but there's no question in my mind, there's a rising cost of risk environment here in The United States. Do you have a follow-up?

Yes, do, of course. I'm gonna pivot to the Mercer segment and I just wanted to pick apart or have you provide more detail on the wealth and career components of organic. I guess, you know, I was listening to Mark's comments about AUM being up. I think he said 36% year over year in wealth, yet we're only seeing 2% organic revenue growth. So I'm trying to understand the connection there.

And then on Career, I think that's probably a little bit more of your more economically sensitive business, but maybe you could speak to the outlook for both of those businesses, please.

Yeah, sure, Greg. Thanks for the question. Yeah, I think overall for the company, we had a terrific quarter of growth again, 12% on a consolidated basis, good good solid underlying effort, Marsh and GC. Parts of our consulting businesses where there maybe even more discretionary spend, you will, parts of career, parts of our business at Oliver Wyman as well, notably branding, for example, are some of the softer parts that are more exposed to not just the declining economy, but just some of the uncertainty as many big businesses in The US are playing a bit of defense. We had a terrific quarter of growth in health at Mercer.

But Pat, maybe you could talk a little bit about what you're seeing in both career and in the investment business.

Great. Thanks, John, and thanks for the question, Greg. Let start with wealth since that seems to be the spot you started a little bit more detail in your question. It's important to note that the wealth business is a portfolio of services across defined benefits, pension consulting, investment advisory services, and OCIO. So you mentioned AUM, only the OCIO business segment for the revenue there are we compensated by AUM.

So that's the only spot that that impacts that first off. Overall wealth, Mark mentioned, we grew 2% in Q2, driven by the growth in our investments business, particularly the OSA offering, tied to AUM. We were challenged by some tougher comps in the DB pension consulting work. Now, while we have mentioned in the past that the defined benefits pension space is in structural decline, in recent years we've actually seen an increase in demand for project based consulting on the back of higher plan funded statuses that has been driven by higher interest rates, as well as there's been a bump in regulatory requirements in certain jurisdictions around the world. Now this year, the demand for that type of work that I've described is starting to slow specifically in The US and in The UK as clients look to pause discretionary project work due to shifting priorities in the macro environment.

And then there's been slowing demand for those regulatory changes that I mentioned. Demand for the DC type plan solutions, so think of master trusts in Australia or The UK or things like 401Ks in The United States, those continue to grow. And we're also advancing our investment advice and OCO solutions for diversified asset owners. So there it's insurers, endowments and foundations, family office, wealth management, those types of asset owners. Now, OCIO tied to AUM has been a strong growth engine for Mercer over the long term, and over the past year we've seen strong net inflows both organically and inorganically, and the 36% that Mark had mentioned included our inorganic and our growth rate we exclude that.

So that's a component there that likely ties to that component. And while capital markets, they've been volatile in 2025, I would say they still provided us a bit of a year over year tailwind in Q2, so that's good. Bottom line, we really maintain that our capabilities and the value we're creating for clients here will continue to drive growth for us inside of this segment. So I think the difference between the 36% and the 9% that he talked about sequentially was really tied to the inorganic and organic component of the AUM growth. Now career, which is the second part of your question, I've got to provide a little bit of context on the career business to be able to answer that one.

First, it's a portfolio of offerings. So some of them are project based consulting assignments, so typically one time type things. And others are more product like offerings, so think here compensation benchmarking surveys, assessments, employee engagement surveys. And those tend to be more recurring in nature for the work we're doing for clients. Additionally, career is naturally prone to some seasonality in client work.

It's got a peak period, specifically around the annual comp and reward cycle that clients do as in their year end planning in late Q3 and in Q4. Now in this quarter, Mark had mentioned career contracted 5%. That was primarily driven by softness in project demand in The United States, which is facing a couple of market dynamics, which are more pronounced than we've seen in international. The first dynamic there is the current environment of economic uncertainty means that clients are less inclined to commit to larger, long term transformational HR technology projects and big programmatic changes, and we tend to do more of those projects in The United States. So there's the first impact.

The second is demand for talent and rewards projects tend to be higher during periods with higher inflation, which typically drives up wages, salaries, thinking about bonuses, things like that. And then also when we see higher voluntary employee turnover clients. So both of those activities both drive projects at employers as they look to attract, retain, and incent their workforce. The reality in the current employment market is we are seeing relatively low voluntary turnover at clients, and that is reducing the urgency for those types of projects. Now, this contraction I'm describing in US and Canada was partially offset by the growth we had in international, and we had growth across all three major areas of our business.

The talent work we do, the rewards work we do, and the transformation work we do across international. So we saw good solid growth there. We feel like we're the leading rewards consultant business in the world with real capabilities, expertise, and geographic reach. The business overall has performed well for us over the last few years. It's continuing to grow in international.

So we do remain confident about the longer term growth momentum that we see in our career business and the value we're going go ahead and be able to bring to

Thanks, Pat. So well positioned in both of our businesses, obviously exposed to some of the uncertainty in The U. S. And in our career business and then in our investment business, some structural issues with defined benefit growth in prior years. Thank you, Greg. Andrew, next question please.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Mike Zaremski with BMO.

Hey, thanks. Good morning. Question kind of maybe related to the first question, specifically on the RIS segment. So I want to make sure we're thinking about things correctly. So when we kind of think from a macro level about total organic growth in the IRS segment, usually we think nominal GDP is kind of the biggest corollary and very secondary kind of would be pricing power levels, since, you know, a lot of this is more fee based too. You know, would you agree with that kind of high level statement? Because I'm trying to think out the we can kind of have a view on pricing.

You've helped us with a view on pricing. The nominal GDP decline is lighter. Just wanna see if I'm missing anything maybe in terms of just talent hiring in the past or now or other Good

morning, Mike, and thanks for the question. I don't have any argument with the way you characterized it. I feel good about our execution, I feel good about how we're positioned. Our international growth was quite strong. What we're seeing here is in The United States, particularly upmarket and in more of our large account segment, if you will, you're seeing businesses defer project work, we're seeing slowdown in construction activity, M and A activity, IPOs, hiring has obviously slowed.

All those on some level are inputs. We have a macro environment, it is what it is. Power through it and continue to deliver solid results, but declining P and C pricing, slowing economic growth, interest rate headwinds with fiduciary interest income and moderating inflation as well, at least up until now. Obviously that's a hot debate in the world, but Martian GC 5% ex Vid, given some of those headwinds, feel good about that.

Got it. And my quick follow-up and I feel like you started off the call John saying performance tracked kind of in line with the expectations overall. I feel like the beauty of Marsh historically and currently is that you guys have had good line of sight into your revs, you'd be able to pull the expense levers accordingly. It sounds like from everything you're saying is, you know, there's obviously a lot of uncertainty, but you still feel like there's uncertainties at a level where you feel comfortable being able to manage the profit margin piece of the business. Is that fair?

Yeah, thanks Mike. I appreciate that. I think there was a compliment in there. I think there was a bit of debate about our guidance about the top line coming into the year. We didn't obviously know exactly what would unfold during the course of the year, but we did expect lower interest rates, lower P and C pricing, slightly slowing economy, probably more uncertainty has persisted that's impacted some of the more discretionary parts of our business.

But I feel good about the work we've done to, again, manage expense growth in a tighter environment. And we do a lot of scenario planning around tighter conditions. And by the way, we do scenario planning around more positive environments too, where how are we going to allocate capital if growth is above what our expectations are. I expect these conditions to persist in the second half. We'll see obviously what unfolds and 2026 will be a new year, right?

A lot that's going to happen around trade and geopolitically over the course of the next six months. And then we'll see what the environment looks like as we head into next year. But I feel good about how we're positioned. I feel good about how we're executing. We're continuing to invest.

It gets a little tighter obviously in moments like this, But we've consistently not only delivered margin expansion, but invested in our business over time. We try to get that balance right. Thank you, Mike. Andrew, next question.

Our next question comes from the line of Jamie Mueller with JPMorgan.

Hey, good morning. John, just on your comments on slowdown in IPOs and M and A and obviously your comps on growth have been tough as well. But just if we look at, at least, capital markets activity, it seems like it's troughed already. And obviously, next month could be different, but it seems like IPOs are picking up, M and A is picking up as well. Are you seeing that in your business as well?

And should we assume that your growth is close to troughing or is there still a lot of uncertainty Thanks,

Jimmy. I mean, M and A and IPOs are obviously just a component of much more complex macro picture. As we said, we continue to expect mid single digit underlying revenue growth, an eighteenth year margin expansion and solid growth in adjusted EPS. And we feel good about that outlook. We'll see as things move forward. Again,

I think we see it a bit more defensive posture in US businesses today, really just trying to find a leveling of, it's always uncertain, right? I mean, I think that word's probably been overused, including by myself during the course of this year. There's never certainty, but the level of uncertainty has been challenging for many of our clients. We're trying to help them navigate that and that's an opportunity as I mentioned, we'll see. I think it's too early to know whether we'll see a meaningful uptick in M and A activity or IPO activity or for that matter construction as well.

And then just relatedly on Guy Carpenter, the growth was fairly strong given tough comps. Is that more and that's despite a soft pricing environment. Is that more a function of just the fact that it's a low base? Or is the momentum in your business better than what pricing would suggest in reinsurance?

I'll ask Dean just to talk about the growth in the quarter, but I think we have the best team on the field, the best analytics in the business and ultimately it's a reflection of the confidence that our clients have in our ability to deliver value. Dean, maybe you can talk a little bit about growth in the quarter for Jimmy.

Yes. Thanks, John. Jimmy, look, we're pleased with our 5% growth in the quarter, as John noted. And as Mark noted, came on top of 11% growth in the second quarter of twenty twenty four. And it was a record new business quarter in the second quarter of twenty twenty four.

As respects this quarter, we saw really strong growth across our international platform. Exceptional growth in Latin America, exceptional growth in EMEA, strong growth in the London market in The UK, strong growth in Asia despite clear pricing headwinds in Japan and China on the April 1 renewal. New business is very strong. I mean, it's strong and it's balanced across our platform. As John noted, significant ILS activity, record cap bond growth in the quarter.

Guy Carpenter participated in 14 cap bond issuances in the quarter and twenty three year to date, which is a record for Guy Carpenter. We continue to see new opportunities in our capital and advisory practice. In the quarter, we won several mandates to raise third party capital for clients large and small in The US and London, a number of well known MGAs in particular. And we're winning M and A mandates, providing M and A advice and supporting activities for a number of those clients. And then I would say, of the headlines is property cat demand did ease up at the mid year renewal.

We sold an additional $5,000,000,000 of property cat limit through the mid year renewals, helping to drive the top line. We feel really good about our talent. As John noted, we're attracting top talent in the market. And we've got a great balanced organization. We feel good about our prospects.

Thank you, Dean. And thanks, Jimmy. Andrew, next question please.

Our next question comes from the line of David Motemaden with Evercore ISI.

Hey, thanks. Good morning. Was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about the strength within Marsh International overall and how durable you think it is. I heard the pricing was negative in a lot of the regions, but the growth continues to be solid. How long do you think that can sustain?

Yeah, thanks David and good morning. I'll ask Martin maybe to talk a little bit about growth. But again, overall, I was pleased with growth at Marsh in the quarter. You mentioned the pricing headwinds, but some other macro headwinds as well. And I feel good about our execution in this environment.

We're in many markets doing it in different ways, but building our capabilities in the middle market around the world, that's part of the growth. We're well positioned and well led outside of The US. Martin, maybe you can talk a little bit about the growth in the quarter.

Thank you, John. Yeah, very pleased with our international growth in the quarter. Seven on top of seven in 2Q twenty twenty four. Really strong new business growth across the whole business. EMEA was up 8% on top of 7% in second quarter twenty twenty four.

Asia Pacific up 4% on top of seven in the second quarter twenty twenty four percent, Latin America 3% on top of an 8%. So very strong geographic growth. I'll dig into some of the capabilities as well. We had a really good quarter in construction activity around the business. Our credit specialties grew.

Cyber despite rate decreases saw strong growth and penetration to our clients as people, particularly internationally, realized the risk posed by cyber. Our FinPro business grew. And capital markets business across international was stronger than in North America. But really one of the standouts was our benefits business, which continues to show real strength and momentum. And then geographically, really pleasing in some of the areas where we've allocated capital and feel we're really well positioned, Japan, India, The United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Italy, Spain, China, all showing really strong growth.

So we feel we have a great momentum. The capabilities that we have across international really differentiate ourselves against any of the local players. And we have the best and the strongest network that is also able to serve The US business and other international businesses that we have. So, we are highly differentiated where we operate and we have leading positions in virtually every market that we operate in across international. So, feel really good about it.

Thanks, Martin. David, do you have a follow-up?

Yeah, I was just more of a big picture question and you sort of talked about this in a few of the different segments, just the difference between some of the trends that you're seeing in some of the more discretionary and project based parts of the business compared to the more durable, more renewal oriented businesses. Could you just level set us the business mix has changed for a while? How much of the revenue base at Marsh is exposed to that more discretionary or project based spend?

Yeah, David, that's a hard question to answer. Think all 25,000,000,000 on some level is last year's numbers exposed to the economy. Obviously, we have a defensive and resilient business, demand remains quite strong. Pat talked about some aspects of our career business that are a bit more exposed to the economy than others. I mean, when we take a look at it, it's probably 15% to 20% or so our revenue base is, if this is the right expression, even more exposed to softer moments of the economy.

And we're in this interesting moment, right? I mean, the economy is okay. It's not like economy is in the tank, but we have certain segments of our business seeing softer conditions just from a challenging environment where uncertainty is driving a defensive posture from some of our clients. Maybe David would be helpful, maybe I'll ask Nick to talk a little bit about our growth in Oliver Wyman overall in the quarter and maybe where you see more resilience and some of the softer parts of the OW offerings.

Yes, absolutely. Thank you. And Pat touched on the career business, maybe a sort of compliment to that. We always guide that Oliver Wyman will be a mid to high single digit growth business through the cycle. You all know that it has probably a wider range of growth as you go through that cycle.

And I think we're extremely happy with how we've executed in a slower market. There were some timing and other idiosyncratic effects that slightly dampened Q2. But what we're seeing, there are many different drivers to our business. We're seeing positive trends like John talked at the beginning about the hunt for growth at the same time as efficiency and the need to invest in resilience. Many companies finding that challenging.

We're supporting many clients as they explore their AI strategies and what that does for their business, changes in supply chain, the challenges of the energy transition. These are all positive trends supporting growth in the business. That's balanced at the moment. Back to Jimmy's question, we have seen lower M and A. So some of our private capital work, some of the work we do in economic consulting is affected by that.

And we are seeing client uncertainty. I don't want to further overuse John's word. But when lots of things change, there's a need for strategic advice. When people are not sure if things are going to change, they wait for a little while. And we are saying some of that as well.

We also see on the supply side continued excess capacity working its way out of some parts of the consulting industry. But as a whole, we're happy with the execution. As Mark noted, The Americas grew strongly as our fastest growing region. Europe has done a good job of replacing some very large client programs which have rolled off. The Middle East has done a great job of diversifying what has been a slowdown in the Saudi Arabian market, but we're very broad across that region.

On the industry side, insurance and asset management and our actuarial practice grew again well diversified businesses. We have actuarial consulting in life in P and C and in health, all of which grew strongly. Our consumer telecoms and tech practices and our transportation advanced industrials practices grew. So in the past you may have heard me talking about other parts of Ottawa. Mean, it's a very diversified business. Maybe just to echo some of the comments that Dean and Martin and Pat have all made, our pipeline of sales remains solid.

We're very comfortable in our ability to manage the cost base. And we continue to find ourselves being an incredibly attractive home for established top talent in the industry who are eager to help build a new leader in strategy consulting unencumbered by some of the challenges of previous models.

Thanks, Nick. David, thanks for the questions. Andrew, next question please.

And our next question comes from the line of Alex Scott with Barclays.

Marsh & McLennan (MRSH) Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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