Earnings Labs

Aon plc (AON)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Fri, Feb 5, 2016

$322.28

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+0.12%

1 Week

+1.00%

1 Month

+6.30%

vs S&P

+0.22%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and thank you for holding. Welcome to the Aon Plc Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all parties will be in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer portion of today's call. If anyone has an objection, you may disconnect your line at this time. I would also like to remind all parties that this call is being recorded and that is important to note that some of the comments in today's call may constitute certain statements that are forward-looking in nature as defined by the Private Securities Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical results or those anticipated. Information concerning risk factors that could cause such differences are described in the press release covering our fourth quarter and full year 2015 results as well as having been posted on our website. Now, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Greg Case, President and CEO of Aon Plc.

Gregory C. Case - President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Thank you and good morning everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2015 conference call. Joining me today is our CFO, Christa Davies. I would note that there are slides available on our website for you to follow along with our commentary today and consistent with previous quarters, I'd like to cover two areas before turning the call over to Christa for further financial review. First is our performance against key metrics we communicate to shareholders. Second is the overall organic growth performance including continued areas of strategic investment across Aon. On the first topic, our performance versus key metrics. Each quarter, we measure our performance against the key metrics we focus on achieving over the course of the year: grow organically, expand margins, increase earnings per share and deliver free cash flow growth. Turning to slide 3. In the fourth quarter, organic revenue growth was 5% with solid growth across all major businesses, highlighted by 6% growth in each of our retail brokerage businesses. Operating margin increased 110 basis points, reflecting strong operating performance in both segments. And EPS increased 20% to $2.27, reflecting strong operating performance and effective capital management. If we turn to the full year, organic revenue growth was 3% overall, reflecting solid growth across both Risk and HR Solutions despite pricing pressure and overall economic uncertainty. Operating margin increased 50 basis points, reflecting strong operating performance and record margin results in those segments. EPS increased 8% to $6.18, overcoming substantial foreign currency headwinds. And finally, free cash flow increased 10% to a record $1.7 billion. Overall, our results reflect both the strong performance in the quarter and for the full year. In the year of substantial volatility driven by macroeconomic factors and industry headwinds, we continue to invest heavily in client-serving capabilities across…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. At this time, we don't have any questions on queue.

Gregory C. Case - President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Sorry. Apparently, we're having some difficulty on the queues – on the questions. We've got a number in queue. I can assure you we'll take all the time we need today to answer any and all the questions we've got, so be comfortable with that. We'll work out this logistical glitch a bit. And they're coming up in a bit, so just a little patience and we're going to get this moving as soon as we can. So apologies for that. Redial back in, and I think you'll get to the front of the queue.

Operator

Operator

Our first question comes from the line of Ryan Tunis of Credit Suisse. Your line is open.

Gregory C. Case - President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Ryan, are you with us? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Dave, I think you might be up. Ryan J. Tunis - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Hey, Greg.

Gregory C. Case - President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Yes, please. Ryan J. Tunis - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Hey. Sorry about that. My first question is for Christa, and it's just – I think she said that non-cash pension income will be a benefit this year versus 2015. Just wondering if you could quantify that, what the benefit is? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. It's small, Ryan, but it is going to be up slightly year-over-year. Ryan J. Tunis - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Okay. And then just on the reclassification, I guess just trying to understand what's going on here. I think last year you guys still had something like $300 million-plus of share-based compensation that was helping free cash flow, but now it sounds like you're moving something to financing activities. I'm just trying to understand why it sounds like there might be some share-based compensation that's still helping free cash flow and some that might have been moved to financing activities. Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. So I think the first thing to say, Ryan, is this has – this reclassification has no cash impact on total cash generated or cash paid in previous or future periods. I think the issue you're referring to is actually quite a different issue. The reason we did this was really as a preferable classification and it's consistent with peers. And we feel like it's a much cleaner way to explain our overall cash flow and cash flow growth. The stock compensation expense is stable and has not changed. Ryan J. Tunis - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Okay. And then Just one last one, I know the guide to the tax rate is at about 19%, but over the past couple…

Gregory C. Case - President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Sure. Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Dan Farrell of Piper Jaffray. Sir, your line is open. Daniel D. Farrell - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): To your cash flow growth targets, even if we take into account the pension decreases and some of the change, there's some healthy growth there. I'm wondering if you could comment on ReView on the underlying macro trends that you think you might need for that? If we look at the last couple of years, certainly you would probably have more headwinds than we would've thought we're going to have. And do you think you need any of that to reverse – or with the current headwinds that we're seeing, do you think that that cash flow is still achievable? Thank you. Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. I think it's a great question, Dan, because we have had some significant headwinds in the last couple of years, most notably FX, which had a $140 million impact on operating income in calendar year 2015. We would say that we do not need changes in the macro environment to achieve our $2.4 billion in free cash flow in 2017. If you think about the $1.7 billion of free cash flow we delivered in 2015, you can add back the $137 million of cash we spent on litigation in 2015, and then you can add about $100 million of improvement in free cash flow from decreased uses of cash between now and 2017. So you're already up to $2 billion of free cash flow, and then you really need an incremental $400 million from revenue growth and margin expansion and improved working capital. And so we really believe that we have exceptionally strong free cash flow over the coming years and exceptionally strong free cash flow per share as we expect declining share counts between now and 2017, too. Daniel D. Farrell - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question that we do have comes from the line of Sarah DeWitt of JPMC. Your line is open.

Sarah E. DeWitt - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMC. Your line is open

Hi, good morning, and congrats on a good quarter. First on the brokerage organic growth, the 5%, this is the best result you've had in years. Could you just talk about what changed versus the third quarter?

Gregory C. Case - President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Yeah, Sarah. First, step back, reflect – if you think about brokerage overall, it's consistent with what we're trying to achieve over the course of the year, being able to grow in virtually every environment, and we've been able to do that. And in the fourth quarter, what you're seeing is just at continuation. So for us, it's really nothing new but a continuation of the yield on a lot of the investments we're making in the business and the progress we're making across the business overall. And listen, we saw the new business characteristics in U.S. Retail, for example. These are records – record-on-record, in fact, in terms of sort of what's happened over the course of the last year. So, for us, this is just a continuation in terms of sort of where we are. Across the business, we really like our position now, the way we finish in 2015 and our position in 2016 and the trajectory going into 2016 overall. So for us, what you would read into this is this is just another quarter kind of on a proof point of our underlying capability, and expect continued growth at the same levels going forward and the ability, frankly, to deal with any headwinds that are out there as we've been able to do and move the business forward.

Sarah E. DeWitt - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMC. Your line is open

Okay, great. And then on consulting, the organic growth is usually seasonally highest in the fourth quarter because of private health exchanges. Why wasn't that the case this year? And could you just give us your latest thoughts on what you view is the opportunity for private health exchanges, especially since there has been some press that larger players are a bit slower to adopt and Cadillac tax might be pushed out?

Gregory C. Case - President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Well first, take a step back over all HR Solutions. Again, we love where we finished on the risk side. We really like where we finished on HR Solutions. And this is a business over the course of the year that produced 10% operating income growth, grew at 4%. We made substantial – and by the way, also achieved record margins. We made substantial investment scenarios like retirement and delegated it across the board, and in our Health Solutions. And again, we look at Health Solutions across the board, really every category in terms of the ability to help clients with this very important challenge they've got around the health side. And we think we've got one of the strongest capabilities here whether it's H&B, whether it's global benefits across the board, and on the exchanges. Retiree, active, employee, self, all across the board. And what we would say, if you think about sort of quarter-over-quarter, first, we would agree the adoption on the health active side across the board, especially the larger end, hasn't been as fast as expected. By the way, especially given some of the results we've seen with existing clients because it's been a bit exceptional. Reduced volatility for them, price reductions year-over-year. 25%, in fact, had price reductions over the last year. So we're very, very positive in terms of the overall impact. The pipeline looks very, very strong. And again, even in the exchange business as it exists, we had double-digit growth and it's profitable. So for us, we love this solution on behalf of clients, but as part of our broader health solution. I would reflect, by the way, in the fourth quarter last year, we had the single largest implementation on the retiree side, sort of in the history of the world and maybe will forever be in the history of the world. And that actually influenced results a bit, too. But we really like the business overall tremendously, and we're really feeling good about our position in HR Solutions.

Sarah E. DeWitt - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMC. Your line is open

Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question that we do have comes from the line of Quentin McMillan. Your line is open – from KBW. Quentin McMillan - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Hi, guys. Thanks very much. Can I ask a question on seasonality, a two-part question? One on just the reinsurance brokerage organic bounce-back this quarter after a couple of quarters of negative growth. So it's nice to see some positive trend there. But the last time that you shared a positive number was in 4Q 2014. It may just be coincidence that that happened year-over-year, but can you talk about sort of how you account for revenue recognition in the reinsurance brokerage and if there's anything to read into that, and then possibly what that could mean for next year or for 4Q 2016? And then on the HR Solutions side, your profitability in the fourth quarter basically doubles from the rest of the quarter. So can you just help us to also understand why there's so much more profitability in 4Q other than just the healthcare exchanges, and if there's anything else that we can kind of look at that? Thanks so much. Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: So let me do sort of just technically how we account for reinsurance because I think that's one of your questions. So we account for revenue and reinsurance over the course of a 12-month period of time. And so therefore, what you're seeing in Q4 is revenue that was placed over the last 12 months. And that's really for our treaty business I'm talking about, which is about 80% to 85% of our total revenue. So 12-month revenue recognition. So what you're seeing in our Q4 results is the last four quarters of revenue. And so it's sort of a lagging indicator because you're getting price over that last 12 months showing up in our current year's results. The facultative and capital markets, they are recognized in the quarter, so that's sort of 15% to 20% of our revenue.

Gregory C. Case - President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

And so if you step back on the reinsurance side, basically, in terms of where we finish and thinking about going into 2016. Again, this is consistent with the theme across the company. We feel very good about how we finish the year and what it sets to save for in 2016. Obviously, again, looking at in terms of the overall year, we're not happy with the level of growth and reinsurance of negative 1% for the year. But we've said already, we expect reinsurance to return a positive organic growth in 2016. And for us – especially for our reinsurance business maybe more than any other. It's a great example of a business right now as business results don't really reflect the underlying capability and opportunity we see, which is exceptional. I mean, think about it, we're the largest adviser in the world in this area and really, number one in treaty, number one in fact, number one on the alternative capital side, capital markets. 20% of the global book is linked to U.S. property cat and that's wholly commission based. Those rates have come down 15% to 25% over the last 24 months and that's been reflected. Probably those are starting to flatten out a bit; the decrease is not as great. But against that, it's really been the team's ability to continue to win 19 consecutive quarters of wins on treaty reinsurance, which had been exceptional, and really, the ability to create net new demand. And this is really in areas like mortgage overall and what we've done in ReView. So they've been able to offset these headwinds, which are diminishing, those businesses that they've offset whether they're going to continue to grow. And the opportunity going into 2016, we feel very good. And we'd say, by…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question that we do have comes from the line of Adam Klauber of William Blair. Your line is open. Adam Klauber - William Blair & Co. LLC: Thanks. Good morning, everyone. The sale of the Absence Management company, just a couple of points around that. Was that business higher or lower margin than your overall? In other words, will that help the margin going forward? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: So as we think about the Absence Management business, it's a terrific business, helping businesses really manage their workforce overall. One of the things we would say about that business is given the high demand from corporations to manage their workforce and of the absence of their employees over time, it has significant – very high capital requirement to invest in this business over the coming years. And as we look at our strategy, it's not as core to our strategy as some other areas in which we've been investing. And so as we think about the need to invest capital in this business over the coming years, we do believe that Guardian has a much higher priority in this area and they're going to substantially invest. And so we feel really good about partnering with them to continue to serve our clients in this area. We did not disclose the financials in this business, but you should think about this business as overall in line with our focus on improvement return on capital. Quentin McMillan - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Okay. And then just detail on that. I think you mentioned maybe $12 million of transaction cost. Was that in the operating line or was that adjusted out? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: It is included in our HR Solutions operating income so it is in the operating line. So as we think about this business, there is obviously a gain that shows up in other income, which is quite significant. And then there are transaction costs and severance related to this showing up in the operating income of HR Solutions. Quentin McMillan - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Okay. And was the revenue for the Absence Management, was that pulled out for the fourth quarter or was that in the fourth quarter? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: It was in the fourth quarter. Quentin McMillan - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Okay. Then on the – staying with the solutions on the HR cloud business. Is that business growing materially faster than your overall business? And how's the pipeline of large clients looking for 2016? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah...

Gregory C. Case - President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

This business has done exceptionally well. We love the position overall and it's growing well above double-digits. The fundamental capability we've got and the need clients have around HR transformation and improvement is just exceptional. And the capability we've got on the Workday front in particular is really, really carving out a lot of space there for us. And we're seeing the growth, not only in the HR side, but we're also seeing it as clients think about beyond HR transformation, how it relates to finance transformation. And this combination has just been incredibly positive. By the way, Aon itself has going to do the same thing. We adopted Workday on the HR side. We've now adopted Workday and are implemented on the finance side. And we see the potential, and our clients see it as well. So for us, this has been a very, very strong growth business. We really like the capabilities here and the prospects on behalf of our clients. Quentin McMillan - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Thanks. And just one more. In the risk business, how much are exposures helping more now than a couple of quarters ago?

Gregory C. Case - President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Exposures continue to be helpful. And by the way, it is the right question because in the end, a lot's discussed on price. It really is an issue of exposures as much as price. And again, we can clinically look at this with the Risk Insight Platform across our entire book at a very micro level. When you add all that together, price and exposures, they're net-net stable. So, the market roughly is stable. So, a little up, a little down but roughly it's been stable. And I'm really looking at the chart right now across multiple quarters and it's, give or take, stable. The prices have come down a little bit, exposures have come up and we – just how the market overall has performed. From our standpoint, that's right, we don't really look at market conditions as an excuse not to grow or reinforcement to grow. We're going to grow either way, we have proven we can do that. 2015 is another example of that. We'll see it in 2016. And we've more than offset price changes and exposure changes with net new business and net new capabilities we brought to the marketplace, as well as our ability to retain our existing book of business and actually add services on to that. So, for us, overall, it's been market stable. And our ability to deal with it has been quite positive. Adam Klauber - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question that we do have comes from the line of Kai Pan of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Kai Pan - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Thank you so much. Good morning. First question is on the HR Solutions. And in the past, you have been guiding like year-over-year improvements in terms of underlying margin, as well as operating income; it grows from mid to high single digits. I just wonder is that still valid going forward? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Hi. We fully expect to grow revenue organically, to continue to expand margins and to grow operating income in HR Solutions as we have in 2015. Kai Pan - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay. That's great. And then just a number of question on the free cash flow target $2.4 billion looks like 2015 the reclassification as you benefit about more than $200 million. So, the raise of your guidance, the $100 million, I just wonder what's the calculation behind it? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. I think one of these things that shares with help from taxes is really driven. The amount is the result of employee choice and the market value of the stock, two variables of which we have no control. So, as we think about it, we think that we have very strong free cash flow growth over the next coming years, and therefore, $2.4 billion is the right number. And this particular element we took out really has no impact on cash. And so we think that, therefore, $2.4 billion is the right goal going forward. Kai Pan - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: So there's no change in the underlying forecast for your free cash flow target? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: No. Kai Pan - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay. That's great. And lastly, Greg, if you could talk about on the acquisition front because the buybacks have been very meaningful return to shareholders. I just wonder like in this marketplace, where do you see the platform capability you could help grow like in the future and how do you balance between acquisitions versus shared buybacks?

Gregory C. Case - President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Yeah, Kai. We actually look at both, and if you look at our history over the last 10 years, we've actually been a little more leaning towards acquisitions when you look at some of the amount of our overall investments versus what the buyback has been over time. And underlying that, if you look back over the last 10 years, our operating income growth year-over-year has been roughly 11%. So, it's something we've really invested in. And invested heavily in organic improvement as well, as I've described before. The level of capabilities that we're investing in for existing clients, new clients and on the data and analytics side is we believe candidly quite unprecedented. If you think about data and analytics, Global Risk Insight Platform to ReView to the Aon Client Treaty now at the endpoint, all the work we've done and delegated exchanges, you get the picture. So, we're very, very much focused on investment back into the business. And M&A plays a big role on that, and will continue to play a big role on that. And we probably – I'm looking at Christa – we'll probably look at more deals this year, situations this year that may be any time at our history measured in the billions. Done fewer of them, because we're always going to be disciplined around return on investment capital. Christa has in place a very, very structured way to think about how we can very meticulously invest our capital to get to the highest return on capital, generate free cash flow and build wealth for our shareholders. And in the context of that, serve clients in a very, very effective way. And that's really the machine we've set up. That's how the engine runs and that's what we've done. So, we're going to continue to look at where the best places to place our capital. And we'll be open to acquisitions as we are, organic investment, buyback, and all of the above. That's really how we're looking at it. Kai Pan - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay. Specifically, kind of a follow-up, if there's a price like discussion about wholesale platform. I'm wondering, if that's something would be of your interest?

Gregory C. Case - President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Again we're not going to comment on specific situations or categories. But you can imagine, we're going to do what we need to do to actually support our clients and deliver distinctive value to our clients and do it in a way, again, that returns benefits to our shareholders. So, we're going to look at capabilities across the board. We've partnered with great capability on the wholesale side. We're going to continue to do that and always look at options. Kai Pan - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: That's great. Well, thank you so much, and good luck.

Gregory C. Case - President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

All right.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question that we do have comes from the line of Vinay Misquith of Sterne Agee CRT. Your line is open.

Vinay Misquith - Sterne Agee CRT

Analyst · Sterne Agee CRT. Your line is open

Hi. Good morning. So the first question is on the HR Solutions. Margins grew by 100 basis points this year, while organic revenue growth was actually lower this year, that's 2015 versus 2014. Curious how you've managed to expand margins even though the organic revenues were lower this year versus last year. Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. It's a great question, and I think it's really about the investments we've made, Vinay, and the areas of growth that we've outlined: delegated investment management, HR BPO and our cloud solutions, and healthcare exchanges. And they are generating great returns on investments, which is how we're able to continue to expand margins and grow operating income at lower levels of organic growth. And so, we will continue to manage the portfolio on a return-on-capital basis. And generating improved cash flow from the investments we've made organically and inorganically in our business.

Gregory C. Case - President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Vinay, really what's been highlighted here is the idea of operational leverage. And a lot of the core organic investments we make in the areas Christa described, same is true, by the way, on the Risk Solutions side, is the reason, again, back to we're very confident, comfortable talking about margin expansion in lower growth environments. By the way, don't take away from that that we're not interested in growing organically. We're absolutely focused on that and that is a high priority, and we'll continue to do that. But our ability to actually produce results in a variety of environments is really a function of our ability to invest heavily back in the business from an organic standpoint.

Vinay Misquith - Sterne Agee CRT

Analyst · Sterne Agee CRT. Your line is open

So that's helpful. And now within the segment, I believe there were $12 million of costs. So should we sort of add back those $12 million to say that that's the normalized operating income for the segment for this year? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah, I think that's probably right.

Vinay Misquith - Sterne Agee CRT

Analyst · Sterne Agee CRT. Your line is open

Okay. Great. And then one last question, just on the free cash flow and maybe my math is not that great, but my understanding is that the reclassification helped the free cash flow by about $200 million. And the future guidance for free cash flow has increased only by $100 million. So, have the underlying cash flows for the future sort of come down by $100 million? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: No, they have not. So, one of the things that I tried and obviously failed to communicate earlier was this number varies substantially by year. And the amount is a result of employee's choice, growth in net shares and the market value of our stock. Therefore, we have no control over the number. As we think about our free cash flow going forward, there is no change to our view on the underlying free cash flow growth of the firm. We do believe that this amount going forward is somewhere between $0 and $100 million, therefore, we've increased our target by $100 million to $2.4 billion. One of the other things I would make clear is that the $2.4 billion in free cash flow in 2017 is fully deployable cash, because if you look at the $1.7 billion we generated in 2015, we actually returned $1.9 billion of cash to shareholders in 2015. So, we are generating a huge amount of cash, which we can fully deploy on either return to shareholders or, as Greg said, investing back into our business either organically or inorganically in the form of M&A. So we're very excited about the future growth potential of the firm given the huge cash flow generation we're going to produce.

Vinay Misquith - Sterne Agee CRT

Analyst · Sterne Agee CRT. Your line is open

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question we do have comes from the line of Charles Sebaski of BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Charles Joseph Sebaski - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open

Good morning and thank you. I guess, the first question, Christa, a follow-up to the free cash flow question going forward. With regard to the working capital improvement, I guess, I was just hoping you can just help me understand a little bit how that is truly incremental as opposed to timing. I guess, if I think you pull in your accounts receivable and push out payables is a timing issue, but is there something else in that that's truly incremental to free cash flow? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. Well, the one other thing that I would say is that we are on a sort of march now to really improve our flow-through of every $1 of revenue through to $1 of free cash flow. And I would say we're on a 10-year journey to get there. I think the overall industry in which we operate has not been particularly focused on free cash flow, and I think it has been a journey for us, which we've been on really for the last, you know, almost five years. And I think as we continue to improve the collection of cash from customers and we continue to manage the payment of cash to suppliers, we believe that we have improvements in cash for at least the next five years to eight years in terms of working capital. And it's structural improvements in the process around which we do this, in the way in which we manage this, in the overall portfolio of business we do. So, I guess, what I would say as you think about Aon, we believe we should be working capital neutral overall and we are far from that today. So, we believe the upside in terms of cash from working capital is substantial over the coming years.

Charles Joseph Sebaski - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open

I guess, and obviously you guys are a different business or like in a different business, but I guess in some other industries if you pull in your receivables faster, an incremental improvement might be of less charge-offs, right? You have less credit events; that there's something is truly is incrementally increasing as opposed to just the time value of money by getting that cash flow today versus 90 days from now. I guess I'm wondering, is there structural elements in that improvement for you or is it timing related? Christa Davies - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: It's absolutely structural. If you think about today, we are tying up a huge amount of cash, essentially, by not collecting the cash from customers early enough, or by paying suppliers. And so, as we think about return on capital of Aon, we are managing our overall portfolio to improve cash in this area. And we would say, we are making structural process improvements, and have for the last couple of years. You can see it if you look at receivables divided by revenue you can see days sales outstanding improve over time. And the same on the supplier side. And so, whether we're improving invoice velocity or eliminating prepaid expenses, there are a number of structural things we're doing to improve the flow-through of $1 revenue to $1of free cash flow.

Charles Joseph Sebaski - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open

Okay. I appreciate that. I guess, finally just on the risk business and the investments you guys have made in the data and analytics. I think now we more clearly see on the reinsurance side or maybe the GRIP program with the insurance carriers. I was hoping you might be able to just expound a little bit on where maybe some of these data and analytic investments are helping you improve the retail. I don't know if you need to charge for it at the retail level or if it flows through in organic growth. And that piece of it, if you think of kind of the multitude pieces in the risk business, the real core retail side and where the data and analytics is helping the business there.

Gregory C. Case - President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

So the effort on data and analytics has really been multi-year and ongoing. And for us, we believe it's going to be fundamental to what we needed to try to get it accomplished over time, Charles. It really is going to be differentiated in terms of our capability versus the marketplace. And there are many examples. By the way, the risk insight platform efforts really are actually, the work is done directly with the primary insurers serving clients. So it actually touches very much the primary insurance marketplace. But let me give you one example that – I happened to be just in London yesterday with Lloyd's and Lloyd's syndicates. We just launched something called Aon Client Treaty, which is a very – it's basically built on a foundation around data and analytics. So in essence, it will be, when done, the single biggest underlying transaction likely in the history of Lloyd's to-date and it really takes our book that goes into the London market to our global broking center and we actually modeled that book in detail, really bottom up, all different aspects of what's going on. 64,000 policy transactions, 120 different classes of business, 157 countries. You get the idea. We built an incredible data room in which underwriters will come in and actually take a company-level understanding at underwriting and then apply it to portfolio level. And in essence, what we're saying to our client, by the way, on Monday happening at our Property Symposium, I'm talking to clients in our Property Symposium and essentially saying if you're going to use London capacity, you've eliminated your tail risks. So when you actually think about the set of syndicates that are actually going to come to bear on behalf of you, the last three, four, or five actually create risk. We've eliminated that. So we've actually pre-confirmed 20% of that capacity that will follow a lead capacity going into London. That makes that capital we're bringing to bear much, much more competitive. So there's an example of hard clear data and analytics but essentially we've analyzed our book sort of, it happens to be in the London marketplace, but imagine, we can look at this all over the world in which we're actually providing distinctive value, unduplicated value to clients using data and analytics. So, that was a little bit longwinded, but I hope you get the idea that it's a very powerful tool. By the way, in order to do that, you had to be able to analyze all 6,000 clients going into London in a way that, frankly, leverages off our risk insight platform. Never been done before.

Charles Joseph Sebaski - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open

Thank you very much for the answers.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Greg Case for the closing remarks.

Gregory C. Case - President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Excellent. Well, let me apologize again for the logistics during the Q&A. If anything comes up and you want to ask us, please feel free. We're available at any time. And just appreciate everybody for being on the call today. And look forward to catching up at the end of the first quarter. Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

That concludes this conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.