Okay. Well, it is a pleasure... I didn't want that part to get caught online, but Mike Katz over there, EVP of Finance, is also a varsity ping-pong player. You heard it here. I also have with me here, CEO Heather Lavallee and Executive Chairman Rod Martin. It's a pleasure to have you all here. I'm gonna kick off with a few questions and then open it up to our listeners. Heather, you've officially been CEO for a long two months. Maybe you can specify your near-term priorities, including any potential reviews, changes to the current strategy. What do you envision the earnings mix to be looking like in five or 10 years?
Thank you for the question. Good to be here with everyone. Our priorities, and I'll take a step back and kind of, you know, talk a little bit about why our priorities are unchanged is, while I may be the new CEO, I'm not new to Voya. This is my 15th year with the firm. I used to lead our retirement business. I led our employee benefit business. I've got a lot of tenure working with this team. As we think about our priorities going into 2023, they're really focused on three things. The first is around execution of our organic growth goals. It aligns with what we talked about at Investor Day of driving revenue growth, operating margin improvement, and capital management.
Second is a focus on integrations of the acquisitions that we announced last year, specifically Allianz GI and Benefitfocus. Third is around capital management, and we announced last week on our earnings call our intention to resume share repurchases in the second quarter. You know, we believe capital management is gonna continue to be an important lever for us to be able to drive EPS growth into the future. That's really the focus: execution, integration, and capital management.
Great. Rod, you over, you know, a number of years, dating... When did you join? 2011 was it? Yeah. April of 2011. The company went public in 2013. I mean, the de-risking, the transforming of the company over the past decade, maybe you could talk about now your new role moving forward and maybe what you envision for the company's future?
The role is very straightforward. I'm executive chairman. In our company, what that means is serve as a strategic advisor to Heather, which is probably the biggest single part of the role, and I continue as chairman of the board through fundamentally the end of this year. Envisioning the company, we laid out in our most recent Investor Day what Heather just talked about. We delivered results in excess of those targets in 2022. I think after the de-risking, the ROE improvement, and the growth initiative that we laid out last year, it really is just about, as Heather says, you know, execution and focus on the integrations of these things. The intersection of health and wealth is a big part of that growth initiative.
Our ability to expand through the Allianz piece is a huge piece that Heather will speak about. I think Voya is just beginning on what can be.
Maybe, kind of shifting over a little bit to the Benefitfocus acquisition, definitely, a key area of focus among investors. Maybe you could talk about the reaction from distribution partners, both health and wealth clients in general, and just what the product manufacturers are saying about the platform.
The reaction from the marketplace has been very, very positive. One of the reasons why we think it's been so positive is we have been clearly communicating our intention to be open architecture, product-agnostic, and intermediary-centric. Let me just break down what do we mean by that. If you take our health business today, we currently sell our voluntary products to up to 100 different ben- admin partners, and we're gonna continue to work with all of those different ben- admin partners. That kind of gets to the open architecture component. The product-agnostic, Benefitfocus today works with a variety of number of voluntary providers, including Voya.
We think that product agnostic approach is important 'cause at the end of the day, we realize that it's the benefit brokers and consultants who are gonna make the recommendations. They're driving the RFPs. The employer clients at the end of the day are the ones who are gonna make the decisions. The market has really liked that approach that we're taking. We also are seeing really positive reactions from the employer clients who are excited about the ability over time for us to be able to reduce their administrative burden by really helping to simplify both kind of that health ecosystem as well as the retirement ecosystem.
Then we think that as we continue to evolve Benefitfocus's capabilities, we're gonna help brokers and consultants bring even new innovation to the market, which at the end of the day makes them look good to their clients and creates a differentiated value proposition. All in all, it's been quite favorably received in the marketplace.
That's good to hear. With respect to capital, real briefly, Maybe Heather talk about the philosophy moving forward. You know, I guess you've cited that you can resume buyback starting in the second quarter. As of year-end pro forma, you were sitting on about $300 million of liquidity there. Do you think you could get back on the 90%-100% trajectory of payout ratio? How do dividends factor in? That's been a big question.
Yeah. With the specifics to capital management, again, our philosophy has remained unchanged. You go back to since Rod started when we became public, as we've returned over $8.7 billion to shareholders during that time period. That's something we're proud of, and it's something, again, it's continued to be a very important lever for us. Specifically, when you think about the businesses, first let me talk about the free cash flow nature of the business. You think about in 2022, we generated $600 million of excess capital for the organization and achieved our 90%-100% free cash flow conversion that we've talked about.
We today, with our business mix, including the addition of Benefitfocus, we have very capital light businesses, high free cash flow generating. I think it makes us a bit unique in the marketplace. Real strong diversification of revenue. We feel first very good with our ability to continue that 90%- 100% free cash flow conversion. As we talked about resuming share repurchases in the second quarter, when you think about our ability to generate excess capital, you know, we think that's a very logical place for us to use that capital as in the form of share buybacks. As I talked about my priorities with integration, that's really going to be our theme. We do expect to have excess capital to be able to deploy back to shareholders this year.
You can also think about the dividend is we see us currently sitting at about a 1% dividend. We have been doing a lot of work and having discussions around the ability to increase that dividend thoughtfully. That's one of the things that we have, as we've been doing our listening tour with shareholders over the last, we'll call it 8, 9 months, we have heard that loud and clear. That's something, again, we are it is our intention to be able to do that.
The other thing you would expect is, you know, as we think about debt, we have continued to think about paying down debt as we have done share repurchases, and you can expect us to also be leaning into a bit of debt extinguishment as we think and move into 2023.
Got it. I guess with that, you did some, you know, really good fits in terms of M&A last year. Do you need to do more M&A? If so, how big would that be?
Yeah. Great question. As we talk about M&A, and this is something that we've gotten the question a lot, geez, we kind of leaned in in the middle of a CEO succession doing these transactions. How do we think about that? Well, first, we feel as though our approach to M&A or philosophy around M&A is it's got to be strategic. It's got to be accretive or make sense for the long term for shareholders and make sense for customers. We have been very selective in our approach of M&A. At Investor Day last year, we talked about really needing four different capabilities from an inorganic perspective that we think would accelerate our growth strategy.
We talked about capabilities that would lean in on the customer experience and improve outcomes at the intersection of health and wealth. We talked about technology and data capabilities. In our asset management business, we talked about growth in privates alternatives as well as global distribution. When you think about the transactions we announced last year with Allianz Global Investors, we have added 500 relationship managers in 19 geographies through Allianz GI, so tremendous global reach. That's kind of a check the box. We did our acquisition of Tygh Capital Management, which is a smaller, you know, lift and shift in which is expanding our privates and alternatives capabilities. Benefitfocus fits squarely in that intersect around the customer experience and technology and data.
At this point, we feel as though we've got all the right capabilities we need to be able to now drive our growth organically. You know, while we'll always have an eye on are there different things we need to be thinking about over the long term, we're gonna be doing it from a lens of, is it in the best interest of shareholders, and is it in the best interest of customers? Again, think of us in 23 as execution on the organic growth and the integrations of these properties.
Got it. Now I'm just talking about consolidated EPS outlook. At the 2021 Investor Day, you outlined 12%-17% annual EPS growth through 2024. You blew right by that with 24% growth last year. Yet this year, you've guided to 10%+ EPS growth, and that's before factoring in any benefit from Benefitfocus. Maybe you could talk about this 10+, why it's achievable, and then whether you can get back on the 12-17 run rate.
You know, and if you go back to our Investor Day last year, when we laid out 12%-17% EPS growth at our Investor Day, that was on the high end of many of our peer companies. You know, we think a lot of people looked at us and said, "That doesn't seem quite realistic, so we want you to prove it." I think we did that in 2022 with a 24% EPS growth rate. The fact that... That was even navigating the macro markets that we all had to operate through. We believe that we've got really strong resiliency of the mix of businesses. We've got a leadership team that knows how to navigate and deliver and, you know, has managed through different macro environments.
What gives us confidence going forward is, you know, you look at how we finished the year, we've got very strong commercial momentum. Revenue is up in our core businesses. We've improved operating margins, which are two of the important levers and contributors to EPS growth. We also talk about capital management, which is the third lever, and the fact that we're intending to resume share buybacks in the second quarter. All of those combined give us confidence. The way to think about it is with Benefitfocus, that probably adds about, you know, 2% of EPS growth is the way we're thinking about it, which brings us in on the low end of the range. To have 10 even 10%-12% on top of 24%, we think is quite an impressive accomplishment.
Agreed.
I think maybe to add a little bit here, Andrew, too. If you think about some of the themes that we talked about in 2022 that continue to reveal themselves in 2023 across our businesses. On the wealth side, we talk a lot about diversity of revenue. Certainly, the equity markets were a headwind to that business, but we still performed very well. Why is that? Because of the interest rate environment. That will continue to be a tailwind as we move into 2023. In the health business, it seems like a long time ago because we were all sitting outside last year at this conference, COVID was a headwind. Not a headwind for our health business as we head into 2023, so that's a foundation that we're growing off of.
Finally, for investment management, we had the Allianz GI business for five months in 2022. We're gonna get that for a full year. When you look at the revenue growth that we expect out of the investment management business, we get the full benefit of Allianz GI next year. The themes that we talked about in 2022, just that piece also gives us a lot of confidence about where we're going in 2023, on top of just the piece that we talked about at the top, our ability to generate cash in these businesses, which gives us further confidence as capital management being a ballast to make sure that we grow EPS as we suggested we could.
Makes a lot of sense. Maybe drilling into the operating entities a little bit, the Wealth Solutions segment, how do you think about the long-term growth of Wealth Solutions? And maybe touch on how SECURE 2.0 Act plays into it.
Sure. Well, I'll, maybe piggyback a little bit off Mike's comment is, within Wealth, we talk about the revenue diversification as something that's been a tailwind. Exactly to Mike's point, where in a year where we're seeing rising interest rates and we saw pressures on equities, we were able to manage through that quite effectively. We've also had strong discipline around how we've managed expenses. As we think about the growth of the Wealth, of the Wealth Solutions business and the benefits of SECURE Act, you know, in Investor Day, we talked about leaning in on the mid-market space, which is a space we have not been in historically, which creates some nice growth opportunities for us.
We've been able to leverage our leadership business within the tax-exempt space, number one in the government market, leadership position in corporate markets, in the small end and the large end, to be able to create commercial momentum in those market segments. Secure 2.0 is gonna create tailwinds for us because we're seeing changes with auto features. Think auto-escalate, auto-enroll, which is gonna have some favorability on recurring deposits. We also see benefits of SECURE Act of really mandating that people need to have access to coverage, so we're seeing a lot of startup plans, which is an area, think about very small employers, which has grown for us between 20% and 30% in the last couple years of just the rapid rise in new plan growth.
Some emerging places in Wealth are things like multiple employer plans and pooled employer plans. We have been one of the early adopters in that space for a number of years. We actually, with some of our clients, have already been well-established. We feel very, very good. The last piece that gives me, frankly, a lot of excitement goes to something Rod talked about of the Benefitfocus acquisition. Our value proposition for our Wealth clients is quite different from our peers. The fact that we're leaning in holistically at the workplace across Health and Wealth is serving clients in a very differentiated way. It's not just around the rollover or retail.
That value proposition, combined with our culture, and our ability to deliver on our promises, is one that we think is gonna continue some strong commercial momentum in that business.
Maybe shifting gears to the health benefits segment. Again, you outperformed your guided target of 7%-10% annual revenue and in-force premium growth. It was up 11% last year. Thoughts going forward?
We feel confident in our ability to hit the targets that we've set out, the 7%-10%. I'll point to a few different elements of that business. Number one, about half the business is in the stop-loss space. You think about what are the drivers of stop-loss, it's annually renewable and is able to take advantage of medical trends. You think about levered trend, that there is always an increase in the health costs. We don't need to aggressively grow our stop-loss book of business to drive revenue growth, right? We know we're gonna renew it. We're gonna be disciplined with our underwriting margin, that's gonna continue to be a tailwind for revenues.
We have expanded our stop-loss down into the mid-market space, which we think is creates some growth opportunities for us. Just think about stop-loss as there's kind of a natural growth trajectory. In our voluntary business, this has been one of the fastest growing sectors for us, and we continue to innovate around a product perspective as well as around our claims and some of our client experiences. We have been one of the, you know, top five growers in the voluntary space and for a number of years, and we see that trajectory continuing. The other pieces that I would point to in our health are there are some new adjacent revenue areas that we're growing that are more kinda show up over a number of years. Think about our Health Account Solutions, leave management.
These are really important capabilities for clients that are going to begin to contribute over time into that book of business. You know, all in all, then lastly is we've got a really strong distribution footprint that the team is extremely well-respected, so we feel confident.
Just maybe the piece I would add, Andrew, is that as we think about growing that business, to your point, we grew at 11% top line last year. We continue to believe that we'll grow at 7%-10% in 2023 and beyond. It's really the discipline around underwriting. Like, we fully understand that earnings can move meaningfully if you don't get that right. We're not trying to get over our skis and going out and winning new business for all the reasons Heather just called out. It's really underwriting, underwriting. We talked about it on the call. Jan. 1 is an important time. 75% of the business gets written off of Jan. 1, and we feel really good about what we got done at the beginning of this year.
I think it's just, it's a continuation of a story that we've been telling for a long time, but the big takeaway is it's not just about the top line, 7-10. It's the bottom line, 7-10.
Maybe shifting gears again to investment management, then I'd like to open it up to everybody to ask questions. The AGI acquisition, you know, we had written about it. It just seemed like an obvious home run. Maybe you could share with us your views around the impact of how material international distribution will be to your top line outlook. Then also, you know, what are some of the expense and revenue synergies of that business?
Sure. When we think about our asset management business, there are a number of reasons of why we're quite excited to be able to grow that business and improve margins. If we start with AGI, and I'll go back to the comment around global distribution, 500 relationship managers, 19 countries. That access to distribution, I've been kind of using the analogy of like a 4-lane highway. It just creates a huge opportunity for distribution of our products into those countries. We think about the ability for us to leverage the strong performing income and growth product that's manufactured out of our San Diego team, which was part of the acquisition, you know, generating $1.4 billion in flows in the first 5 months of the year. We've got a lot of excitement there.
We are gonna be launching four new UCITS later this year. Two of them are on the traditional Voya IM platform, two on Allianz. It's the ability to broaden the product set and expand the distribution that have us significantly excited for growth. A couple other areas in investment management we're excited about is our insurance business. You know, you think about in 2018, we had about 20 insurance partners. Now you look at 2022, we have over 60 partners who are able to leverage our expertise in fixed income and managing the general account to be able to bring those to insurance partners. Finally is some of the capabilities we've invested in privates and alternatives. We've expanded some, sort of our equity capabilities. Again, that just goes to the breadth of the products.
We have committed to expanding margin by 1% in 23. We think that Allianz gives us that opportunity with some of the higher margin products. Lastly, your question around expense synergies. We certainly had some as part of the deal, which we are on track to be able to take out. We also think there's additional things we can do to drive expenses, and we really focus in and on is aligning expenses with the revenue so that we really achieve that margin expansion that we have been targeting.
Just remind us, what % of the investment management business does Allianz own now?
Allianz owns, 24% of the investment management business.
Got it. A definite vested interest in your success.
Yeah. It's a really important piece. Because of that ownership, and we've talked about the fact that we've done a lot of joint meetings with them, they are absolutely aligned with us on driving the revenue growth, being able to, you know, really prioritize some of the products we're going to be able to bring to market or expand the distribution, take full advantage of their global capabilities, also with an eye towards expense management. Our priorities as a combined team are completely aligned.
Excellent. Maybe any questions from the audience? I can't see with all these bright lights going in my eyes. Anyone wanna jump in? Okay, I'll hold off. If you, if you do have a question, don't hesitate, I won't call on you. No, I'm kidding. Anyway, maybe talk about the fit for the investment management. Is that a critical component of what makes up Voya? Or is it, you know, where will that be in the long term?
We really like the Investment Management business. You know, the question we've had is, well, how does it fit in with the workplace strategy? There's the strategic fit of the Investment Management business, and then there's the economic fit. From a strategic fit, you know, one of the things we talk about is being a purpose-driven company, and our purpose is together we fight for everyone's opportunity for a better financial future. We truly believe that it influences the decisions we make day in, day out. The ability for people to generate an appropriate return on their investments to accumulate and to then create income into retirement is critical. The Investment Management business squarely fits in from that perspective. Strategically, we talk about investing, protecting, and then thinking about being able to accumulate.
Those components all go together. I think the investment management business really fits in from a strategic perspective. From an economic perspective, it absolutely aligns with our capital-light and high free cash flow conversion business. We really like the asset management business. Hopefully, that is demonstrated by the fact that we have leaned in on the acquisition with Allianz Global Investors. We like our scale at this point. We like the capabilities and the distribution, and we think it's gonna be a great place for us to continue to drive growth.
To put some numbers around it, Andrew, you think about outside the general account, our asset management business is managing 20% of assets. Including the general account, it's 40%. It's a sizable footprint of our Wealth Solutions franchise. I think the other piece that's interesting here too is that this has been a capability that we've been able to grow since we've been a public company in managing assets for other insurance companies. We now do business with over 60 insurance companies across the globe that are looking for the talents that our asset management franchise brings to the table. I, you know, I think it's not just the fit that Heather just called out. Financially, it makes a lot of sense given the contributions that they bring to the table for our wealth franchise.
Including now Allianz's rather substantial, general account. A piece of, I should say.
Yeah. add 1 to the 60+ .
Yeah.
Interesting. You know, one topic that's come up a lot at Voya and maybe, you know, people need to get a little more clarity around that is the intersection of health and wealth and your, you know, your two key, two big segments there. I mean, maybe you could provide an update on how this strategy is going, and are you seeing revenue synergies emerge with these two businesses?
The simplest way that we talk about our workplace strategy and the intersection of health and wealth is that at the end of the day, are we helping employers to ease the administrative burden and optimize their spend? Are we helping employees and their families be able to make better decisions and ultimately improve their outcomes? That's kind of the North Star that we look at. With the acquisition of Benefitfocus, that absolutely squarely puts us right in the center of that overall health and welfare benefits decision. We talk about it as a sister capability to the retirement recordkeeping, which you think about what does retirement recordkeeping do? It puts you squarely at the center of investment allocation decisions, enrollment decisions, contributions. Benefitfocus does the exact same on the health.
You know, that absolutely is paying dividends. I also announced in December that we have combined our health and wealth businesses under one leader, so Rob Grubka, who has a proven track record of leading our health businesses very successfully. Our intention of aligning those, they're still operating separately from a P&L, so we have visibility. It's really thinking about those intersection points and thinking about the customer experience when we're onboarding them, the customer experience when they're calling in with an issue, when they have claims, when they're coming in and they're navigating some of those complex decisions around how much should I put in my health plan? How much should I contribute to my savings? How do I think about those decisions?
The teams have done some really fantastic work to be able to design tools that are frankly agnostic of which business side you come from. At the end of the day, these are all workplace solutions offered through the employer that have one thing in common. They help to recruit, retain, and drive better outcomes for clients. We are starting to see really nice signs of what we're calling cross-serving. We bring on a new client, we have the ability for them to add additional Voya products and solutions over time. That's something you're gonna continue to hear a little bit more from us, is this idea of we land the client, we expand the relationship, and we deepen it from expanding the participant participation in those solutions.
Maybe shifting to the investment portfolio overall. You did some repositioning. Could you talk about what the incremental benefit was there and if there's any more to come in 2023 and beyond?
Do you wanna take this, Mike?
Yeah. No, look, we did not do anything drastic coming out of 2022. When we think about the general account, it's built for through the cycle returns, and we've demonstrated that through a variety of different cycles. That said, the higher rate environment did give us an opportunity to do some things on the margins to bring down our risk scores while still maintaining yields that frankly are better than where the portfolio was returning historically. Where is that revealing itself? It's fundamentally revealing itself in the wealth business. We talked about the fact that if you look at Q1 versus Q4, that we expect the spread income to stay relatively consistent. Why does that matter?
It matters because we're actually able to, and we just did this on January first, pass on a meaningful amount of credited interest to our customers, but yet still maintain the same spread income that we delivered in fourth quarter. Stepping back, we feel really good about the makeup of our general account. Things were relatively benign from a credit perspective for the majority of 2022. From everything that we can see heading into 2023, seems relatively constructive at this point. We'll see what happens in the second half. I think what we do know is if there is any turbulence that, you know, we will perform on a relative basis better than most. That's something that we've been able to demonstrate since we've been a public company, and we expect that to continue.
Frankly, that links back to the point that Rod and I were referring to before. There's a reason why 60+ insurance companies use us to help manage assets, and I think there will be events that happen in the future, and we feel confident with our ability to navigate through those.
Mike, that was. You know, you mentioned that you're gonna keep the spreads consistent with the fourth quarter into the first. That was, I think, close to $250 million of spread income, and that's versus a fourth quarter of 2021 that was a little bit over $200 million. We should feel good that you've got a sustainable number there, barring any crazy moves in the macro environment, maybe with an up bias.
Look, I think you should feel really good, and certainly, you know, there are contracts within the book where higher rates will continue to build from a benefit perspective, as you're alluding to. Look, we've talked a lot about margins in our Wealth Solutions business being very, very competitive, 33%-36% since we've been a public company. Frankly, given the rate environment, we're now at the higher end or even above that range at this point. What that business is delivering, I think it gets back to what Heather was talking about of the diversity of revenue.
I mean, there are gonna be things that go different than what we expect in our long-term assumptions, but right now, we've got a tailwind of a meaningful amount coming out of the spread income side of that business, and we feel good about that heading into 23.
Right. We even have up equity markets this year as opposed to down 15%.
Let's hope that continues.
Yeah, hopefully. Any questions from the audience, just to make sure I'm not enjoying all the questions myself, which I am. Okay. Maybe, talking a little bit about warrants. You know, there's been some buzz about that. I think the warrants expire in May of 2023. Could you talk about how you plan to manage any volatility there from these warrants as they near the expiration? I think it's about 26 million of them. How does that play out? What does that mean for the stock when they do expire one way or another?
Yeah. The warrants were put on when we went public 10 years ago. They were actually issued to ING, who later sold them to a number of banks who restructured them, some into structured notes. Those banks did not wanna have a point of view on Voya. What they did is went out and short the stock to make sure that they were essentially neutral on how we move from an equity perspective. Those warrants, as you just referenced, Andrew, they come to term in May of this year. So it's been 10 years that we've been a public company. We have publicly said that we were open to extinguishing those warrants ahead of that date.
Last year was one of the first time we talked about that. Given volatility levels, it just didn't make sense to do that. We continue to look at that as an opportunity, heading into May, to the extent that that makes sense. We look at it the same way we look at all actions with capital management. We wanna make sure it's in the best interest of shareholders. What exactly happens heading into that? Andrew, I think that'll reveal itself over time. To your point, there is a high short interest in the stock.
We actually view that this event, getting past this event, as a potential catalyst for us because there's a lot of individuals, especially those new to the Voya story, that like the capital-light nature of our business, they like the EPS growth, they like the diversity of revenue. They see a high short interest, and they ask themselves the question, "What am I missing?" We actually are looking forward one way or another, whether we do something to mitigate that sooner or we just get past that May date and those go away, as just yet another reason why there can be more demand for our equity.
The stock had a great move when you reported results on the fourth quarter. I think it was up some 9% or so that day. The stock still remains, in our view, very compelling from a valuation standpoint. Maybe it's 8-9 times next year's earnings. What is it that you think the investor is not getting in the Voya story? What are they kinda missing? You know, we're very excited about it from where we sit.
Hey, well, maybe we'll tag team this one and I'll start it. I think that number one, with our earnings this last week, hopefully we've given clarity around the strategies unchanged. We're executing on the organic growth, and we're resuming share buybacks, and that the capital management strategy is unchanged. I think those were some very important questions we needed to answer. We also obviously worked through a CEO succession, which we believe has gone smoothly. Again, it's the continuity of the leadership team that has delivered. If you go out back since 2018, same team for the most part, that has delivered a over 20% annual EPS growth since that time period. We feel like we've got a track record.
I think one thing that's interesting is with the divestitures of life and annuity, there may be some confusion around who's a good peer set, because we're not a traditional life insurance company. We have the high free cash flow generating. We're not, you know, a capital-intensive business with long tail liabilities. I think that element is a bit confusing. As we continue to tell the story, we've talked about the importance of being able to increase the dividend. That's one of the things that we've heard is the important with our kind of free cash flow generation to be able to continue to return that capital back to shareholders in form of growth. Let me let me toss it over and see if there's some other thoughts.
I think you nailed it, Heather. The only piece I would add is that we have a prove it type mindset here at Voya. You know, Rod, you were saying earlier today that when we talked about 12%-17% EPS growth at the Investor Day in 2021, people liked it, but they didn't necessarily believe it. In 2022, we had double-digit headwinds to EPS growth, yet we still put up a 24% EPS growth number in 2022. We just came back and said double-digit with a path to the low end of the 12%-17% despite putting up the 24%. I think what Heather and Rod and I and the full team just basically, where we're fully focused on is just printing and printing and printing.
I think this is an opportunity for many of the people in the room and listening in, we just are gonna control what we can control, try to tell the story in a more compelling way. At the end of the day, if we keep printing what we're printing, we think it'll be there for our shareholders.
Andrew, let me just add one piece. If you think about the decade that we've been, nearly the decade we've been a public company, I don't know that there are many other examples of companies that have been through in a 10-year period as much change deliberately as we have been. We've largely delivered on those outcomes, in my view. No company's perfect. We're certainly not, but we've largely delivered on those. When you tell a story of 12%-17% EPS and it's above where most people are, there's gonna be a natural pushback on, really? Can you do it? Year one, we've more than accomplished that. Again, we weren't the only one that had a 10% EPS headwind. All the other peers did too. We did that.
Heather's talked about, you know, the mindset the team has is we know we need to prove it, and we're gonna continue to do so. I think if you think about the heavy lifting that we've done through that period of time, all of that energy by both the management team and the board is focused on forward-looking, it's focused on the execution. That's what gives me a lot of confidence that, the team that has substantially been together over that period of time, we've executed the CEO, succession piece. Stay tuned. I'm very, very comfortable personally that we're gonna continue to execute well.
Great story. Great having you. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Andrew. Thank you.