Share count
673Mpeak FY2016
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MET, MetLife Inc.
Insurance — Life & Health financial
MetLife is a life insurer and one of the largest providers of group, workplace benefits — life, dental, disability, vision — that employers buy to cover their people, alongside individual protection and institutional retirement and annuity products. It collects premiums and deposits up front, invests that money while the obligations sit on its books, and aims to earn more on those investments than it must pay out, plus fees for administering the benefits, taking in more than its claims and costs.
We hold leading market positions in the United States ("U.S."), Asia, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East.
Over the next four years we will continue to execute on our New Frontier strategy, which was designed to accelerate growth across our global platform while delivering attractive returns and all-weather performance.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$77.1B
+8.6% YoY · 3% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $77.6B 5-yr avg $70.5B
Revenue $734M +20.1% vs yr-ago qtr
Operating margin 222.2% yr-ago 231.6%
Net income $1.2B yr-ago $950M
Net margin 158.3% yr-ago 155.5%
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What moves the needle
- Two levers run this business, and the first is the one that sets MetLife apart: it leans heavily on group benefits sold to employers — life, disability, dental bought through the workforce rather than one policy at a time — a recompeted, price-pressed market the filing itself calls highly competitive, where winning a large employer's account can tempt an insurer into underpricing the risk it just took on. The second is the spread under all life insurance: the gap between what it earns investing the premiums it holds and what it owes the insured, which leans on credit discipline in the portfolio and the standing temptation to reach for yield. Binding both is mortality and longevity — whether it reads the odds across millions of lives shrewdly enough to earn on the risk rather than merely to win the account. The bad case is mispriced coverage or a credit cycle that marks down the assets backing long-dated obligations. The record below carries the margins, the returns on capital, and the investment mix.
- Is it a good business?
- A life insurer is read on the spread it earns on a large float and the growth in book value, not a combined ratio: benefits exceed premiums by design, since claims fall due decades after the premium and are funded by the investment income on accumulated reserves. Book value per share has slipped about 4% a year across the record, though much of that swing is rising rates marking the bond portfolio down through other comprehensive income rather than economic loss. The float runs about 0.6× equity, the leverage that magnifies the spread. Whether the spread holds as rates move, and whether the reserves prove adequate, are what the 10-K decides, not an earnings multiple.
Drafted from the company's filings and reviewed by hand; every number is shown in full in the sections below.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, 2016–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2016’16 | 2017’17 | 2018’18 | 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | TTMTTMMar 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | |||||||||||
| $60.8B | $62.3B | $67.9B | $69.6B | $67.8B | $68.7B | $68.8B | $66.9B | $71.0B | $77.1B | $77.6B | RevenueRevenue |
| $37.2B | $39.0B | $43.8B | $42.2B | $42.0B | $41.2B | $48.5B | $44.3B | $44.9B | $49.8B | $50.2B | Premiums earnedPremiums |
| $16.8B | $17.4B | $16.2B | $18.9B | $17.1B | $21.4B | $15.9B | $19.9B | $21.3B | $22.6B | $23.0B | Investment incomeInv. inc. |
| $850M | $4.0B | $5.1B | $5.9B | $5.4B | $6.9B | $5.3B | $1.6B | $4.4B | $3.4B | $3.6B | Net incomeNet inc. |
| 45% | — | 19% | 13% | 22% | 19% | 17% | 26% | 21% | 27% | 25% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||||
| $14.8B | $12.3B | $11.7B | $13.8B | $11.6B | $12.3B | $13.0B | $13.7B | $14.6B | $17.1B | $15.5B | Operating cash flowOp. cash |
| 1% | 7% | 10% | 9% | 7% | 10% | 18% | 5% | 16% | 12% | 13% | Return on equityROE |
| −1% | 4% | 7% | 6% | 5% | 8% | 12% | 0% | 11% | 7% | 8% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| $16.2B | $17.1B | $17.8B | $19.2B | $14.7B | $15.6B | $16.1B | $16.5B | $16.1B | $17.1B | $17.6B | Float (reserves)Float |
| $898.8B | $719.9B | $687.5B | $740.5B | $795.1B | $759.7B | $663.1B | $687.6B | $677.5B | $745.2B | $743.2B | Total assetsAssets |
| $19.2B | $17.6B | $19.8B | $20.4B | $23.7B | $27.2B | $25.1B | $26.7B | $25.2B | $25.6B | $27.6B | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| $67.5B | $58.7B | $52.7B | $66.1B | $74.6B | $67.5B | $29.9B | $30.0B | $27.4B | $28.4B | $27.3B | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||||||||
| 1.11B | 1.08B | 1.01B | 944M | 913M | 869M | 809M | 762M | 711M | 673M | 656M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $0.77 | $3.72 | $5.05 | $6.25 | $5.92 | $7.88 | $6.53 | $2.07 | $6.22 | $5.02 | $5.52 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $1.57 | $1.59 | $1.65 | $1.74 | $1.81 | $1.89 | $1.98 | $2.05 | $2.15 | $2.24 | $2.30 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $60.92 | $54.41 | $52.02 | $70.04 | $81.64 | $77.62 | $36.94 | $39.37 | $38.60 | $42.18 | $41.67 | Book value / shareBVPS |
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 9-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +8.5%/yr | +9.0%/yr |
| EPS | +23.2%/yr | −3.3%/yr |
| Dividends / share | +4.1%/yr | +4.3%/yr |
| Book value / share | −4.0%/yr | −12.4%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2016–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$77.1Blow FY2016
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →
Is it a good business?
- Return on equity 12%SolidNet income $3.4B ÷ equity $28.4BIndustry peers: median 13%
What this means
What it earns on shareholders' capital, the underwriting result plus what the float earns invested. Durably above the ~10% cost of equity is what compounds book value.
- Investment income $22.6Bearned on investmentsNet investment income $22.6B
What this means
What the float and capital earned this year. This is the second engine: an insurer that breaks even on underwriting still wins if the float is large and invested well.
The float and book value
- Float (reserves) $17.1B0.6× equityLoss and claim reserves $17.1B, 0.6× equity
What this means
Money held against future claims and invested in the meantime. Buffett's insight was that good underwriting makes this float cost less than nothing, a pool of other people's money the owners earn on. Measured here from loss and claim reserves only; it excludes unearned premiums and funds held, so the true float is somewhat larger than shown. The larger it is against equity, the more that leverage works, for better or worse.
- the compounding scoreboardEquity $28.4B ÷ 673M shares
What this means
A life insurer is judged the way Berkshire is, by the growth in book value per share over the years as the spread on the float and the mortality and fee margins compound into equity. This is the level today; the record below shows whether it has grown. Note that reported book value swings with interest rates, which mark the bond portfolio up and down through other comprehensive income.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Low contestabilityThe moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.
In its own filing Raised, but not as a competitor
The filing raises AI among its risks, but in other terms (security, regulation, energy or the like), not as a competitor to its product; it frames AI mainly as a capability.
AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat, and the company is using it that way.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Management, ownership & pay
read the proxy →From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.
| Fiscal year | Chief executive | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Net income |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Mr. Khalaf | $16.6M | $32.5M | $6.9B |
| 2022 | Mr. Khalaf | $18.1M | $33.0M | $5.3B |
| 2023 | Mr. Khalaf | $20.5M | $15.4M | $1.6B |
| 2024 | Mr. Khalaf | $20.3M | $30.4M | $4.4B |
| 2025 | Mr. Khalaf | $22.4M | $13.8M | $3.4B |
Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Net income is the whole business's, as filed, for the same fiscal years.
- Insider ownership<1%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- Stock-based compensation$168M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 0% of revenue, equal to 3% of operating profit. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.
What an owner would ask, FY2025
read the 10-K →- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Pension & retirement as critical estimates
each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →
The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.
Peers, Insurance — Life & Health
The same industry, side by side on the spread-and-book-value lens. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.
| Company | Revenue | ROE | Yield on float | Return on assets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PGRProgressive Corp. | $87.7B | 22% | 4.8% | 5.2% |
| METMetLife Inc. | $77.1B | 9% | — | 0.7% |
| ALLAllstate Corp. | $67.7B | 13% | 7.9% | 2.5% |
| PFHPrudential Financial Inc | $60.8B | 9% | 6.4% | 0.5% |
| ATHSAthene Holding Ltd | $25.7B | 14% | — | 0.9% |
| RGAReinsurance Group of America | $23.7B | 9% | — | 1.0% |
| CRBGCorebridge Financial Inc. | $19.0B | 14% | — | 0.6% |
| LNCLincoln National | $18.2B | 11% | 14.4% | 0.4% |
| Group median | — | 12% | — | 0.8% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
price / tangible bookAn insurer is worth a multiple of its tangible book value, and the multiple it deserves is set by the return it earns on that book. Type today’s price; we show what you would be paying against what MetLife Inc.’s record justifies.
$
The assumptions
Tangible book / share, delivered−19%/yr’20→’25
The justified multiple is (return on tangible equity − growth) ÷ (cost of equity − growth). An insurer earning exactly its cost of equity is worth about one times tangible book; the premium above that prices each point of durable excess return. A higher cost of equity lowers the justified multiple for an insurer.
Enter a price above to run it.
Price / tangible book—
Justified by the return—
Normalized return on tangible equity11%
Price / book—
Earnings yield—
P/E (3-yr avg ’23–’25)—
Graham’s price gate—
Graham applied the same standards to financial enterprises (Intelligent Investor ch.14): the 15× multiple cap on averaged earnings, and P/E times price-to-book at most 22.5. The gate marks the bargain-hunter’s floor, not a verdict.
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
Tangible book $17.1B on 643M shares, a 11% normalized return on it. The dials set the multiple such a return would justify; your price sets the multiple you are paying. It assumes the insurer keeps earning that return; an underwriting cycle, a reserve shortfall or a bad year on the float changes it, which is what the record and the 10-K are for.
Cite: Owner Scorecard, "MetLife Inc. (MET), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/MET, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← MERC its page in the Manual META →
Industry order: ← LNC the Insurance — Life & Health chapter MFC →