Aflac Incorporated Announces First Quarter Results, Declares Second Quarter Cas...( COLUMBUS Georgia April 23 /- Afla...),Health

COLUMBUS, Georgia, April 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Aflac Incorporated today reported its first quarter results.

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Total revenues were $4.3 billion during the first quarter of 2008, compared with $3.8 billion in the first quarter of 2007. Net earnings were $474 million, or $.98 per diluted share, compared with $416 million, or $.84 per share, a year ago. Net earnings included realized investment losses of $4 million, or $.01 per diluted share, compared with $9 million of realized gains, or $.02 per diluted share a year ago. The impact on net earnings from the change in fair value of the interest rate component of the cross-currency swaps related to the company's senior notes, as required by SFAS 133, increased net earnings by $3 million, or $.01 per diluted share in the first quarter of 2008. The impact from SFAS 133 was immaterial in the first quarter of 2007.

We believe that an analysis of operating earnings, a non-GAAP financial measure, is vitally important to an understanding of Aflac's underlying profitability drivers. We define operating earnings as the profits we derive from our operations before realized investment gains and losses, the impact from SFAS 133, and nonrecurring items. Management uses operating earnings to evaluate the financial performance of Aflac's insurance operations because realized gains and losses, the impact from SFAS 133, and nonrecurring items tend to be driven by general economic conditions and events, and therefore may obscure the underlying fundamentals and trends in Aflac's insurance operations.

Furthermore, because a significant portion of our business is in Japan, where our functional currency is the Japanese yen, we believe it is equally important to understand the impact on operating earnings from translating yen into dollars. We translate Afl
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