NU Online News Service, Jan. 31, 6:03 p.m. – AFLAC Inc., Columbus, Ga., is reporting $163 million in net income for the fourth quarter of 2001 on $2.4 billion in revenue, down from $166 million in net income on $2.5 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2000.
AFLAC gets much of its revenue from sales of cancer insurance and other specialty insurance products in Japan. The company has included $18 million in losses on "cross-currency swaps" in its fourth-quarter net earnings figure.
The swaps are financial contracts that are supposed to limit the effects of large shifts in interest rates and yen-dollar exchange rates on the dollar value of AFLAC debt.
The swap losses are due mainly to the interest rate component, rather than the exchange-rate component, AFLAC says.
Operating earnings, which exclude the swaps losses, increased increased 8.6%, to $182 million.
