CNO Financial Group, Inc. (NYSE:CNO) Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call August 2, 2022 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Adam Auvil – Investor Relations

Gary Bhojwani – Chief Executive Officer

Paul McDonough – Chief Financial Officer

Eric Johnson – Chief Investment Officer and President

Conference Call Participants

Ryan Krueger – KBW

Dan Bergman – Jefferies

John Barnidge – Piper Sandler

Erik Bass – Autonomous Research

Operator

Hello everyone, and thank you for joining the CNO Financial Group Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Results Call. My name is Varis and I will be moderating your call today. [Operator Instructions]

I now have the pleasure of handing over to your host Adam Auvil. Please go ahead.

Adam Auvil

Good morning. And thank you for joining us on CNO Financial Group's second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Today's presentation will include remarks from Gary Bhojwani, Chief Executive Officer; and Paul McDonough, Chief Financial Officer.

Following the presentation, we will also have other business leaders available for the question-and-answer period.

During this conference call, we will be referring to information contained in yesterday's press release. You can obtain the release by visiting Media section of our website at cnoinc.com.

This morning's presentation is also available in the Investors section of our website and was filed in a Form 8-K yesterday. We expect to file our Form 10-Q and post it on our website on or before August 5.

Let me remind you that any forward-looking statements we make today are subject to a number of factors, which may cause actual results to be materially different than those contemplated by the forward-looking statements.

Today's presentations contain a number of non-GAAP measures, which should not be considered as substitutes for the most directly comparable GAAP measures. You'll find a reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures to the corresponding GAAP measures in the appendix.

Throughout the presentation, we will be making performance comparisons, unless otherwise specified, any comparisons made will be referring to changes between second quarter 2022 and second quarter 2021.

And with that, I'll turn the call over to Gary.

Gary Bhojwani

Thanks Adam. Good morning everyone. And thank you for joining us.

Turning to Slide 4, and our second quarter performance, we reported strong earnings and solid overall sales for the quarter. Operating earnings per share were $0.85, up 29% over the prior year. Excluding significant items operating earnings per share were up 3%.

Variable investment income results performed well in the quarter showing resilience during a period of continued market volatility. Our underlying business results remain strong with insurance product margins, performing as expected. The value of recent strategic investments to accelerate growth and enhance agent productivity were on display in the quarter. We were especially pleased with the performance of our annuities, our direct-to-consumer businesses and our Worksite insurance sales.