Virtus Investment Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRTS) Q3 2023 Results Conference Call October 27, 2023 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Sean Rourke - IR

George Aylward - President and CEO

Mike Angerthal - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Michael Cyprys - Morgan Stanley

Operator

Good morning. My name is Dede, and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the Virtus Investment Partners quarterly conference call. The slide presentation for this call is available in the Investor Relations section of the Virtus website, www.virtus.com. This call is being recorded and will be available for replay on the Virtus website. [Operator Instructions]

I will now turn the conference over to your host, Sean Rourke.

Sean Rourke

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. On behalf of Virtus Investment Partners, I’d like to welcome you to the discussion of our operating and financial results for the third quarter of 2023.

Our speakers today are George Aylward, President and CEO; and Mike Angerthal, Chief Financial Officer. Following the prepared remarks, we’ll have a Q&A period.

Before we begin, please note the disclosures on Page 2 of the slide presentation. Certain matters discussed on this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and as such are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those factors set forth in today’s news release and discussed in our SEC filings. These risks and uncertainties may cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the statements.

In addition to results presented on a GAAP basis, we use certain non-GAAP measures to evaluate our financial results. Our non-GAAP financial measures are not substitutes for GAAP financial results and should be read in conjunction with the GAAP results. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the applicable GAAP measures are included in today’s news release and financial supplement, which are available on our website.

Now I’d like to turn the call over to George. George?

George Aylward

Thank you, Sean. Good morning, everyone. I’ll start with an overview of the results we reported earlier today before turning it over to Mike to provide the details.

In the third quarter, we continued to operate in a challenging and volatile environment and the key highlights of our results included higher retail sales and positive net flows in retail separate accounts, global funds and ETFs, increased net earnings and operating margin, higher return of capital, including our sixth consecutive annual dividend increase, investments in the growth of the business, including in a CLO and in an affiliate, attractive investment performance across strategies and products, both long term and year-to-date and repayment of debt, ending the quarter with a well-positioned balance sheet and modest net leverage.