CNO Financial Group, Inc. (NYSE:CNO) Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call November 7, 2023 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Adam Auvil - Investor Relations

Gary Bhojwani - Chief Executive Officer

Paul McDonough - Chief Financial Officer

Eric Johnson - President and Chief Investment Officer

Karen DeToro - Chief Actuary

Conference Call Participants

Brian Kruger - Stifel

Scott Heleniak - RBC

John Barnidge - Piper Sandler

Suneet Kamath - Jefferies

Operator

Hello, welcome to today's CNO Financial Group Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. My name is Jordan, and I will be coordinating your call today. [Operator Instructions].

I'm now going to hand over to Adam Auvil to begin. Adam, please go ahead.

Adam Auvil

Good morning, and thank you for joining us on CNO Financial Group's Third Quarter 2023 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 the 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 November 9th.

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 non-GAAP measures to the corresponding GAAP measures in the appendix.

Throughout the presentation, we will be making performance comparisons, and unless otherwise specified, any comparisons made will be referring to changes between third quarter 2023 and third quarter 2022.

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

Gary Bhojwani

Thanks, Adam. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. CNO again delivered a solid financial performance for the quarter. Operating earnings for diluted share were up $0.88, excuse me, up to - were $0.88 up 31%. Excluding significant items, operating earnings per share were up 10%.

The fundamentals of our business remain sound, including double-digit growth in total new annualized premium. Continued sales momentum balanced across product lines. Strong net investment income, a robust capital position and continued strong free cash flow generation.