CNO Financial Group, Inc. (CNO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the CNO Financial [ Group's ] Annual Meeting of shareholders. I will now introduce the first presenter, Dan Maurer, Chair of the Board of CNO Financial Group.

Good morning. I'm Dan Maurer, Chair of the Board of CNO Financial Group. I'm pleased to welcome to our 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. I hope that each of you remain safe and healthy. Due to the continuing impact of COVID-19, we are holding our annual meeting in an all virtual format again this year. We will strive to make the meeting as inclusive as possible by offering our shareholders the same opportunities to participate as provided at our past meetings. In addition to authenticated shareholders any opportunity to vote online during the meeting, we welcome shareholders to submit questions live through the text box that opens up after clicking the Q&A button located on the bottom of your screen. We will address questions related to the various proposals during the formal business portion of the meeting. For questions directed at a given proposal, please clearly note that in your submission to assist us in identifying your question. After the formal meeting has adjourned, we will provide time for general Q&A. In a few minutes, we'll conduct the business portion of the meeting, and then I'll introduce Gary Bhojwani, our Chief Executive Officer, for an update on the company. Following Gary's presentation, we will also have other leaders and members of the Board available for the question-and-answer period. First, however, I would like to introduce our director nominees who are standing with me for election, all of whom are joining us virtually today. Gary Bhojwani, Ellyn Brown; Steve David; Dave Foss; Bob Greving; Nina Henderson; Chet Ragavan; Steve Shebik; and Fred Sievert. Charlie Jacklin is also joining us virtually and will retire from the Board at conclusion of today's meeting. I want to take this opportunity to publicly recognize and thank Charlie for his service and contributions to CNO. I speak on behalf of the entire Board when I say that we will miss his experience, leadership and perspective. And we thank him very much for his service. Also with us today is Gabriel Alejandro, a representative of our independent registered public accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers. Mr. Alejandro has informed me that he does not wish to make a statement. He will be available during the Q&A session to respond to any shareholder questions. Now let us turn to the business portion of our meeting. [ Todd Schafer ] has been sworn in to act as the independent election inspector for today's meeting. The polls are open and will remain open for a few minutes to allow any shareholders who have not yet cast their ballots the opportunity to do so. The notice of the meeting, proxy statement and proxy were timely sent to all holders of record of common stock at the close of business on March 9, 2021. Those facts are established by the affidavit of the company's distribution agent. On the record date for the annual meeting, CNO had 133,609,605 shares of common stock outstanding and entitled to vote at this meeting. I have been informed by our Inspector of Elections that a majority of our outstanding shares are present in person or by proxies returned prior to the meeting. This represents a majority of the votes entitled to be cast at the annual meeting, and accordingly, we have a quorum present. Because one, notice of the meeting has been appropriately given; and two, a quorum is present, this meeting is duly constituted. We have 4 items to be voted upon today. Information about each item is contained in the company's proxy statement. As indicated in the proxy statement, the Board of Directors recommends the approval of all 4 proposals. We will address any questions directed at specific proposals after I read all the proposals. If you have not voted, or if you wish to change your prior vote, I encourage you to vote now online. Shareholders who have sent in proxies or voted via telephone or internet and do not want to change their vote, do not need to take any further action. Proposal 1 is to elect myself, Gary Bhojwani, Ellyn Brown, Steve David, Dave Foss, Bob Greving, Nina Henderson, Chet Ragavan, Steve Shebik; and Fred Sievert as Directors for 1-year terms expiring at the 2022 annual meeting of shareholders or until their successors have been duly elected and qualified. Proposal 2 is the approval by nonbinding advisory vote of the executive compensation of the company's named executive officers as disclosed in the proxy statement. Proposal 3 is the approval of the adoption of the amended and restated Section 382 shareholder rights plan. Proposal 4 is the ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the year ending December 31, 2021. Now we will pause for any questions on these proposals. Operator, please unmute Jennifer Childe's line. Jennifer, do we have any questions on these proposals?

Dan, we do not.

We will now proceed to complete the voting. If there are any shareholders who have not already voted their shares or wish to change their vote, please do so now as the polls are about to close. [Voting]

The discussion of the matters for shareholder consideration is now closed and the polls now also closed. The election inspector has delivered the preliminary voting results. I am pleased to report that based on these results, each of the Director nominees has been elected and that each of the other proposals on the agenda has been approved. We will report the final voting results in a Form 8-K to be filed within 4 business days. That concludes the business portion of our meeting, and I formally declare that the 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders is now closed. I will now turn this meeting over to Gary Bhojwani to review CNO's business. Gary?

Thanks, Dan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining me. As I look back at 2020, I'm very proud of how we came together to deliver on our purpose for our customers and shareholders. The pandemic and the events of 2020 reminded us that what we do is important and meaningful to individuals and families across the country. At CNO, we don't just provide insurance. Our associates and agents help secure the future of middle-income America. I start by thanking our 3,400 associates, including those business essential associates and branch office administrators that keep our operations running. 5,000 exclusive agents who work in our branches and our 4,000 independent partner agents. I also thank our customers who place their trust in us every day. Our long-term success is tied to the collective well-being of the CNO community. In 2020, we made significant investments in supporting the safety, health and financial well-being of our associates, customers and agents in response to the pandemic. We also made significant progress in our ESG efforts, further embedding these principles into our business strategy. Earlier this week, we published our 2020 corporate social responsibility report on our website, cnoinc.com. CNO is now a proud signatory to the United Nations principles for responsible investment, which commits us to incorporating ESG principles into our investment analysis and reporting framework. We adopted the SASB and TCFD reporting frameworks and committed to fund $100 million in new impact investments. We also performed our first greenhouse gas emissions inventory and adopted a multiyear GHG emissions reduction target. This past year, we advanced our diversity, equity and inclusion agenda and named a full-time DE&I leader. To underscore our commitment, we are formally including DE&I objectives in our 2021 executive management compensation program. As I reflect on our 2020 performance, the word that keeps coming to mind is resilience. Resilience of our business model, resilience of our associates and agents and resilience of our customers and communities. Our differentiated strategy, particularly our diversified product distribution and customer approach enabled us to navigate the pandemic from a position of strength. Demand for life insurance surged offsetting weaker health sales which have traditionally relied upon in-person meetings. Direct-to-consumer sales set new records as we benefited from the acceleration of a shift to a virtual sales environment. This offset weaker work site sales, which slowed significantly as pandemic-related restrictions hampered our ability to access the workplace. Our health margins benefited from consumers delaying health care due to COVID restrictions, which offset the unfavorable COVID-related mortality impacts. Through 2020, we accelerated the pace and execution of our strategic business transformation. Recall that in January of 2020, we announced a business reorganization that consolidated our 3 segments into 2 divisions: consumer and worksite. Within the consumer division, we continue to build upon success with our direct-to-consumer life business and cross-channel collaboration efforts. Consumers can now be served online over the telephone in person with an exclusive field agent or some combination of the 3. This blend of virtual and local service which we achieved through integrating our direct-to-consumer and field agent channels. Has led to significant improvements in overall lead conversion rates and per customer acquisition cost. We recognize the opportunity to create a similar multi-channel sales and service experience for the Medicare market. We launched our new digital health insurance market place myHealthPolicy.com in October of last year. Within the worksite division we saw modest growth in our employer client base, however due to the pandemic we faced significant restrictions accessing workplaces to complete employee enrollments. In response, we focused extensively on building out our virtual and online enrollment capabilities. For the full year, virtual sales comprised 23% of total production. Continued premium persistency was another key driver of our worksite business this year. Persistency was up modestly over historical levels, reflecting the critical value our consumers attribute to our protection products and the mix of stable industries we serve. Enterprise expenses were higher in 2020, driven primarily by accelerated spending on growth initiatives. This was a conscious decision. The strength of our business and cash flow in 2020 enabled us to capitalize on opportunities to support the continued growth of our franchise beyond the pandemic. We saw this as an opportunity to build capabilities for future growth and differentiation. Our leverage and liquidity remained comfortably above our target levels throughout the year. We intentionally maintain a more conservative posture relative to our target levels due to ongoing COVID-related uncertainty. We also issued $150 million in subordinated debt in November, which pushed our debt up slightly to 25.6% of total capital. We ended the year with an RBC ratio of 411% and $388 million in cash at the holding company. In 2020, we generated $387 million in free cash flow or 107% of our operating income. We returned $330 million to shareholders, which included $263 million in share repurchases. This reflected 12% of our market cap at the beginning of the year. In the past 10 years, we have returned $3 billion to shareholders and reduced our share count by nearly 50%. Turning to our financial performance on Slide 4. For the full year, operating earnings per share grew 37%, largely driven by strong insurance product margins, which benefited from COVID-related deferral of health care. This more than offset the unfavorable COVID impact on mortality. Operating earnings also benefited from a reduced share count as a result of our elevated share repurchase activity. Net investment income was down 10% due to lower portfolio yields. Strong direct-to-consumer Life sales partially offset a decline in health sales, which are typically sold in person through an exclusive field agent. Total new annualized premium was down 6%. Life and health collected premiums were essentially flat as strong consumer persistency was offset by a reduction in the size of the block due to the COVID-related weaker sales levels in 2020. Annuity collected premiums were down sharply with the onset of the pandemic, but improved steadily throughout the year and were up 7% in the fourth quarter. For the full year, they were down 11%. Fee revenue was up 19%, reflecting growth in third-party sales and growth within our broker-dealer and registered investment adviser. Client assets in our broker-dealer registered investment adviser were up 18% to $1.8 billion. Book value per diluted share, excluding AOCI, increased 8%. We ended the quarter on solid capital footing with a 411% RBC ratio and $388 million liquidity at the holding company. Throughout this unprecedented year, our teams have pulled together to support our associates and agent force, rebuild sales, drive productivity and efficiency gains and serve our customers with minimal disruption. Our pandemic response and financial results demonstrated the resilience of our organization and prove that we can emerge from the crisis even stronger. Unifying our channels continues to unlock value for CNO. When coupled with the steps we have taken in recent years to diversify our business, reduce our long-term care exposure, derisk our investment portfolio and strengthen our balance sheet, we remain well positioned to weather the economic challenges that lie ahead. I'm confident that we're on the right path to successfully grow our business, help secure the future of middle-income America, and drive further enhancements to shareholder value. To all of our shareholders, please stay healthy and safe. Thank you for your continued interest in and support of CNO Financial Group. I'll now turn it to Jennifer Childe, Vice President of Investor Relations and Sustainability to moderate the question-and-answer session. Jennifer?

Thanks, Gary. Welcome to the Q&A portion of the meeting. [Operator Instructions] Gary, there are no questions. I'll turn the meeting back to you.

Thank you, Jennifer. We will now conclude the meeting. Thank you for participating today and for your support of CNO. Have a great day.

Thank you. The CNO Financial Group, Inc. Annual Meeting of Shareholders has now concluded. Thank you for attending you may now disconnect.