Brighthouse Financial, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Bright House Financial's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. My name is Justin, and I will be your coordinator today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. We will facilitate a question and answer session towards the end of the conference. In fairness to all participants, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. As a reminder, the conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would like to turn the presentation over to Dana Amonte, head of investor relations. Ms. Amonte, you may proceed.

Thank you, and good morning. Welcome to Bright House Financial's third quarter 2023 earnings call. Materials for today's call were released last night and can be found on the investor relations section of our website. We encourage you to review all of these materials. Today, you will hear from Eric Stagerwald, our president and chief executive officer, and Ed Spihar, our Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the call up for a question and answer period. Also here with us today to participate in the discussions are Miles Lambert, our Chief Distribution and Marketing Officer, David Rosenbaum, Head of Product and Underwriting, and John Rosenthal, our Chief Investment Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to note that our discussion during this call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Bright House Financial's actual results may differ materially from the results anticipated in the forward-looking statements as a result of risks and uncertainties described from time to time in Bright House Financial's filings with the SEC. Information discussed on today's call speaks only as of today, November 8, 2023. The company undertakes no obligation to update any information discussed on today's call. During this call, we will be discussing certain financial measures that are not based on generally accepted accounting principles, also known as non-GAAP measures. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures on a historical basis to the most directly comparable GAAP measures and related definitions may be found in our earnings release, slide presentation, and financial supplements. And finally, references to statutory results, including certain statutory-based measures used by management, are preliminary due to the timing of the filing of the statutory statement. And now I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Eric Stagerwald.

Thank you, Dana, and good morning, everyone. Bright House Financial reported solid results for the third quarter of 2023 that reflect the steady execution of our focused strategy. We continue to manage through this volatile market environment, one in which we saw equity markets fall modestly while interest rates rose significantly, increasing by more than 70 basis points in the third quarter of 2023, as measured by the 10-year U.S. Treasury. As I've said before, while we have a cautious view on both the current market and economic environment, we intend to maintain an active and opportunistic share repurchase program and we remain committed to returning capital to our shareholders over time. Year to date through November 3rd, we repurchased approximately $216 million of our common stock, which included $64 million of common stock repurchased in the third quarter. In addition to our share repurchase program, we remain focused on the steady execution of our business strategy, along with our multi-year multi-scenario financial management framework, and risk management strategy. Turning to the results in the quarter, I am pleased with our sales results in the third quarter. Our annuity sales totaled $2.6 billion, which is a 5% increase sequentially. Sales results in the quarter were largely driven by persistent, strong sales of our flagship SHIELD-level annuities, which increased 15% sequentially, as well as with sales of our fixed deferred annuities. As one of the top annuity providers in the United States, we continue to leverage the depth and breadth of our expertise, along with our strong distribution relationships, to competitively position ourselves in markets we choose to compete in. We remain focused on offering a diversified portfolio of complementary products to further drive the addition of high-quality new business to our enforce book, and we remain pleased with the progress that we continue to make towards shifting our business mix over time. Additionally, we reported $25 million in sales of our life insurance products in the third quarter of 2023, consistent with life sales results in the second quarter of 2023, which continue to be mainly driven by our smart care product. We remain focused on maintaining the competitiveness of our life insurance products, as we execute our life insurance strategy. Turning to financial results, our combined risk-based capital or RBC ratio was estimated to be between 400% and 420% and cash and liquid assets at the holding company remain robust at $900 million as of September 30th. Additionally, we had solid gap results as our adjusted earnings, less notable items were generally in line with our expectations and we continued to effectively manage our expenses. In summary, we reported solid results in the third quarter of 2023. Our statutory balance sheet and liquidity metrics were strong, our sales results remained at a high level, and we continued to deliver on our commitment to return capital to shareholders. We are confident in our strategy and are unwavering in our focus on business growth and prudent financial management. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ed to discuss our third quarter financial results in more detail.