Facing outflows and earnings decline, executives at Calamos are hoping that new blood and new products can bring about a turnaround.

First, the basics, which you can glean from the SeekingAlpha earnings call transcript as well as the company's earnings document.

Calamos reported non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of 24-cents for the first quarter (consensus was 17-cents) compared to 30-cents a year ago, with net income of of $5.1 million, compared to $6.3 million a year ago.

Revenues were $71 million, compared to $85.3 million a year ago.

Total AUM for the quarter were $29.3 billion, compared to $30.6 billion in the fourth quarter and $36.2 billion a year ago.

The firm saw net outflows of $2.5 billion for the quarter.

Calamos also repurchased 312,469 shares of common stock during the quarter.

There were a number of interesting themes to be gleaned from the earnings call conference. Three important points include:

POINT 1: Calamos Continues to Turn to New Blood
POINT 2: Calamos Sees Product Variety, Including Alts, as Very Important
POINT 3: Calamos is Buying Back a Lot of Stock


Now to drill down on these points.

POINT 1: Calamos Continues to Turn to New Blood
It is important to note that this is a company that has already experienced some turnover in its talent. For example, former co-CIO Nick Calamos left the firm last Fall. In February, James Boyne was named president and chief operating officer. Former senior vice president and chief administrative officer Randall Zipfell left soon after.

Chair and chief executive officer John Calamos expressed an interest in continued talent shuffling, saying at various points during the call the following:

As you know from past talks of last year, we did include a value team and also a Long/Short team to our investment team. So we continue to look at additional resources as we expand our product breadth going forward.

Our primary objective is to improve investment performance across the strategies, while particularly in our U.S. growth strategy. The key objective will include our ongoing effort to add talented resources to our investment team throughout the year.

POINT 2: Calamos Sees Product Variety, Including Alts, as Very Important
The company really hopes new products can cut down on outflows.

Calamos had this to say on the subject during various points in the earnings call:

By product category, 57% of our total assets mix is open-end funds followed by 20% in our close-end funds, and 16% in our institutional strategies. Slide 5 breaks down the important developments for the quarter. As mentioned our total assets were down 4% for the quarter and 19% year-over-year. We experienced net outflows of $2.5 billion for the quarter, primarily U.S. growth strategy and some low volatility equity strategies, while we’ve had recent performance challenges, which I will address later in the presentation.

During the quarter, we had positive flows of $160 million into our alternative strategies and continue to impose of more than a $100 million in our global international equity strategies. We view these strategies as key contributors to our growth going forward. In January, we opened up our market neutral and lower volatility equity strategies previous they have been close to new investors.

We are encouraged by influence in to our global, international equity strategies as well as our alternative strategies which we see as key contributors to our growth point forward. And we had improvements in performance in certain of our strategies such as alternative and convertible strategies but continue to address performance, challenges in U.S. growth and low volatility equity strategies.

As you know the market has not been rewarding growth strategies very much, we’re in a regime of value and that of course being a growth manager has not helped us in the current market environment. In January, we reopened our market neutral growth in income, global growth in income funds which were previously post to new investors; we feel like the increase in the issuance of convertibles both here in the U.S. as well as outside the U.S. is very favorable and thought that this would be a good time to open those strategies.

I’m excited about the future opportunities to add new products such as our plan to launch the Calmos Long/Short equity fund later this year. We’re working on other strategies to launch later in the year to increase our product breadth and adapt to the changing global markets.

POINT 3: Calamos is Buying Back a Lot of Stock
Calamos has been buying back a fair bit of its own stock lately. Here is what Calamos had to say on the subject.

One other important point here, last quarter, we approved a share buyback to repurchase up to 3 million shares of our Class A common stock. The company repurchased approximately 312,000 shares totalling $3.4 million during the first quarter as part of the buyback. I want to point out that there is – has been some confusion in the market respect to the repurchases in the Form-4 filing that are required to be made with the SEC.

Given our ownership structure, the Form-4 are filed under my name personally. However, these share repurchase are made by CalamosInvestments as part of the share buyback and are not transactions being made by me personally. As you know, Calamos Investments is a consolidated company making up of the Class A shareholders which are the public re-traded shares and then the rest of the company is privately owned by Calamos family partners.

That creates some of the confusion out there.

Nimish Bhatt, who is senior vice president, chief financial officer and head of fund administration at Calamos, had these additional insights to offer.

On Slide 16, you’ll see our liquid investments consist of cash and investments totaling $486 million as of March 31, 2013, these balances represent the consolidated strength of our organization. We feel these levels are definitive supporter ongoing business operations and allow us to provide capital for new funds such as our recently filed Long/Short equity fund, while like conservative levels of capital for companies regulated subsidiaries, fund accompanies share repurchase program and invest in other corporate strategic initiatives. This strategy is an important part of our efforts to grow the business, maintained strong investment grade credit rating and reflect our philosophy of investing a long-side outlines.

To learn more, SeekingAlpha earnings call transcript as well as the company's earnings document. 

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