“Hoodie Hoo!!”
On Wednesday February 20th at noon you might have heard or seen people yelling “Hoodie Hoo!!” at the top of their lungs while raising their hands above their heads. Although this might have seemed strange, “Hoodie Hoo!!” day is actually a day that is celebrated every year on February 20th and is designed to help people overcome the winter-time blues and to prepare them for the coming of Spring. The main custom of this odd holiday is indeed to go out at noon, raise your hands over your head and yell “Hoodie Hoo!!” for all the world to hear with the intention to chase away winter and make ready for spring, which is exactly one month away. Although this holiday might seem like a joke holiday, it is an actual holiday that was created and copyrighted by Thomas Roy who has created over 80 different holidays, many of them quite unusual, such as Bathtub Party Day and Answer Your Cat’s Questions Day. However, feeling the temperatures outside last week it seems “Hoodie Hoo!!” celebrants did indeed manage to scare away winter….
In the spirit of “Hoodie Hoo!!” day and looking at the Ageas share price performance of last trading week, investors might also have yelled “Hoodie Hoo!!”. On the back of the publication of strong underlying 2018 full-year results on Wednesday the Ageas share price increased by 2.5%, the biggest day increase so far in 2019. At the end of the 3-year strategic plan Ambition 2018, all financial targets but one were also reached. Given these outstanding results, the proposed regular dividend was also at a record level of EUR 2.20 per share, representing a 5% dividend yield and a 5% increase compared to last year’s dividend. Since 2009, Ageas has already returned (Paid dividend + share buyback + capital reduction) EUR 5.2 billion to shareholders.“Hoodie Hoo!!” indeed!!
At the end of the “Hoodie Hoo!!” trading week the Ageas share closed at EUR 43.03 or up 3.8% outperforming the Eurostoxx 50 (+0.9%) and the SXIP 600 Insurance index (+1.6%).
This is the last post of the investor relations blog that was first launched back in December 2012 with a blog post on the full year 2012 results. In total 307 investor relations blogs were posted on the website with the 3 most read blogs being Out of darkness cometh light, what a year! and (Chinese) Heatwave. Rest assured that we will continue to share stories on the ins and outs of Ageas that are relevant to all our stakeholders.