Investor relations blog

Which medal for this new record?

While millions of eyes are riveted on the amazing physical prowess of the athletes from the Olympics games, Ageas also was proud to be achieving its own record by publishing this week the strongest result in its history.

Indeed we reported a full-year insurance net result of nearly a billion euro, precisely EUR 960 million, compared to EUR 721 million last year, and with a strong fourth quarter beating the consensus by 13%.

Secondly, given these outstanding results, the proposed regular dividend was also at a record level at EUR 2.10 per share, representing a 5.0% yield and a 24% increase compared to last year’s dividend excluding the exceptional part relating to the Hong-Kong divestment. This announcement was all the more welcomed by the market thanks to management making it very clear during the analyst call that this amount, which reflects the group’s confidence in its capacity to generate cash, should be perceived as a new reference for the future.

Lastly, we announced that we had reached and even exceeded almost all of our targets for Ambition 2018.

So based on this strong performance, we were aiming for the gold medal. So why did the Ageas share price lose 0.5% on the day of the announcement? It seems that some analysts found it difficult to measure precisely the underlying results due to one-offs in Asia and Belgium. There was also a mixed perception to our operational free capital generation over the quarter which was negatively impacted by exceptional items. And, last but not least, the overall European market was also under pressure on Wednesday.

Ageas’ share price has since recovered however enjoying a solid gain of 1.5% over the week, outperforming both the Euro Stoxx 50 (+0.4%) and the Stoxx Insurance (+1.1%). We may have missed the gold, but we certainly secured the silver!