Allianz has bought back shares for around ten billion euros since 2017.
(Photo: dpa)
Munich Allianz launches another share buyback program. From the end of May to the end of the year at the latest, the insurer wants to buy back paper worth up to 1.5 billion euros. The group announced this after a board meeting on Wednesday evening. Allianz will then retire the purchased shares. In the past few weeks, analysts had already expected a renewed program.
The announced share buyback is the eighth program since 2017. So far, the group had purchased shares worth around ten billion euros. Just last year there were two programs worth a billion euros each.
The buybacks are regularly popular with analysts, since the reduction in the number of shares tends to increase earnings per share. In the past, the rule of thumb among investors was that a buyback of one billion euros increases earnings per share by one percent. After a slump in the fall, the Allianz share price had risen sharply in recent months.
Allianz has paid out around 47 billion euros in dividends and share buybacks over the past ten years, Allianz CEO Oliver Bäte told the shareholders at last week’s Annual General Meeting. “This is possible because we have been able to continuously increase our operating result – by six percent annually in the past three years alone,” said Bäte in his speech.
It should continue on this scale this year as well. The group is assuming a profit forecast of 14.2 billion euros, supplemented by a range of one billion euros up and down.
The largest share of profits is likely to come from property insurance
How much of this has already been achieved in the first quarter should be shown next Friday morning. Then the Dax group wants to present its figures for the first quarter. On average, analysts assume earnings of around 3.6 billion euros.
Property insurance is likely to make the largest contribution with around 1.8 billion euros. More than 1.2 billion euros are likely to come from life and health insurance, and the two asset managers Pimco and AGI are estimated to have earned over 700 million euros.
The smallest of the three group divisions in particular had to accept a slump in profits last year. As a specialist in fixed-income securities, Pimco suffered from the severe slump in this asset class. At AGI, bad speculation in structured alpha funds in the USA weighed on the image.
In the current year, however, there was a turnaround, according to the group. The months of January and February in particular brought significant increases in investor funds.
More: Allianz boss Oliver Bäte can probably continue