PARIS: French insurance group AXA, number two in Europe after German giant Allianz, raised net profit by 10 percent last year with a boost from asset sales and reduced debt, it said yesterday.
But despite a strong set of results, the price of shares in the group fell by 2.17 percent to ¤19.13, with traders saying that they fell short of their expectations.
Net profit totalled ¤4.5bn ($6.17bn) but even this was less than expected by analysts who had tabled for about ¤4.7bn.
Operating profit surged by 14.0 percent to ¤4.7bn, and this also fell short of expectations.
If changes in currency values were excluded, operating profit jumped by 18.0 percent. This performance was achieved on a one-percent rise in sales to ¤91.2bn.
The results showed that all parts of the business did well, although the company got badly caught out on the wrong side of instruments bought to protect against changes in interest rates and currency values.
The company said that capital gains from the sale of a portfolio of a life-assurance subsidiary in the United States and of its majority interest in Axa Private Equity, now Ardian, had been crimped by accounting factors.
One of these was a negative effect of interest-rate and currency hedge instruments which amounted to about ¤300m.
AXA said that it had achieved a return on shareholders’ equity of 14.8 percent, a rise of 1.8 percentage points from the 2012 level and at the top end of the 13.0-15.0-percent range in its strategic plan to 2015.
The operating results is above the strategic target under the “Ambition Axa” plan for an increase of 5-10 percent per year.
The group reduced its ratio of debt to funds to 24.0 percent, better than its initial target for 2015 of 25.0 percent and said it was now targeting 23.0-25.0 percent.
AFP
