Generali: shares shine after 'excellent' results, dividend

(CercleFinance.com) - Italy's Generali reported annual results that it called "excellent" on Thursday and increased its dividend by 6%, which drove its shares up over 2% at the start of trading in Milan today.


The Milan-based group, which is one of the world's leading insurers with nearly 71,000 employees, said that growth in its life segment and cost reductions that are ahead of schedule pushed its operating result to a record 4.9 billion euros last year (+2%).

Net profit rose by 1% to over 2.1 billion euros.

Generali's non-life combined ratio was 92.8%, a level "confirmed as the best among large peers," the company said.

Shareholder equity — a measure closely followed by investors — rose from 25.7 billion euros at end-2016 to 26.2 billion euros in late 2017.

In light of these results, Generali will propose a dividend of 0.85 euro per share, up from 0.80 euro in 2016.

Generali shares opened up after it unveiled its results, and are currently up 0.8%, outperforming the STOXX Europe 600 Insurance index (+0.5%).

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