AXA’s H1 Net Income Rises 2% to $3.9B, Beating Expectations
Europe’s second largest insurer said on Thursday that it was confident of achieving its 2020 targets that involve 2.1 billion euros in cost savings over 2016-2020, and a 3 to 7 percent average annual growth in earnings per share.
Its first-half net income rose 2 percent to 3.27 billion euros ($3.9 billion), beating the average of four analyst estimates of 3.14 billion euros in a Reuters poll.
Revenues rose 0.5 percent to 54.28 billion euros.
“Revenues overall have been stable, but we have clearly realized growth in our target sectors, particularly on the P&C (property and casualty) commercial side, but also on health,” chief executive Thomas Buberl said in a TV presentation posted on the group’s website.
Buberl, who took over as CEO last year, plans to overhaul the group’s U.S. operations, proposing to float a stake in its American life insurance and asset management businesses in 2018 in order to free up capital and pursue takeover targets elsewhere.
($1 = 0.8440 euros) (Reporting by Maya Nikolaeva and Matthieu Protard; editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)