AXA’s H1 Net Income Rises 2% to $3.9B, Beating Expectations

AXA reported a stronger than expected rise in net profit for the first half of the year, helped by higher asset management and property and casualty earnings, and by lower restructuring costs.

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)