15th Aug 2023 08:18
(Alliance News) - Legal & General Group PLC on Tuesday raised its dividend and said it was on track to meet its financial targets, despite a hit from investment losses.
For the first half of 2023, the London-based financial services and asset management company pretax profit was GBP324 million, down 53% from GBP697 million a year before.
This was largely due to around GBP617 million in investment losses, widened from GBP261 million, with operating profit only falling 1.8% to GBP941 million from GBP958 million.
"[Legal & General Retirement Institutional] and [Legal & General Capital] performed strongly, [Legal & General Investment Management] results stabilised, and Retail's performance - while impacted by competition in some areas - was bolstered by growing annuity sales and progress in US protection," L&G said.
L&G raised its dividend to 5.71 pence up 5.0% from 5.44p a year before, and said it intends to grow the dividend at 5% each year to 2024.
Looking ahead, the firm said it was on track to achieve its five-year ambitions for the 2020 to 2024 period. The goals are capital generation of GBP8.0 billion to GBP9.0 billion, earnings per share to grow faster than dividends, with dividend growth of 5% annually to 2024, and a net capital surplus generation that exceeds dividends.
L&G noted that Canada has a market potential where it has seen a growing acceleration of pension schemes looking to de-risk. "The market is estimated to have CAD1.8 trillion (around USD1.338 trillion) of defined benefit liabilities with only around 10% of CAD0.5 trillion private sector DB liabilities having transacted to date," it explained.
Legal & General shares were 1.8% lower at 229.20 pence each on Tuesday morning in London.
By Tom Budszus, Alliance News reporter
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