Standard Life Shares

StevieJ

Aviva hold dividend, share price down 30%, yield must be around 15%, anyone confirm? Looks a very interesting possibility.

sabretoothtigger

Not me thanks, thats an awful loss. I just hope the market is mistaken in thinking SL will report the same, I'd rather bet on that being true.
SL Yield should also be nearing 10% now I'd think

The share price of insurer Aviva is in free-fall after it announced a pre-tax loss of £885m in 2008 versus a profit of £1.5bn a year ago. Net asset value on an IFRS basis at 162p was a shock to the investment analyst community, which had pencilled in a figure of 233p, The decision to maintain its dividend appears to have backfired, with concerns that the payment will put a strain on the company’s capital reserves.

Solvency fears have spread to other leading players in the sector, with Friends Provident, Prudential, Legal & General, Old Mutual and Standard Life all showing double-digit percentage declines.

ad44downey

Is the UK insurance sector going to go down the pan as the US insurance sector has done? People seem to be speculating that it is. :eek:

tonygee_3

Todays falls not unexpected although AVIVA seems overdone
could be great opportunity tomorrow
American Insurance Co AIG was run like a giant casino hopefully ours more restrained
Still expect a good bounce of 30-50% from lows over the next few weeks
But market still falling so buy and sell not hold long term

sabretoothtigger

Your best bet is to look at Norwich unions loss and why that happened, I think they suffer when share prices fall and also bonds

share price of insurer Aviva is in free-fall after it announced a pre-tax loss of £885m in 2008 versus a profit of £1.5bn a year ago

I thought SL had a hedge against these falls, in their trading statement they stated between sept and dec they had not suffered significant losses to their 3bn reserves.

Well we're back at the lows and worse now but why would the price suffer any more, I dont know

I did think of shorting them at 185 because I thought they could fall back but not this much, ridiculous

Theres no real optimism in the charts, they bounced off 140 and that was a good point to buy short term but obviously they have fallen below that now (slightly) so theres nothing predictable.
Which in itself goes someway to explaining the weakness and fear in the share price, new all time lows

The positive is we have results very soon so either they are terrible or anything better would see a rise

Thread needs the dates/schedule copied up

sabretoothtigger

ad44downey wrote: »

Is the UK insurance sector going to go down the pan as the US insurance sector has done? People seem to be speculating that it is. :eek:

http://www.stoxline.com/quote.php?symbol=^IXIS



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Market Cap (GBP m) 3,325.41
EPS 21.7
PE Ratio 7.04
Dividend Cover 1.89
Dividend Yield 7.53
Price to Sales .33

iii

Thu 12th March

UK
07:00 STANDARD LIFE PLC Full year 2008 Preliminary results

Wed 18th March

UK
12:00 STANDARD LIFE PLC Full year 2008 Ex-dividend date - proposed

30/04/09 10:00 Trading statement Q1 2009 Trading statement & Interim Management Statement

Buddy195

tonygee wrote: »

Todays falls not unexpected although AVIVA seems overdone
could be great opportunity tomorrow
American Insurance Co AIG was run like a giant casino hopefully ours more restrained
Still expect a good bounce of 30-50% from lows over the next few weeks
But market still falling so buy and sell not hold long term

Currently 1.29. Can't believe how much they have fallen, anyone think they will bounce back up in the near future?

sabretoothtigger

By Michael Hewson

Technical Analysis: Life firms need insurance plan of their own

By Michael Hewson
Date: Friday 06 Mar 2009

LONDON (ShareCast) - The life insurance sector has taken a bit of a pasting since the beginning of the year. Opening 2009 at around 3,100, it has halved in three months.

Like any sector it has had its fair share of high profile poor performers, Old Mutual and Legal and General being cases in point. Since 2008, they have declined 80% to currently trade just above 30p and 23p respectively.

Aviva and Standard Life by contrast, while lower, had not until recently performed quite as badly. However, fears over solvency and huge losses at Aviva prompted a meltdown in its share price yesterday, losing nearly half of its value in the space of a week. The announcement of an unchanged dividend also looks questionable, at current prices yielding over 17%.

This in turn prompted sell-offs across the board with Standard Life and Prudential following suit.

With fears about reserves at the forefront of investor thinking at the moment, any fear about capitalisation usually results in a stampede for the exit.

It is clear from the chart that there may still be some way to go for the sector before these fears subside.



The triangle breakout in January was the initial signal that all was not well with the insurance sector; however the late rally in February looked to have averted the danger. Taking the base of the triangle as the measuring point, there does appear to be room for further declines in the short term with a target of 1425 not out of the question. The low point so far has been 1496.59.

The perverse thing about the current turmoil in this sector is all these companies are big cash generators and are generally cash rich; however sentiment now being what it is they will in all likelihood continue to remain under pressure.

Looking at broker forecasts, there are only two stocks that are averagely rated as “strong buys”, Resolution and Chesnara. Certainly the better performers in this sector over the last 30 days have been these two. However I certainly wouldn’t be placing too much stock on everything the brokers think, as seven currently rate Aviva a “strong buy”. If I were a private investor I would certainly have mixed feelings about that, having seen the stock plummet in the last two days.

Ratings on Standard Life have been raised by S&P from A to A+ reflecting a more upbeat outlook on its fortunes from the ratings agency.

Aviva: The break below support line at 260p was undoubtedly negative, as it broke out of its 3 month trading range. For now, the next support is going to be today’s low at 160.10p as it trades at levels not seen this decade. A move back above 260p is required here to stabilise, but a strong finish to the week would certainly start the ball rolling.

Legal and General: Continues to look weak with a new low of 23.10p so far today. A recovery back above 40p is needed to stabilise.

Friends Provident: Currently trading just above its October 2008 lows of 47.80p. It needs to hold above these levels and recover back above 70p to diminish the downside risk.

Prudential: After breaking below long term support at 235p the market has made a low of 195.40p. Unless the market gets back above this support level the downside pressure will continue to pre-dominate.

Standard Life: In uncharted territory for this stock as we continue to make fresh lows on a daily basis. It did appear as if it had found a base around 170p, but after this level was breached the selling frenzy has fed in on itself. Hopefully next weeks results will halt the slide here.

Old Mutual: The break of last October’s lows of 38p has continued to undermine here. A recovery back above these levels is required to stabilise otherwise pressure remains to the downside.

tonygee_3

Was tempted this afternoon but thought whats the point there arent any real buyers at moment .There may be a small bounce Monday but the trend is still downward.Seems the Institutions are panic selling at any cost this could get worse over the next 6 months.These stocks could also fall heavily after forthcoming ex div dates.Panic selling might extend to the likes of BP,TESCO etc Im keeping out till that happens.Best of Luck

sabretoothtigger

They seemed to find a steady level today just like they did at 165, bounced off 130 a few times and just before close the price jumped back up

It would be nice to be optimistic but this kind of speculation is short term, world events are so massive that it doesnt matter when its part of a bigger picture, ftse100 stock, life insurance sector and great british institution means every perspective is negative.

A few times now I've read the gloomiest times are the best times to buy because it cant possibly be completely right to assume the very worst.

Given the buffeting the insurance sector has received of late, shareholders in Standard Life might be apprehensive about what’s in store when the company releases full-year results on Thursday.

The company recently headed off a public relations disaster by backing down on plans to make a valuation adjustment to its Pension Sterling Fund.

“We have listened to feedback and the concerns of our customers and key business partners and have decided to put customers back in the position they would have been before the valuation adjustment on 14 January 2009,” the company said in a statement.

Standard Life said it would make an immediate cash injection into the fund and compensate those customers who have left Standard Life since the valuation adjustment was announced on 14 January.

As a result of the cash injection, Standard Life will take a pre-tax charge of around £100m in its 2008 results.

Given concerns following its results yesterday about Aviva’s ability to pay for its maintained dividend, there must be concerns that Standard Life will look at rebasing its dividend. Market consensus is for the 2008 dividend to be raised to 12.02p from 11.5p the year before. Pre-tax profit is expected to be £382m on revenue of just under £22bn.

http://www.sharecast.com/cgi-bin/sharecast/story.cgi?story_id=2646380


For reference next week



Happier times last summer:

Insurer Standard Life said first half operating pre-tax profit rose 51% while it remains confident about its outlook.

Profit under European Embedded Value rules, rose to ££534m, ahead of most analyst predictions of around £518m.

Life and pensions net flows were up 15% at £2bn while life and pension sales on a present value of new business premiums (PVNBP) basis rose 5% to £9.1bn. Its new business contribution rose 4% to £157m.

The group added that despite difficult market conditions, the outlook for its net flows, sales and profitability remained positive.

Net outflows from its mortgage business totalled £0.7bn, with gross mortgage lending down by 54% to £728m.

The company raised its interim dividend 7% to 4.07p a share.

Dead dividend company fears
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80XD36wAFEA&feature=channel_page