Standard Life Shares

sabretoothtigger

Investment and insurance group Standard Life ( SL. ) announced that sales in its life insurance and pensions divisions fell by 15% to 10.5 billion pounds in the first nine months of 2009 as a result of the weaker financial markets.

Better results were forthcoming from the asset management arm which increased its total assets under management by 15.3 billion pounds in the third quarter of the year. The firm also added 4,400 new customers in its self-invested personal pensions (SIPP) business in the third quarter.

A note from Panmure Gordon stated that "unless investors are looking for a relatively defensive company in the life sector, Prudential and Aviva with their exposure to the rapidly growing areas of Asia and the US offer better opportunities" . The broker kept to its "hold" recommendation and 234p target price, slightly above the closing price of 218.8p - a fall of 0.9p.

Acquire on any price weakness is my personal stance till next march's ex div, not expecting any more specific news till then

StevieJ

Has the sale to Barclays gone through yet ?

sabretoothtigger

Cleared this week I think, its more a reason to buy barclays shares really as SL already had cash and I dont think the business was a depressant on the share price

Some results for both companies forthcoming now

StevieJ

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

Cleared this week I think, its more a reason to buy barclays shares really as SL already had cash and I dont think the business was a depressant on the share price

Some results for both companies forthcoming now

I sold my Barclay shares last summer for £3 and topped up with oil shares, my SL shares stick to me like glue though.

sabretoothtigger

Not such a bad thing, I might buy some before the ex dividend date and pretend I had them all the while

sabretoothtigger

SL has a trading statement this Wednesday the 3rd. I reckon the share price is showing a nice yield currently but with a declining FTSE we could see 170 again most likely. Main results would be early March I believe

3 February 2009 Q4 trading results

10 March 2009 Preliminary results

29 April 2010 Q1 trading results and IMS

14 May 2010 Annual General Meeting

11 August 2010 Interim results and Q2 trading results

3 November 2010 Q3 trading results and IMS

http://www.standardlife.com/investor/financial_calendar.html



185 seems a likely turning point, if that should not hold it would accelerate the fall possibly. Not sure why the PE displayed is so high but I presume these results are quite important in moderating that




http://www.biancatrends.com/SL.php

StevieJ

LONDON (Dow Jones)--U.K. insurer Standard Life PLC (SL.LN) Wednesday posted an unexpectedly strong 29% rise in fourth-quarter life and pensions new business sales, signaling a possible recovery from recent quarters and helping to make its shares the leading gainer on the FTSE 10

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100203-704563.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

sabretoothtigger

I agree with this guy but I expect the share price dips more before results and ex-div in March, 10th and 17th March

Life assurance accounts are notorious for their complexity which makes them an excellent cure for insomnia! One of the more tricky concepts in their accounts is "embedded value" where today's profits include the value in today's money of the profits which are expected to be earned upon existing policies during their lifetime.


Standard Life's performance since demutualisation is summarised below. The diluted earnings per share figure follows conventional life assurance company accounting practices so it includes embedded values.

Year 2008 2007 2006 (6 months)
Diluted earnings per share 29.8p 28.3p 11.4p
Dividend per share 11.77p 11.5p 5.4p


Standard Life's figures for 2009 are due to be published in March. For the six months to 30 June 2009 diluted earnings per share were 11.1p, down by almost 36% on the same period in 2008, whilst the interim dividend was increased by 2% to 4.15p.


Should the 36% fall in full-year earnings be repeated in the second half of 2009 then the diluted earnings per share would fall to just over 19p. Using the current price of about 195p, and assuming that the final dividend is also raised by 2%, puts Standard Life's shares on a prospective price-earnings ratio of about 10.3 with a dividend yield of 6.1%.

Seems pretty cheap to me! So that's why I own some.

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/the-case-for-standard-life-foolcouk-b98896f06ae8.html



http://www.investorresearch.mdgms.com/factsheet/factsheet.html?ID_NOTATION=15198473

sabretoothtigger

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Three shares set to move sharply

[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]By top chartist Zak Mir of Zaks-TA.com[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Standard Life (SL.)

I still have a few bonus shares left in Standard Life, but my holding was sold out at 233p in October and it would appear that the shares have not been able to get over this blow. The current charting position is that while there is no end of day close below the floor of the August rising trend channel at 195p one would be pencilling in a top of channel target as high as 220p over the next one to two months. This is particularly so given the latest weekly close above the black 200 day moving average at 202p.[/FONT]

Even my charts arent this messy but I think he is saying they may be forming an uptrend from here



Confirmation would come from this automatically generated chart showing similar change in trend from negative to positive (possibly)

StevieJ

Together with the interim a nice little 6% dividend :beer: