MILAN (Reuters) – Italian insurer Generali said on Tuesday its first-quarter premiums and net profit beat analysts’ estimates, as the life segment returned to positive net flows and the non-life business showed a solid performance.
Adjusted net profit was 1.12 billion euros ($1.22 billion) in the first quarter, beating the 979-million-euro analyst consensus provided by the company.
It was down 9% as the previous year’s figure included a one-off capital gain related to the sale of a property development, the insurer said.
Operating profit, the figure most closely watched by the market, rose 5.5% to 1.9 billion euros, broadly in line with expectations.
Analysts at J.P. Morgan noted that the figure was 1% below their estimates. “We expect a neutral to positive performance in the shares today, in light of Generali’s strong relative performance into the numbers,” they said in a report.
Generali shares were, however, down 2.6%, underperforming the Italian blue-chip index and the European insurers gauge.
The stock has gained 21% since the start of the year.
Premiums rose 21.4% to 26.4 billion euros, compared with a consensus of 23 billion euros, as the life segment recorded net inflows of 2.3 billion euros, mainly due to a strong improvement in savings and pension products which benefited from the commercial actions implemented since 2023.
In the Property & Casualty segment, the undiscounted combined ratio, a measure of underwriting performance in which a level below 100 indicates a profit, improved to 93.7%.
The insurer’s Solvency ratio, a measure of its financial strength, was 215% at the end of March and rose to 217% as of May 15, the head of finance Cristiano Borean told a post-results briefing.
Generali is fully on track to meet all the targets of its plan until 2024, Borean added.
($1 = 0.9211 euros)
(Reporting by Gianluca Semeraro; Editing by Cristina Carlevaro, Tom Hogue and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
