(Bloomberg) — Allianz SE, Europe's largest insurer, aims to generate an additional 6.5 billion euros ($6.9 billion) in annual premiums as the company focuses on its most profitable businesses.
Allianz wants to achieve annual earnings per share growth of 5 percent on average from 2016 to 2018, the insurer said in a statement on Tuesday. The Munich-based company is also targeting a return on equity of 13 percent, adjusted to exclude unrealized capital gains on bonds and other items, by 2018.
Oliver Baete, chief executive officer since May, is grappling with low interest rates, stricter regulatory capital requirements and concern over a slowdown in the insurer's main markets. The CEO has also highlighted increased use of digital technology both as a disruption and an opportunity for insurers.
"We like the headlines," William Hawkins, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods wrote in a report from London on Tuesday. "This is all about promise for the future, so it is likely that the market applies a healthy risk discount to the targets against current expectations for now."
Hawkins said that KBW and other analysts had expected EPS to be "reasonably flat" over the next five years.
Shares decline
The stock fell as much as 1.7 percent in Frankfurt and was down 0.6 percent at 162.20 euros as of 11:53 a.m., trimming its gain this year to 18 percent and valuing the company at about 74 billion euros. The 35-member Bloomberg Europe 500 Insurance Index fell 1.2 percent.
Allianz said it formed a venture with Baidu Inc. and Hillhouse Capital Management Ltd. to provide digital insurance in China. The venture, in which Allianz will have a 20 percent stake, will focus on property and casualty insurance in a market where digital insurance is forecast to have 40 percent compound annual growth for the next five years, the company said.
Allianz wants to raise return on equity for all of the divisions at its life and health unit to at least 10 percent. Germany and Spain were the only two of the company's eight national divisions to exceed that level last year, the company said in slides on its website.
