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Key facts

Legal & General is a leading UK-based financial services business, with over 10 million customers across the world.
We deliver financial solutions and services that help people to plan for their future. Our businesses help people achieve financial security by building retirement income, protecting their homes and families and enabling them to save for the future. We aim to be socially and economically useful in society, working closely with government, industry bodies and charities to help people have good housing, live healthy lives and enjoy good levels of income in retirement.

This is our social purpose: we understand people’s financial needs, pool risk and help society by reducing the pressure on public finances.

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Legal & General's Fundamentals (LGEN)

Macquarie Underperform 274.35 201.00 218.00 Reiterates

Societe Generale Hold 274.35 250.00 250.00 Reiterates

Barclays Capital Overweight 274.35 - - Reiterates

Legal & General on track for a record year in 2017

Legal & General Group Plc ("L&G") today updates on its trading performance.

L&G continues to see great momentum in all its businesses in the year to date and has experienced particularly strong growth in recent weeks. We remain strategically well placed to deliver strong, attractive growth and returns in our core markets.

Legal & General Retirement ("LGR") has delivered total sales for 2017 to date1 of £6.2bn, with the business showing strong momentum in the UK and US institutional pension risk transfer markets, as well as in individual annuities and lifetime mortgages.

Annuity sales generated £4.5bn of annuity premium, consisting of: £3.3bn of UK institutional pension risk transfer business, $0.7bn of US institutional pension risk transfer business and £0.6bn of UK retail annuities. We have doubled our institutional pension risk transfer business in the US versus 2016 and have now written over $1.6bn of US business since entering the market. LGR sales for 2017 to date also include £0.8bn of longevity insurance.

We have significantly outperformed the market in the retail space, with UK individual annuity premiums up 93%, equivalent to a 14% market share. We have written over £0.9bn of lifetime mortgage advances, an increase of 71%, and our innovative, digital lifetime mortgage business now has a leading 35% market share.

Our UK and US pipeline for pension risk transfer is the largest it has ever been. Additionally we expect the UK's ageing demographic and extensive use of cash drawdowns to make the lifetime mortgage market increasingly attractive.

Legal & General Investment Management ("LGIM") achieved total external net inflows of £38.1bn to the end of October. Inflows were well-diversified by product line and geography. Our liability driven investments ("LDI"), active fixed and property funds delivered strong performances, and LGIM continues to be the market leader in defined benefit and defined contribution solutions in the UK, and a global market leader in LDI.

By the end of October, International net inflows were £26.1bn, with £11.3bn from the US and, encouragingly, a further £10.9bn from Europe. Our US asset management business continues to deliver with over 330 institutional clients and over $170bn of assets. We have established our regional office in Tokyo to complement our capabilities in Hong Kong, and LGIM's recently-announced entry into the European ETF market will provide access to one of the fastest growing segments in asset management.

Legal & General Capital ("LGC") has generated £256m of gross proceeds from transactions with a gross value of £821m to the end of October and has committed and invested £319m to new investments as it continues to recycle investments into new strategic UK real asset opportunities. Our investment programme in housing, urban regeneration, clean energy and scale-ups continues to make good progress. Since October, LGC has also announced the acquisition of its second later living business, Renaissance Villages, for a net purchase price of £51m, and the acquisition of a second major housing site, Arborfield in Berkshire, with capacity and planning consent for 1,500 units.

Legal & General Insurance ("LGI") continued to benefit from our strong market shares in UK retail protection and US term assurance with total gross written premiums to the end of October up 6%2 to £2.1bn. The management actions taken to address the adverse claims experience reported in our Group Protection business in H1 2017 are becoming evident and experience is improving in line with management expectation, and the first half losses have been completely reversed in H2.

General Insurance ("GI") gross written premiums are up 13% to £305m by the end of October. We continue to increase our direct to consumer sales, have launched our market leading digitally innovative SmartQuote proposition and we have been successful in winning further distribution agreements for our household products. In October we agreed to acquire Buddies, a pet insurance provider, which will enable us to further diversify our product range in GI. Following our adverse claims experience in the first quarter of the year, we took management action which has mitigated the ongoing impact of claims on the GI result.

Our business growth is supported by a strong balance sheet with a Solvency II surplus of c.£6.9bn and a shareholder coverage ratio of 190%3.


Nigel Wilson, CEO, commented:

"L&G is on track for a record year for earnings and profits. Our core business divisions are generating formidable momentum. With yesterday's announcement of the sale of our closed book, in run-off Mature Savings business for £650m, our business is now well-positioned and focused on the products and geographies where we see optimum growth and cultural alignment. Our market leading positions and strong balance sheet, coupled with our management capability is allowing us to benefit from global growth opportunities."




1. At 6 Dec 2017

2. Increase versus 31 October 2016. LGI comparison excludes disposed business (L&G Netherlands).

3. At the end of October, the Group's estimated Solvency II surplus was c.£6.9bn with Eligible Own Funds of c.£14.6bn, a Solvency Capital Requirement ("SCR") of c.£7.7bn and a shareholder basis coverage ratio of 190%. In line with our practice, this assumes that Transitional Measures for Technical Provisions are recalculated to current market conditions, as we believe this provides the most up to date and meaningful view of our Solvency II position. The shareholder basis adjusts for the Own Funds and SCR attributable to our With-profits fund and the final salary pension scheme. Legal & General Group's core subsidiaries are rated AA- by Standard & Poors

ends

Shore Capital Buy 263.30 - - Reiterates

JP Morgan Cazenove Underweight 263.30 218.00 218.00 Reiterates

HL's take.

Final Results tomorrow - Wednesday 7th.

L&G Full Year Results 2017 Part 1

CONTINUING STRONG PERFORMANCE IN 2017: EPS1 31.9P, RETURN ON


EQUITY 25.6%

FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS2:

· OPERATING PROFIT UP 32% TO £2,055M (2016: £1,562M)
· PROFIT BEFORE TAX3 UP 32% TO £2,090M (2016: £1,582M)
· PROFIT AFTER TAX UP 50% TO £1,902M (2016: £1,265M)
· FULL YEAR DIVIDEND UP 7% TO 15.35P PER SHARE (2016: 14.35P)
· 2017 RESULTS INCLUDE MORTALITY RELEASE4 OF £332M
· OPERATING PROFIT FROM CONTINUING OPERATIONS5 EXCLUDING MORTALITY RELEASE UP 12%
TO £1,616M (2016: £1,447M)
· NET RELEASE FROM CONTINUING OPERATIONS5 UP 9% TO £1,352M (2016: £1,242M)
· ONE-OFF US TAX BENEFIT6 OF £246M
· SOLVENCY II COVERAGE RATIO7 OF 189% (2016: 171%)
· SOLVENCY II NET SURPLUS GENERATION OF £1.2BN (2016: £1.1BN)
BUSINESS HIGHLIGHTS:

· PRT8 AND INDIVIDUAL ANNUITY NEW BUSINESS OF £4.6BN (2016: £4.1BN)
· LIFETIME MORTGAGE ADVANCES OF £1.0BN (2016: £0.6BN)
· LGIM EXTERNAL NET FLOWS UP 49% AT £43.5BN (2016: £29.2BN)
· LGIM AUM UP 10% AT £983.3BN (2016: £894.2BN)
· GROUP-WIDE DIRECT INVESTMENT UP 44% AT £14.4BN (2016: £10.0BN)
· LGI GROSS PREMIUMS UP 5% TO £2.5BN (2016: £2.4BN)

more.....

Disappointingly muted market response to a fantastic set of results, bullish forward predictions and a 7% increase in the dividend.

L&G has taken full control of fast-growing upmarket builder Cala Homes paving the way for it to become a major UK housing delivery business.

The insurance and investment group has paid £315m to acquire the 52% of Cala it does not already own.

This involves buying out its fellow major shareholder, the property investor Patron Capital, and Cala’s management team in a deal that values the firm at £605m.


I don't like this. I think L&G should stick to what it knows.

have sold previous @ 270 will buy back 218 paid to much for cala will impact
on 2018 year. BB

26p div today.

11.05p final.

ex div today. Money arrives drekly

Oops. I must have total divs logged.

Just for clarity (as in the link in the header) :-

Ex dividend date was yesterday 26th April @11.05p.

Today (27th) is the record date.

7 Jun 2018 payment of final dividend for 2017 (to members registered on 27 April 2018)

Citigroup Buy 269.95 306.00 308.00 Reiterates

Dallying with the 50DMA.

L&G Half-year Report 2018 Part 1

H1 2018: Consistent delivery of growth from divisions

Financial highlights

· OPERATING PROFIT1 FROM DIVISIONS2 UP 7% TO £1,059M (H1 2017: £994M), increases in 5 out of 6 businesses since H1 2017

· OPERATING PROFIT1 OF £909M, up 5% (H1 2017: £862m excluding mortality release) after increased investment in the business

· EARNINGS PER SHARE3 DOWN 8% TO 13.00P (H1 2017: 14.19P), impacted by financial markets

· PROFIT AFTER TAX DOWN 19% TO £772M (H1 2017: £952M)

· RETURN ON EQUITY1 AT 20.3% (H1 2017: 26.7%)

· INTERIM DIVIDEND4 OF 4.60P PER SHARE (H1 2017: 4.30P)

· SOLVENCY II COVERAGE RATIO5 OF 193% (H1 2017: 186%)

· SOLVENCY II OPERATIONAL SURPLUS GENERATION UP BY 11% TO £0.7BN (H1 2017: £0.6BN)

Business highlights

Investing & Annuities

· LGR ANNUITY SALES OF £1.1BN6 (H1 2017: £2.0BN)

· LGR LIFETIME MORTGAGE ADVANCES UP 23% TO £0.5BN (H1 2017: £0.4BN)

· GROUP-WIDE DIRECT INVESTMENT UP 38% AT £16.3BN (H1 2017: £11.8BN)

Investment Management

· LGIM AUM UP 4% AT £984.8BN (H1 2017: £951.1BN)

· LGIM EXTERNAL NET FLOWS OF £14.6BN (H1 2017: £21.7BN), US FLOWS $11.5BN (H1 2017: $10.8BN)

Insurance

· LGI GROSS WRITTEN PREMIUMS UP 3% TO £1.4BN6 (H1 2017: £1.3BN)

· GENERAL INSURANCE GROSS WRITTEN PREMIUMS UP 12% TO £193M (H1 2017: £173M)

"Legal & General again delivered consistent, positive results with five of our six businesses increasing their operating profits for the first half of 2018. Operating profit from divisions increased 7% to £1.1 billion and RoE was 20.3%. However, a reduction in positive investment variance meant earnings per share were down from 14.19p to 13.00p. We have increased our dividend to 4.60p, in line with our formulaic approach, an increase of 7%.

We expect to have an exceptionally busy H2. We are currently actively quoting on over £20bn of UK pension risk transfer deals, including over £7bn of transactions in exclusive negotiations expected to close in H2. We are reviewing our long term mortality assumptions and expect to make a full year release in H2 which will be larger than the £332m released for full year 2017. LGIM's momentum continues as it expands in the United States and extends its global footprint in Asia. LGC is accelerating UK investment through its "Changing Britain" programme which reflects growing regional devolution. We are confident that Legal & General is strongly positioned for growth in H2 and beyond."

Nigel Wilson, Group Chief Executive


1. The Alternative Performance Measures within the Group's financial highlights are defined in the glossary, on pages 99 to 104 of this report.

2. Represents operating profit from divisions and excludes mortality reserve releases (H1 2018: £nil, H1 2017: £126m). H1 2017 release reflects changes to LGR's base mortality assumptions.

3. Excluding mortality reserve releases (H1 2018: £nil, H1 2017: £126m).

4. A formulaic approach is used to set the interim dividend, being 30% of the prior year full year dividend.

5. Solvency II coverage ratio on a shareholder basis is adjusted for the Own Funds and SCR of the With-profits fund and the final salary pension schemes.

6. Constant FX rate comparisons have been calculated by applying the average FX rates for H1 2017 to both H1 2017 and H1 2018 local currency results. Actual FX rate comparisons apply the H1 17 and H1 18 average FX rates to the equivalent periods' results respectively.

more.....

Numis Add 261.05 305.00 - Retains

Shore Capital Under Review 261.05 - - Under Review

Invesco add a few http://www.moneyam.com/action/news/showArticle?id=6109625