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Legal & General Group PLC on Tuesday raised its dividend and said it was on track to meet its financial targets, despite a hit from investment losses. For the first half of 2023, the London-based financial services and asset management company pretax profit was £324 million, down 53% from £697 million a year before. This was largely due to around £617 million in investment losses, widened from £261 million, with operating profit only falling 1.8% to £941 million from £958 million. ‘[Legal & General Retirement Institutional] and [Legal & General Capital] performed strongly, [Legal & General Investment Management] results stabilised, and Retail’s performance - while impacted by competition in some areas - was bolstered by growing annuity sales and progress in US protection,’ L&G said. L&G raised its dividend to 5.71 pence up 5.0% from 5.44p a year before, and said it intends to grow the dividend at 5% each year to 2024. Looking ahead, the firm said it was on track to achieve its five-year ambitions for the 2020 to 2024 period. The goals are capital generation of £8.0 billion to £9.0 billion, earnings per share to grow faster than dividends, with dividend growth of 5% annually to 2024, and a net capital surplus generation that exceeds dividends. L&G noted that Canada has a market potential where it has seen a growing acceleration of pension schemes looking to de-risk. ‘The market is estimated to have C$1.8 trillion (around $1.338 trillion) of defined benefit liabilities with only around 10% of C$0.5 trillion private sector DB liabilities having transacted to date,’ it explained. Legal & General shares were 1.8% lower at 229.20 pence each on Tuesday morning in London. Copyright 2023 Alliance News Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
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