Chesnara Share News (CSN)

LONDON (Alliance News) - Pensions consolidator Chesnara PLC boosted its dividend Thursday after profit rose in 2017 amid a strong economic value performance and its solvency ratio rose further.

In 2017, pretax profit more than doubled to GBP89.6 million from GBP40.7 million the year prior.

This was after economic value rose to GBP723.1 million from GBP602.6 million the year before. Economic value earnings also rose to GBP139.5 million from GBP72.5 million the year prior.

Chesnara proposed a 13.07 pence from 12.69p the year prior. For the full year, the dividend was improved to 20.07p from 19.49p the year before.

"2017 has been another good year for Chesnara during which we completed the acquisition of Legal and General Nederland, now successfully rebranded Scildon, and made good progress on integrating it into our business," Chesnara Chief Executive Officer John Deane said. "The acquisition has contributed to an impressive set of results on all financial metrics. In particular I am pleased to report an economic value growth, excluding the acquisition gain, of 9.1%."

In November 2016, Chesnara acquired Legal & General Nederland for EUR160.0 million which completed in early April 2017. This was a 33% discount to the economic value.

"All divisions have made significant contributions to cash and value generation," Deane added. "The UK business had again generated cash ahead of expectations and Movestic continues to deliver significant growth, which has resulted in further cash generation."

"During the post acquisition period, Scildon has delivered Economic Value growth and solvency surplus broadly in line with our initial expectations", Deane continued. "That said, we retain our view that the business would benefit from some focussed improvements and have initiated a development programme to improve the profitability of new business."

Chesnara's solvency ratio rose to 146% from 144% in 2016.

Shares in Chesnara were 0.1% higher at 380.00 pence on Thursday.