He sold out at 43.5p to be precise. I bet he is kicking himself now seeing the share price at 56p. But at least his shares are doing really, really well elsewhere. Good luck to him but why he continues with his commentary is beyond me. Unless he is a dog in the manger.
Interestingly, these estimates by proactive investors exclude the sale of the Polish business which was announced Friday for €2.5 billion (RNS).
"The sale of our eight non-core businesses will generate total cash proceeds of £7.5 billion. "
GLA
Aviva had a relatively successful 2020. Operating profits for the full year were well ahead of market expectations, and it's also made significant headway on its restructuring.
The planned sale of the French and Italian businesses will leave the group below its target on debt and well above its target on capital. With plans to increase the dividend slowly, that leaves some questions about what the group plans to do with all the extra capital.
We wouldn't rule out share buybacks, especially as the prospective dividend is already pretty chunky at 6.1%. However, a better use of the capital might be to fund future growth
In particular Aviva's bulk annuity business, where Aviva takes on final salary commitments from pensions funds, has grown rapidly with sales of £6bn in 2020 up 48% year-on-year. These contracts see significant quantities of new assets into the business which can be managed by Aviva Investors - increasing scale and profitability in a less capital intensive part of the business. However each new insurance contract requires underwriting with some of Aviva's own capital, making expansion expensive.
There are signs of improvement elsewhere in eth business too.
Underwriting had improved in the General Insurance business, with premiums and customer numbers holding up well through the pandemic. Meanwhile the defined contribution Workplace pension platform is showing steady growth in assets, supported by the introduction of auto-enrolment. It's a similar story in Aviva's platform for financial advisers, where the group now has a 14% share of market wide adviser flows.
However, Aviva's ace in the hole strategically is that it's ahead of the game in digitisation. So far it's not easy to see the benefits - although it may go some way to explaining the group's relatively resilient lockdown performance. In time automating a larger proportion of the client journey should deliver cost savings and could improve cross-selling.
Overall we think 2020 has been a year of significant progress a Aviva, and recently installed CEO Amanda Blanc seems to be making headway where her predecessors struggled. With much of the strategic reshuffle now nearing completion the focus turns to improving performance in the core businesses. In what has been a tough year for the market in general, early signs look promising.