Stock price when the opinion was issued
Revenues from asset management, insurance, annuities, health benefits. Very diversified. Around for decades. Likes the safety and growth over time. Dividend growth is about 8%. Payout ratio still in 50-70% range. High quality. Not necessarily a home run, but a single: core holding for the long term, dividend payments, some price appreciation. Yield is 4.6%.
Because it's diversified, interest rate moves benefit different segments at different times.
All the insurance names, both in Canada and the US, continue to work. If interest rates do, in fact, go higher, that will only be beneficial for lifecos and other insurers. The chart looks fantastic. Good run, so there is some weakening in the intermediate term.
If a long-term holding, best thing you can do is sit on your hands and do nothing except participate in the DRIP program. Especially if he's right on the broader call of rates being 8-10% in the secular bear market of 2030-40, should be a big tailwind for insurers.
Why is this company climbing so much faster than ManuLife (MFC-T)? If you look back pre-crash days, ManuLife was a $42-$44 stock and it really rose to the highs on the back of variable annuity growth. However, variable annuities provided a guarantee to policyholders on certain levels of payout. Ultimately, that was the noose upon which the company got hung. Response by management was to hedge the book aggressively and this has effectively insulated the company from downside but they did it at the bottom of the market. Now the upside associated with the rising capital markets is not as direct as expected, because so much of the book has been hedged. Companies that have less hedging have performed much better.