Stock price when the opinion was issued
Doesn't believe Asian exposure is affected by US-China issues. Would only be affected secondarily if economy started to slow and people had less money in general.
Nice recent beat. Still has momentum in Asia. Wealth management earnings were up 8%, even after the $43M charge on California wildfires. At 9.7x PE for 2026, still cheaper than Canadian banks and than SLF and GWO. Reasonable 10% growth rate. Lowest payout ratio among peers. Another "when", not "if", story. Yield is 4.02%, with nice growth.
Stock's been flat and stuck at these levels for the last little while. There may have been a downgrade yesterday. Thinks it's undervalued. Great dividend yield, dividend should remain steady and increase. Steady growth company; sees ~8% going into the next few years. Price-to-book is 1.6x, fairly cheap relative to some peers.
Wait and see. Market's hesitant to push it to new heights. If you forget about the last few months, 200-day MA is still trending higher thought flattening a bit. Stock price is below that now, but it's done that before and moved up again. Getting paid to wait.
Earnings quality still improving, though last quarter showed some negatives in the US. Acquiring Comvest, a private asset management platform, which should be nicely accretive. At 7.5%, not same EPS growth as a year ago. Trades at 9.8x versus peers, 45% payout ratio. Nice dividend, which will have some nice growth.
In general, insurance companies are a better buy than the banks right now.
There are unconfirmed reports that it is going to spin off or sell the John Hancock unit in the US. Seasonality is from mid-September until the end of the year. It has gone sideways ever since. It has recently been testing its all time high. It is outperforming the market and trading above the 20 & 50 day moving overages. This will probably go down with the market. It is a good time to take money off the table if you are a trader.