Panmure Gordon continues to buy Aviva's equity story

Life insurer Aviva’s latest full-year results provided a small beat with respect to consensus on nearly every key metric.

That drove the firm's IFRS net asset value figure to 274p per share, ahead of broker Panmure Gordon’s estimate of 240p.

The results benefitted from positive back book actions – worth £282m - which offset the approximately £200m of headwinds primarily from UK annuities and FX.

At £1,979m the firm’s life business performed better-than-expected at the operating profit level. Analysts had pencilled in £1,938m. In parallel, the value of new business on a PVNBP basis rose 15% on a constant exchange rate basis to reach £1,009m (consensus: £906m).

The company’s combined ratio of 95.7% also came in ahead of forecasts.

Following on from all of the above, analyst Barrie Cornes maintained his target price of 660p and 'buy' recommendation on the shares.

As of 09:45 the stock was moving higher by 4.32% to 555.5p.