Randall & Quilter posts profit rise, hails positive start to 2019
Randall & Quilter posted a rise in 2018 pre-tax profit on Monday as it hailed a positive start to the current year.
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In the year to the end of December 2018, pre-tax profit from continuing operations increased 45% to £14.3m while net tangible assets per share pushed up 17% to 123.6p.
The specialist non-life legacy insurance investor lifted its full-year dividend to 9.2p a share from 8.9p the year before.
R&Q said the increase in pre-tax profit was achieved despite the deferral of significant legacy transactions - most notably the delayed acquisition of Global Re, the group's largest deal ever - which are now expected to complete in 2019.
Chairman and chief executive officer Ken Randall said: "The current year has begun positively with regulatory approval received for the change of control of Global Re, which will complete in the next few days, and our investment portfolio having fully recovered the unrealised losses experienced in December 2018.
"Our legacy pipeline remains very active with continuing evidence that insurers are increasingly turning to run off specialists to offload discontinued portfolios of insurance business in order to improve their capital efficiency and reduce costs of managing non-core activities."
The company said it was well positioned to be a net beneficiary of Brexit, whatever the outcome.
"Our European Program Management and principal Legacy consolidators are domiciled in Malta and regulatory arrangements have already been agreed for the establishment of a UK branch office of Accredited Europe. This will enable the group to continue underwriting and servicing business in the UK as well as throughout all EU member states."
At 1005 BST, the shares were up 1.8% to 184.25p.
Numis said pre-tax profit was ahead of its forecast of £12.8m, while NTA per share was also better than its estimate of 115p, helped by forex gains.
Meanwhile, Shore Capital said the results were "excellent".
"While the benefits of the capital raise are unlikely to be reflected in the results until 2020F and beyond, it shows the confidence of management in the growth prospects of the business, in our view.
"The additional capital should allow R&Q to fully grasp the plentiful opportunities that we expect to be available in the coming years. With the Global deal now approved we have even greater confidence in our 2019F earnings estimates and make no adjustments to them today."