Manulife Financial Corp is “constantly looking” for buyers for its Canadian variable annuities business, but it has “not been a very vibrant market,” its chief executive said on Wednesday.
Canada’s biggest life insurer struck a deal this week to exit most of its legacy U.S. variable annuity (VA) business, freeing up over C$2 billion ($1.6 billion) of capital.
“The true value of our company isn’t being appreciated, and to some extent, that is a function of the fact that we do have some legacy businesses that, at the very least, create uncertainty and concern,” CEO Roy Gori said at a TD Securities Event.
The company is “constantly looking for an ability to transact” in Canada, he added.
Manulife has said it aims to reduce the contribution of its less profitable and slower-growing legacy long-term care (LTC) and VA businesses to less than 10% of core earnings by 2025, from 25% in 2020. It did not disclose what that proportion will be following the U.S. deal but said the transaction will reduce core earnings by C$200 million in 2022.
Manulife shares are up 2.4% since the deal was announced, compared with a 0.2% decline in the Toronto stock benchmark.
“We believe completing a sale of the U.S. LTC business will pose more difficulty, as the market is currently in low demand for these types of transactions,” Canaccord Genuity analyst Scott Chan said in a note following the announcement.
Gori also said Manulife would like to deploy more capital in China, and would raise its stake in a joint venture with Sinochem from the current 51% if the opportunity arose.
The company said in June that it aimed to earn half of core earnings from Asia by 2025, from about 41% at the end of 2020.
Source: Reuters.com