Related Articles
Top Stories
May 25 2012 13:58
The costs of the first phase of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project have increased significantly to almost R90bn, according to a report.
May 25 2012 19:13
Uncertainty over the future of the euro zone returned to push the rand down against the dollar.
May 25 2012 11:36
The JSE has identified and stopped "incorrect" trades from one of its members, and will reverse the trades and lower the session's total value after the close.
Johannesburg - Investors in JSE-listed wealth management firm Liberty Holdings were thrown a curve-ball on Thursday when foreign exposure compounded group's earnings woes.
Liberty told investors it expected to lose between R1.1bn and R1.3bn for the six months ended-June. It publishes its results on August 6.
The earnings loss is equal to basic and headline loss per share of between 434 cents and 521 cents.
Normalised embedded value per share is expected to be between 7 800c and 8 000c owing to the first half loss. This is based on its black economic empowerment (BEE) normalised earnings figure. Liberty Holdings is trading at around 6 300c a share.
While losses of R750m from interest rate and equity market exposures were expected, the stronger rand from the first quarter led to a surprise negative mark-to-market adjustment on the group's foreign currency investments of about R530m.
Liberty entered into a series of hedges to protect its investment portfolios against volatility and downside in the equity market following the turmoil at the end of 2008.
So far, Liberty's hedging gambit has proved costly as equity markets have rallied strongly since March 2009. With the hedges in place, the Liberty portfolios have not enjoyed the same up-side benefits that other financial services firms had seen.
In an interview with Fin24.com Liberty Life CEO Steven Braudo cautioned that the Liberty Life insurance business was struggling.
Said Bruce Hemphill, CEO of Liberty Holdings: "This has been a very difficult year for global markets, and our business has not been immune".
"This has contributed to life operations experiencing further lower policy persistency and management has acted decisively, deeming it prudent to strengthen persistency assumptions at the half year," he said.
Persistency is the measure by which insurance businesses calculate the percentage of policies already written without lapsing or being replaced by policies of other insurers. Liberty had started a strategy to get persistency back to "acceptable" levels, Hemphill said.
- Fin24.com