Brit Insurance Holdings HI profits ‘materially’ ahead of expectations |
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Sat, 20 Aug 2005 09:05
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LONDON - Brit Insurance Holdings has announced on Friday that its first-half pretax profit is slated to beat all predictions and is set to cross £110 million. This figure is over and above the market expectations that had forecast a gain of £90 million and is largely influenced by the prevailing trading conditions, which were pretty favorable for trade, the company said.
The company also revealed that its first half profits had been helped in a large measure by the low levels of claims as well, "Low levels of claims incurred, excellent investment performance and profit on exchange rate adjustments when reporting under IFRS," the company said in a trading update. Despite reporting excellent first half returns, the company remained cautious in its outlook for the second half of the current year.
Chief executive Dane Douetil said that the performance of the company had indeed been strong in the first six months of the year ending June 30. But he admitted that the second half was unlikely to be as strong as the first one, since market conditions remained volatile, "It is unlikely that all the positive factors experienced in the first half of the year will be repeated in the second half. Although we believe that it would be imprudent to infer that our excellent first half performance will be repeated in the second half of 2005 we look forward to the year end with some confidence," Dane Douetil stressed. He was of the opinion that the IFRS regime could play a major part in the second half and could introduce a significant degree of volatility in the balance sheets.
In the backdrop of the positive news regarding the first half profits, Brit Insurance shares rose by 3.44 percent to 90.2 pence. The first half results will be released on September 6.
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