FBD upgraded to ‘outperform’ by Davy

A growth in FBD’s solvency capital has led Davy, a stockbroker, to upgrade the stock from ‘neutral’ to ‘outperform’.

While analysts Emer Lang and Stephen Lyons don't foresee dividends before 2019, they told investors that the company's solid first half "provided evidence of FBD's encouraging turnaround."

Davy laid out how the company is targeting “modest growth in its core areas” following the de-risking of its business. Additionally, claim costs have stabilised, “supported by another period of benign weather,” the analysts said.

The stock had been held back by “concerns that a lack of detail made it difficult to draw any comfort around solvency development,” however, disclosures in the company’s solvency and financial condition report allayed those concerns.

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Davy now forecasts FBD’s solvency capital ratio, the amount of capital insurers are required to hold, to rise to 155 per cent by the end of 2019, up from 126 per cent at the end of this year.

The stock was up marginally in early morning trade in Dublin, albeit on very low volume.