Press Release
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February 27, 2025
published at 7:00 AM CET
Thomas Buberl
Chief Executive Officer of AXA
AXA has delivered a very strong performance in 2024, successfully executing in the first year of its strategic plan ‘Unlock the Future‘. We have a clear strategy fully focused on insurance and built around leading businesses, supported by a robust balance sheet. This is producing attractive and consistent results, with record topline and underlying earnings per share, both growing by +8% this year, and cash generation of more than Euro 7 billion.
Our Group is now growing at a stronger pace, with robust revenue growth across all lines of business and geographies. We have remained disciplined on pricing while accelerating on volume growth. This reflects continued demand notably in both P&C Commercial lines and Life & Health, high customer satisfaction driving improved retention, and contribution from growth initiatives.
Group underlying earnings reached Euro 8.1 billion, a function of both higher topline growth and excellent margins. We have delivered on our short-term profitability improvement in P&C Retail and UK Health and maintained strong margins in P&C Commercial lines, with limited impact from Nat Cats. Trends in Life are improving, and we continue to invest in technology to support long-term growth.
In the context of these results, and in line with our capital management policy to deliver an attractive 75% total payout ratio, the Board of Directors is proposing a dividend of Euro 2.15 per share, up 9% versus last year, corresponding to a 60% payout ratio, and has approved an annual share buy-back of Euro 1.2 billion. We anticipate returning an additional Euro 3.8 billion to shareholders through a share buy-back to be launched following the expected closing of the sale of AXA Investment Managers to BNP Paribas.
Capitalizing on our model, we continue to reinvest in our high-return business, compounding value for our shareholders.
The Group is in strong shape, and we are confident in executing our plan. I would like to thank all our colleagues, agents, and partners for their tremendous efforts to deliver this excellent performance, as well as our customers for their loyalty and trust.
NBV), present value of expected premiums (
PVEP) and new business value margin (
NBV Margin) is on a comparable basis (constant forex, scope and methodology), unless otherwise indicated. These and other terms, including but not limited to contractual service margin (
CSM) and new business contractual service margin (
NB CSM), are defined in the glossary section of this press release.
underlying earnings per share,
underlying return on equity,
combined ratioand
debt gearingare APMs as defined in ESMA’s guidelines and the AMF’s related position statement issued in 2015. AXA provides a reconciliation of such APMs to the most closely related line item, subtotal, or total in the financial statements of the corresponding period (and/or their calculation methodology, as applicable) in its Activity Report as of December 31, 2024 (
AXA’s 2024 Activity Report), on the pages indicated under the heading
USE OF NON-GAAP AND ALTERNATIVE PERFORMANCE MEASURES. For further information on the above-mentioned and other non-GAAP financial measures used in this press release, see the Glossary in AXA’s 2024 Activity Report. AXA’s 2024 Activity Report is available on AXA’s website (www. axa.com).
Investor Relations team
Axa Media Relations