On the 18th, as the domestic stock market generally trended lower, Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance jumped more than 12% early in the session. Buying appears to have poured in after the company's strong first-quarter results were seen as confirming an improvement in insurance profit and loss.
As of 10 a.m. that day on the Korea Exchange, Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance was trading at 37,200 won, up 3,850 won (11.54%) from the previous session.
Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance said on the 15th that its standalone net profit for the first quarter rose 9.9% on-year to 223.3 billion won. It was an "earnings surprise," beating market expectations by 42%. This was due to the reflection of a roughly 90 billion won one-off reversal following a partial change in calculation standards. Of this, insurance profit and loss came to 302.1 billion won, up 71.7%.
Samsung Securities raised its target price for Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance to 44,000 won from 42,000 won that day. Jeong Min-gi, an analyst at Samsung Securities, said indicators are improving based on contract quality enhancements that have continued since the second half of 2024.
Jeong said, "The pace of increase in incurred losses is narrowing faster than competitors," and added, "With the maturity mismatch between assets and liabilities (duration gap) improving to virtually neutral, the risk-based capital ratio (K-ICS), an indicator of capital soundness, came in at 207%."
He added, "There is uncertainty about dividends due to the burden of surrender value reserves," but noted, "We judge that this is already sufficiently reflected in the share price, which is around a price-earnings ratio (PER) of 3."