| Previous Close | 144.50 |
| Open | 143.91 |
| Bid | 143.50 x 0 |
| Ask | 143.95 x 0 |
| Day's Range | 143.12 - 144.46 |
| 52 Week Range | 104.81 - 157.65 |
| Volume | 148,871 |
| Avg. Volume | 290,434 |
| Market Cap | 20.552B |
| Beta (5Y Monthly) | 0.72 |
| PE Ratio (TTM) | 22.88 |
| EPS (TTM) | N/A |
| Earnings Date | N/A |
| Forward Dividend & Yield | 3.32 (2.31%) |
| Ex-Dividend Date | Dec. 14, 2020 |
| 1y Target Est | N/A |
- The Motley Fool
3 Top TSX Stocks to Buy Today if You Have $1,000
Some TSX stocks still notably lag broader markets. Their cheap valuations indicate that they will soon join the rally, and the discrepancy will eventually wane.The post 3 Top TSX Stocks to Buy Today if You Have $1,000 appeared first on The Motley Fool Canada.
- Bloomberg
Intact Caps Decade of Takeovers With $9.4 Billion RSA Deal
(Bloomberg) -- After a decade of buying up rivals to become Canada’s largest property and casualty insurer, Intact Financial Corp. is looking across the Atlantic with its biggest deal yet.Intact sealed an agreement Wednesday to buy the Canada, U.K. and international operations of London’s RSA Insurance Group Plc as part of a C$12.3 billion ($9.4 billion) transaction. Denmark’s Tryg A/S is taking RSA’s Swedish and Norwegian operations.Intact’s portion of the deal is C$5.1 billion and brings it into entirely new markets in Europe while bulking up its core Canadian business. It supercharges an acquisition spree that has turned the Toronto-based company into the dominant force in Canada’s non-life insurance industry, a little more than a decade after it was cast off by Dutch insurer ING Groep NV.The RSA deal also will be a major test of whether Chief Executive Officer Charles Brindamour, 50, can replicate the firm’s success in digesting acquisitions on a larger scale and farther afield than it has ever attempted before.“We have an established track record of integrating companies,” Brindamour said during a press conference on Wednesday. “We’ve done that many times in the past. We feel that we are in a strong position to tackle that challenge.”Spinoff SuccessIntact traces its roots back to 1809, when a group of businessmen formed the Halifax Fire Insurance Association. That firm was acquired in the 1950s by a Dutch insurer that eventually became part of ING. In 2009, ING divested its 70% stake in ING Canada Inc., which changed its name to Intact.Brindamour, who had become CEO about a year earlier, wasted little time in bulking up the newly independent insurer. Intact bought French insurer Axa SA’s Canadian business in 2011, bolstering its domestic premiums by almost 50%.Intact went on to make 12 more deals with a total announced value of about $3.1 billion before the RSA acquisition, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The firm serves about one in five families and one in four small- and medium-sized businesses in Canada, Brindamour said.So far, the strategy has been rewarded. The company’s shares have risen more than fourfold from May 19, 2009, the day its listing as Intact became official. That compares with a 67% gain for the S&P/TSX Composite Index. Intact’s market value of about C$21 billion is up about fivefold in that time.The shares slid 1.6% to C$145.49 at 10:06 a.m. in Toronto, following a 0.6% gain on Wednesday after the deal was announced.Intact has benefited from being an independent, publicly traded company competing against policyholder-owned insurers that can’t make deals the same way, said Victor Adesanya, an analyst with DBRS Morningstar. The company also has a track record of making its acquisitions profitable by spotting trends in the market and exiting unprofitable business lines, he said.“They’re able to deploy advanced data analytics when it comes to risk selection, segmentation and identifying risk,” Adesanya said in an interview. “They do this better than others in the industry.”The RSA takeover -- the largest ever by a Canadian property and casualty insurer -- will put that system to the test. For one, it will add significant bulk to the company, increasing annual premiums in Canada from C$10 billion to about C$13 billion and boosting total premiums about 67% to C$20 billion.Intact’s workforce will balloon 63% to 26,000, its specialty-insurance business will grow by 30%, and it will be navigating unfamiliar regulatory environments in the U.K., Ireland and Denmark.Brindamour says he has admired RSA for a long time and has thought deeply about the complexity of an acquisition. He said he’s comfortable with the deal now because RSA’s businesses have leadership positions and Intact’s existing operations are in “very good shape.”He said his company’s net operating income per share has grown at a 10% compound annual rate over the past decade and revenue growth has exceeded the industry’s by about 4% a year over that time.“The reason why acquisitions make sense for us is because we’re an outperformer in the markets where we operate,” Brindamour said.(Updates share-price move in 10th paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- The Canadian Press
UK insurance firm RSA agrees to takeover offer from Intact and Tryg
TORONTO — One of the U.K.'s oldest insurance companies is getting two new owners and one of them is Canadian.RSA Insurance announced Wednesday that it is being taken over by Toronto-based insurer Intact Financial Group and Denmark's Tryg in a cash transaction worth about $12.3 billion or 685 pence per share — a 51 per cent premium on RSA's share price.Intact will pay $5.1 billion of that total and take over RSA's operations in Canada, the U.K. and international markets, while Tryg will cover the remaining $7.2 billion (4.2 billion pounds) and get RSA's Swedish and Norwegian businesses. They will co-own RSA's Danish business and RSA shareholders, who still need to approve the deal, will nab an unpaid interim dividend of eight pence per share."We have been thinking about finding a way to make this transaction possible for many years...but the conditions were not always right for this to work," Intact chief executive Charles Brindamour told a conference call with reporters Wednesday."Earlier this spring and early summer, it became clear to us that the timing would be very good to put a transaction together and work off the strength of the RSA platform to make this possible, so it's been a long thought process and relationship."Brindamour framed the deal as a way for Intact to boost its annual premiums, which it expects to increase by about 30 per cent to reach $13 billion, up from $10 billion.The deal also helps Intact gain a toehold in the U.K. and Ireland, where the company said there is an "attractive opportunity" to improve underwriting performance and competencies in risk selection.Intact said the deal will involve some job cuts at head office, but wouldn't share numbers. It vowed to provide details on the number of staff impacted within 120 days of the deal's completion.Meanwhile, Tryg estimated between 10 and 15 per cent of the workforce in Norway and Sweden would be cut in the three years after the deal closes.The acquisition is expected to be completed during the second quarter of 2021.To help finance its purchase, Intact has signed deals with some of Canada's largest pension plans.The company announced last week agreements with the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board for subscription receipts that will become Intact shares once the deal closes.CDPQ will invest $1.5 billion while CPP Investments will contribute $1.2 billion. Ontario Teachers' will invest $500 million.Intact has also signed a deal to raise an additional $1.25 billion in a bought deal private placement of subscription receipts with a group of underwriters, led by CIBC Capital Markets and Barclays Capital Canada Inc.RSA employs around 13,500 people worldwide and has about nine million customers across more than 100 countries.Founded more than 305 years ago, RSA is one of the world’s longest-standing general insurers. Its brands, including More Than, offer personal insurance for home, car, pet and travel. The company also has a commercial insurance arm."RSA has provided peace of mind to individuals and protected businesses from risk for more than 300 years," said RSA chairman Martin Scicluna."I am confident that the values of our business, and not least our dedication to serving customers well, will be sustained as part of Intact and Tryg."— With files from The Associated PressThis report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2020.Companies in this story: (TSX:IFC) Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press
