Beazley launches buyback after strong 2024, sees $80m hit from wildfires
By Benjamin Chiou
Date: Tuesday 04 Mar 2025
(Sharecast News) - Shares in Beazley dipped on Tuesday despite the insurer announcing a $500m share buyback programme and a massive dividend increase alongside its 2024 results, as the company guided to $80m of losses related to the Californian wildfires.
The wildfires, which occurred since the end of the last financial year, is expected to result in a "net claims impact of around $80m".
"The January 2025 California Wildfires were another significant market event and one which further demonstrates the increasingly volatile, complex and changing risk environment we are operating in," said chief executive Adrian Cox.
For 2024, pre-tax profits reached a record $1.42bn, up 13% on 2023, helped by a 10% increase in insurance written premiums to $6.16bn. The undiscounted combined ratio (COR) was 79.0%, up from 74% in 2023.
"This result was delivered in a year with a significant global IT outage, an active hurricane season and ongoing geopolitical volatility, illustrating the resilience of our business," Cox said.
Beazley said the strength of its results supports a "one-off rebasing" of the ordinary dividend by 76% to 25p per share.
Shares were 0.7% lower at 887.5p by 0849 GMT.
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