Manulife Financial $18.16 - Toronto symbol MFC

MANULIFE FINANCIAL $18.16 (Toronto symbol MFC; Shares outstanding: 2.0 billion; Market cap: $37.9 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 3.7%; www.manulife.ca) sells life and other related forms of insurance, as well as mutual funds and investment management services. In the three months ended September 30, 2015, Manulife’s earnings per share, excluding one-time items, gained 10.3%, to $0.43 from $0.39 a year earlier. Revenue rose 16.2%, to $7.48 billion from $6.44 billion. The company continues to expand in growing Asian markets. Right now, about 40% of its insurance premiums come from that region. Manulife ended the latest quarter with $888.0 billion of assets under management, up 34.0% from $662.5 billion a year earlier. A large part of the increase came from the Canadian insurance operations of U.K.-based Standard Life. Manulife bought those assets for $4.0 billion in late 2014. The stock trades at just 10.7 times its forecast 2016 earnings of $1.70 a share. Manulife raised its quarterly dividend by 5.6% with the June 2015 payment, to $0.17 from $0.155. The shares yield 3.7%. Manulife is a buy.

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