MANULIFE FINANCIAL CORP. $18.04

MANULIFE FINANCIAL CORP. $18.04 (Toronto symbol MFC; Shares outstanding: 2.0 billion; Market cap: $35.1 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 4.1%; 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 December 31, 2015, Manulife’s earnings per share dropped sharply, to $0.11 from $0.33. That was largely due to writedowns in the value of its own investments in oil and gas stocks. However, excluding one-time items, per-share earnings rose 16.7%, to $0.42 from $0.36. 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 $935.0 billion of assets under management, up 35.3% 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 early 2015. The stock trades at just 9.4 times its forecast 2016 earnings of $1.92 a share. With the March 2016 payment, Manulife raised its quarterly dividend by 8.8%, to $0.185 from $0.17; it now yields 4.1% Manulife is a buy.

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