Ping An Insurance Earnings: Strong NBV and OPAT Growth on Improving Life Insurance Margin

Ping An Insurance’s first-quarter 2024 year-on-year net profit decline narrowed to 4% versus the 23% decline in 2023. The results highlight stronger-than-expected growth in both new business value, or NBV, and operating profit after tax, or OPAT, driven by an improved life insurance margin. We expect this trend to continue in 2024, but full-year NBV growth is likely to moderate given a higher base in the second and third quarters of 2023 as a result of robust sales of last-batch 3.5% pricing savings-type products. Thus, we leave our assumptions largely unchanged and retain our fair value estimate at CNY 60 per A-share (HKD 65 per H-share) for Ping An.