South Africa: Discovery's financial results reveal a 34% surge in earnings, showcasing global growth
Discovery today released its interim financial results for the six months ending 31 December 2024, highlighting strong performance and sustained growth. Group chief executive officer Adrian Gore attributed the success to strategic investments in global expansion and new ventures, particularly Discovery Bank, which achieved monthly profitability in December ahead of schedule.
With its two key composites—Vitality and Discovery South Africa—well-positioned for scaled organic growth, the Group is entering a new phase of focused execution.
'Following the emergence from a period of sustained investment, we have seen a strong performance, which is expected to result in further growth in profit from operations in 2025, exceeding our medium-term ambition of 15% to 20%, driven, in particular, by a second-half recovery in the UK," Gore said.
The period delivered growth in normalised operating profit, up 27% to R7,020m, headline earnings, up 34% to R4,267m and normalised headline earnings, up 34% to R4,350m. The Group's embedded value increased to R120bn and the positive contribution from experience variances over the period reflected the competitive dynamics of the Group's Shared-value Insurance model.
The key financial highlights include:
Discovery South Africa: Normalised operating profit increased 27% to R5,520m as the composite focused on driving quality new business at appropriate margins, with new business increasing 6%, excluding the prior period take-on of the Sasolmed closed medical scheme.
Discovery Bank: Delivered a 42% increase in total revenues and has now achieved monthly operational profitability with continued excellent performance across all key metrics. It is well positioned to leverage its scale, data and capabilities to drive growth across the composite.
Discovery Health: The administrator of Discovery Health Medical Scheme and 18 closed medical schemes delivered robust earnings growth, while continuing strategic investments in technology, innovation, artificial intelligence, and personalised healthcare. New business increased 9%, excluding the Sasolmed closed medical scheme take-on in the prior period (decreased 31%, including Sasolmed).
Discovery Life: Delivered strong earnings and cash generation, supported by positive claims experience, while maintaining its market-leading retail market share and new business margins. Group life new business, which tends to be volatile, declined over the period.
Discovery Invest: Delivered significant earnings growth, benefitting from strong market performance and some one-off gains for the period.
Discovery Insure: Delivered an excellent recovery in operating margin, and also benefited from benign weather conditions.
Vitality: The composite's normalised operating profit increased by 27% to R1,500m, and new business API increased 8%.
VitalityHealth: Operating profit increased 15% to £25.9m (14% to R599m). The business has successfully actioned price adjustments over the past 18 months to mitigate increased private medical insurance utilisation, with the strong retention of in-force business resulting in a 16% increase in earned premiums.
VitalityLife: Operating profit increased by 8% to £14.1m (8% to R327m). The business utilised its advanced price optimisation to deliver a 19% increase in new business Annualised Premium Income of high quality (39% excluding automatic contribution increases), despite a stagnant UK market.
Vitality Network: Operating profit increased by 20% to US$18.9m (15% to R339m), as margins increased from 31% to 35%. Membership grew by 26% to 6.2 million, demonstrating the global relevance of the Shared-value Insurance model.
The Group's share of Ping An Health Insurance's after-tax operating profit increased by 23% to R424m, following strong gains from Chinese bond and equity market movements in the period and continued operating delivery. Within VHI Other, Vitality USA acquired WellSpark, further progressing its expansion from its traditional focus on the employee wellness market towards the significantly larger addressable market of integrated digital health and care.
Amplify Health successfully deployed nine health tech solutions across multiple Asia-pacific markets. Gore highlighted that Discovery's growth strategy is based on the efficacy, repeatability, and scalability of its model through organic growth and global partnerships. The Group's strong performance demonstrates the effective deployment of the model and its applicability across the different industries and markets.
Driving sustainable growth
The model's evolution to hyper-personalisation, leveraging the Group's data and technology assets, will continue to improve key value drivers. The Vitality AI platform and its capabilities will allow greater and more precise understanding of people's health risks and determine the exact actions to improve health outcomes, quantifying the impact on health and mortality.
Gore further emphasised that the Group demonstrated continued financial resilience and remains well positioned to manage potential volatility in the current macro-environment.
He said the two powerful and focused composites – Discovery South Africa and Vitality – and the strong platforms in each, are resulting in growth in earnings, cash generation, and return on equity, as well as lower leverage.
In line with this, the Group has declared its interim ordinary dividends for the period at 87 cents per share, consistent with the growth in normalised headline earnings.
All rights reserved. © 2022. Bizcommunity.com Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).
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