AFLAC Beats and Raises Dividend

AFLAC (AFL) is our fourth stock to report Q3 earnings today. For Q3, the duck stock earned $1.56 per share in operating earnings. Remember that for insurance companies, it’s better to look at operating earnings rather than net earnings. Currency exchange continues to be an issue for AFLAC. The weak yen knocked off 13 cents per share.

Quarterly revenue dropped 12.1% to $5 billion. Compared with last year’s Q3, operating earnings fell from $685 million to $672 million. But thanks to share buybacks, operating earnings per share rose by 3.3%. Ignoring the yen, operating earnings per share increased by 11.9%. During Q3, the average exchange rate for the yen was down 14.9% from last year.

For the first nine months of the year, operating earnings came to $4.60 per share, but AFLAC lost 40 cents due to the yen. Excluding that, operating earnings were up 2.9%.

So far this year, AFLAC has repurchased 17.4 million shares for $1.1 billion. They still have 52.1 million shares left under the current plan.

The board approved raising the quarterly dividend from 39 to 41 cents per share. That comes to $1.64 per share for the year, or 2.6% based on today’s closing price.

Now for guidance. AFLAC said that if the yen stays between 120 and 125 on the dollar, then they expect operating earnings to range between $1.36 and $1.56 per share. That translates to a full-year range of $5.96 to $6.16 per share.

Posted by on October 27th, 2015 at 6:29 pm


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