Zhongjin reiterated "outperform industry"! Maintaining a target price of 33.1 Hong Kong dollars for CHINA TAIPING (00966)

On March 25th, CHINA TAIPING (00966) released an impressive annual report: in 2025, the shareholders' attributable profit reached HK$27.059 billion, a year-on-year increase of 220.9%; the dividend per share was HK$1.23, a significant increase of 251% compared to the previous year, far exceeding market expectations. CICC promptly issued a research report, reiterating the "outperform industry" rating for CHINA TAIPING, maintaining a target price of HK$33.1, representing a potential upside of 56.3% from the current stock price. CICC pointed out that all aspects of the company's indicators are pointing towards a long-term improvement in fundamentals, stating that "any short-term disturbances present a good opportunity for positioning." CICC believes that the performance highlights are concentrated in three areas: first, in the transformation of life insurance dividends leading the industry, CHINA TAIPING Life Insurance's dividends accounted for 86.1% of first-year premium income for long-term insurance, with new business value reaching HK$8.661 billion, a year-on-year increase of 2.7%, with expected growth in embedded value leading major competitors; second, continuous improvement in underwriting profitability for property insurance, with CHINA TAIPING Property Insurance optimizing comprehensive cost ratio by 1.3 percentage points to 98.8%, and insurance service performance increasing significantly by 29.1% year-on-year; third, steady progress in investments, with equity assets accounting for 17.3%, and a high dividend strategy leading to a 29.4% year-on-year increase in dividend income. CICC particularly emphasized that, benefiting from the leading advantage of the transformation of dividend insurance, the sensitivity of CHINA TAIPING's new business value to declining interest rates is only -5.7%, demonstrating significantly better risk resistance than its industry peers.