Hastings Group Holdings PLC (LON:HSTG) saw its shares rise on Thursday after the motor insurance upped its guidance on dividends and highlighted the acceleration of its digital services.
The FTSE 250-listed firm offered a 7% increase in full-year dividend and increased its future target dividend payout ratio to a range of 65% to 75% as it reported in-line full-year 2018 results and it maintained its outlook and guidance for 2019.
READ: Hastings Insurance shares plunge on outlook concerns amid growing competition
In the year to December 2018, Hastings grew its adjusted operating profit by 4% to £190.6mln and customer policies increased by 2.5% to 2.7mln. Its gross premiums increased by 3% to £958.3mln for the year, while net revenues grew 6% to £756.4mln.
Hastings' chief executive Toby van der Meer commented: “We have made good progress on building our next generation technology solutions including our core platform, pricing, anti-fraud and digital capabilities in particular.
“This includes the launch of our new mobile app that has already been downloaded over 150,000 times, and our new online self-serve functionality and digital claims notification and tracking.
In late afternoon trading, the group's shares were 3.3% higher at 226.2p.
Shore Capital reiterated a ‘buy’ rating on the shares which it noted is still only trading at 9.8x an adjusted price-earnings ratio based on 2019 forecasts.