Earnings call transcript: Helvetia Baloise Group H2 2025 strong earnings boost stock

Helvetia Baloise Group reported robust financial results for the full year 2025, marking a successful start as a merged entity. The company’s stock surged by 5.59% following the announcement, reflecting investor confidence in the group’s performance and strategic direction. The stock price climbed to 221.10 CHF, nearing its 52-week high of 223.8 CHF.

Key Takeaways

• Helvetia and Baloise both reported a 20% increase in earnings, exceeding expectations.
• The merger integration was completed smoothly, with minimal customer disruption.
• The company’s stock rose by 5.59% post-announcement, indicating positive market sentiment.

Company Performance

The Helvetia Baloise Group demonstrated strong performance in 2025, with both legacy entities surpassing individual strategic targets. The merger, which created a new combined entity, was executed efficiently, allowing for a seamless transition to a unified organization. The group reported improvements in key financial metrics, including combined ratio and expense ratio, highlighting operational efficiency. The company’s financial strength is further evidenced by its perfect Piotroski Score of 9, indicating robust fundamentals across profitability, leverage, and operational efficiency metrics, according to InvestingPro data. With a market capitalization of $27.4 billion and a P/E ratio of 21.54, the merged entity commands significant market presence.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue and earnings per share figures were not disclosed in detail.
• Underlying earnings for Helvetia increased by 20%.
• Baloise’s net profit also rose by 20% on an adjusted basis.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, Helvetia Holding AG’s stock price increased by 5.59%, reflecting investor optimism about the company’s financial health and strategic execution. The stock’s rise positions it close to its 52-week high, underscoring strong market confidence. Over the past year, shares have delivered an impressive 24.85% total return. Notably, InvestingPro analysis indicates the stock is currently undervalued relative to its Fair Value, potentially offering additional upside for investors. For those seeking comprehensive analysis, Helvetia is among the 1,400+ US equities covered by InvestingPro’s detailed Pro Research Reports, which transform complex financial data into clear, actionable intelligence. The platform reveals 8 additional ProTips for Helvetia, available exclusively to subscribers alongside advanced metrics and peer comparison tools.

Outlook & Guidance

While detailed forward guidance was deferred to the Capital Market Day, the company expressed confidence in maintaining the strong performance levels achieved in 2025. The merger’s success sets a high baseline for future growth targets, which will be discussed further during the strategic presentation.

Executive Commentary

Fabian Rupprecht, Group CEO, emphasized the successful merger execution, stating, "Both companies had a very strong year in 2025 individually, and have also made an excellent start as a combined company." Matthias Henny, Group CFO, highlighted the financial strength, noting, "The strong results also mean that we have given ourselves a very high starting point for the next plan."

Risks and Challenges

• Maintaining the high performance levels post-merger could be challenging.
• The complexity of the merger and integration process may pose operational risks.
• Limited forward guidance during the earnings call may create uncertainty among investors.

Q&A

The earnings call Q&A session was notably brief, with no questions submitted by participants. Management attributed this to the early distribution of information and the complexity of the merger details, inviting further inquiries during the Capital Market Day.

Full transcript - Helvetia Holding AG (0ACB) H2 2025:

Valentina, Conference Call Operator, Chorus Call: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Helvetia Baloise Group conference call, full-year 2025 results. I am Valentina, the Conference Call Operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it’s my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Peter Eliot, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Peter Eliot, Head of Investor Relations, Helvetia Baloise Group: Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining this call on what we appreciate is a very busy day for you as well as for us. In our call today we have Fabian Rupprecht, our Group CEO, and Matthias Henny, our Group CFO. The purpose of this call is to answer any questions you might have on our full year results. We look forward to discussing the new strategy and financial targets at our Capital Market Day this afternoon. You’ll have seen we published commentary on the results slides on our website, so we won’t repeat those here. Nevertheless, I invite our Group CEO, Fabian Rupprecht, and Group CFO, Matthias Henny, to say a few words before we open for Q&A. Fabian, please.

Fabian Rupprecht, Group CEO, Helvetia Baloise Group: Thank you, Peter, and good morning to everyone. It’s a great pleasure to welcome you all to the first result presentation of the new Helvetia Baloise Group. Both companies had a very strong year in 2025 individually, and have also made an excellent start as a combined company. Both companies delivered on all the targets they had set as part of their individual strategies. We’re very proud that these targets were achieved in parallel to the preparation efforts of the merger, and indeed, thanks to the intense preparation up to day one, we were then able to move immediately to a joint organization with clear targets and fast decision-making. We’ve also established a strong new brand with international reach. We’ve kept employee engagement high and minimized disruption for our customers.

Matthias Henny, Group CFO, Helvetia Baloise Group: We will tell you more about all of that and about our new strategy and targets at our Capital Market Day this afternoon. However, this morning is now about the full year 2025 numbers. I hand over to Matthias for those. Thank you, Fabian, and good morning and welcome everybody from me. We appreciate that we have provided you with a lot of numbers today. A merger of this size under IFRS 17 provides some accounting challenges. However, we have tried to be as helpful as possible in our reporting of these. It is my intention as CFO of the new group to be as transparent as possible in our communications. Firstly, we have provided the company’s audited accounts. These include a P&L contribution from Helvetia only.

However, we wanted you to also be able to assess the 2025 performance of Baloise, so we have provided Baloise 2025 results based on its previous accounting assumptions. These have not been audited and they do not reflect the accounting changes arising from the merger with Helvetia. However, they do include certain merger-related expenses incurred in 2025. We have therefore also provided you with an assessment of what the Baloise results would have looked like without these costs. You see these in the Baloise adjusted results. Finally, we appreciate that you want to know what the income statement might look like in future, and we need a starting point for our new financial targets. Therefore, we have provided you with pro forma combined information. This is also unaudited and is provided for illustrative purposes only.

We would urge you to treat the numbers with caution and we direct you to the disclaimer on slide 43 of the presentation. The important thing is that we are extremely pleased with the results that both Helvetia and Baloise achieved individually in 2025. Helvetia’s underlying earnings rose 20%, far above its targeted growth rate. Meanwhile, Baloise’s net profit was also up 20%, if one adjusts for merger-related one-off impacts. ROEs were correspondingly satisfying. The main driver of the good results for both companies was the non-life underwriting result. Helvetia improved its combined ratio by 1.8 percentage points with a loss ratio excluding discounting and nat cats that was 1.5 percentage points better and an expense ratio that improved by 30 basis points. Baloise also improved its combined ratio by 1.6 percentage points on an adjusted basis, including a 20 basis points improvement in the expense ratio.

Both companies reported very strong gross cash remittances and SST ratios. The combined SST ratio is an internal indicative estimate. This stands at about 260%, which is about 20 percentage points higher than the level we indicated at the time of the merger announcement. The strong results of both entities and the combined group support attractive shareholder remuneration. We propose a dividend for the 2025 financial year of 7.70 Swiss francs per shareThis equates to a total payout, which is 5.54% higher than the combined payout of both companies in the previous year. The strong results also mean that we have given ourselves a very high starting point for the next plan. You will see that we have not adjusted the number when using it to set our targets for future earnings growth, which we will discuss this afternoon.

With that introduction, we are happy to take your questions on our full-year 2025 results.

Valentina, Conference Call Operator, Chorus Call: We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you’ve entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode and eventually turn off the volume from the webcast while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. Once again, to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one. Ladies and gentlemen, we have no questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Fabian Rupprecht for any closing remarks.

Fabian Rupprecht, Group CEO, Helvetia Baloise Group: Okay. That’s a little bit to our surprise that there are no questions. I assume that this has to do with the fact that you just received the information quite early and that there is an overload of information. Our IR team will be at your disposal during the day to answer all the questions, so please don’t hesitate to call them. Looking forward to having you around in our CMD this afternoon with hopefully many more questions on the strategy. Thank you so much.

Valentina, Conference Call Operator, Chorus Call: Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.

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