An extremely volatile year for the Hannover Re share
The movement of the Hannover Re share in the year under review was to a large extent similarly shaped by the crisis on financial markets. After the sharp fall in January, however, our business figures for the record year of 2007 initially prompted an upward climb and a clear decoupling from the general market trend. Our share reached its highest point of the year on 5 May 2008 at EUR 35.79. In early June, however, a downward trend set in against the backdrop of the aforementioned crisis news and gathered impetus from mid-September onwards. Shortly after the release of our profit warning - motivated primarily by write-downs on equity investments - our share touched its lowest point of the year of EUR 15.70 on 28 October 2008. A rally followed, boosted by positive expectations for the upcoming treaty renewals. Our share was listed at EUR 22.50 on 30 December 2008 and hence suffered a loss of EUR 9.05 or 28.7% in the year under review. After allowance for reinvestment of the dividend paid in an amount of EUR 2.30 the overall performance was -23.5% - and hence not as poor as that recorded by the Dax and MDax.
In a three-year comparison (see chart) the Hannover Re share including reinvested dividends delivered a performance of -15.9%. It thus surpassed the MDax and Prime Insurance Performance Index, but fell just short of the Dax. In 2008 we did not achieve our strategic objective of outperforming the weighted ABN Amro Global Reinsurance Index in a three-year comparison.
Performance of the Hannover Re share in comparison with standard indices and the ABN Amro Global Reinsurance Index*
The market capitalisation of the Hannover Re Group totalled EUR 2,713 million as at year-end. With a free float market capitalisation of EUR 1,253 million our company ranked eighth in the MDax at the end of December, while our share came in at number 13 according to the criterion "Trading volume over the past 12 months" with a traded volume of EUR 4,962 million for the year. According to both criteria, therefore, the Hannover Re Group ranks among the 50 largest listed companies in Germany.
With a book value per share of EUR 23.47 the Hannover Re share recorded a price-to-book (P/B) ratio of 0.96 as at the end of December, compared with a higher MDax average of 1.01.