“Our focus on operating efficiency has resulted into significant revenues growth in our major operations†said AXA CEO Henri de Castries.
“The improvement from the growth level reported in the first quarter 2002 was mainly due to the Life & Savings operations. Introduction of new products, together with the quality and adaptability of our salesforce, facilitated the shift of our clients towards General Account products – which increased by approximately 18% - while allowing for significant quantity of unit-linked products to be sold – they still represent 27% of total revenues.
“Our Property & Casualty and International Insurance businesses continued to focus on profitable growth, while benefiting from a positive pricing cycle. “The diversity of our Asset Management operations both geographically – USA and Europe – and in terms of business mix –fixed income, growth and value— has enabled the Group to deliver positive net inflows, despite very difficult market conditions.â€
To respond to the very high volatility which has been impacting insurance stocks in general and AXA stock in particular in the last few weeks, AXA has decided to accelerate the reporting calendar for its first six month 2002 earnings and its financial situation as of June 30, 2002:
· The July 24 press release provided a list of mostly qualitative factors available to Management at that time to evaluate the Group’s fundamentals. This press release remains the official reference of AXA’s financial communication.
· Today’s revenues release contains all the information pertaining to the revenues for the six month period ending June 30, 2002.
· A release will be issued on August 21 before market opens. This release will contain our estimated half-year consolidated earnings (operating, adjusted and net) before the Supervisory Board and the Management Board have reviewed the half-year consolidated statements.
· On September 2 after market closes, AXA will publish its half-year earnings release together with the usual set of documents, instead of September 12 as originally planned.
As usual, the release will be followed by analysts, investors and media presentations.
For more information please visit www.axa.com.
(source: AXA)
