Swiss Life Holding AG In-Depth Analysis: Investment Opportunities and Performance Analysis

Swiss Life Holding AG is a Swiss company that offers a range of life insurance policies, retirement/disability annuities and investments to groups and individuals. The company focuses its business mainly in Switzerland, France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Singapore and Dubai. It was founded as Rentenanstalt in 1857 and took over "La Suisse Assurances" in 1988 (dismantled and then liquidated in 2007). It is the largest life insurance group in Switzerland and one of the leading life insurers in Germany, France and Luxembourg. 7,800 employees work for Swiss Life Holding.

SLHN is trading at a very fair price, at 12.4 times recurring earnings, 1.02 times tangible book value, 0.72 times sales and 5.74 times free cash flow. In these times, it is becoming very difficult to find quality stocks at this price in Switzerland and Europe.

From a dividend perspective, the Swiss insurer is also attractive, since it offers a yield of 3,08%, for a distribution ratio of only 38,16%. Swiss Life therefore still has a lot of room to continue increasing its distributions in the future, even if profits were to decrease. It has not hesitated to do so in the past, with an impressive rate of 19,57% per year (over the last five years).

Just like the dividend, the profit, cash reserves and asset values are growing over the long term, which demonstrates the strength of Swiss Life's business model. The company is clearly succeeding in creating value for its owners over the long term, and this is reflected in the share price, which has more than doubled over the last five years.

The return on assets and return on equity are not extraordinary, with 0.46% and 6.7%. The net margin is also quite low, with 6.12%. On the other hand, the insurer still manages to generate profits and cash on a regular and increasing basis, helped in particular by a low need for investment expenditure.

The long-term debt-to-asset ratio is slightly up, but remains at very reasonable levels, at 2.3%. Swisslife could theoretically pay off its entire debt in just over two years by using all of its available free cash flow. Despite this prudent use of debt, the Swiss insurer has also not needed to finance its development by increasing its share capital, which has been stable for several years. This is a positive point for shareholders who thus avoid a dilution of their assets.

As we can see, Swisslife is a solid holding company with a very long history. Despite its size, its business remains simple, not very subject to risks of technological obsolescence and difficult to attack by new competitors. It is the kind of stock that you can buy and forget about in a corner for many years.

At the current price of 357 Swiss francs, SLHN is trading at a price that reflects its intrinsic value quite well, with perhaps even a slight undervaluation. As mentioned at the beginning of the article, this alone is already very rare in these times. It is therefore very clearly a stock to hold, or even to buy/strengthen if you have nothing better to sink your teeth into.

The last time I bought a stock in "Swiss - something" was at the beginning of my investment career, almost in the last century, and I picked up a lesson that still influences my choices of companies today. Let's bet that history will not repeat itself. In any case, it's much better this time...