Aviva Upgrades Outlook For Earnings, Cash, Dividend - Quick Facts

(RTTNews) - Aviva plc (AV.L, AV) announced Thursday upgrades to its targets for earnings growth, cash and dividend at a conference for investors and analysts.

The company now targets higher than mid-single digit percentage growth annually in IFRS operating earnings per share from 2019.

Further, remittance target increased to 8 billion pounds from 7 billion pounds, allowing Aviva to deploy 3 billion pounds of excess cash over 2018 and 2019. This is expected to be used to repay 900 million pounds of debt in 2018 and fund bolt-on acquisitions and additional returns to investors. The company's pay-out ratio target increased to 55-60% of operating earnings per share by 2020, underpinned by improved earnings quality and cash flows from Aviva's businesses which are becoming less capital-intensive.

The investor and analyst event will start at 8am UK time, with presentations covering strategy, growth, capital management and Aviva's international businesses.

Mark Wilson, Group Chief Executive Officer, said, "After a few years of restructuring, our businesses are now high quality and we expect good, sustainable growth from each of them. We have improved the consistency and quality of our profits and so we are raising our expectations for earnings growth to more than 5% annually from 2019 onwards."