Taishin Financial may still focus on the M&A of life insurance

Taishin Financial Holdings (2887-TW) held earnings conference call today on December 5th. Its 1Q-3Q18 net profit reached NTD11.3bn (+8.3% YoY) with EPS of NTD0.97(+10.2% YoY).

“Although Taishin Financial is qualified for hostile takeover, it is still too complicated. Taishin Financial will therefore still focus on the M&A of life insurance companies and we are putting the efforts.” said Welch Lin, the general manager.

Lin also pointed out that the difficulty in life insurance M&A is that non-finance-holding life insurance companies are too big, such as Nanshan Life Insurance, and foreign life insurance companies are withdrawing from the market, so the options are not much. Moreover, the cost needs time to be evaluated. The evaluation process will follow IFRS17, or other financial issues such as whether not to use MtM (mark-to-market) to evaluate debt will be considered as well.

In addition to the life insurance M&A, Lin said that the bank-side expansion must wait for the third-instance judgment of Chang Hwa Bank acquisition case to decide.

Regarding securities, the company told that the synergy of TCSC M&A is very well. Taishin Financial may continue to explore proper options in the market and if there is a good M&A opportunity, the company may continue the acquirements.