Split & Dividend: Allianz, Aspermont, Amazon - These Triple-A stocks are a joy to watch!

Allianz - A lavish dividend beckons

Allianz, the European market leader in the insurance business, is also one of the top 3 insurance companies internationally. The assets under management in the asset division are impressive, reaching over EUR 2.5 trillion by the end of 2021 despite various capital market turbulences. The operating surplus also climbed to a new record of EUR 13.4 billion, up from EUR 10.8 billion.

Of course, the risks have grown, but the insurance giant's cushion for contingencies is also constantly increasing. The Solvency II ratio improved again by 1% to 209%. For open issues with the regulatory bodies in the USA, EUR 2.8 billion has already been taken into account in net income. This mainly concerns the AGI US Structured Alpha Fund.

To the delight of shareholders, Allianz is allowing its shareholders to participate in its success in two ways. Firstly, the cash dividend increased by 12.5% to EUR 10.80, and secondly, a new share buyback program of EUR 1 billion was launched. The financial services provider will hold its AGM for 2021 on May 4, followed by its next quarterly results on May 12. We assume that the falling bond prices and the March storms will put some pressure on current earnings but that the 2022 outlook will still be conciliatory. Hamburg-based private bank Berenberg sees strong momentum in the core business and advantages in the strong US dollar. It votes "Buy" with a price target of EUR 269. The dividend yield of 5% alone is something to write home about. Allianz is a base stock for every portfolio.

Aspermont Ltd - Rising customer numbers and margins in the service business

Perth-based Aspermont Ltd is a media and fintech company in one. The Corona pandemic has allowed growth for the Australian provider of information services around the commodities industry. However, due to the elimination of live events, the whole thing was limited in intensity. The old core business is still print-oriented in the form of regular publications for the mining sector, but the new lines of business are highly digitized. In the design of a fintech, Aspermont provides data services at the highest level within a highly scalable XaaS model.

The B2B approach guarantees exclusive access to management and decision-making levels of commodity companies, which can connect with the financial world through Aspermont's networking. In this way, roadshows, financings and capital placements also generate income from investment banking activities. For young, growing companies, these are important additions that can be secured through regular subscription and membership fees. More than 4 million people already use the services, and relevant content from industry leaders is very popular with recipients.

After a 2-year pandemic, live formats such as "Future of Mining" (FOM) are making a comeback. In March, 300 companies again took advantage of this offer in Sydney, and now a similar event is planned for September in Denver, USA. As a result of the advance bookings, management is already assuming that it will be possible to exceed the forecast figures for 2022 and 2023. The digital model is fully rolled out, meaning each new activity significantly increases the operating profit margin.

On April 19, there was a new addition to the executive team. Dean Felton was appointed as a non-executive director. He has more than 25 years of experience in the mining industry and has held various management and consulting positions with major companies Rio Tinto, BHP and Vale. Aspermont's share price is currently consolidating at around AUD 0.02, or the equivalent of EUR 0.013. Given the strong earnings momentum, there should indeed be some surprises in store for the current year.

Amazon - Can a split move mountains?

No sooner had the marketing strategists at e-commerce giant Amazon uttered the word "split" than the stock went up 10%. The share had previously slid slowly downwards after reaching a high of EUR 3,323 in November 2021. Here, the strong selling pull on the NASDAQ caused enormous pressure. The share then bottomed out at EUR 2,395 at the end of January.

Operationally, the world market leader in online shopping is doing exceptionally well. Sales are growing at around 15% per year, while earnings per share are growing even faster at over 50% in 2022. In the next 5 years, experts estimate revenue growth from the current level of around USD 30.7 billion to USD 121.2 billion, which corresponds to an outright quadrupling. Earnings per share are expected to rise in parallel from around USD 48 to USD 188. In relation to the current share price, this is a P/E ratio reduction from 65 to 16 by 2026.

Admittedly, investors already have to pay high prices for these prospects because Amazon is anything but cheap. Nevertheless, in addition to e-commerce, the Company also has a gigantic server and web services business under the AWS label. Here, Amazon operates one of the largest virtual data centers globally and has enormous cloud resources at its disposal. To ultimately make the stock attractive to smaller investors again, the Company announced a 1-for-20 split on March 9, which will now be implemented on May 27. Other companies, such as Tesla, even doubled again by the split date. It remains to be seen whether this will also be the case for the relatively expensive Amazon share. Currently, it is constantly rising by 1-2% per day; only yesterday, the sellers were probably stronger. Crisis or not, online shopping is always happening! Amazon offers a good medium-term opportunity during stronger corrections.

Investors are looking for support and stability in a very fragile overall market. Allianz and Amazon are two accepted blue chips that combine earnings power and shareholder value. There have rarely been stock market periods where these stocks have performed poorly. Australia's Aspermont is solidly positioned, growing decently and can now again play to all its strengths in the B2B business.