Deutsche Bank lowers target price on Prudential

Analysts at Deutsche Bank lowered their target price on insurance company Prudential from 1,550.0p to 1,475.0p on Wednesday but said "brighter skies" were ahead.

Deutsche Bank stated lower estimates for Prudential were more than reflected in the stock's current price after falling almost 30% over the last six months, underperforming even the Hang Seng.

The German bank stated the reasons for this were "not hard to find" as, amongst other factors, it highlighted elevated political risk, further waves of new Covid cases across Asia, the impact of particularly severe lockdowns in Hong Kong and China and the failure to find a new chief executive.

"On the back of these factors, we lower our near-term sales estimates and also cut our target price; however, with almost 40% upside, trading at 0.77x EV and now on a prospective PE discount to European peers, this still leaves the shares deeply oversold," said DB.

However, the analysts did highlight that "rapidly improving" new Covid case numbers in most of its markets pointed to "brighter news flow ahead" for Prudential.