Genworth Financial Inc (NYSE:GNW) has been registering a decline in its share value, despite repeated efforts by the company to try and boost its mortgage insurance business. Furthermore, the company has been trying to narrow its focus on mortgage insurance and to do this it has already filed an 8-K to sell its lifestyle protection insurance. A deal has been reached with AXA S.A, which has been estimated to be worth $475 million. The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of 2015.
Genworth has been trying to cut its expenses, in order to provide improved EPS and share value to its investors. The company has set a target to lower cash expenses of $100 million, by the end of FY2016. So far, the company’s measures are expected to lower costs of $30 million and $40 million for the years 2015 and 2015 respectively.
Genworth’s recent move to becoming more focused on its mortgage insurance business has been a result of the business reporting profits for the last eight quarters. This can be attributed to the fact that the housing market in the US has been improving and stronger mitigation regulations are being put in place. As a result, new business for the mortgage insurance segment has experienced fewer losses.
Furthermore, the company insiders have also been backing the stock, with the EVP of Human Resources at Genworth, Michael S Laming, purchasing 20,000 shares on August 18. The shares were priced at an average of $5.20 per share. He had followed in pursuit of the company CFO, Klein Martin P. The CFO had bought a total of 15,000 shares at a total price of $74,850. Since the start of 2015, to date, the company has been experiencing consistent decline in terms of its share value and has underperformed the index by a margin of 33.1%.
Genworth Financial Inc (NYSE:GNW) registered a decline of 4.67% in its share value, to close at a share price of $4.8.