Liberty, the insurer, has failed to make acquisitions crucial to future growth, leading to a selloff which ended only last week and saw its share price drop more than 2%.The share has since pared its losses. Liberty reported that BEE normalised earnings fell 9% to R1.8bn in the half-year to June. Embedded value of new business written dropped 32% to R257m, which disappointed investors as it is an indicator of future profits. This reversed an earlier, albeit small, gain of 7% in the same period last year — to R369m — which the company has since restated to R380m. This did not please the market, which sent Liberty’s share down more than 12% in the month shortly after its June 2015 results were released.WJ de Vries, an analyst at Avior Capital Markets, said at the time that Liberty’s growth was dependent on its African acquisitions. But the company has not made any significant acquisitions during the year, resulting in a "deferred acquisitions costs" balance of R706m on its balance she...
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