Share count
2.6Bpeak FY2023
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PUK, Prudential Public Limited Company
Insurance — Life & Health financial
A life insurer, collecting premiums for decades and earning a spread on the reserves it invests until claims fall due.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$11.5B
+7.0% YoY · −13% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What moves the needle
- The spread on the float and the growth in book value. What decides it: the gap between what the invested reserves earn and what is credited to policyholders, the mortality and fee margins on top, and the scale of the float against equity. Benefits exceed premiums by design, so a P&C combined ratio is the wrong lens; the risks are interest rates and reserve adequacy. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
- Is it a good business?
- A life insurer is read on the spread it earns on a large float and the growth in book value, not a combined ratio: benefits exceed premiums by design, since claims fall due decades after the premium and are funded by the investment income on accumulated reserves. Book value per share has slipped about 1% a year across the record, though much of that swing is rising rates marking the bond portfolio down through other comprehensive income rather than economic loss. The float runs about 8.7× equity, the leverage that magnifies the spread. Whether the spread holds as rates move, and whether the reserves prove adequate, are what the 10-K decides, not an earnings multiple.
Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, 2017–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2017’17 | 2018’18 | 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | TTMTTMDec 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | ||||||||||
| $39.8B | $45.0B | $23.4B | $22.5B | $23.0B | $9.0B | $9.7B | $10.7B | $11.5B | $11.5B | RevenueRevenue |
| — | — | — | — | — | $8.5B | $9.4B | $10.4B | $11.1B | $11.1B | Premiums earnedPremiums |
| $3.1B | $4.0B | $783M | $2.1B | ($2.0B) | ($1.0B) | $1.7B | $2.3B | $4.0B | $4.0B | Net incomeNet inc. |
| 27% | 14% | 47% | 25% | — | — | 25% | 27% | 20% | 20% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | ||||||||||
| $1.8B | $3.4B | $1.2B | $2.8B | $278M | $1.1B | $832M | $3.6B | $2.5B | $2.5B | Operating cash flowOp. cash |
| $1.7B | $3.2B | $1.2B | $2.7B | $242M | $1.0B | $788M | $3.5B | $2.3B | $2.3B | Owner earningsOwner earn. |
| 14% | 18% | 4% | 10% | -11% | -6% | 10% | 13% | 20% | 20% | Return on equityROE |
| 7% | 11% | −4% | 6% | −13% | −9% | 7% | 10% | 17% | 12% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| Balance sheet | ||||||||||
| — | — | — | — | $149.8B | $126.2B | $139.8B | $147.6B | $174.5B | $174.5B | Float (reserves)Float |
| — | — | $454.2B | $516.1B | $188.2B | $160.2B | $174.1B | $181.9B | $212.2B | $212.2B | Total assetsAssets |
| $6.6B | $9.4B | $5.0B | $8.0B | $7.2B | $5.5B | $4.8B | $5.8B | $7.7B | $7.7B | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| $21.8B | $22.0B | $19.5B | $20.9B | $18.9B | $16.7B | $17.8B | $17.5B | $20.1B | $20.1B | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | ||||||||||
| 2.57B | 2.58B | 2.59B | 2.60B | 2.63B | 2.74B | 2.74B | 2.71B | 2.58B | 2.58B | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $1.20 | $1.56 | $0.30 | $0.82 | $-0.78 | $-0.37 | $0.62 | $0.84 | $1.54 | $1.54 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $0.68 | $1.25 | $0.45 | $1.05 | $0.09 | $0.38 | $0.29 | $1.29 | $0.91 | $0.91 | Owner earnings / shareOE/sh |
| $0.59 | $0.65 | $0.63 | $0.31 | $0.16 | $0.17 | $0.19 | $0.20 | $0.23 | $0.63 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $8.48 | $8.53 | $7.53 | $8.04 | $7.21 | $6.12 | $6.50 | $6.44 | $7.80 | $7.80 | Book value / shareBVPS |
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 8-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | −14.4%/yr | −12.4%/yr |
| Owner earnings / share | +3.7%/yr | −2.8%/yr |
| EPS | +3.2%/yr | +13.6%/yr |
| Dividends / share | −11.2%/yr | −6.0%/yr |
| Capital spending / share | +0.7%/yr | +12.9%/yr |
| Book value / share | −1.0%/yr | −0.6%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2017–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$11.5Blow FY2022
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
FY2025 20-F · source on SEC EDGAR →
Is it a good business?
- Return on equity 20%StrongNet income $4.0B ÷ equity $20.1BIndustry peers: median 11%
What this means
What it earns on shareholders' capital, the underwriting result plus what the float earns invested. Durably above the ~10% cost of equity is what compounds book value.
- Not enough data
What this means
Net investment income wasn't found.
The float and book value
- Float (reserves) $174.5B8.7× equityLoss and claim reserves $174.5B, 8.7× equity
What this means
Money held against future claims and invested in the meantime. Buffett's insight was that good underwriting makes this float cost less than nothing, a pool of other people's money the owners earn on. Measured here from loss and claim reserves only; it excludes unearned premiums and funds held, so the true float is somewhat larger than shown. The larger it is against equity, the more that leverage works, for better or worse.
- the compounding scoreboardEquity $20.1B ÷ 2580M shares
What this means
A life insurer is judged the way Berkshire is, by the growth in book value per share over the years as the spread on the float and the mortality and fee margins compound into equity. This is the level today; the record below shows whether it has grown. Note that reported book value swings with interest rates, which mark the bond portfolio up and down through other comprehensive income.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Low contestabilityThe moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.
In its own filing A competitive risk, new this year
Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat, in language that was not in the prior year's filing.
“Technological advances, including those enabling increased capability for gathering large volumes of customer health data and developments in capabilities and tools for analysing and interpreting such data (such as AI, machine learning and predictive models as well as other digital technologies), may result in increase…”
AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Peers, Insurance — Life & Health
The same industry, side by side on the spread-and-book-value lens. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.
| Company | Revenue | ROE | Return on assets |
|---|---|---|---|
| RGAReinsurance Group of America | $23.7B | 9% | 1.0% |
| CRBGCorebridge Financial Inc. | $19.0B | 14% | 0.6% |
| LNCLincoln National | $18.2B | 11% | 0.4% |
| PUKPrudential Public Limited Company | $11.5B | 10% | 0.4% |
| VOYAVoya Financial Inc. | $8.2B | 11% | 0.4% |
| GNWGenworth Financial Inc | $7.3B | 2% | 0.3% |
| BHFBrighthouse Financial Inc. | $6.8B | 2% | -0.0% |
| GLGlobe Life Inc. | $6.0B | 20% | 3.3% |
| Group median | — | 11% | 0.4% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
price / tangible bookEnter the US price, in dollars: the NYSE/Nasdaq quote you hold. Per the filing's own cover, “American Depositary Shares, each representing 2 Ordinary”; Prudential Public Limited Company reports in USD, so every figure in this tool is stated per ADS so your dollar quote reconciles exactly. The record tables elsewhere on this page remain as filed.
An insurer is worth a multiple of its tangible book value, and the multiple it deserves is set by the return it earns on that book. Type today’s price; we show what you would be paying against what Prudential Public Limited Company’s record justifies.
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The assumptions
Tangible book / share, delivered−4%/yr’20→’25
The justified multiple is (return on tangible equity − growth) ÷ (cost of equity − growth). An insurer earning exactly its cost of equity is worth about one times tangible book; the premium above that prices each point of durable excess return. A higher cost of equity lowers the justified multiple for an insurer.
Enter a price above to run it.
Price / tangible book—
Justified by the return—
Normalized return on tangible equity13%
Price / book—
Earnings yield—
P/E (3-yr avg ’23–’25)—
Graham’s price gate—
Graham applied the same standards to financial enterprises (Intelligent Investor ch.14): the 15× multiple cap on averaged earnings, and P/E times price-to-book at most 22.5. The gate marks the bargain-hunter’s floor, not a verdict.
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
Tangible book $15.3B on 1274M shares, a 13% normalized return on it. The dials set the multiple such a return would justify; your price sets the multiple you are paying. It assumes the insurer keeps earning that return; an underwriting cycle, a reserve shortfall or a bad year on the float changes it, which is what the record and the 10-K are for.
Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Prudential Public Limited Company (PUK), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/PUK, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← PTLE its page in the Manual PXS →
Industry order: ← PRU the Insurance — Life & Health chapter RGA →