Guardian Hold­ings Ltd (GHL) record­ed prof­it at­trib­ut­able to its share­hold­ers of $850.14 mil­lion in its fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2024, an in­crease of 31.77 per cent com­pared to the $645.43 mil­lion the group earned in 2023.

The group’s in­sur­ance earn­ings, rev­enue less ex­pens­es, to­talled $885.84 mil­lion in its 2024 fi­nan­cial year, which was an in­crease of 36 per cent com­pared to $651.37 mil­lion in 2023.

GHL’s net in­come from in­vest­ing ac­tiv­i­ties in 2024 amount­ed to $1.99 bil­lion, an im­prove­ment of 4.33 per cent over the $1.91 bil­lion in 2023.

In the re­port on GHL’s per­for­mance in 2024, the group’s chair­man Robert Almei­da said, “Your group’s strong earn­ing pow­er, sol­id track record and di­ver­si­fied busi­ness mod­el were in­stru­men­tal in achiev­ing ex­cep­tion­al fi­nan­cial re­sults for the 2024 fi­nan­cial year...

“In terms of nor­malised core busi­ness growth, the group achieved a year-over-year growth in prof­it be­fore tax­a­tion of $415 mil­lion or 61per cent af­ter ex­clud­ing the pri­or year’s non-re­cur­ring net fair val­ue gain of $174 mil­lion.”

Almei­da said that in 2024, the group gen­er­at­ed $377 mil­lion in new busi­ness con­trac­tu­al ser­vice mar­gin, a strong 19 per cent growth over 2023, un­der­scor­ing con­tin­ued mo­men­tum. “These re­sults were achieved against a back­drop of a chal­leng­ing ex­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment, no­tably marked with con­tin­ued eco­nom­ic, geopo­lit­i­cal and cli­mate un­cer­tain­ties.”

Almei­da said the group re­mains fo­cused on its jour­ney to per­fect and pro­tect its core which re­mains at the heart of its op­er­a­tions. A key fo­cus is to in­crease the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s gen­er­a­tion of free cash flow per share, which is es­sen­tial to en­abling re­silience and sus­tain­able growth, he said.

The GHL chair­man high­light­ed that the board ap­proved the di­vest­ment of 100 per cent of the shares of Thoma Ex­ploitatie BV. The trans­ac­tion was con­clud­ed in Jan­u­ary 2025.

GHL pro­pos­es to pay a fi­nal div­i­dend of $0.57, which, in ad­di­tion to the in­ter­im div­i­dend of $0.23 per share, will bring to­tal div­i­dends for the 2024 fi­nan­cial year to $0.80 per share, an in­crease from $0.75 per share for the 2023 fi­nan­cial year.

“This div­i­dend will be paid to share­hold­ers on May 7, 2025. The div­i­dend of 80 cents per share rep­re­sents a pay­out ra­tio of 22% on the earn­ings per share of $3.66 and we are fo­cused on in­creas­ing both earn­ings per share and the pay­out ra­tio,” said Almei­da.