By Tom Sims and Alexander Hübner
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – The value of the real estate holdings of Allianz, one of Europe’s biggest investors, shrank in 2024 for a second consecutive year, figures on Friday showed, underscoring troubles in the property sector.
The German insurer’s property portfolio dropped 7.7% last year to 53.9 billion euros, coming on top of a 6.2% decline the previous year. It contrasts with increases in the company’s debt and equity holdings in 2024.
The commercial real estate market in Germany, France and the United States has been under pressure for several years due to high office vacancies and falling property prices following interest rate hikes and a trend towards home-working since the pandemic.
Investors have been closely watching to what extent financial firms, funds and other property owners are revising the values of their holdings or selling as the market declines.
The drop in Allianz’s portfolio was mainly due to lower valuations for holdings rather than outright sales, a spokesperson said. In 2023, Allianz said it was a mixture of both.
Data and surveys have shown that investors are expecting only a modest revival in commercial real estate in 2025.
“The recovery on the property markets is only making slow progress,” Kay Wolf, the CEO of Deutsche Pfandbriefbank, one of Germany’s top property financiers, said this week.
The details on Allianz’s investments came in its latest earnings report, which showed how the company was performing more broadly.
It reported a better-than-expected 15% rise in fourth-quarter net profit, helped in part by results at its dominant property and casualty division.
Allianz, among Europe’s largest financial services groups and operator of the giant PIMCO brand, also cited an increase in business volume at its health and life insurance business, its other big segment.
The company reported net profit attributable to shareholders of 2.472 billion euros in the three months through December, up from 2.151 billion euros a year earlier. The figure surpassed a 2.351 billion euro consensus forecast.
For 2025, the company expects operating profit of between 15 billion euros and 17 billion euros, compared with 16.0 billion euros in 2024.
(Reporting by Tom Sims and Alexander Huebner; Editing by Rachel More, Muralikumar Anantharaman and David Evans)
