Sep. 7 at 11:03 PM
Morgan Stanley upgraded Admiral Group to Overweight from Equal-weight, raising its price target to 4,450p from 3,575p, implying about 16% upside from its previous close of 3,816p. The bank sees accelerating UK motor-insurance pricing as a strong catalyst for margin recovery.
UK motor-insurance CPI rose 8% year over year in July, accelerating for five consecutive months. With about 90% of Admiral’s profits coming from UK motor insurance, the company is well positioned to benefit. In H1 2026, Admiral raised rates by a high-single-digit percentage, above its 5%-7% full-year claims-inflation estimate.
Morgan Stanley said Admiral is now rebuilding margins rather than simply maintaining them and raised its 2027-28 group pretax profit estimates by about 6.5%. Concerns over autonomous-vehicle disruption are also viewed as manageable in the near term due to regulatory and deployment delays.
$MS