Foreign sales giving MetLife a boost

MetLife Inc., the largest U.S. life insurer by assets, is reaping the benefits from its growing international business. Though it’s a smaller piece of MetLife’s pie, profits outside the United States soared 63% in the latest quarter, as customers from Mexico to Japan embraced the brand that Snoopy made lovable., which is helping offset any domestic sluggishness. The insurer’s ability to shrug off difficult domestic conditions provides powerful reasons why investors looking for solid -- if unspectacular -- gains should stock up on MetLife. Last year, 9.6% of the insurer’s revenues came from overseas. That figure is up from 8.1% in 2005 and just 6.9% in 2004. The company's biggest business -- generating 41% of its revenues -- is providing insurance and retirement plans for corporations and their employees. Individual life and disability policies and retirement products account for 30%, and auto and home insurance 6%. Investors can also look forward to MetLife investing its mountains of policy premiums in bonds with higher yields. "MetLife continues to be one of the best-performing life insurance stocks, without being associated with a particular product story or an industry theme," Goldman Sachs analyst Joan Zief wrote in an update last week, raising her 2007 earnings forecast by 15 cents a share. Even now, after surging 31% in the past 12 months, MetLife shares remain a relative bargain. The stock is trading at 1.5 times book value, versus two times for the industry. MetLife's trailing 12-month price/earnings multiple -- at 8.6 -- also compares favorably with Prudential Financial Inc.'s 15.5. MetLife has also leaped ahead of AXA Financial and Prudential to become the second-largest provider of annuities, after Hartford Financial Services Group. Sales are expected to soar as baby boomers retire over the next 20 years.