Hanwha Investment & Securities lowered its target price for Samsung Life Insurance to 336,000 won from 346,000 won, trimming the valuation by 2.9% after the insurer's second-quarter performance missed expectations and its earnings outlook weakened. Hanwha analyst Kim Do-ha said the change reflected a 3.2 trillion won drop in the value of Samsung Life's insurance business, even as the valuation still included 18.858 trillion won for the insurance business and 48.434 trillion won for its Samsung Electronics stake. The broker also cut net profit attributable to controlling shareholders forecasts to 2.723 trillion won for this year from 2.942 trillion won and to 2.473 trillion won next year from 2.638 trillion won, with adjusted EPS projections reduced by 7.4% and 6.3%, respectively. Samsung Life reported consolidated second-quarter net profit attributable to controlling shareholders of 689.9 billion won, down 9.1% from a year earlier, missing Hanwha's estimate by 15.7% and market consensus by 9.0%. On a separate basis, operating profit fell 73.5% to 184.3 billion won, more than 60% below market expectations. Insurance earnings dropped 50% to 276.6 billion won, while investment earnings swung to a 92.3 billion won loss. Hanwha said a wider-than-expected claims gap and higher loss ratios in both survival and death coverage hurt the outlook, while investment results were hit by an 850 billion won hedging loss on variable-linked products and losses on separate-account investments. Kim said the investment weakness was largely one-off, but the sustained rise in incurred claims led the broker to lower future earnings mainly through insurance earnings. Despite the higher value of Samsung Life's Samsung Electronics holdings, Hanwha said rerating potential for the shares looked limited because the insurer has not presented a specific shareholder-return policy for the large special gains it could receive, so that uncertainty was reflected through the NAV (net asset value) discount rate rather than in earnings estimates.