The S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) has just concluded what was quite a happy month. Over April, the ASX 200 managed to add a reasonably healthy 1.8%, with the Index rising from 7,177.8 points to 7,309.2 points. But let's talk about the AMP Ltd (ASX: AMP) share price.
ASX 200 financial stalwart AMP had a cracking month over April, well outshining the broader market. The AMP share price began the month at $1.05. But by the end of last week, AMP shares had closed at $1.14 each. That's a gain for April of 8.57%, not to mention a gain more than four-fold over the broader market.
So how did the AMP share price, which has a bit of a reputation as an ASX 200 laggard, pull off this impressive performance?
Well, there's been a few developments with AMP shares over the past month that could have combined to produce this result.
How did the AMP share price rocket 8% in April?
The first is the ongoing share buybacks AMP has been conducting. Back in its February earnings release, AMP committed to keeping its ongoing share buyback program active, which it continued to do over April.
Just this morning, the company confirmed it had removed another 2.22 million shares from the market last week, bringing the buyback program's total to 37.6 million shares and counting. Share buybacks are generally supportive of a company's share price. So this probably contributed to AMP's stellar month.
Then, on 19 April, AMP released its latest quarterly cash flow update. As we covered at the time, investors seemed impressed with AMP's performance over the three months to 31 March 2023.
The company revealed that its cash outflows came in at $600 million for the quarter. That was a marked improvement over the $900 million of outflows over the prior corresponding period in 2022.
AMP also announced that it has increased its loan books by $200 million over the quarter, while assets under management grew by $2 billion to a total of $126.2 billion.
This release saw the AMP share price spike at the time, and could also be a factor behind its April performance.
Finally, last month saw AMP pay out its first dividend in over two years. Investors bagged a partially-franked payment of 2.5 cents per share back on 3 April. This dividend gives the AMP share price a trailing yield of 2.16% on current pricing (or 4.31% if annualised).
So it's likely that it was a combination of these events over April which led investors to give the AMP share price such a good showing last month. Let's now see how this ASX 200 share fares in May.
