Voya Financial Trades Near 52-Week High: Time to Hold the Stock?

Shares of Voya Financial, Inc. VOYA closed at $77.34 on Wednesday, near its 52-week high of $78.35. This proximity underscores investor confidence and indicates further price appreciation.

The stock is trading above the 50-day and 200-day simple moving averages (SMAs) of $72.67 and $70.35, respectively, indicating solid upward momentum. SMA is a widely used technical analysis tool to predict future price trends by analyzing historical price data.

With a market capitalization of $7.45 billion, the average volume of shares traded in the last three months was 0.7 million.

VOYA Shares are Affordable

Voya Financial shares are trading at a price-to-book value of 1.07X, lower than the Zacks Life Insurance industry average of 2.04X, the Finance sector’s 4.4X and the Zacks S&P 500 composite’s 8.62X. Its pricing, at a discount to the industry average, gives a better entry point to investors. The stock has a Value Score of A. This style score helps find the most attractive value stocks.

VOYA’s Price Performance

Shares of Voya Financial have gained 6.1% in the last six-month period compared with the industry’s growth of 13.5%.

Voya Financial has outperformed its peers, including Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated RGA, Sun Life Financial Inc. SLF and Primerica, Inc. PRI. Shares of RGA and SLF have gained 3% and 1.9%, respectively, while PRI has lost 3.6% in the last six-month period.

VOYA’s Growth Projection Encourages

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Voya Financial’s 2026 earnings per share and revenues indicates an increase of 11.5% and 2.8%, respectively, from the corresponding 2025 estimates.

Average Target Price for VOYA Suggests Upside

Based on short-term price targets offered by 11 analysts, the Zacks average price target is $85.00 per share. The average suggests a potential 9.13% upside from the last closing price.

Factors Acting in Favor of VOYA

VOYA’s earnings are driven by its solid segmental performances across Retirement, Investment Management and Employee Benefits segments. These businesses reflect higher-growth, capital-light and higher-return units, boasting the company’s solid presence in the market.

The Retirement segment is steadily witnessing significant growth on the back of higher revenues reflecting onboarded OneAmerica assets, favorable market impacts, higher alternative investment income and active portfolio management, positive defined contribution flows, as well as disciplined management of spend. Given continued commercial momentum, margins remain above the long-term targets. This, in turn, should drive higher fee income, strong spread income and prudent management of spend. 

The Investment Management segment should benefit from higher investment capital returns, primarily driven by overall market performance, higher fee-based revenues benefiting from strong commercial momentum and favorable market impacts and disciplined management of spend.

VOYA is constantly taking strategic steps to ramp up growth in its Investment Management segment. Voya Financial and Allianz Global Investors inked a long-term strategic partnership that added scale and diversification to Voya Investment Management.

The Employee Benefits segment of the insurer is likely to benefit from unfavorable Stop Loss claim development in the prior period, which did not repeat, and a smaller block of business in the current period, lower premium-driven expenses and disciplined management of spend, and higher alternative investment income and active portfolio management.

The company’s capital levels remain strong. For the third quarter of 2025, the company generated more than $0.2 billion of excess capital, which was approximately 90% of after-tax adjusted operating earnings. The third quarter of 2025 marked another quarter of consistent cash flow generation, where VOYA generated more than $200 million of excess capital. VOYA remains well-positioned to exceed the $700 million goal. Voya Financial ended the third quarter with a healthy balance sheet and approximately $350 million of excess capital. As of Sept. 30, 2025, the estimated combined RBC ratio was 407%.

VOYA’s Capital Deployment

Operational excellence has been helping the company deploy capital to enhance shareholders’ value. The balance sheet is well-positioned and was strengthened by the approximately $200 million of excess capital it generated in the quarter. VOYA expects to return between $100 million and $150 million in quarterly dividends and share repurchases throughout 2026, subject to market conditions. As of Sept. 30, 2025, the company had approximately $0.35 billion of excess capital and remaining share repurchase authorization of $661 million.

Risks

However, the life insurer has been experiencing increased expenses due to higher policyholder benefits, interest credited to contract owner account balances, operating costs and interest expenses. If the company does not strive to generate revenue growth greater than the magnitude of the increase in expenses, the margin will continue to erode.

Conclusion

Voya Financial is well-positioned for growth on improved investment income, higher average equity markets and positive net flows, favorable retention, as well as strategic partnerships. It should continue to benefit from financial flexibility and effective capital deployment.
Voya Financial should continue to benefit from impressive dividend history, solid growth projections, optimistic analyst sentiment, and attractive valuations. It is, therefore, wise to hold on to this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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