The AMP Ltd (ASX: AMP) share price continues to go from bad to worse. AMP shares are down a nasty 4% today to $1.08 a share. This puts the embattled wealth manager just a hair above the all-time low of $1.05 a share it reached last week. It also gives up the gains that AMP saw last Friday when the company rose by close to 4%.
This move actually makes AMP one of the worst-performing S&P/ASX 200 Index (INDEXASX: XJO) shares on the market today. Even the ASX 200 is having a day in the green, currently up 0.2% to 7,047 points today.
So what's going on with AMP?
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A disastrous three years
Things have been going downhill for AMP for just over three years now. Ever since the Banking Royal Commission held in 2018, AMP shares have been under pressure. As you might remember, the Royal Commission uncovered systemic misconduct by AMP, including the infamous fees-for-no-service scandal. The company's plans to right the ship have undergone setback after setback. This resulted in AMP's post-Royal Commission CEO Francesco de Ferrari resigning from AMP earlier this year.
AMP did manage to orchestrate the sale of its AMP Life division last year. It also successfully offloaded its AMP Capital arm last month. But it wasn't enough to stop a shareholder revolt at its annual general meeting a few days later, narrowly avoiding a second strike on its remuneration report.
Which brings us to today. Right now, AMP shares are at their lowest levels ever. And that's saying something for a company that has been listed for more than two decades. The shares are now around 80% below where they were in February 2018, and 92% below where they were at AMP's ASX listing back in 1999.
So why is the AMP share price falling again today?
It's not exactly clear why the AMP share price is once again coming under pressure. There are no major news or announcements out of the company that might result in investors hitting the sell button.
AMP has even commenced a share buyback program as of 10 May. This should, in theory, be supporting higher AMP share prices, since share buybacks take shares off the market. And this has been happening with gusto. Just today AMP released a market announcement detailing how it purchased $4.5 million worth of shares last week.
So perhaps today's share price moves are the result of a large institutional investor exiting an AMP position. Or perhaps a broker issuing a sell recommendation. Though it's not clear yet, what we do know is that today's move was probably not what investors were hoping for after Friday's share price bump. At the current share price, AMP Limited has a market capitalisation of $3.7 billion.
