It's been a fairly pleasant start to the trading week for the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO). The ASX 200 gained a robust 1.15% today and is comfortably back over 6,860 points. But it was even better for the AMP Ltd (ASX: AMP) share price.
AMP shares were on fire today. The wealth manager and financial services provider has closed at $1.26, up a pleasing 4.56% to $1.26 a share. That also happens to be a new 52-week high for the company.
That 4.56% gain was even better than most other ASX financials shares, such as the ASX banks.
But $1.26 is, of course, nowhere near AMP's all-time high. Although the company has recently seen some welcome love from shareholders of late, with a year-to-date performance of 25.7%, AMP remains down a painful 75.1% over the past five years. And the company remains a very long way from the all-time highs of over $14 a share that we saw way back in the early 2000s.
The company was famously shredded following the 2018 Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry. The royal commission saved some of its worst criticism for AMP and the company experienced a dramatic loss of investor support in its aftermath. Not to mention the loss of almost all of its previous management team.
Image source: Getty Images
Where to next for AMP shares?
So now that AMP has hit a new high today, where to next for the company? Could there be more 52-week highs to come?
One ASX expert reckons there might be. My Fool colleague Bernd recently spoke with Bennelong Kardinia Absolute Return Fund portfolio manager Kristiaan Rehder. Rehder named AMP as a "company of interest to us", and described it thus:
It's been out of favour for some time … [but] our analysis shows that there's considerable excess capital. And we think it can surprise the market in regards to the extent of its capital returns in the near term.
So that sounds like pretty good news for shareholders. But we'll just have to wait and see what the next chapter of AMP turns out to be.
In the meantime, the current AMP share price gives this ASX 200 share a market capitalisation of $3.8 billion.
