American Equity Investment Life climbs after Keefe Bruyette upgrades rating to Outperform

• American Equity Investment Life (AEL +4.4%) is trading higher after Keefe Bruyette analyst Ryan Krueger upgraded the stock to "Outperform" from "Market Perform."
• The price target on the stock has been kept unchanged at $42.
• Krueger expects meaningful benefits" from the company's 2021 transition to emerge in 2022 and beyond, including significant capital deployment, increasing fee-based earnings from reinsurance usage, improving investment spreads, and an ongoing recovery in annuity sales.
• Shares of AEL have climbed 27.97% over the past 12-month period as seen in the graph below:

• The life insurance firm declared a $0.34/share quarterly dividend and authorized $500M in additional repurchase recently.
• Earlier in the month, American Equity Investment Life reported its Q3 results, with non-GAAP EPS beating estimates, but revenue of $542.56M falling short of expectations.