Aflac Bounces Back as Earnings Growth Returns

Aflac (NYSE: AFL) fills a niche in the U.S. insurance market, offering benefits for specialized situations that most regular group plans don't cover. Aflac also plays a key role in the Japanese insurance market, where the company gets the bulk of its revenue, and investors have to remember the risks and rewards that having extensive international operations can involve.

Coming into Thursday's second-quarter financial report, Aflac investors had modest expectations, believing that they could easily see the company's earnings fall for yet another quarter. The insurer defied those fears, however, producing extremely strong earnings growth despite flat revenue performance, and reassuring investors about its future outlook. Let's look more closely at Aflac and what its latest results say about how the company is doing.

Image source: Aflac.

Source: Fool.com