Principal Financial price target raised to $89 from $88 at Piper Sandler

Piper Sandler analyst John Barnidge raised the firm’s price target on Principal Financial (PFG) to $89 from $88 and keeps an Overweight rating on the shares. The firm is reducing its EPS estimates in the space driven by continued fee and spread headwinds. This was confirmed by a rather challenging pre-announcement of variable investment income from MetLife (MET) in late June suggesting this swing factor for a large chunk of lifecoland got sequentially worse, which also – in Piper’s opinion – pushes out the normalization factor towards 2026.