Allstate posts lower net, misses estimates

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Allstate Corp (ALL.N) on Wednesday reported third-quarter net that missed analysts' estimates, hurt by higher catastrophe losses from hail and wind storms.

Allstate, the largest publicly traded home insurer in the United States, said net earnings were $978 million, or $1.70 a share, down 15.5 percent from $1.16 billion, or $1.83 a share, in the year-earlier quarter.

The news sent the insurer's shares down 2.6 percent to $56.07 in after-hours trading after closing at $57.58. Since the start of the year, Allstate stock has fallen about 11 percent compared to the Standard & Poor's insurance index .GSPINSC, which is almost flat.

Allstate, one of the first major insurers to report third-quarter earnings, said operating net, which analysts use to measure performance, was $893 million, or $1.54 a share.

That fell short of analysts' average expectation of $1.69 a share, according to Reuters Estimates.

It was also down from the year-ago quarter, when the Northbrook, Illinois-based company, the second-largest writer of auto policies in the United States, earned $1.19 billion, or $1.88 a share, in operating net.

Catastrophe losses for the quarter totaled $343 million in the latest three months, up from $169 million in the year-ago quarter. While Allstate was not hit with any major hurricanes, "we had a fair amount of hailstorms and windstorms this year," Allstate Chief Executive Thomas Wilson said in an interview on

CNBC.

(Reporting by Ed Leefeldt)