(Bloomberg) -- Sun Life Financial Inc. reported first-quarter profit that missed estimates as sales in Asia weren’t high enough to counter lower earnings from group insurance amid continued weakness in its US dental business.  

Underlying income slid 2.2% to C$875 million ($640 million), or C$1.50 a share, the Toronto-based insurer and asset manager said Thursday in a statement. That fell short of the C$1.65 average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Net income attributable to shareholders rose 1.5% from a year earlier to C$818 million, and the firm increased its quarterly dividend by 3 cents to 81 cents a share, according to the statement. 

The company’s shares dropped as much as 6% in Toronto trading Friday, their biggest intraday decline since March 2020. Its stock fell 5.9% to C$69.10 at 1:37 p.m.

Read More: Sun Life Drops Most in Four Years on Profit Miss: Street Wrap

“We were impacted by some negative items hitting us this quarter that were largely normal volatility, and some were unique to the quarter, but they all went in the same direction,” Chief Executive Officer Kevin Strain said in an interview Friday. 

Sun Life continued to face headwinds in the US stemming from Medicaid policy changes following the end of the Covid-19 public health emergency, which adversely affected the firm’s US dental business. That weighed on the group insurance division, which posted an 8% drop in underlying net income. 

The company expects the US dental business to return to stronger performance by 2025, Strain said. 

In the meantime, he said, “broad-based growth” in Asia remains a bright spot for the firm. Underlying net income in that business was up 26% at C$177 million. 

“We’ve been really building our reputation in that market,” Strain said. “We’ve got a solid product lineup and our brand is seen as quite strong.”

Still, Sun Life’s wealth-management business reported a profit decline on higher expenses, and the company posted lower year-over-year earnings from its individual-insurance unit following the sale of Sun Life UK, a deal that was completed in April 2023.  

The quarter was “mixed,” Bank of Montreal analyst Tom MacKinnon said in a note to clients, adding that the performance was “attributable to a list of items generally largely unique to the quarter and not necessarily indicative of any trend.”

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