Shareholders of TPK Holding Co Ltd (宸鴻), which counts Apple Inc as its No. 1 touch-panel client, yesterday approved the company’s plan to raise its payout ratio from 2 percent to 10 percent of last year’s net profit.
“Based on the company’s earnings last year, the move will drive up the company’s cash dividend to at least NT$5 per share,” TPK chairman Michael Chiang (江朝瑞) told reporters after the company’s shareholders’ meeting.
The company’s net income grew nearly 1.4-fold last year from a year ago to NT$11.34 billion (US$384.15 million), or NT$46.12 a share, its financial statement showed. It posted the second-highest earnings per share among all of the listed companies on the local bourse.
Revenue also jumped to NT$143.37 billion, from NT$59.6 billion in 2010, data showed.
TPK’s plan was sparked by shareholders’ complaints last year, when the company posted a net profit of NT$4.74 billion, or NT$23.83 per share, in 2010, but only distributed a stock dividend of NT$0.5 per share and zero in cash dividend.
The company also reported that consolidated revenue last month reached NT$12.94 billion, up 61.49 percent from a year earlier, but down 9.05 percent from a month earlier.
Cumulative sales in the first two months of the year totaled NT$27.07 billion, up 79.84 percent from a year earlier, the company said in a statement.
However, chief financial officer Freddie Liu (劉詩亮) told an investors’ conference last month that TPK’s revenue would shrink this quarter by 10 to 13 percent compared with revenues of NT$45.48 billion in the fourth quarter amid some of its customers adjusting their product lines.
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