Restaurant chain operator Wowprime Corp (王品) yesterday said that its board of directors has approved a proposal to distribute a cash dividend of NT$4.499 (US$0.15) per share based on last year’s earnings per share of NT$4.52.
The dividends include NT$3.855 from earnings and NT$0.644 from capital surplus and reserves, the company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The proposed dividend, if approved by shareholders on June 6, is lower than the NT$5.5 per share distributed a year earlier, but still offers a payout ratio of nearly 100 percent.
Based on yesterday’s closing price of NT$81.4, the proposed dividend would translate into a dividend yield of 5.53 percent, higher than the average interest rates offered by the nation’s five major banks of between 1.04 percent and 1.07 percent for one-year to three-year fixed savings.
Wowprime’s net profit last year fell 25 percent from a year earlier to NT$345 million, although sales increased 3 percent to NT$16.28 billion, ending three consecutive years of decline, company data showed.
The company’s Taiwan operations saw sales rise 4.7 percent year-on-year to NT$9.38 billion last year, while its Chinese operations edged up 0.8 percent year-on-year to NT$6.9 billion.
In the first two months of this year, cumulative sales grew 3.26 percent to NT$2.87 billion, Wowprime said.
The company last month announced that its president, Annie Yang (楊秀慧), who is also the CEO of its Taiwanese operations, is to retire on March 31 after 22 years at the company.
Yang’s positions are to be taken over by director Lobo Lee (李森斌), who joined the company in 1993 and has served as chief executive of China operations since 2015.
He is to assume his new posts on April 1.
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