Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠), the nation’s largest plastics maker, said yesterday its board had approved a proposal to distribute NT$1.1 in dividends per common share based on last year’s earnings, down 83.6 percent from an all-cash dividend of NT$6.7 it paid in the previous year.
In a stock exchange filing yesterday, Nan Ya said the dividend payout would include NT$0.8 in cash and 3 percent in stock.
The NT$1.1 dividend, if approved by shareholders on June 11, compares with the NT$1.5 dividend Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) — another Formosa Plastics Group company — announced on March 13 and marked the lowest payout to date from one of the group’s subsidiaries.
With shares closing at NT$41.3 yesterday, Nan Ya’s proposed cash dividend of NT$0.8 translated into a dividend yield of 1.9 percent. That would be slightly higher than the 1.8 percent in dividend yield at Formosa Petrochemical, based on its share price of NT$67.7 yesterday.
Nan Ya’s worse-than-expected dividend payout came as the firm was negatively affected by weak petrochemicals prices, rising inventory write-downs and continued losses at other Formosa Group affiliates, resulting in an 84.1 percent decline in net earnings last year from the previous year, another stock exchange filing from the company said yesterday.
Nan Ya reported NT$9.39 billion (US$278 million) in after-tax net profit last year, or NT$1.23 earnings per share, the filing said. In 2007, the company made a record profit of NT$59.05 billion or NT$7.75 in earnings per share, the company’s previous financial reports said.
Operating profit dropped to NT$11.96 billion, a 67.4 percent decline from NT$36.74 billion a year earlier, while revenue fell to NT$208.72 billion last year, down 8.7 percent from NT$228.7 billion recorded in the previous year, the company said.
After earning NT$24.82 billion in profit in the first nine months of last year, Nan Ya incurred a loss of NT$15.43 billion in the final three months.
In comparison, the firm reported a net profit of NT$15.36 billion for the same period of 2007 and a net profit of NT$5.98 billion in the third quarter of last year.
In another exchange filing, Nan Ya said the board also approved a plan to raise NT$2.28 billion by issuing 228.71 million new shares, as the company wants to use the proceeds for capacity expansion.
The board also agreed to issue a NT$10 billion in seven-year corporate bonds to repay debt and improve its financial structure, a separate filing said.
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