United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 3 contract chipmaker, yesterday said that its board of directors has approved a proposal to distribute a cash dividend of NT$0.58 per share.
That was lower than the NT$0.7 per share distributed last year, but UMC maintained a 100 percent payout ratio based on its earnings per share of NT$0.58, or NT$7.07 billion (US$229.16 million), for last year.
This year’s cash dividend distribution implied a 4.96 percent dividend yield based on the stock’s closing price of NT$11.7 yesterday.
“The company’s policy is to sustain a high payout ratio,” UMC chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) said by telephone.
The chipmaker does not plan to follow in the footsteps of bigger rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which has decided to pay cash dividends on a quarterly basis.
TSMC is the first local listed company to divide payment over the year.
UMC plans to continue to pay the cash dividend once per year, Liu said, adding that the board members did not discuss any new arrangements.
Locally listed companies usually pay a cash dividend once per year in August or later.
However, they have now been given greater flexibility to also arrange payments either quarterly or twice per year, following a revision to regulations that was passed in July last year.
Separately yesterday, solar wafer maker Green Energy Technology Inc (綠能科技) said that a majority of its creditors have agreed to a proposed debt restructuring scheme.
Green Energy’s seven creditors, led by King’s Town Bank (京城銀行), have reached a preliminary agreement to give a one-year grace period for the company’s short-term loans that ends on Dec. 31, the firm said in a statement.
The solar wafer maker said that it would be allowed to pay interest at an annual rate of 0.94 percent on mid-to-long-term loans, while also deferring the principal payment in accordance with improvement in the company’s financial status.
As of the end of last year, Green Energy had NT$2.27 billion in short-term debt on its books and NT$1.85 billion in long-term debt.
Green Energy yesterday posted NT$245 million in revenue for last month, down 7.6 percent from NT$266 million in January and a decline of 69.5 percent from NT$857.53 million in same period last year.
Prices for high-end wafers are to stabilize this month, the company said.
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