D&L pins hopes for strong growth on monetary easing
D&L Industries, a giant in speciality food inputs and plastics business segments, is hoping for better growth in the second quarter of the year.
D&L president and CEO Alvin Lao told reporters during the company’s annual meeting on Tuesday that strong economic activity coupled with prospects of further monetary easing boded well for consumer-oriented businesses such as D&L.
D&L earlier announced that profit in the first quarter of the year hit P748 million, up 1 percent. The company cited negative consumer sentiment from the higher inflation period in 2018 “spill over” into the early part of 2019 alongside delays in the passage of the national budget.
Lao on Tuesday also sought to temper expectations on any big boost from election-related spending ahead of the 2019 midterm polls, also due to the budget impasse.
“We didn’t see any impact because there was no budget,” Lao said.
During the meeting, D&L declared a regular cash dividend of P0.223 per share plus a special cash dividend of P0.063 per share to shareholders of record as of June 26 this year. Ex-date is on June 21 and payment will be made on July 22.
In total, shareholders will receive P0.286 dividends per share, or a dividend yield of 2.8 percent based on June 7’s closing price of P10.20 per share.
This year’s dividend, amounting to P2.04 billion or an increase of 10 percent from last year’s P1.86 billion— equivalent to 64 percent of last year’s recurring income.
