Emerald Oil declares 5% interim cash dividend

Emerald Oil Industries — producer of the Spondon branded rice bran oil — has declared a 5% interim cash dividend for the July to March period of the 2022-23 fiscal year. 

An interim dividend is declared and paid before a company determines its earnings for the whole year. 

The company, in its disclosure on the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) website on Thursday, said its previous sponsor-directors who held 30.54% shares will not be entitled to this interim dividend. The record date is 26 June this year. 

According to its financials for the first nine months of FY23, the company made a Tk5.2 crore profit during the period, which was a loss of Tk2.14 crore in the same period of FY22. 

Emerald Oil Industries, which got listed on the stock market in 2014, was non-operational till January last year because of a loan scam by its previous owner who fled the country. 

The factory was closed till January 2022. Also, the company has been in losses for years. As a result, it failed to pay any dividend to its shareholders for five straight years since the fiscal 2016-17. 

Then for FY22, it declared a 2% cash dividend as it made a profit of Tk1.21 crore in that fiscal. 

At present, the oil producer is running its factory for only seven to eight hours a day owing to a gas crisis. 

This is why it has set up a new husk boiler that will run for 24 hours without any interruption so that it can continue its daily oil production. 

But sources said the husk boiler is not working properly either, and the factory is still not running for 24 hours. 

The company also decided to enhance its refining capacity from existing 30 tonnes to 70 tonnes a day. 

Minori Bangladesh, a subsidiary of the Japanese farming company Minori Co Ltd, took over Emerald Oil Industries in 2021, and resumed its production in January last year. The new owner has invested around Tk31 crore.

Although the company returned to production, the new owner did not get the previous owner's shares in favour of Minori Bangladesh as there was complexity over loans from two banks.

For this reason, the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) has allowed the company to issue fresh shares against its share money deposit in favour of the new owner.

The share price of the company skyrocketed in recent times. In the last three months, its share price rose by over 300% to close at Tk136.1 each on Thursday at the DSE.