May & Baker Shareholders Get N345m Dividend as Firm Posts Improved Results

Shareholders of Pharmaceutical manufacturing company, May & Baker Nigeria Plc will share N345.05 million as dividend for year ended December 31, 2018, following improvement the company reported in its financial results for the year. The dividend will translate to 20 kobo per share.

The company’s results shows a 6.08 per cent growth in turnover from N8.06 billion in 2017 to N8.55 billion in 2018. This was achieved despite the fact that in 2018, the company lost three key products which contributed over N3 billion in turnover for the 2017 business year.

Profit before tax stood at N817.91 million while profit after tax from continuing operations was N342.7 million. With N242.5 million extra ordinary income from discontinued operations, the company made a comprehensive income of N585.20 million in 2018 compared to N336.62 million in 2017. At the same time, finance costs reduced by 33.67 per cent from N512.13 million in 2017 to N339.72 million in 2018. The company ended the year with profit after tax of N548.2 million as against N336 million in 2017.

Managing Director, May & Baker Nigeria Plc, Mr. Nnamdi Okafor said the continuing growth in sales and the steady profitability of the company to its recent strategic initiatives which has made it resilient to challenges in the operating environment.

“Our turnover has been growing despite the recent streamlining of our business into core healthcare business. We have also maintained decent profit when compared to what obtains in our industry,” he said.

He said the impact of the recent recapitalization by the company will become visible in the 2019 business year as the net proceeds of the rights issue would be invested in some key projects.

Meanwhile, the board of directors of May & Baker has appointed leading entrepreneur and philanthropist, Chief Samuel Onyishi as a non-executive director of the healthcare company.