The shareholders of Julius Berger Plc has approved N2.00 dividend at the company’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Thursday in Abuja.
The chairman of Julius Berger, Mr. Mutiu Sunmonu said that the company has seen reasons to demonstrate its commitment to the shareholders in the light of the monumental successes recorded and so declared a dividend of N20.00 per N0.50 share.
According to him, “The company remains uniquely positioned as Nigerian’s most reliable construction company, capable of unfailingly delivering higher quality and innovative solutions for even the most challenging of projects.
“The company will persist in implementing it’s long,- term diversification strategy regarding the client mix and business areas. Opportunities in new segments will vigorously be explored, with emphasis on prospects borne out of the Group core competencies and expertise”.
The chairman also affirmed that Julius Berger would continued to stand apart as it’s quality standard has been meticulously maintained, which informed the successful recertification of the company’s Quality management System to meet the updated standard specifications of the International Organization for Standardization’s ISO 9001:2015.
He, however, pointed out some macroeconomic policies challenges that impacted negatively on the company operations and construction sector, ranges from unsubstantiated lateness in yearly budget passage of federal budget, ineffective implementation, inconsistent and unpredictable releases of schedules for capital expenditure, all which negatively impacted on the company’s Cash flow and profit.
Other similar policies the chairman outlined includes undue losses from induced utilization of bank’s overdrafts to leverage unavoidable gaps all which substantially mutilated the company profits.
Sunmonu however remained optimism that the current company’s forecasts and possible external market influences inculcated in it’s 2019 performance planning will attract upward adjustment to leverage anticipated incremental growth rate.
The leading International Construction Company in Nigeria had declared N10.2 billion profit before tax and N7 billion net profit during its 2018 operations in Nigeria compare to N4.7 billion in 2017.
According to the chairman, the Group profit before tax (PBT) of N10.2 billion in 2018 recorded an impressive 172.7 per cent increase over the N3.7 billion in 2017 financial year, just as the construction company alone also posted N6.6 billion at 472.4 per cent increase above N1.2 billion in 2017.
While the Group net profit of N7 billion profit in 2018 far exceeded N4.8 billion in 2017 by 46.5 per cent, the giant construction company alone posted impressive net profit of N4.8 billion above that of N400 million at over a thousand percent increase in this financial year.
The Financial Statement however shown the Group’s tax liability of N4.2 billion and N1.2 billion for the 2018 and 2017 financial year respectively, while the construction giant alone incurred a tax obligations of N2.1billion and N1.2 billion for 2018 and 2017 financial year.
The highlights of the presentations of the 2018 Annual Financial Statement were the dividend declaration of N2.00 per N0.50 share, the appointment of Auditors and fixing their renumeration, re- appointment of 13 directors on board of the company and re- election of three members on statutory audit committee, which includes, Engr. Heinz Stockhausen, Dr. Ernest Nnaemeka Azudialu Obiejesi and Mt. George Marks respectively.
Source: Nigerian NewsDirect
