Company wants revision of delisting rule
JAKARTA (JP): PT Pfizer Indonesia, a pharmaceutical company which has been delisted from the Jakarta Stock Exchange (JSX), yesterday urged the authorities to revise the ruling on the delisting of shares from a capital market.
The company's chief commissioner, Mohammad Sadli, told reporters after an annual shareholder meeting of the company here yesterday that the firm had always met the criteria for profits, equity capital, auditing and regularly reporting.
Pfizer, together with PT Prodenta Indonesia, a producer of consumer goods, and PT Unitex, a textile company, was delisted from JSX on April 26, because the number of its shareholders was less than the minimum of 100.
According to the JSX ruling, a company can be delisted from the market if the price of its shares has fallen to below their nominal value of Rp 1,000, it suffers net losses for three consecutive years, it does not pay dividends for three consecutive years, its shares are not traded for six months or the number of its shareholders is less than 100.
"Pfizer shares were quoted at more than Rp 10,000 on the Surabaya Stock Exchange (JSX) today, far above their nominal value," said Sadli, who is a former minister of mines.
He said Pfizer actually has 206 shareholders, of whom 123 hold less than 500 shares each and 83 hold 500 or more.
Because the JSX defines one lot of trading as 500 shares, the 123 shareholders are not counted as shareholders, he added. "That's why only 83 are recognized as shareholders," he said.
Victim
"What are we supposed to do? We're the victim of our own success," said Pfizer's president, Mac Dara Lynch.
He said shareholders do not want to sell their shares because they want to keep them and reap dividends.
Two pensioners who held 100 and 500 shares respectively, said that they wanted the government to protect minor shareholders like them.
"Buying 400 more shares would cost me more than Rp 4 million. It would be impossible for me," said one of them.
Pfizer, established in 1969, is a producer of several name brand products such as Terramycin capsules, Visine eye ointments, Combantrin medicine for hookworms and Norvask calcium channel blocker for hypertension.
One securities analyst told The Jakarta Post yesterday that the Capital Market Supervisory Agency (Bapepam) should issue a special ruling to protect small shareholders.
The small company, whose asset in 1993 were Rp 23 billion, is highly profitable, Lynch said.
Lynch said Pfizer's after-tax profits increased by 40 percent from Rp 3.6 billion in 1992 to Rp 5.1 billion in 1993.
The company, which paid an interim dividend of Rp 340 per share to its shareholders a few months ago, will pay a final dividend of Rp 110 per share in July.
The final dividends will bring Pfizer's total 1993 dividends to Rp 450 per share, 12.5 percent higher than the 1992 dividends of Rp 400, he said.
Pfizer issued 600,000 shares or twenty percent of its total common stocks through a public offering on the JSX in 1984. Its shares were listed in Surabaya in 1989. (09)