Mayora to split stocks

JAKARTA (JP): PT Mayora Indah, a publicly listed food processing company, will split its shares to improve the liquidity of its trading on local exchanges, an executive said.

The company's director of finance, Hermawan Lesmana, said yesterday that the stock split will cut the prices of the shares to Rp 500 (22 U.S. cents) each from Rp 1,000 at present.

He said the stock split plan was approved by shareholders in an extra-ordinary meeting yesterday.

In addition to the stock split, Hermawan also announced the company's plan to distribute two bonus shares for every one existing share.

Hermawan said that the bonus shares will be issued from the companies' agioes (gains from the increase in share prices during their initial public offering), not from the company's retained earnings.

Mayora Indah, which is listed on the Jakarta Stock Exchange, is 52.64 percent owned by PT Unita Branindo, 5.08 percent by PT Mayora Investama, 42.01 percent by public investors and the remainder by a number of parties with an ownership of below one percent.

Hermawan said that this year, Mayora Indah is projected to gain a net profit of Rp 52 billion.

The company's net profit decreased to Rp 22.3 billion in the first six months of 1995 from Rp 24 million for the same period last year, even though its sales increased to Rp 152 billion from Rp 120 billion.(31)