PT Indah Kiat's profits plunge by 25.6%
JAKARTA (JP): PT Indah Kiat Pulp & Paper Corporation yesterday reported a 25.6 percent decline in last year's profits due to "domestic and international financial constraints."
A director of the company, Njauw Kwet Meen, said at its annual shareholders' meeting here that last year's profits were Rp 31 billion lower than the Rp 121 billion recorded in 1992.
Njauw, however, declined to give details of the reason because of a poorly scheduled public meeting which made a number of shareholders, journalists and security analysts unable to attend the meeting.
"Hopefully, they aren't doing it on purpose to restrict public knowledge about the condition of the company," said Li Ming Surjaputra, presumably as a joke, considering that no news was the best news for a company with unexplained losses. He is a research analyst of the Singapore-based J.M. Sasson & Co. (Pte) Lt.
Indah Kiat currently operates two paper mills in Tangerang and Serang, both in West Java, and one pulp and paper mill in Perawang, Riau.
Yesterday's meeting, which had been announced in a number of local papers, was scheduled to start at 11:00 a.m. A public relation officer of Indah Kiat, however, said that the meeting ended at around 10:00.
Another analyst, Roberto Toruan of PT Sanyo Primarindo Securities, told The Jakarta Post he was disappointed that management did not stick to their own public announcement of the meeting published in Indah Kiat, one of the leading paper producers in Indonesia.
Njauw said the shareholder meeting had agreed on the payment of a dividend of Rp 25 for each share on Sep. 22 and to issue 4- for-10 bonus stocks on Aug. 22.
Under the present situation, Indah Kiat, which was listed on the Jakarta and Surabaya stock exchanges in 1990, has 1.03 billion shares and assets of Rp 3.56 trillion.
Widjajas
Indah Kiat is 51.3 percent owned by PT Purinusa Ekapersada, 16.83 percent by CHP International (BVI) Corp., 7.98 percent by YFY Global Investment BVI Corp., 0.15 percent by Yuen Foong Yu H.K., Co. Ltd. and 23.74 percent by the public.
PT Purinusa Ekapersada, the major shareholder, is a holding company of the Sinar Mas business group, whose chairman is tycoon Eka Tjipta Widjaja.
Eka Tjipta, the patriarch of the Widjaja family who is also the chief commissioner of Indah Kiat, and Indra, the "crown prince" and a commissioner, did not attend the annual meeting, which was held in a shopping mall in West Jakarta.
The other three Widjajas, Sukmawati, Teguh Ganda and Oesman, acting as Indah Kiat's vice commissioner, president and vice president respectively, did attend, however.
Despite the gloomy situation of the meeting, Teguh told shareholders that 1993 had done extremely well for Indah Kiat, with both sales and operation earnings increasing.
He added that the net sales had risen from Rp 425 billion in 1992 to Rp 650 billion in 1993, while its operational revenue rose from Rp 106 billion to Rp 109 billion.
Touching on the environmental issue, the company's annual report reveals that the total investment of Indah Kiat on waste treatment equipment and technology to date has reached more than US$40 million.
Environmentalists and ecologists have repeatedly criticized Indah Kiat for destroying the environment around its mill in Riau.
They said Indah Kiat had constructed a pulp and paper mill whose raw material cannot be supplied by its own forest concession, prompting the government to give another part of the pristine forest in Sumatra to the company.
As if denying the allegation, Teguh said yesterday, "Indah Kiat has taken measures to preserve the forest around its mills. It had developed an industrial forest by the end 1993, and more than 75,000 hectares have been replanted."
He added that every year Indah Kiat's industrial forest plantation expands by between 20,000 and 30,000 hectares of replanted trees. (09)