Semirara sets highest payout this year

MANILA, Philippines — Listed integrated energy company Semirara Mining and Power Corp. (SMPC) has set an all-time high payout this year with the declaraton of P7.4 billion in special cash dividends.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange yesterday, SMPC’s board of directors approved and declared P7.4 billion in special cash dividends, which is on top of the P5.3 billion in regular cash dividends paid out in April this year.

“Shareholders on record as of Oct. 25 are entitled to a special cash dividend of P1.75 per share, the highest amount ever declared by the company. Ex-dividend date will be on Oct. 20, while payment will be made on Nov. 9,” SMPC said.

The cash dividend will be sourced from its unappropriated retained earnings for the interim period as of end-September.

With this additional special cash dividend, SMPC’s total dividend payout to its shareholders this year will be P12.7 billion, the highest in its history.

SMPC’s total annual dividend of P3 per share translates to a cash dividend yield of almost 12 percent based on its October 11, 2021 closing price of P25.45.

In the second quarter, the company was able to generate the record-setting quarterly payment after recognizing P14.8 billion in revenues on the back of all-time high coal sales and higher average selling prices.

Second quarter coal sales jumped by 96 percent year-on-year from 2.5 million metric tons (MMT) to 4.9 MMT, the highest quarterly sales volume ever recorded by SMPC.

In the same period, average selling price of Semirara coal surged by 49 percent from P1,601 per ton to P2,393 per ton as Newcastle coal prices peaked at $136 per metric ton in June, the highest level in more than a decade.

This pushed the company’s net income to surge by 279 percent in the second quarter to P3.98 billion, while first half net earnings jumped by 181 percent to P6.28 billion, a recovery from the slump last year.

With the revenue and profit improvement, SMPC was able to turn over close to P1.7 billion in royalty payment – a record high – to the Department of Energy in the second quarter.

Of the P1.7 billion, more than P1 billion will be retained by the national government, SMPC said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange yesterday.

Meanwhile, the rest will go to the host local government units of the SMPC mine site –P136 million for the province of Antique, P300 million for the municipality of Caluya, and P230 million for Barangay Semirara.

SMPC is the only vertically integrated power producer in the country that mines its own fuel. The largest domestic coal producer, it supplies affordable fuel to power plants, cement factories and other industrial facilities across the Philippines.

As the country’s largest coal miner, Semirara has two operating mines in the Semirara Island in Antique, which are the Molave and Narra Pits, where about 70 percent of  production is for local demand while the rest is for export.

The company expects the commercial operation of the Molave mine to end in 2023 while Narra mine—depending on coal release—is estimated to be completed by 2027.