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The Board of Directors of STK Century Corporation has just approved the documents for the 2024 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders. The meeting is scheduled to take place on March 28 at 242 Tran Binh Trong Street, District 5, Ho Chi Minh City, according to the finalized list on February 29, 2024.
Looking back at 2023, STK recorded revenues of VND 1.425 trillion and net profit of VND 87 billion, a decrease of 66% and 64% respectively compared to the previous year. This is also the lowest profit figure in the past 7 years since 2017.
The company stated that its business performance in 2023 was mainly affected by indirectly and directly shrinkage of order scale due to lower sales volume compared to the same period. Compared to the set target of VND 2.149 trillion in revenue and VND 253 billion in net profit for 2023, STK only achieved 66% of the revenue target and 34% of the profit target.
In 2024, STK sets an ambitious plan with expected revenue to exceed VND 2.703 trillion, an increase of 90% compared to the realization in 2023. The expected net profit is over VND 300.5 billion, nearly 3.5 times higher. If the set plan is achieved, the company will set records for both revenue and profit since its equitization in 2005.
STK Century Corporation has not yet announced specific objectives and tasks to implement the 2024 business plan. However, the latest report from SSI Research shows that recycled fiber is the main driver of long-term revenue growth and the new Unitex factory will start operating in 2024, which will boost STK’s revenue growth in the long term.
The Unitex fiber factory has a capacity of 60,000 tons of fiber per year (phase 1 has a scale of 34,000 tons per year; phase 2 has a scale of 24,000 tons per year). When operational, the Unitex factory can double the capacity of existing factories (Cu Chi and Trang Bang).
Previously, at the 2023 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, the leadership of STK Century Corporation stated that the Phase 1 of the Unitex factory can achieve an exploitation rate of 80% of the designed capacity and meet the demand for winter orders in 2024. Phase 2 is expected to be delayed for more than a year, according to which the project will be implemented in 2026 and become operational in 2027.
In March 2023, STK Century Corporation successfully signed a capital loan agreement with a total value of USD 52.5 million, equivalent to nearly VND 1,233 billion, to invest in the new Unitex factory Phase 1. The loan is financed in USD and has a loan term of 57 months, which will be disbursed in 2023 and 2024.
Dividend payment plan with a 15% stock dividend ratio
At the upcoming General Meeting of Shareholders, STK will present to the shareholders the plan for distributing the profits of 2023, of which the dividend will be distributed in the form of stock with a ratio of 15% (shareholders owning 100 shares will receive an additional 15 shares).
It is worth noting that the company currently has nearly 94.1 million shares in circulation, including over 2.5 million treasury shares. However, the company is currently conducting the sale of over 1 million treasury shares to employees from March 6 to 30, 2024, and is expected to sell the remaining treasury shares (1.5 million shares) on the market. At the same time, STK will privately sell 13.5 million shares to professional securities investors.
STK employees can buy treasury shares at the price of VND 20,000 per share
If all the above selling rounds are completed, the expected number of shares in circulation at the time of the record date for the 2023 dividend payment of STK is over 101.1 million shares. With a implementation ratio of 15%, the company is expected to issue over 16.5 million new shares to pay dividends and will raise its charter capital to over VND 1,131 billion. The expected time of issuance within 2024 after receiving the complete reports from SSC.
