Food ingredients and plastics producer D&L Industries Inc. is seeking more partnerships with large multinational companies planning to establish a regional presence in Asia.
D&L president Alvin Lao said during the annual stockholders’ meeting the partnerships similar with that of US food manufacturer Ventura Foods would allow the company to expand the export business faster than its rapidly growing domestic operations.
“There are large multinational food companies who want to have a presence in, or plan to expand to Asia, but they do not want to invest in putting up manufacturing plants or maintain local offices. We can represent them. We can be the distributor for their products in Asia or we can manufacture their products for them,” Lao said.
D&L earlier planned to secure half of the revenues from its overseas business from the current 22 percent.
Lao said achieving this goal had been a challenge since the group’s domestic business had also been expanding significantly amid the strong Philippine economy.
Lao said D&L’s partnership with Ventura enabled it to export products to China, Hong Kong, Japan and other countries in the Asia Pacific region. Its other partnerships also export to the US and Europe in addition to Asia.
Meanwhile, D&L declared a regular cash dividend of P0.205 per share plus a special cash dividend of P0.055 to shareholders of record as of June 20. It set the record date on June 15 and the payment date on July 9, 2018.
Shareholders will receive a total of P0.26 in dividends per share or a yield of 2.4 percent based on the company’s June 1 closing price of P10.94.
This year’s dividend, amounting to P1.86 billion or an increase of 11 percent from last year’s P1.68 billion, is equivalent to 64 percent of last year’s recurring income.
D&L Industries’ recurring net income reached P2.9 billion in 2017, up 11 percent from the previous year, on the back of higher sales volume and margin expansion in the high margin specialty products segment.
Net income increased 12 percent in the first quarter of 2018 to P744 million on the year.