TNM pays K301.2 million dividend
Cellphone network operator TNM resolved to pay a final dividend of K301.2million which is an equivalent of three tambala per share for the year ended December 31 2012 during its annual general meeting (AGM) held on Thursday.
The AGM held at Sunbird Mount Soche in Blantyre, declared a final dividend of K301.2 million to be paid which together with interim dividends already paid bring the total for 2012 to K702.8 million.
The AGM also approved an increase in the board chairperson’s annual retainer fees from K1 million to K2.25 million, board committee chairperson’s fees from K800 000 to K1.8 million, and non-executive directors from K800 000 to K1.5 million effective July 1 2013.
The AGM, also agreed to increase meeting attendance fees for the board chairperson from K60 000 to K150 000, board committee chairperson from K60 000 to K120 000, and non executive directors from K60 000 to K100 000.
TNM board chairperson Matthews Chikaonda, in the 2012 annual report, notes that the year was volatile for the company.
“TNM experienced high revenue growth and rapid currency depreciation which more than doubled the cost of our capital expenditure programme and significantly increased finance charges on our largely foreign currency denominated debt. Without the re-engineering of most of our corporate practices over the past two years these negative effects would have been worse. Overall our profit after tax declined 49 percent to K0.692 billion on service revenue growth of 43 percent,” reads Chikaonda’s letter in the annual report.
TNM managing director Willem Swart in the annual report notes that the service provider continues to improve their network quality and network coverage.
“[TNM] invested K8 billion in infrastructure mainly in redundancy system for the core network and billing systems. With the commissioning of the Lilongwe to Salima optic fibre, transmission backbone grew by 22 percent to 430km from 350km in 2011,” reads Swart’s report in part.
The TNM 2012 AGM further reappointed Deloitte certified public accountants as auditors and to authorised directors to determine their remuneration.
TNM 2012 annual report notes that market share grew to 45 percent from 42percent in the previous year, subscriber base rose by 24percent to 1.9million.
The report indicates that gross profit rose from K7.87 billion in 2011 to K9.30 billion in 2012 while profit fell from K1.36 billion to K0.69 billion.
In 2007, TNM realised K1.45 billion profit after tax, marginally rose to K1.53 billion in 2008, fell to K1.22 billion in 2009, K1.18 billion in 2010 fell to K1.36 billion in 2011 before hitting K0.692 in 2012.
