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Fiji’s Amalgamated Telecom Holdings Ltd has announced a group consolidated next after tax profit of $15.4 million for the year ended March 31, 2010, a 53.5 percent drop on the $33.1 million profit the previous financial year.
Chief executive officer Tomasi Vakatora said the reduced profit was due to a combination of a decline in sales revenue and increase in expenses and the incurrence of “abnormal or one-off items”.
Vakatora said the figure was in line with projections announced on May 19.
Sales revenue declined by 10.4 percent and was attributed to retail price reductions “of which some were taken at the ATH Group’s initiative in response to market conditions and others through various determinations by the Commerce Commission over recent years”.
Other contributing factors were “intensity of competition and consequent loss of some market share and relatively weak trading conditions from the flow on effects of the global financial crisis onto the Fiji economy”.
Vakatora said that despite the reduced profit, ATH directors were proposing a final dividend of 2 cents per share totaling $8.442 million.
The dividend will be submitted for approval at ATH’s annual general meeting on August 19.
The proposed final dividend is in addition to the interim dividend of $12,663,146 paid in March 2010, bringing the total dividend for the year to $21, 015, 524.
The ATH stable includes ATH, Telecom Fiji Ltd, Vodafone Fiji Ltd, Fiji Directories Ltd, Internet Services Fiji Ltd, Transtel Ltd, Exceed Pasifika Ltd, ATH Technology Park Ltd, ATH Call Centre Ltd and Pacific Emerging Technologies Ltd.
