SABECO spends $42 million in cash dividend advance

During the pandemic, SABECO has focused on corporate restructuring and rebranding of products

With more than 641.28 million shares listed and in circulation the group, better known as SABECO, will spend about VND962 billion ($41.8 million) in advance of this dividend for shareholders.

The payment date will be March 23, making SABECO one of the few companies on the Vietnamese stock exchange to maintain annual dividend payments. Specifically, in both 2019 and 2020, the company paid a dividend of 35 per cent.

SABECO has made efforts to improve its business performance and management in recent years. The brewer was recently named as one of Vietnam’s best-performing companies in the TOP50, a prestigious annual ranking developed by Nhip Cau Dau Tu magazine in tandem with Thien Viet Securities to honour the most effective companies on the Vietnamese stock exchange. The ranking process took counsel from many economists and business experts, including Harvard Business School graduates.

To objectively assess the management capacity of enterprises, the TOP50 evaluated business results over three consecutive fiscal years based on revenues, return on equity, and earnings per share.

SABECO has also won other high-profile awards, including being named in the top 50 listed companies last year by Forbes Vietnam, marking the fifth year in a row.

Recently, SSI Securities Company continued to issue an updated report on the food and beverage industry, in which demand is forecasted to gradually recover. However, with a still unpredictable pandemic, the consumption of food and drink products and related services may not recover strongly in the first half of the year, but gradually recover from the third quarter, but with the growth rate expected to be much higher.

In 2021, SABECO recorded revenues in the fourth quarter reaching around VND9 trillion ($392 million), up 15 per cent over the same period. Profits after tax reached VND1.4 trillion ($60.9 million), down 9 per cent over the same period.

SSI forecasts that SABECO’s net profit is expected to grow by 18.5 per cent in 2022.

SABECO is the leading beer producer throughout the country with 26 factories and a total capacity of two billion litres per year. It targeted revenues of $1.33 billion and net profits of $208 million for 2021 as a whole, reflecting increases of 20 and 7 per cent on-year, respectively.