Perth-based shipbuilder Austal will pay an annual total dividend of 8 cents a share after revealing record revenues and profit for the year to June.
The company said in its annual report on Monday that statutory net profit jumped 45% to $89 million on a 13% rise in revenue to $2.09 billion (88% of which came from the building of military ships around the world).
The company declared a final dividend of 5 cents a share, unfranked, well up on last year’s final dividend of 3 cents a share. That takes the full-year payout to 8 cents a share, up 33% from the 6 cents paid for 2018-19.
That’s the highest annual payout since 2008. But investors ignored that and the shares fell 3% to $3.51.
Austal which makes high-speed aluminium hull naval vessels, border patrol, and coast guard vessels and ferries, in fact, did better than its updated earnings guidance released in May.
In May Austal had forecast EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) of no less than $125 million, but on Monday it said full-year EBIT was $130.4 million, up 41% on the previous year and ahead of market forecasts of $126 million.
Austal CEO David Singleton said the results reflected strong momentum across its US and Australasian operations.
“I’m delighted that Austal has generated a record full-year result amidst significant global economic volatility, exceeding the record revenue and profit milestones that we set in financial year 2019,” he said.
“I am particularly proud of the fact that we kept all of our sites open during the pandemic, kept all of our people employed, and have been in a position to pay full-time employees a bonus to reflect their exemplary performance in this difficult time,” he said.
The company did not provide EBIT guidance for the new financial year because of the continuing uncertainty generated by COVID-19.
It did say that it had entered the new financial year with an order book of $4.3 billion of work to be delivered from 2020-21 to 2023-24.
That is well down on the $4.9 billion order book at the end of 2018-19 and a reason perhaps why the shares weakened.
