Ecowise is going to give a special interim dividend cash dividend of $0.01 per ordinary share (
http://info.sgx.com/webcoranncatth.nsf/ ... penelement) for the financial year ending 31st Oct, 2008. At the same time, they are proposing a rights issue of 214,165,181 new shares at an issue price of $0.01 for each proposed right shares, on the basis of 1 rights share for every 2 shares held, disregarding fractional entitlements.
My take:
Hmm, didn't Ecowise did such a thing not too long ago? Digging out the old archives, I found that on 24-Jul-2007, they did put an announcement to propose a cash dividend and rights cum warrants issue(
http://info.sgx.com/webcoranncatth.nsf/ ... penelement). Back then, the special interim tax exempt cash dividend for the financial year ending 31st Oct, 2007, is $0.03 net per ordinary share. They also proposed a rights issue of 249,975,000 new shares at an issue price of $0.01 per rights share with detachable free warrants. Each warrant carries the right to subscribe for 1 new share at an exercise price of $0.05. So back then, every 1 share held entitles the holder to 3 rights share and 1 warrant. Complicated? Yes, I thought so too.
Oh, so now, after nearly 1 year, they wanted to give out another 'special' interim dividend, coupled with rights shares but no warrants. It's not so 'special' if they did it for two successive years!
This is seriously going to dampen their share price in the short term. But it begets a more serious question - what do they need the new capital for? Are they concerned about existing shareholders by diluting their share holdings again and again? Take a look below:
Based on today (date of announcement):
Share capital: 376,067,246
Outstanding warrants: 52,263,116
Potential rights issue: 249,975,000
This can seriously affect EPS, considering the huge dilutive effect of the rights issue. It's going to nearly half the EPS ... goodness.