2024 Financial Report | Holding ample cash but still "stuck" in dividend distribution, BAIYUNSHAN PH suspected of being voted out by the market

BAIYUNSHAN PH (600332.SH), which holds the "Viagra" (Jin Ge) flagship product, has released its 2024 financial report.

The data shows that BAIYUNSHAN PH's current revenue and net profit attributable to the parent company were 75.515 billion yuan and 4.056 billion yuan, respectively, representing a year-on-year increase of 6.68% and 2.25% respectively.

Despite the slight increase in performance, on March 18th, BAIYUNSHAN PH's A-shares and H-shares experienced intraday declines of 4.17% and 5.30% respectively, with one of the main reasons suspected to be its dividend distribution plan falling short of expectations.

The dividend distribution plan indicates that BAIYUNSHAN PH plans to distribute a cash dividend of 0.75 yuan per share, calculated based on a total share capital of 162,000 shares as of the end of 2023, totaling 1.217 billion yuan in cash dividends, accounting for 30.02% of the current net profit attributable to the parent company.

This is in line with the commitment made by BAIYUNSHAN PH's management in February this year - not less than 30%.

"Unless there are special circumstances, the company will distribute dividends as planned, and the total amount of dividends expected to be distributed in cash (including cash dividends already distributed in the mid-term) shall not be less than 30% of the net profit attributable to the parent company for the year; and the profits distributed in cash in the past three years shall not be less than 30% of the average distributable profits achieved in the past three years," BAIYUNSHAN PH pointed out.

This dividend ratio is basically consistent with BAIYUNSHAN PH's previous dividend distributions, with cash dividends accounting for 30.03% and 30% of the current net profit attributable to the parent company in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

Looking back at BAIYUNSHAN PH's dividend distribution ratio over the past 10 years, it has mostly hovered around 30%.

According to Wind statistics from TrustWind01, apart from 2015 when dividends could not be distributed due to non-public issuance of A-shares and employee stock ownership plan issues, the average annual dividend amount of BAIYUNSHAN PH from 2013 to 2022 as a percentage of the current net profit attributable to the parent company was 28.99%.

At the same time, BAIYUNSHAN PH has ample cash, with the amount of cash and cash equivalents reaching as high as 19.824 billion yuan as of the end of 2023.

In the secondary market, the "sense of loss" towards BAIYUNSHAN PH may be due to the limited overall business growth, with shareholder returns heavily relying on dividends.

Under the policy orientation of state-owned capital market value assessment, BAIYUNSHAN PH's dividend ratio has remained unchanged for many years, leading to a gap with investor expectations.

In fact, some state-owned enterprises have made commitments to cash dividend ratios not less than 50% or even higher.

Tianshan Stock (000877.SZ) stated in its shareholder dividend return plan that the cash dividends distributed annually from 2022 to 2024 will not be less than 50% of the net profit attributable to the parent company; while China Mobile (600941.SH) has committed that the cash dividend ratio for 2023 will be above 70% of the current net profit attributable to the parent company