The Sun

Berjaya Corporation Berhad (BCorp) announced yesterday an interim dividend-in-specie of 25 Berjaya Media Berhad shares for every 1,000 BCorp shares held, or equivalent to a dividend rate of 2.35% single-tier exempt dividend per share for the fi nancial year ending April 30, 2009.

The proposal is subject to approvals of the relevant authorities and BCorp’s shareholders.

In a statement to Bursa Malaysia yesterday evening, BCorp also announced a substantially higher revenue of RM1.61 billion for Q2 ended last Oct 31, compared with RM639.9 million in the previous year’s corresponding quarter.

The higher revenue was mainly due to the consolidation of Berjaya Sports Toto Berhad (BToto) as a subsidiary company with effect from last February and higher revenue contributions from the consumer marketing and general insurance businesses.

However, pre-tax profit for the quarter of RM78.9 million was lower than the previous year’s corresponding quarter of RM279.7 million. In the previous year’s corresponding quarter there were signifi cant non-recurring items such as the gain of RM339 million from the placement of 170 million 5% Berjaya Land Berhad ICULS and the gain of RM36 million from the disposal of certain subsidiaries which were partly offset by the loss arising on dilution of interest in a subsidiary company of RM221 million (all totalling about RM154 million).

In the current quarter, the group incurred losses on foreign exchange of RM31 million due to the weakened ringgit and made additional impairment in value of investments in associated companies and certain quoted investments totalling about RM46 million.

Profit from operations for the current quarter under review was lower than previous year mainly due to lower brokerage income from the stock-broking business arising from the stock market downturn and high claims ratio which led to underwriting loss in the general insurance business.

For the six-month period ended last Oct 31, the group registered a revenue and pre-tax profi t of RM3.1 billion and RM215.7 million respectively compared with a revenue and pre-tax profit of RM1.2 billion and RM477.1 million respectively in the previous year.

The increase in the current period’s revenue and lower pre-tax profit were mainly due to the reasons mentioned above. However, operationally for the six-month period the group performed better than the previous year, mainly due to the consolidation of BToto as a subsidiary company of the group and higher profit contribution from the consumer marketing business.

BCorp’s board took cognisance of the prevailing global economic conditions arising from the fi nancial meltdown in the West and the unavoidable impact on the regional economies, including Malaysia’s economy which may affect the operating performance of the group in the remaining quarters of the financial year ending April 30, 2009, but expects the gaming business under BToto and consumer marketing business under Cosway (M) Sdn Bhd to be resilient.

As such, the board is optimistic that the group will continue to register revenue and operating profit growth for the remaining quarters of this financial year from the gaming and consumer business contributions.