KARACHI, Sept 23: Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) would declare dividend at Rs3 per share (30 per cent) for the financial year ended June 30, 2002, a poll of five stock brokerage houses showed.

The Board of Directors of PTCL is set to meet on Wednesday to approve the audited accounts for financial year 2003 and recommend the dividend.

PTCL having the heaviest weightage in the KSE-100 index and the most actively traded scrip — evidencing nearly eight billion shares traded in the first eights months of the current year — investors naturally have been anxiously looking out for the telecom’s financial figures.

Analysts at a sample of five stock brokerage firms, InvestCap; First Capital Securities; Arif Habib Securities; Taurus Securities and KASB agreed that the utility would declare a payout at Rs3 per share, compared with Rs2.75 paid last year, but on the net earnings side, there were variations on the digit after the decimal. Everyone forecast that the after tax profit would be higher than Rs21 billion, but how high would that be was open to speculation. The estimates ranged between Rs21.2 billion to Rs21.8 billion, which translated into earnings per share (eps) of Rs4.17 to Rs4.27. For the financial year 2002, the company had posted after tax profit at Rs19.8 billion, which equated to Rs3.88 per share.

Views differed on the quantum of top line growth, but all agreed that the real increment to the bottomline would be the blessing of significant reduction in financial charges. PTCL had paid off most of its debt during FY’03, which was why analysts said its financial charges could drop by 60 to 75 per cent for the year, from Rs2.4 billion the year ago.

At the recent average price of Rs38, the PTCL stock was trading on price-to-earnings (p/e) ratio of 9 times and was offering a dividend yield of around 8 per cent.

First Capital Securities forecast profit after tax (PAT) at Rs21.8 billion for the FY’03. The brokerage said that revenue could climb by 2 per cent.

Taurus Securities predicted PAT of Rs21.2 billion. Analysts stated that while year-to-date revenues were up 7 per cent till March’03, the utility’s revenues had shown slight decline in Jan-Mar’03 quarter versus the same period last year, which looked like revenue would be down by almost 1.5 per cent for the full year.

Arif Habib Securities visualized the telecom giant to post PAT in the range of Rs21.2 to Rs21.4 billion with the eps of approximately Rs4.20 per share. “We retreat our neutral stance on the scrip but expect the scrip to outperform the market in the coming days”, analysts said.

InvestCap forecast PAT at Rs21 to Rs21.5 billion for FY’03, depicting growth of 6 to 8.5 per cent over the earlier year. “Earnings growth in FY’03 has been driven by addition of 327 thousand Active Lines In Service (ALIS) and volume-based growth, owing to tariff rebalancing in NWD and International call segments”, analysts said.