By Micheal Eboh

Chemical and Allied Products (CAP) Plc has assured shareholders of consistent and improved returns on their investment, promising steady growth in its sales volume and bottomline in the years ahead.

Speaking during its 46th Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Lagos, Chairman of the company, Mr. Larry Ettah disclosed that the company plans to continually grow its business through innovation and excellent customer service delivery.

He explained that the company will continue to offer high quality products and services to discerning customers, leveraging on the strength of its technical partners, especially in product development and delivery.

He noted that within the last couple of months, the company has expanded its operations across the country, by opening three additional Dulux Colour Centres in Lekki, Port Harcourt and Kaduna, while it also introduced the Dulux Mobile Colour Centre, a novel initiative in Africa, with the aim of bringing colour to the doorsteps of its consumers.

Ettah said “We will continue to grow the business through innovation and excellent customer service delivery. We shall leverage on the strength of our technical partners to in colour mastery and offer differentiated colour solutions to customers.

“The business shall lead the drive in ensuring sustainability of its products and the environment. We are confident that we will continue to record steady growth in company’s sales volume.”

Meanwhile, shareholders of the company lauded the management over the company’s performance, a factor which has led to the impressive dividends and bonus declaration.

The company, in addition to an interim dividend of N1 per share in November 2010, declared a final dividend of N2 per share, bringing its total dividend to N3 per share for its 2011 financial year. The company also rewarded shareholders with a bonus of one ordinary share for every ordinary share held in the 2010 financial.

CAP recorded significant improvement in its top and bottomline in 2010, with a turnover of N3.645 billion, representing an appreciation of 20 per cent from N3.023 billion recorded in 2009.

Its profit before tax grew by 84 per cent to N1.14 billion from N619.296 million recorded in 2009, while it posted a profit after tax of N882.856 million, rising by 159 per cent from N340.98 million recorded in 2009.

Speaking further on the results, Ettah explained that the Back Duty assessment of N179 million provided for in the accounts of 2009 was satisfactorily resolved in December 2011, with the sum of N81 million written back to the profit of the company.

Also speaking, National Coordinator, Independent Shareholders Association of Nigeria, Mr. Sunny Nwosu, said that shareholders were grateful to the company for the token, adding that it was important for the company to do all it could to improve upon the performance in the cming years.

He said, “We are glad that we are able to get this N2 dividend, in addition to the N1 payment we got last year and we hope that next year, shareholders would receive a higher dividend as well as bonus, and this can be achieved by further improvement on their performance. Already we can see traces of this from our first quarter results which was recently released.”