The Fotherington Insurance Group Overwhelms Investors with Special Dividend

The Fotherington Insurance Group (TFIG : ISE) has joined the ranks of other recent IPO's in active trading with a very successful month of November, and a special one-time-only dividend payment of L$0.01 in addition to the above-expectation L$0.025 already paid to shareholders.

"Our November results came in ahead of expectations we set at the end of October when we wrote the Prospectus," CEO Percy Fotherington announced in todays press release, "Looking at trends, November continued in the vein of October and we wrote more business for residents as well as starting to do insurance agreements in corporates, an example we announced was agreement with Andy Grant of GDB. We are in the process of finalising further deals with corporates and i would hope to see this reflected in our December numbers.

"Given the growth in November and outlook for December we have decided to pay a final dividend for November of L$0.015 per share, making a total normal dividend for November of L$0.025 per share. this is compared to the L$0.020 expected in the Prospectus.

"We also made some one-off gains on selling investments. given the scale of the gains I have decided to pay those out as a Special Dividend of L$0.01 per share.

"Our month return on equity was 3.7% (a pleasing 2.7% excluding the one-off investment sale profits)."

On December's outlook Fotherington outlined, "We aim to increases the insurance written during December and invest further surplus funds in income generating investments. our aim, of course, is to maintain our cash levels to meet the 4 largest potential insurance exposures we have - during November we met this criteria by a factor of 1.9x.

"Given we are seeking to continue to invest surplus funds, we would expect December to see a net cash outflow though we expect to increases revenues and profits.

"Given our increase in business to residents and the aim of do further deals with corporates i expect earnings and dividends to rise in December. Again, we would expect to pay out 90% of earnings in the form of a dividend hence, in the near term at least, whilst we follow this pay out policy i do not expect much growth in NAV.

"On current trends i would hope to pay a total dividend for December of L$0.030 per share."

In explaining the rationale behind the special dividend Fotherington explained, "During November we sold some investments and made valuation adjustments in others to reflect their fall in market value. the net effect was to realise a profit of L$6,255 (=cL$0.01 per share). Given that this is a one-off gain and so we do not expect to repeat this going forwards and given its scale we have decided to pay it out in the form of a one-off Special Dividend. Shareholders should not expect us to repeat this unless we come across another one-off gain (and none is on the horizon). Therefore, whilst the total dividend for November was L$0.035 per share, shareholders should view the dividend for November as L$0.025 plus a special dividend of L$0.010 per share."

TFIG(ISE) is currently trading at L$1.10, a 10% increase over IPO level since entering active trading with a daily trading volume of 10,755 shares.