| This Thursday (6 Dec), semiconductor company ASTI Holdings will pay out a dividend of 2 cents a share, its first ever payout since 2012 (when it paid 0.15 c). The 2-c dividend amounts to $13.1 million based on a share capital of 654.7 million. The stock traded at around 8 cents before it went x-dividend on 20 Nov and has since traded at around 6 cents. The dividend monies come from ASTI's 100% disposal of Semiconductor Technologies & Instruments Group in Sept 2018, resulting in a net inflow of $54.7 million from that event. |
The disposal places it in a position to make a cash exit offer for another subsidiary, Dragon Group International, which is listed on SGX too.
Dragon Group International has been on the SGX Watchlist since March 2015, and has failed to meet the criteria for an exit.
On 1 Nov 2018, ASTI, being its controlling shareholder, said it is working on a cash exit offer for Dragon's minority shareholders.
Trading in the Dragon’s shares have been suspended since 11 May 2018 and will remain suspended until the completion of the exit offer.ASTI's Executive Chairman and CEO, Dato’ Michael Loh (photo), has his hands full, as would surely be the case for some in his top management.
Dato Loh is also Executive Chairman and CEOof Dragon. And Dragon has "ongoing" negotiations on two major matters, as briefly noted in Section 10 of ASTI's 3Q18 results announcement.
With Zhuhai Yinlong Energy Co. a private entity in China, Dragon has been in talks regarding Zhuhai taking a 40% stake in Dragon subsidiary EoCell.
In turn, Zhuhai will invest US$20 million in EoCell.
Dragon's shareholding of EoCell is supposed to go from 93% to 40%. (See our earlier article: DRAGON GROUP INT'L: Little-known exposure to big lithium story)
 Director of vendor company: George Richmond, an experienced gold mine investor. NextInsight file photoIn another matter, Dragon is working on a major reverse takeover of Coeur Gold Armenia Ltd, transforming itself into a gold miner. As previously reported, Dragon entered into a non-binding term sheet on 19 Oct 2017 to acquire 100% of Coeur Gold Armenia. The latter indirectly owns mining exploration rights for gold and other minerals such as silver, antimony and copper in Armenia which has a long history of gold mining (and shares borders with Turkey). |