Hanwha Co. said on the 22nd that it held a meeting for individual shareholders at the NH Investment & Securities headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul, on the 21st, where it shared the purpose of the recently released spin-off and its future corporate vision and plans to enhance shareholder value.
The meeting was arranged to help individual shareholders understand the spin-off resolved by the Hanwha Co. board on the 14th, strengthen communication, and build shareholder trust. About 50 individual investors attended.
That day, Hanwha Co. cited resolving the "conglomerate corporations discount" through optimization of its business portfolio as the core purpose of the spin-off. The company said it will clarify the business identities of the surviving and new entities and induce a market revaluation by optimizing strategies and investment for each business group.
Han Sang-yoon, executive vice president in charge of IR at Hanwha Co., said, "As a conglomerate corporations, we have not been properly recognized for our value in the market, so we expect this partitioning will allow us to fully reflect the corporate value of our subsidiaries."
The company again emphasized its commitment to expand shareholder returns. It reiterated its intent to execute the shareholder return policy released at the time of the spin-off announcement, including retiring all 4.45 million treasury shares excluding portions allocated for employee performance compensation and setting a minimum dividend per share (DPS) of 1,000 won (for common shares). It also said it will consider steadily increasing dividends going forward, taking into account the growth of subsidiaries.
Hanwha Co. judged that the market views the spin-off and shareholder return policy positively. A Hanwha Co. official said, "A series of brokerage reports have evaluated that the spin-off will make the governance structure more transparent and serve as a catalyst to reduce the holding company discount, and Hanwha Co.'s share price also surged more than 25% on the day of the release, indicating that expectations for the business structure overhaul have shown up in real indicators."
Hanwha Co. plans to hold meetings for overseas investors in places such as Hong Kong and Singapore. A Hanwha Co. official said, "We will continue to strengthen transparent management and ongoing shareholder communication and do our best to be properly recognized for our corporate value in the market."