Masan Group Corporation (HOSE: MSN) on December 3 announced an increase in its cash dividend for the 2021 financial year by 20 per cent to VND1,200 per share.

The additional VND200 per share means another VND250 has to be paid in late December as VND950 per share has already been paid to shareholders in July.

Besides, the board of directors has also approved the tabling of a proposal at the annual general meeting for issuing bonus shares at the rate of 5:1 to existing shareholders as of the book-closing date.

For the past two years the company’s shareholders have remained patient as Masan implemented its turnaround plan for WinCommerce (WCM), laid the foundation for its ‘mini-mall’ concept and realigned its businesses to evolve into a pure consumer platform.

The management views the corporate actions as a way to reward shareholders while adhering to the company balance sheet’s medium-term targets, which have been significantly strengthened in 2021.

The issuance of bonus shares is also expected to benefit shareholders with improved trading liquidity since management believes the continued rollout of the mini-mall concept will drive significant shareholder value creation.

Management has outlined a preliminary 2022 plan to expand the number of mini-markets (Winmart+) by 700-1,000 next year to 3,300-3,600.

Masan also plans to convert at least 50 per cent of its existing Winmart+ locations into mini-malls, a model that combines WinMart+ (grocery), Phuc Long Kiosk (coffee and tea), pharmacy, Techcombank (financial services), and Reddi (mobile telecommunication), to offer consumers an integrated loyalty offering.

It believes the mini-mall concept can drive value creation by improving the profitability of WCM despite the cost of expansion by offering more products and services to drive higher foot traffic, advancing the breakeven time for new stores through better unit economics due to revenue sharing schemes with kiosk brands, strengthening its position in the south and rural areas, and building a digital platform with Reddi at the core to transform Masan into a consumer-tech platform and generate new consumer, digital use cases to achieve long-term growth.

Later this month Masan and Masan Horizon expect to receive cash dividends of VND1,406 billion (US$61.6 million) from a subsidiary, Masan MEATLife, as part of the company’s overall treasury initiative to upstream excesses to the group level.

The VND250 per share will represent VND295 billion in total cash and the bonus issuance will increase MSN share count by 236,106,938 to 1,416,641,630.

All corporate actions mentioned are subject to customary corporate and regulatory approvals. — VNS