COMPANY MEETINGS
MENDARIS (SUMATRA) RUBBER AND PRODUCE
CONSERVATIVE DIVIDEND POLICY THE twenty-seventh ordinary general meeting of the Mendaris (Sumatra) Rubber and Produce Estates, Ltd., was held on May i8th in London.
Mr. H. Eric Miller (the chairman) said that the fact that the directors had felt obliged to limit the amount of the dividend for 1937 to 5 per cent., the same rate as for 1936, notwithstanding the substantially larger amount of profit earned, must have caused some disappointment, but the board had to take all relevant factors into account and under prevailing circumstances there was no gainsaying the wisdom of a conservative distribution.
During 1937 the percentage of quotas allowed to be exported under the International Agreement had averaged 831 per cent., but there was an internal cut in the Netherlands Indies which had reduced the company's permitted exports to just under 78 per cent. of standard. They had availed themselves of the opportunity to purchase export licenses for 165,345 lbs. and were thus able to account for 2,094,826Ibs. , Taking the unsold portion of the exported crop at a conservative valuation, their average sale price was equivalent to 9.39d. per lb. 'London landed terms, id. per lb. higher than the equivalent price realised for the 1936 crop. The tapping results evidenced the generally satisfactory condition and yielding capacity of the estate and bore out their contention that the standard production allotted to them was unfairly low. Their standard for 1938 had been assessed at 2,527,468 lbs., but the direc- tors hoped that in view of the facts now at their disposal the authorities would grant the estate a standard more in keeping with its true producing capacity. He had already referred to the good yielding capacity of the estate and was glad to say that in the opinion of their visiting agent, who was a very experienced planter, the old areas were improving still further, foliage and bark reserve in those areas remaining good, so that no special manuring would be required this year. There was ample evidence that the money they had spent in past years on nitro- genous manure and the establishment of leguminosae had been laid out to good advantage. The present low selling price for rubber offered no particular inducement to go in for new planting, while potential production looked like being far in excess of probable absorption for a long time to come. When the turn for the better was coming in'the U.S.A. none of them could foresee, but the com- pany's estate was in good order and they were in a position to exercise patience without loss of efficiency. The report was unanimously adopted.
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