South African multimillionaire Stephen Brookes is set to pocket R12.61 million ($857,100) in interim dividends from his ownership stake in South African homebuilder Balwin Properties Limited.
The interim dividend will be paid from the company’s R2.57-billion ($174.8 million) income reserve, which was accrued over time since it commenced operations two decades ago.
Balwin is a residential property developer of large-scale estates for South Africa’s low-to-middle-income population. The group provides high quality, environmentally efficient and affordable apartments with an innovative lifestyle offering for residents.
Brookes, who founded the company in 1996, is the largest shareholder with a substantial stake amounting to 170,374,031 shares, or a 36.08-percent stake in the company.
In the first half of 2021, the South Africa-based property developer disclosed that higher apartments sales enabled the company to deliver 1,261 apartments to clients, up from 896 apartments in the prior year.
As a result, revenue grew from R930 million ($64.4 million) in 2020 to R1.312 billion ($90.8 million in 2021, while profit rose by 44 percent from R81 million ($5.6 million) to R117 million ($8.1 million).
In reaction to the solid financial performance, the board declared a dividend of R0.074 ($0.00484) per share payable to shareholders from its income reserves on Dec. 13.
The payment of the interim dividend on Dec. 13 as declared by the board will see Brookes pocket a total of R12.61 million ($857,100) in interim dividends from his stake.
The cash distribution from the interim dividend payment will set the multimillionaire on course to offset some of the unrealized losses that he has seen from his stake since the start of the year.
Since the year began, the market value of Brookes’ stake has declined from R755.2 million ($52.7 million) to R613.3 million ($41.7 million) as of the time of writing.
This translates to a loss of R161.9 million ($11 million) for the South African businessman since Dec. 31, 2021.
