Sopharma

Generic pharma producer Sopharma’s shareholders voted BGN 0.11 dividend per share at the general shareholders’ meeting held on 15th June, 2018. The dividend yields 2.59% at current quotes.

Last year Sopharma distributed a dividend of BGN 0.10 per share, which yielded 2.5% at the market quotes then. That was the first dividend raise since 2010 – in 2017 the raise was 42% higher than previous year.

Sopharma latest earnings

Sopharma’s top line shrank by 11% in May’18 on lower exports, according to Company’s regular monthly newsletter. During the month, Sopharma registered a 16% y/y drop in export and 1% increase in local sales. On a cumulative basis for the period Jan-May’18, the Company marked an overall 2% y/y decrease in revenues, with export shrinking by 3% y/y and local sales growing by 1% y/y.

Buyback programme

In June 2018 Sopharma bought back 0.085% of its shares, according to Company filings to the Bulgarian Stock Exchange. During the month, Sopharma bought 114,144 shares, thus increasing the treasury shares from 6.70% to 6.79% of its capital. According to local regulation, public companies can buy back up to 3% of their share capital per year, with total amount of bought back shares not surpassing 10% of its capital.

Finally, merger with Unipharm was approved

On 27 June 2018, Sopharma announced it has received approval from the financial regulator to absorb local peer Unipharm. Under the terms of the deal, each Unipharm share will be converted into 0.957502 Sopharma shares, Sopharma said in a bourse filing. The deal is now subject to approval by the shareholders of the two companies. The two companies’ shareholders meetings are expected to be held on August 1, Sopharma said.

Sopharma and Unipharm restarted the merger procedure last month, after the registry agency said in April it has declined to register the merger as the decisions of the meetings of the shareholders of the two companies regarding the deal preceded the publication of the merger contract in the commercial register.

The shareholders of Sopharma and Unipharm approved the merger in February. The initial merger deal was signed by the two companies in September 2017 and envisaged Unipharm shares to be converted into Sopharma shares at a ratio of 1:0.891512.

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