KUALA LUMPUR: Investment holding company, LPI Capital Bhd, is confident of sailing through the challenging financial year 2015 (FY15) and post another satisfactory performance.
Its chairman, Tan Sri Teh Hong Piow, said LPI registered sterling results in FY14 and the board was confident of registering further improvement in the performance for FY15.
"The group will work to further strengthen resilience capacity, implement innovative action plans and improve efficiency and productivity.
"With our robust business plan and strong risk management culture, the group is confident of sailing through these challenging times with another satisfactory performance for FY15," he said at LPI's 54th annual general meeting here today.
For financial year ended ended Dec 31, 2014, LPI's pre-tax profit surged by 33.1 per cent to RM341.9 million from RM256.8 million in 2013.
Revenue grew by four per cent to RM1.17 billion from RM1.12 billion previously.
Chief executive officer, Tan Kok Guan, said the impressive FY14 performance was attributed mainly to the strong results of its wholly-owned Lonpac Insurance Bhd, and partly to realisation of gains of LPI's investments in equities.
Tan said despite operating in a volatile economic environment and a highly-competitive market place, Lonpac delivered a credible performance with a pre-tax profit of RM255.3 million for FY14, up 10.3 per cent from RM231.4 million in the previous year.
"The record pre-tax profit of Lonpac was contributed by the strong underwriting performance in 2014.
"Underwriting profit of Lonpac registered a credible increase of 9.5 per cent from RM186.2 million in FY13 to RM203.9 million in FY14," said Tan.
In view of the impressive performance of the group, LPI board has declared a second interim single-tier dividend of 55 sen.
Together with the first interim single-tier dividend, which was paid in August 2014, the total interim dividend paid for FY14 amounted to 75 sen.
This is 7.1 per cent higher than the 70 sen paid for FY13. -- BERNAMA