Hindustan Zinc’s (HZL) board has declared an interim dividend of Rs 10 per share or 500% for FY25, entailing a total outgo of `4,225.32 crore. The firm has fixed May 15 as the record date for the dividend.
The dividend comes at a time when Vedanta and its parent London-headquartered Vedanta Resources (VRL) were seeking to shore up funds to trim debt. Vedanta holds 64.92% stake in HZL.
Following the announcement, the company’s share prices closed 3.92% down to Rs 445.85 on the BSE.
Earlier in December, HZL, in which Indian mining major Vedanta holds a majority 64.9% stake, declared an interim dividend of `6 per share interim for FY24, amounting to a total outgo of `2,535.19 crore.
Prior to that in July, HZL announced an interim dividend of `7 per share for FY24 – the first payout for FY24 – with a total outgo `2,957.72 crore.
The company had declared a total dividend of Rs 75.5 per share in the previous financial year, with a total outgo of Rs 31,901 crore.
Last week, Vedanta Group chairman Anil Agarwal said that the Indian government was looking to divest its stake in HZL, for which they will get about `50,000 crore.
The Indian government holds a 29.54% stake in Vedanta, which was privatised more than two decades ago, and the remaining is held by public shareholders.
HZL had posted a 21% fall in net profit at `2,042 crore for the quarter ended March, impacted by lower zinc and lead prices, compared with `2,589 recorded in the year-ago period.
During the quarter under review, HZL’s revenue fell 11% to `7,550 crore from `8,509 crore recorded during the same year-ago period, while it posted a 14% fall in Ebitda at `3,641 crore, it said in a statement last month.
