Celltrion held a board meeting and announced on the 13th that it had decided to distribute both cash and stock dividends.
Accordingly, shareholders holding Celltrion shares will receive cash dividends of 750 won and stock dividends of 0.05 shares per common share. This is expected to be paid to shareholders after final approval at the regular shareholders' meeting in March next year, with the record date for dividends set for December 31 of this year.
This dividend amount is the largest in the company's history. The total cash dividend amounts to approximately 153.7 billion won, and the total number of shares to be distributed is approximately 10.25 million shares. The calculation of dividends was based on approximately 200.3 million shares, excluding treasury shares (about 12.04 million shares) from the total issued shares of about 217 million shares. This is the first stock dividend in two years.
The company stated that the decision to grant stock dividends was part of returning profits due to revenue growth and that it believed the current corporate value is significantly undervalued. The company emphasized, “This decision aims to share future growth value with shareholders,” adding that growth drivers such as increased sales of biosimilar products, expansion of the new product portfolio, and successes in new drug development are becoming evident.
Celltrion has a policy to continue expanding dividends under a medium to long-term goal of increasing cash dividends to about 30% of profits from future investments. The company completed a total of two rounds of treasury stock buybacks amounting to about 700 billion won this year alone. A treasury stock buyback of about 560 billion won is scheduled to occur early next year. Last year, it bought back approximately 1.25 trillion won in treasury stock and has acquired about 430 billion won in treasury stock this year. Celltrion ranks high in both the buyback and cancellation of treasury stock among KOSPI top companies.
Celltrion emphasized, “In addition to the revenue growth of our core biosimilar business, we are strengthening our pipeline of promising new drugs such as antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), multi-antibodies, and microbiomes, aiming to leap into a global new drug company while forecasting continued high revenue growth in the future,” and noted that it plans to actively implement its shareholder return policy.