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Emerald Oil Industries Limited, a company that resumed operations last year after a hiatus of four years, revealed their financial reports for three fiscal years –FY17-FY19 – yesterday.
The new entrepreneurs, who were given the charge of the company by the securities regulator Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) in 2022, published the company’s financials in a bid to comply with the securities regulations.
But the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) on the same day sent a query letter to the company citing mistakes in its published financial reports.
The producer of the rice bran edible oil halted its production in 2017 owing to a shortage of working capital following several scams of its sponsors.
Later, the publicly traded company announced to resume its production on June 28, 2022, after an investment was poured in from the Japanese firm Minori Bangladesh following an intervention of the securities regulator.
Before in March 2021, the stock regulator BSEC had restructured the board of the company by appointing five independent directors on its board in a bid to bring the non-functioning company back to business and protect the interest of its investors.
Before yesterday’s publication, the company for the last time had published its annual report in 2016.
The company has also not been offering any dividends since FY17.
According to the oil producer’s latest financial reports, it had been a loss incurring one since 2017 due to the factory closure.
The company reported a loss per share of Tk 34.34 for the year ended in June 2017 while its net asset value (NAV) per share stood at negative Tk 17.46 and net operating cash flow per share (NOCFPS) at Tk 1.86.
For the fiscal year that ended in June 2018, the company reported a loss per share of Tk 1.97, while its NAV per share stood at negative Tk 19.43.
Moreover, the company reported a loss per share of Tk 1.14, a NAV per share of negative Tk 20.57, and no NOCFPS for the year ended on June 30, 2019.
The company, as per the latest DSE filing, said since there was no collection from its former managing director Syed Hasibul Gani Galib or any other parties since July 2017 till date, the full amount of receivables, Tk 155.66 crore, was shown as bad debts in the latest published financial reports.
The current management also figured out serious irregularities of the previous board, the DSE filing read.
Meanwhile, the DSE in its query letter said though the company published its financial reports, those were not prepared as per the securities laws.
A delegation of the company also met with the DSE authorities yesterday to resolve the issues.
Talking to the Business Post, Ashraful Alam, chief financial officer (CFO) of Emerald Oil Industries Limited said, “There were some mistakes in our published information which later got corrected as per the DSE advice. Currently, there is no problem concerning the issue.”
After the change in its board, the rice bran edible oil manufacturer on October 4, 2022, announced the opening of a new branch in Japan to incept its export operations.
The company currently has a manufacturing capacity of 48 tonnes of rice bran oil and 282 tonnes of de-oiled rice bran per year, according to its officials familiar with the matter.
Incorporated in 2008, Emerald Oil Industries Ltd went into the production of rice bran oil under the brand name Spondon back in 2011.
The company, however, halted production in 2017 due to the working capital crunch, after its founders fled the country following a loan scam and subsequent imprisonments in a case filed for that forgery.
Listed in 2014, the company had raised Tk 20 crore through IPO from the capital market.
Emerald Oil shares dropped 10.60 per cent to Tk 28.50 per share on the DSE trading floor on Sunday.
The sponsors and directors held a 38.26 per cent stake in the company, while institutional investors and the general public owned 5.83 per cent and 55.91 per cent respectively till January 2023.
With a market capitalisation of Tk 190 crore, the edible oil producer has a paid-up capital of Tk 59.71 crore.
