Swire Pacific Ltd A (SWRAF) Q2 2023 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Swire Pacific Interim Results Analyst Briefing. Joining us at the briefing today are Mr. Guy Bradley, Chairman of Swire Pacific, Mr. Martin Murray, Finance Director of Swire Pacific, and Ms. Karen So, Managing Director of Swire Coca-Cola. Before we take a detailed look at our interim results, we'd like to show you a short video highlighting Swire Pacific's key development and achievement in the reported period. Enjoy the video. May I now invite Guy, Martin and Karen to take us through the details of the interim results of 2023. Thank you. Well, it was a strong first-half performance, driven by a rebound from all core divisions in the first half, main driver being aviation. As you saw yesterday, there were very strong profits reported by Cathay Pacific at the airline subsidiary level, and they were partially offset by results from its associates. Elsewhere, the big news was the announcement of a proposed sale of Swire Coca-Cola USA for HK$30.4 billion, which realises a gain of over HK$22 billion if approved. To go with that, there is an announcement of a proposed special dividend of HK$11.7 billion, We're also proposing a 4% increase in the interim dividends for the first half. And in terms of focus, we still remain committed to executing the strategic plans in our core markets of Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland and Southeast Asia. Just looking at some numbers, the recurring underlying profit was up 284% to 4.9 billion versus prior year 1.3. This came, as you can see in the bottom half of the chart there, from all divisions, although aviation, as I said, was the big recovery versus the prior year. The sale of Swire Coca-Cola USA, I'll go into much more detail at the end of the presentation, but at this stage I'd just li...