Dear Editor,

I hear Michael Lee-Chin’s cry of pain at the non-payment of dividends since May 2021 as described in the Jamaica Observer article titled ‘I’m not happy’ published on July 14. I’m not happy either, although I ceased being a minority shareholder of the NCB Financial Group (NCBFG) aeons ago.

If I’m upset, can you imagine the sentiments of the 44,208 shareholders? This is a slap in their faces when the group made a profit of almost $40 billion in 2022. Not only has the group not paid out a dividend for over two years, but it has been holding the shareholders in limbo as to when dividend payments will resume.

Now 44,208 shareholders is a lot of shareholders — 8,000 more than participants in the largest initial public offering (IPO) in the history of the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE). I’m, of course, referring to the TransJamaican Highway IPO of March 2020.

For a shareholder, the most important objectives of a company is stock appreciation, higher dividends, expansion into new markets, increasing profitability, and making the business more attractive for investment. The entity has failed the first, second, and fifth above-mentioned expectations of a shareholder. The stock traded at an all-time high of $249.00 in July 2019. Brokers could not have anticipated that it would decline to where it has.

In October 2020, two brokers thought that it would trade between $140.00 and $160.00. In a worst-case scenario, $109. Who could have anticipated that the stock would have fallen below $100.00? For the past 52 weeks it has traded between $64.00 and $99.00.

It must be clear to the board that the non-payment of dividends over the past two years has exacerbated the problem. I know that this is but a single factor, but an important one. The annual reports read well, but no dividends! I’m now wondering if the stock will fall below the $60.00 mark.

NCBFG has been looked at for years as the bellwether stock. Where NCBFG goes, so goes the JSE. Can’t the board see what it is doing? Show respect to your shareholders — people who have stuck with you through thick and thin. When I see young JSE Junior Market companies paying out $0.06, it pains my heart to see a big group like NCBFG paying out $0.00 for two consecutive years.

I hope that Purity and Derrimon Trading are paying close attention.

One point in the Observer article didn’t miss me. The cost to income ratio at NCBFG for 2022 was 69 per cent. That of their rival, Scotiabank, was 56 per cent. The world-class standard is 54 per cent. I didn’t need the chairman to tell me that Scotia is a more efficiently run group than NCB. Scotiabank paid out $0.35 per quarter last year — $1.40 over a 12-month period. This year Scotiabank reduced the quarterly dividend to $0.25, then without much fanfare increased it again to $0.35 in July.

I trust NCBFG will come good in quarter 4.

For the chairman to come out and publicly state, “I’m not happy. I am definitely not happy,” something’s definitely not right in the State of Denmark.

Norman W M Thompson

norms74160@gmail.com