Two listed companies under the same ownership have received approval from the court for merger.

Tripti Industries, which has been in the red for the last five consecutive years, will amalgamate with Olympic Industries. The name of the new company will be Olympic Industries, according to officials.

The two companies received the approval last week from High Court Division of the Supreme Court following an appeal for merger.

Prior to getting the legal nod, board of directors of the two companies also approved the merger in two separate extraordinary general meetings last month.

The officials said the merged company has a plan to expand its businesses as pan of a new business strategy. “We have

already been working on setting up a new biscuit manufacturing unit with bigger capacity than the existing two units," said a senior official of the

company.

Each of the existing two biscuit manufacturing units has a production capacity of 1,000 tonnes of biscuits per month.

“We also 'plan to set backward linkage units such as flour producing plant,” the official said, adding that they currently buy flour as a raw material for biscuit production.

The merged company plans to restart edible oil and vanaspati ghee production units, which are not in operation under Tripti Industries, he said.

"We will utilise the resources of Tripti Industries, which is now a poorly performing company, to expand the growth of Olympic Industries,” he added.

The book closure date for

entitlement of Olympic shares against Tripti shares has been fixed from July 16 to 20. From July 21, the two companies will be considered as one with the name of Olympic Industries.

One Olympic share will be given for every 5.79 Tripti shares.The ratio is fixed by crite-rions such as net asset value (NAV) on current cost basis, NAV on historical cost basis, weighted average market price, earning based value and discounted cash flow based value.

Tripti Industries, which manufactures edible oil, vanaspati ghee and ballpoint pen, incurred a loss of Tk 1.79 crore in 2006-07, while the loss was Tk 1.71 crore in 2005-06 andTk2.03 crore in 2004-05.

On the other hand, Olympic Industries, which produces biscuits, candy and dry-cell battery, made a net profit after tax of Tk 3.25 crore in 2006-07, while the profit was Tk 2.41

crore in 2005-06 and Tk 1.27 crore in 2004-05.

During the last three fiscal years, Olympic gave 11 percent, 13 percent and 11 percent dividends to the shareholders.

Presently, shares of Olympic Industries, which was listed in 1989, are being traded under A category meaning the company is regularly holding annual general meetings and declaring dividends.

On the contrary, shares of Tripti Industries, which was listed in 1986, are being traded under Z category that shows the company performs poorly.

Yesterday on the Dhaka Stock Exchange each Olympic share was traded between Tk 380.25 and Tk 388.25 against the face value of Tk 100, while each Tripti share was traded between Tk 61 and Tk 65 against the face value of Tk 100.

sarwar@thedailystar.net