Omnia at Record as Dividends Resume: Johannesburg Mover

Omnia Holdings Ltd. (OMN), southern Africa’s biggest fertilizer supplier, advanced to a record in Johannesburg trading as the company resumed paying dividends a year earlier than planned.

Shares in the chemical, fertilizer and the explosives group climbed 5.4 percent to 105 rand by the close, the highest since at least August 1990, when Bloomberg started compiling records on the stock.

Omnia paid a total dividend of 2.80 rand ($0.33) a share in the year through March as earnings for the Johannesburg-based company jumped 41 percent to 630 million rand, it said in a statement today. The group, which opted not to pay dividends because it had raised 971 million rand of equity to fund a new nitric-acid complex, had expected it would resume paying in fiscal 2013.

“We completed our new 1.4 billion-rand nitric acid complex on time and below budget, which will provide a solid base for Omnia’s next growth stage,” the company said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Stephen Gunnion in Johannesburg at sgunnion@bloomberg.net; Tshepiso Mokhema in Johannesburg at tmokhema@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Vernon Wessels at vwessels@bloomberg.net