KARACHI (February 01 2003) : American standards of accounting have elevated Pakistan State Oil to US $3.5 billion dollar company, said Tariq Kirmani, Managing Director of PSO on Friday.
“PSO happens to be the only entity to rank amongst Asia's top 1,000 companies today, having also emerged as a consistently outstanding organisation year after year on the Karachi Stock Exchange,” he added.
Speaking at a launching ceremony of “PSO's new marketing innovation, the Fleet and Corporate Credit Cards” here on Friday, Kirmani said the company's exemplary performance has been aptly reflected through the outstanding results and achievements by an enthusiastic team of brilliant and dedicated cross-functional professionals.
PSO, in fact, is the only public-limited company that functions as a multinational and the results are before the stakeholder community that expects “only the best from us,” he added.
Kirmani pointed that the company only last week announced a cash dividend of Rs 6 per share (60 percent) to its shareholders translating into a cash pay-out of Rs 1.029 billion, as against Rs 3.00 per share resulting into a cash pay-out of Rs 0.429 billion in the same corresponding period of last year.
He said, during the first half of FY 2003, PSO sales revenue soared to Rs 101.3 billion, an all-time record since the inception of the company, thus registering an impressive growth of 17.5 percent over last year.
For the period ended December 31, 2002, the company earned an all-time record profit after tax of Rs 2.06 billion, while the profit before tax stood at Rs 2.9 billion.
During this July-December 2003 period, PSO sales volume increased from 5.2 million tons to 5.4 million tons, up by 3.4 percent, enabling the company to successfully increase its market share in key products, he added.
Kirmani said, the remarkable profitability of the company was augmented significantly as a result of the right steps taken by PSO management in the right direction in terms of improved productivity and increased efficiencies, aggressive marketing, business processes reengineering coupled with the full impact of enhanced margins.
Increased profit for six months is also attributed to the depressed earnings during the same period last year owing to September 11 incident, which had not only affected the consumption adversely but also resulted in hefty inventory losses to OMCs, Kirmani said.
Kirmani said, it is a public-limited corporation and, in fact, the only company competing with three other reputed multinationals in Pakistan.
However, it is the only national company that has survived and withstood the challenges and environmental pressures of a deteriorating industry, especially after last year's global events that have had the most serious repercussions in South East Asia, he said.
Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Executive of Orix Leasing, Humayun Murad, said that he greatly admired the initiatives taken by PSO to launch an innovative series of plastic cards aimed at providing customers greater service and satisfaction in line with its New Vision philosophy.
