December 10 (SeeNews) - The Serbian unit of tobacco giant Philip Morris, Duvanska Industrija Nis (DIN), reported on Monday a net profit of 2.047 billion dinars ($37.9 million/25.8 million euro) for the first nine months of the year.
The company provided no year-ago figures in a statement to the Belgrade Stock Exchange (BELEX). Company officials were not immediately available to comment.
A total of 1.396 billion dinars of the net profit will be distributed as dividend, which will be paid to investors by the end of 2007, the statement said.
Last year, DIN’s net profit surged to 4.7 billion dinars from 1.0 billion dinars in 2005.
DIN last paid dividend, 32.24 dinars per share, in 2003 to the holders of its priority shares under the latest data available from the BELEX.
The company stock last traded on October 23, closing unchanged at 7,097 dinars.
Philip Morris bought a majority stake in DIN for 518 million euro in September 2003. DIN competes with Duvanska Industrija Vranje, which was bought by British American Tobacco also in 2003.
(1 euro = 79.4676 dinars)