Dacca Dyeing wins court order for gas line reconnection

The Dacca Dyeing & Manufacturing Company Limited has won a Supreme Court order to get back its disconnected gas line, the company has informed the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE).

The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court on Thursday ordered Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company Ltd to reconnect the textile company's gas line within 15 days of receiving the order, the DSE informed investors on Sunday.

The company had been fighting the civil lawsuit over unpaid gas bills for more than four years.

It had deposited Tk1 crore in favour of the state-owned gas distributor as per a previous High Court order in 2016. It also deposited Tk35 lakh as per a verbal order of the Appellate Division.

On Thursday, the Appellate Division ordered Dacca Dyeing to pay Tk20 lakh each month as gas bill arrears in addition to the regular gas bill.

Contacted, SM Atikur Rahman, the company lawyer, declined to give the details in this regard.

Dacca Dyeing officials did not pick up the telephone either when this reporter had been looking for further information on Sunday afternoon.

The company, listed with the stock market in 2009, has not been paying any dividends since 2016, the year when it filed a writ petition for reconnection of the gas line.

It has not published its financial updates either since 2018. Even the company website is full of many dead links, like information on directors.

Important information for shareholders is grossly unavailable on the company website as it is yet to publish any financial report there.

The DSE, however, categorised the company under the Z category as it is not arranging shareholders' annual general meetings for years and the dividend has been a far cry.

According to the DSE website, Dacca Dyeing, a Tk87 crore paid-up capital company, made TK8.6 crore in net profits in 2015.

However, it began losing money following the gas line disconnection and the annual losses in 2016 and 2017 fiscal years widely surpassed its previous year's profit.

In 2016, the company posted nearly Tk29 crore loss, which increased to more than Tk34 crore in 2017.

Meanwhile, the price of the company shares came down to below Tk3 earlier this year as investors were not counting on its last net asset value per share of more than Tk15 in 2017.

However, regulatory steps to rail non-performing companies and speculation on junk scrips boosted Dacca Dyeing share price to more than Tk9 against the face value of Tk10 each.

In the bull market of 2010, Dacca Dyeing shares were trading above Tk100 each.

The latest shareholding report at the DSE reveals that the sponsors and directors still collectively hold 30.45% of the company shares.

Also, 20% of shares are held by institutional investors and over 48% are owned by general investors, while 0.32% are in foreigners' hand.