There seems to be a bit of concern on here about CER's ability...

There seems to be a bit of concern on here about CER's ability to pay dividends going forward.

My comments are similar to Reggiemiller. They need to pay distributable profit at the very least from taxable income.

The fact that CER may have writedowns is irrelevant. CER recorded a loss for the HY ending 31 Dec 07 and FY 08 but still declared a dividend of 1.4c.

Writedowns on property have no tax effect anyway. Land does not depreciate for tax purposes and buildings are generally depreciated for tax purposes over 25-40 years.

At the very least we will get something similar to last year's dividend (worst case scenario)

Also I dont think people here understand the significance of the CSF portfolio.

At the beginning of this thread, I worked out that CSF would likely contribute about $51m profit for the HY 31 Dec 08 to CER.

This is currently ringfenced within CSF but CER only need to sell about $75m of property before they are able to tap into distributions from the CSF portfolio. Have a read of the 15 Jan ann. Of the $138m CSF debt refinanced, it only needs to be reduced to $50 before CER is entitled to distributions.

That means $51m for the HY or approximately $100m for the full year being distributed to CER from the CSF portfolio. This would then most likely be distributed to CER shareholders.

Last weeks ann was very promising. Dont let Friday's action on the market fool you into thinking otherwise.

Cheers