no dividend

I thought I would start a new thread as I have been chatting "off the air" with one or two of you.

I hope the thread gains some momentum. What I really would like to discuss is WHY CER did not pay a dividend.

Firstly I was taken aback and secondly, yes it was a rather ordinary announcement as far as content goes.

We have the fact that a dividend was not paid so if we a re going to speculate on something it might as well be the "WHY" of it.

I was taken aback because I would have thought that CNP could obviously have used the cash to reduce gearing etc with a look through dividend of about 51% of whatever the CER dividend would have been.

I see one potential positive and one potential negative so far.

POSITIVE:

CER might use the cash to reduce gearing within the CER structure to stregthen its balance sheet not withstanding the 46.5% tax.

NEGATIVE:

CER actually does not have an underlying profit due to asset revaluations (i.e. writedowns) and as such they need to retain cash to reduce gearing as above (but for the said negative reason)