Where are the dividends?, page-8

Here are a few reasons

• It simply doesn't reward long term shareholders. It works on a record date so a person who has held Neuren for a single day would still recieve the dividend.
• Not everyone lives in Australia (Neuren is a NZ company after all), and those who live in Australia and work still need to pay tax on franked dividends if their personal income tax rate is higher than the company tax rate paid.
• The company publically stated they have already had interest in NNZ-2591 and aren't going to become a sales organisation - ie they are are unlikely to exist in 18 months because they want to be acquired. Having more cash in the bank is useful to tell an acquirer that we don't need them, so they need to pay top dollar if they want us prior to the Phase 3 read outs.
• The company has already earmarked $50m for a share buy back. I know plenty here don't like that idea either. but it's objectively a better idea than a dividend, particuarly for existing investors because every share holder has an increase in fractional ownership at a price I am sure we can all agree is well below what is fair value for the company. Plenty can (and will) argue that point but Jon's comments have made it clear that the SBB was the better option of the two
• If there is a transaction (acqusition) and there is a good reason to remove the franking credits from the organisation that decision can be made at that time. There's no need to pay a dividend now. These type of deals occur often and the deal might be made with the condition that $x is paid out from the company (Neuren) as a dividiend and the remainder of Y will be paid as shares, or shares and cash from the acquirer. No point worrying about that now.
• Jon was the CFO prior to being the CEO so he's well versed in all these concepts so I am very much happy to go with what he and the board recommend.