Lai See | Wison chairman cashes in on company's bonanza results

Hong Kong-listed Wison Engineering has turned a few heads recently, not least because of its eye-popping first-half results, announced on Wednesday. Profits attributable to shareholders were up by a whopping 7,224.3 per cent while revenue grew by 131.3 per cent and gross profit soared 92.8 per cent.

Wison, which listed in Hong Kong at the end of last year, is an EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) company and makes most of its money from its coal-to-oil business. Some analysts in the finance industry watch it as it's a peer of Sinopec Engineering Group, which listed in Hong Kong earlier this year.

Although Sinopec is bigger, Wison's benchmarks are better in some areas and it has a bigger order backlog and a higher gross margin, according to Simon Powell, CLSA's head of Asian oil and gas research.

Wison attracted attention a week ago when the company had to scramble to set up a conference call to deny an Apple Daily story that the company was linked to Bo Xilai. Despite denying this the stock fell 15 per cent.

And then just to add to the intrigue surrounding the company, it announced a dividend payout of 5.74 fen on earnings per share of one fen. This is equivalent to a payout ratio of 574 per cent, which is highly unusual since the norm is about 50 per cent. Why such a big payout - to help restore confidence in the company?

However, the chairman and founder Hua Bangsong owns about 80 per cent of the shares so most of this will go to him. When the chairman takes most of the cash out of the company, this can hardly be construed as being good for confidence. So what's going on?