P. AND O. COMPANY

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 105, 28 January 1938, Page 14

P. AND O. COMPANY

Larger Dividends From Subsidiaries Accounts of the Peninsular aud Oriental Steam Navigation Company, Ltd., for the year ended September 30, show a profit (after providing for depreciation) of £320,808, compared with £328,910 the previous year, and £156,999 for 1934-35. The preferred dividend of 5 per cent, requires £152,000, and the deferred dividend is again 4 per cent., requiring £183.701. Against £152,093 brought forward. £143,200 is carried forward. Dividends from subsidies were £413,000, against £371,000 the previous year, but the voyages of the company’s own steamers were not as satisfactory as in 1935-39. A sum of £BSO,OOV has again been changed to profit and loss as depreciation. Two new refrigerated vessels ■built for the Australian trade were put into service for about that sum. Both are ranking good earnings. The terms of the. issue of the com pany’s per cent, debenture stock. 1943-72, stock of the nominal value of £68,000 was cancelled during the year, leaving £5,743,000 outstanding. Depreciation to date, at £17,911,185, exceeds the 5 per eent. basis by £4.143,194. Lord Craigmyle, presiding at the annual meeting in London, said the company had been confronted by circumstances peculiar to its own trades. There was a severe drop in the carriage of gold, andw the state of affairs in the Mediterranean had not helped the lines plying via Suez. The valuable short sea passenger traflic between England and Gibraltar, Tangier, and Marseilles, had been restricted, but carryings of. Australian cargo had increased. Hostilities in China had more gravely affected the company’s normal trade. "We have sometimes heard it said that British shipping flourishes on war,” Lord Craigmyle said, “I could not imagine any statement more, unsound. Its only foundation is the short-lived.era. of high freights which war brings, with it owing to the scarcity and diversion of tonnage. But, as the Great War proved,, even the shipowners who gain for the time being stand to lose far more' than they have won in the aftermath of dislocation and depression which follows.”