The board of directors of Muthoot Finance has approved payment of an interim dividend of Rs 20 per equity share. “Shareholders whose names appear as on the close of business hours of April 23, 2021 (a) as Beneficial owners as per the list to be furnished by the Depositories in respect of the shares held in electronic form and (b) as Members in the Register of Members of the Company in respect of shares held in physical form, would be entitled to receive the interim dividend,” the company said in a communication to exchanges.

The interim dividend will be paid to the shareholders within 30 days from the date of declaration, the gold loan company said. For the quarter ended December 2020, the gold loan financier had reported a 22 per cent jump on a year-on-year basis in standalone profit after tax at Rs 991.4 crore while total income grew 20 per cent to Rs 2,777 crore.

Muthoot had achieved a growth of 22 per cent in the gold loan portfolio during the first nine months of the current year. Non-gold loan portfolios in subsidiaries constituted 10 per cent of the consolidated loan portfolio. Muthoot Finance claims to be the largest gold loan NBFC in India. It has a branch network of 4500 plus branches and serves about 2,00,000 plus retail customers every day for gold loans and other products. Its loan assets stood at Rs 41,611 crores as at March 31, 2020 and had a Capital Adequacy Ratio of 26.38 per cent as on December 31, 2020.

Rating agency ICRA last month had upgraded ratings on the long-term debt facilities of Muthoot Finance from ‘[ICRA]AA(Stable)’ to ‘[ICRA]AA+(Stable)’. ICRA in its rating rationale has stated that “The rating upgrade factors in the sustained healthy financial performance of Muthoot Finance Limited (MFL) along with the scale-up in the overall portfolio which was largely led by the gold loans business. MFL’s gold loan book has more than doubled over the last 5 years to Rs 49,622 crore as in December 2020 and accounted for about 90 per cent of its overall consolidated portfolio. The credit costs in the gold loan business have been under control, which uplifts the consolidated earnings performance.”