Capital Properties’ profit rises 13.57%

EAST PROVIDENCE – Capital Properties Inc. (OTCQX: CPTP) said its annual profit grew 13.57 percent last year to $1.57 million, after growing 5 percent to $1.36 million in 2007. Basic income per common share now outstanding increased 3 cents to 24 cents in 2008 after edging up a penny to 21 cents in 2007.
Total revenue edged up 1.24 percent to $6.78 million in 2008, slowing from its 15.7 percent increase the year before. (READ MORE)
Leasing-segment revenue grew 4.45 percent to $2.98 million, slowing from its 14.4 percent growth in 2007. The company cited “increases in rental under short-term lease, including rentals from a building purchased in November 2007,” namely, the former industrial structure occupied by the 3 Steeple Street restaurant, which is listed on the State Registry of Historic Buildings. The year-ago period included a $100,000 one-time payment to settle a dispute with a former tenant, Capital Properties noted.
Meanwhile, revenue from the company’s petroleum-storage segment rose 1.70 percent last year to $3.78 million after rising 16.5 percent in 2007 thanks in part to a new 175,000-barrel tank that began renting in August 2006. The 2008 increase was “due principally to higher monthly rent from the annual cost-of-living adjustment,” the company said, but that increase was partly “offset by lower contingent revenue due to lower throughput,” as last summer’s higher energy prices put a lid on consumption.
Interest income fell 83.59 percent last year to $21,000, after growing 17.4 percent to $128,000 in 2007. The company cited both last year’s lower interest rates and its own “lower levels of cash available for investing [after] the cash purchase of the Steeple Street building.”
General and administrative costs shrank by $159,000 compared with 2007, “due principally to lower payroll and related costs due to the non-replacement of a retired employee who was also paid a bonus in 2007,” Capital Properties said in its report late yesterday. (Its 2007 report included fourth-quarter expenses of $234,000 related to performance and retirement bonuses paid to Ronald P. Chrzanowski, Capital Properties’ former president and chief operating officer, and Avery L. Noe, the Capital Terminal Co. subsidiary’s former president, both of whom left at year’s end. (READ MORE) The company’s new president is Robert H. Eder, who is also a director of the Providence and Worcester Railroad Co.) But last year’s lower personnel costs were partly offset “by costs of $232,000 incurred by the company in 2008 in connection with the proposed reverse stock split and the amendment to its articles of incorporation,” Capital Properties said.
At a special meeting on Nov. 21, shareholders approved a 75-to-1 reverse stock split – intended to bring the company below the U.S. Securities and Exchange Act’s 300-shareholder threshold for public companies and their more-stringent financial reporting requirements – and the creation of a Class B common stock.
That same day, the Capital Properties board of directors elected not to proceed with the reverse split, having determined that, with about 670 shareholders of record, “it would be unable to reduce the number of shareholders through the reverse stock split below 300.” (READ MORE) But the board did declare a dividend of one share of Class B common stock for each share of Class A common stock held by shareholders of record on Dec. 11.
In mid-December – to make possible the issuance of those Class B shares – Capital Properties voluntarily shifted its stock listing. The company’s common stock previously had been listed on NYSE Euronext’s Amex under the symbol CPI. Instead, Capital Properties chose to be listed on the Pink OTC Markets Inc.’s upper-tier over-the-counter bulletin board for companies able to satisfy financial and disclosure standards, called the OTCQX, where it now trades under the symbol CPTP.
For the quarter ended Dec. 31, the company had a profit of about $230,000, on total quarterly revenue of $1.64 million, based on the full-year results reported yesterday and the data previously reported for the first nine months of the 2008.
A regular quarterly dividend of 3 cents per share on the company’s outstanding common stock – both Class A and Class B – was declared by the board of directors at its regular quarterly meeting on Jan. 27. The dividend was payable Feb. 25 to shareholders of record at the close of business Feb. 11.
Capital Properties Inc. (OTCQX: CPTP) is a $5.8 million company based in East Providence. It and its subsidiaries operate in two segments: petroleum storage, at the Capital Terminal Co. facility in East Providence; and leasing, of both commercial real estate in downtown Providence and outdoor advertising sites along highways in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. For more information, call (401) 435-7171.