H&M has called time on a proposal to encourage shareholders to reinvest their dividends in new stock.
The proposal would have provided H&M with money to invest in business improvements, but proved too difficult to implement “from a technical perspective and because of time constraints”.
Earlier this month H&M posted “disappointing” fourth-quarter results after footfall declined and it battled to compete with online retailers. H&M’s profits plummeted 34% to £440m.
H&M chief executive Karl-Johan Persson conceded that last year’s sales had been “disappointing” and that strategic “mistakes” had been made.
He said then: “The fashion industry is changing fast. At the heart of the transformation is digitalisation and it is driving the need to transform and rethink faster and faster.”
H&M was investigating the option of offering shareholders an opportunity to reinvest their dividends in new H&M shares.
However, the retailer said yesterday: “The investigation has shown that the reinvestment plan would be difficult to implement, both from a technical perspective and because of time constraints.”
The retailer will now pay shareholders a dividend unchanged on the previous year.
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