Soul Patts Shares Close Green: Dividend Raised Again as Merger Lifts NAV

Soul Patts shares (ASX:SOL) closed marginally higher, as the company delivered its 28th consecutive year of interim dividend growth, raising its half-year payout 9.1% to 48 cents fully franked, as the merger with Brickworks and underlying cash generation underpin the latest result.

The Soul Patts share price closed Thursday up a modest 0.16% at A$38.34, after swinging through a 3.2% intraday range as markets digested a complex earnings report that blended spectacular headline gains with more measured organic progress. The shares touched both A$39, and A$37 handles during the session before finding late support, with volume elevated as income-focused portfolios absorbed the dividend announcement. At current levels, SOL carries a trailing yield approaching 2.5% on a fully franked basis, cementing its status as the ASX’s first recognised dividend aristocrat with an unbroken 28-year record of annual payout increases.

What Was In The Report?

The company reported statutory net profit after tax of A$2.303 billion for the six months ended 31 January, a staggering 604% increase on the prior corresponding period. However, the bulk of that gain stems from accounting impacts tied to the recently completed Brickworks merger, asset revaluations, and a substantial tax position reset rather than pure operational performance. Stripping out those one-off items, regular NPAT rose a more modest 6.7% to A$304 million, while the key cash metric, Net Cash Flow From Investments, climbed 15.4% to A$334 million, providing the underlying fuel for dividend growth.

Pre-tax Net Asset Value advanced 9.7% year-on-year to A$13.8 billion, a solid result across a diversified portfolio spanning listed equities, private companies, credit, and real assets. More significantly, the Brickworks merger and associated tax restructuring delivered a 26.8% step-up in post-tax NAV per share during the half, unwinding decades of cross-shareholdings and releasing latent franking credits and capital gains tax benefits. That structural shift has handed Soul Patts materially greater flexibility to recycle capital without the tax friction that previously constrained portfolio rotation.

The balance sheet remains robust, with A$472 million in available cash and approximately A$1.2 billion in total liquidity when undrawn facilities are included. During the period, management deployed A$2.1 billion into new public and private investments while executing a broad range of exits and loan repayments, demonstrating active capital turnover without over-extending the group’s financial position.

Emerging companies now represent close to A$1 billion in pre-tax NAV, while private equity exposures exceed A$1.4 billion across holdings such as Ampcontrol and SoulPatts Agriculture. Credit investments, increasingly weighted toward private credit, have grown alongside expanded allocations to real assets and property.

Traditional listed stakes in TPG Telecom, New Hope, and the post-merger Brickworks entity remain important anchors, but Soul Patts is unmistakably shifting toward a multi-asset platform that blends public and private markets, equity and debt, and domestic and international exposures.

What Next For Soul Patts

Looking ahead, Soul Patts has signalled an intention to increase deployment into international and defensive assets, aiming to reduce home-bias risk and smooth returns if the domestic economic cycle weakens. Management has also flagged readiness to capitalise on mispriced risk as markets evolve, leveraging the group’s substantial liquidity buffer and deal-flow network to pursue counter-cyclical opportunities in private equity and credit.

The dividend trajectory also appears sustainable. With NCFI up more than 15% and the payout explicitly tied to cash generation rather than accounting earnings, the 48-cent interim sits comfortably within coverage ratios. Markets will be watching whether the full-year dividend can extend the growth streak to 28 years on an annual basis, which would likely require a final dividend above prior levels.