The board of Ashok Leyland Ltd. has approved the issue of free shares and dividend to its share holders after its March quarter results on Friday, May 23.

Ashok Leyland will be issuing one bonus share for every one share held as of the record date by its shareholders. The record date for the bonus issue will be intimated at a later date.

The last time Ashok Leyland had issued bonus shares to its shareholders was back in 2011, when it had issued one free share for every one share held.
Additionally, Ashok Leyland has approved the payout of ₹4.25 per share as dividend to its shareholders. The company will be spending a total of ₹1,248 crore for the dividend payout.
For the fourth quarter, Ashok Leyland reported a 38.4% jump in its net profit to ₹1,246 crore from ₹900 crore during the same quarter last year. The profitability was aided by a tax credit of ₹173 crore. The base quarter had no tax credit.

Revenue for the quarter increased by 5.7% from last year to ₹11,906.7 crore. A CNBC-TV18 poll had predicted the figure to be ₹12,196 crore.

Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation (EBITDA) for the quarter grew by 12.5% year-on-year to ₹1,791 crore, which is marginally higher than the CNBC-TV18 poll projection of ₹1,720 crore.

EBITDA margin expanded by 90 basis points from the year-ago period to 15% from 14.1%, which was also the figure from the CNBC-TV18 poll.

Shares of Ashok Leyland are currently trading 0.6% higher after the results announcement at ₹240.36 per share.