Chapter 3

Capital Allocation

For four straight years the CASS parent has declared no dividend to its own shareholders, even as it collected rising cash dividends from its half-owned subsidiaries and let group cash build to Rp1.77 trillion. The money is not trapped downstream — the parent received Rp258 billion of subsidiary dividends in FY2025 and kept all of it. EMTEK, in control since 2024, has consolidated ownership and rebuilt the board but signalled nothing on returns; the one visible use of the idle cash is a Rp200 billion placement into a state fund at a 2% coupon.

What the public holder has received

CASS states it plainly in successive annual reports: "In 2025 and 2024, the Company decided not to distribute dividends to shareholders" [1], and the same for 2024 and 2023 [2]. Over those same four years the group's operating subsidiaries paid roughly Rp635 billion of cash dividends to their minority partners — chiefly SATS at the JAS ground-handling level: Rp113.0 billion (2022), Rp148.9 billion (2023) [3], Rp117.4 billion (2024) and Rp256.0 billion (2025) [4].

The statement of changes in equity confirms where those payments land: the "cash dividend" line reduces only the non-controlling-interest column — Rp117,412 million in FY2024 and Rp256,018 million in FY2025 — while the parent's own retained earnings rise untouched, from Rp990,538 million to Rp1,441,290 million [5]. The minority partner at the operating company is paid in cash every year; the public shareholder at the parent is not.

Source: FY2025 Annual Report, Dividends and Dividend Policy [6]; FY2024 Annual Report, Dividends and Dividend Policy [7].

The cash reaches the parent, then stops

A reader could reasonably assume the cash is stranded inside a subsidiary the parent only half-owns. The parent-only financial statements say otherwise. In FY2025 the parent booked Rp258.1 billion of dividend income up from its subsidiaries — more than double the Rp118.6 billion of a year earlier — plus Rp42.7 billion of interest [8]. It ended the year with Rp639.2 billion of cash of its own [9], Rp891.6 billion of distributable (unappropriated) retained earnings, and almost no debt — total parent liabilities were Rp21.8 billion [10]. The cash arrived at the parent, and the parent chose to keep it.

The operating level is close to even-handed. In FY2025 the subsidiaries distributed roughly Rp514 billion of dividends in total — Rp256 billion to non-controlling interests and Rp258 billion up to the parent — a near-even split consistent with the roughly 50/50 ownership of JAS [11][12]. Cash leaves the subsidiaries to both owners in step; the asymmetry appears one level up, where the parent retains the public shareholder's share rather than passing it on.

Source: Note 36, Financial Information of Parent Entity, FY2025 audited financial statements [13][14][15].

The pile and what it earns

Group cash and equivalents reached Rp1,774.1 billion at end-2025, up from Rp1,480.1 billion a year earlier and equal to about 55% of total assets [16]. Against Rp94.2 billion of debt, net cash was roughly Rp1,680 billion — about 43% of the company's Rp3.94 trillion market value. On a stock that pays its public holders nothing, close to half the market capitalisation is idle cash.

Source: Note 4, Cash and Cash Equivalents [17]; net cash and market-value ratio derived from reported financials and the 30 July 2026 share price.

How the pile is held is reassuring on one axis and less so on another. The balance sits in ordinary time deposits (Rp1,453.6 billion) and bank accounts spread across arm's-length banks — BNI, BTN, Mandiri, CIMB Niaga, BCA and Standard Chartered — earning 3.50%–5.25% on Rupiah and 4.00%–4.25% on dollars [18]. There is no sign the cash is being routed to a bank affiliated with the controller — a genuine mitigant given how often minority value leaks that way in the region.

One deployment reads less comfortably. On 21 October 2025 the group subscribed Rp200 billion — about 11% of its cash — to a privately-placed, five-to-seven-year debt instrument issued by PT Danantara Investment Management, the state's strategic-investment vehicle, at a fixed coupon of 2% [19]. That 2% is below what the same balance sheet earns on plain bank deposits and well under Indonesian inflation, and the money is now locked up for years rather than available for distribution. It is small against the Rp1.77 trillion pile, but it is the first visible decision about the idle cash under the new owner, and it moved money toward a government fund rather than toward shareholders.

Who is deciding, and a precedent worth knowing

EMTEK — the Indonesian media and internet group — took control through PT Roket Cipta Sentosa, buying about 51% for Rp872.8 billion in April 2024, running a mandatory tender at Rp883 per share, then lifting its stake to 61% in April 2025 by acquiring a further 10% block [20]. It rebuilt the top of the house — the president commissioner and president director resigned in mid-2024 [21] — renamed the company Cahaya from Cardig, moved its domicile to Soekarno-Hatta, and trimmed the portfolio, divesting the JATC training subsidiary in July 2025 for a Rp57.7 billion gain [22]. What it has not done is set out any policy for returning cash to the roughly 12% public float.

How a CASS controller uses group cash is not hypothetical. The FY2025 accounts still carry Rp385.4 billion of impaired "other receivables" owed by the previous owners' vehicles — PT Dinamika Raya Swarna (Rp197.2 billion) and DRS Capital (Rp188.2 billion) — loans the group extended to affiliated parties and has now provided against in full [23]. In July 2025 it assigned a further related receivable, from Cardig Asset Management, to a third party for a nominal Rp1,000 [24]. The prior control group extracted value through affiliate lending that did not come back; that history raises, rather than settles, the question of what the current control group will do with a far larger and more liquid cash balance.

What would change the read

The capacity for a first dividend is not in doubt. Parent-only cash of Rp639 billion and distributable earnings of Rp891.6 billion could fund a substantial maiden payout without touching the operating businesses or the net-cash position [25][26]. EMTEK has held full 61% control only since April 2025, so a first dividend has not yet had an annual cycle to appear, and CASS's dividend policy is discretionary under its articles [27].

The read here — that the public minority's cash return has so far been nil while the pile compounds — would change with a declared parent dividend at the next annual meeting, or a buyback of the thin float. It would harden the other way with further below-market placements like the Danantara subscription, or a return to affiliate lending. For a stock trading at roughly eight times earnings with 43% of its market value sitting in cash, whether that cash ever reaches the public holder is the difference between a cheap compounder and a value trap.