Gazprom Neft could double dividends for 2018, pay 38% of profit
MOSCOW. April 19 (Interfax) - The Gazprom Neft board of directors has recommended shareholders vote at their annual meeting to accept a 2018 dividend of 30 rubles a share, including 20.05 rubles per share in interim dividends for 9M, the oil company said in a statement.
The total payout will be 142.2 billion rubles. This works out at 37.8% of net profit to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), which was 376.7 billion rubles.
The company paid 15 rubles per share for 2017, including 10 rubles per share in interim dividends for 9M.
The AGM will take place on June 14 in St Petersburg. The record date for participation is May 20. The proposed dividend record date is July 1.
This will be the company's fourth straight year of record dividends. It paid 6.47 rubles per share for 2015, 10.68 rubles per share for 2016 and 15 rubles per share for 2017. The company has boosted dividends 4.5-fold in the last four years.
Gazprom Neft's dividend policy is to pay the greater of 25% of profit to Russian Accounting Standards (RAS) or 15% of IFRS profit. However, in recent years they company has paid out 25% of IFRS profits.
Gazprom Neft's updated strategy through 2030 envisages that net profit and dividend payment volumes will grow provided that macro-indicators do not decline, the head of the company Alexander Dyukov told reporters in March. "We will do everything in our power to at least maintain the current volume of dividend payments at 35% of net profit. We can say one thing for sure, that the volume of net profit will increase. Thus, even if the volume of dividend payments will remain at the 35% level, the absolute volume of dividend payments will remain at the level of 35%, with the absolute volume of dividend payments to be paid by the company also growing," he said.
Gazprom Neft has 4,741,299,639 issued ordinary shares. Its principal shareholder is Gazprom which controls just over 95% of shares in the oil company.