Nornickel shareholders approve 2016 dividends at 446.1 rubles per share
MOSCOW. June 9 (Interfax) - Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel) shareholders approved a decision to pay final dividends for 2016 at 446.1 rubles per share at the annual meeting on Friday, an Interfax correspondent reports.
The total payment is 70.6 billion rubles or around $1.2 billion.
Nornickel had already paid shareholders 444.25 rubles per share for 9M 2016 at a total of around $1.1 billion.
Total dividends in 2016 thus amount to 890 rubles per share - 140.9 billion rubles in total. This corresponds to a dividend yield of 10%, former Nornickel vice-president Andrei Bugrov, chairing the meeting, said.
The dividend record date is June 23.
Payments for 2016 were possible due to changes in the dividend policy in April of last year. The size of dividends is calculated on the basis of the net debt/EBITDA ratio. If this figure is lower than 1.8x, then dividends will amount to 60% of EBITDA. If the figure is more than 2.2x, then 30% of EBITDA. The share of EBITDA in the range of 30% and 60% will be calculated inversely to the coefficient, if the level of net debt to EBITDA is between 1.8x and 2.2x. Dividends are now paid out twice: interim dividends for 9M and final dividends. Interim dividends amount to at least 30% of total dividends.
Vladimir Potanin's Interros holds 30.3% of Norilsk Nickel's shares and Rusal owns 27.8%. Around 6.3% is held by Evraz co-owners Roman Abramovich, Alexander Abramov and Alexander Frolov.
The shareholders also elected a new board of 13 directors, endorsing all 13 candidates nominated.
The quorum is 74% of all shareholders. The register of shareholders entitled to vote closed on May 16.
There was only one change to the board, namely the Rostec representative, who is usually nominated by Alisher Usmanov's Metalloinvest: Sergei Korobov, former head of RT - Business Development, was replaced on the board by Sergei Skvortsov, advisor to the head of Rostec, who served on the Nornickel board two years ago,
The board will be again be chaired by Gareth Penny, a former head of De Beers and now chairman of New World Resources Plc and Pangolin Diamonds. He was nominated by Vladimir Potanin's Interros.