“The first draft will be prepared by the company’s board of directors. I do not rule out that last year’s scenario may be repeated, when I put forward a proposal for a higher dividend payment on behalf of the government, and the general meeting then approved it,” said Stanjura. His proposal was also supported by the Minister for Regional Development Ivan Bartoš (Pirates).
According to the spokesman of the Department of Finance, Tomáš Weiss, the office will wait for the proposal of the amount of the dividend from the board of directors of ČEZ and will then consider the possibility of submitting a counter-proposal. “We cannot comment on the intentions of our shareholders, it is their business,” ČEZ spokesman Ladislav Kříž responded to Právo on Tuesday.
CEO Daniel Beneš recently announced that ČEZ could send a dividend of 44 billion crowns to the state budget thanks to a record profit exceeding 80 billion crowns.
CEZ’s dividend payout ratio now amounts to 60 to 80 percent of adjusted net profit, which reached 78.4 billion crowns last year. In the case of a payment of 80 percent of the adjusted profit, the value of the dividend from one share would be 117 crowns. Last year, the company paid 48 crowns before tax per share.
Last year, according to Česká spořitelna, the ČEZ board proposed a dividend payout ratio of 80 percent, but the Ministry of Finance increased it to 100 percent. If such an increase were to occur again, it would correspond to a dividend of CZK 146 per share.
According to Beneš, ČEZ should pay over 100 billion to the state in total this year. In addition to the dividend, it should be up to 40 billion crowns for tax on extraordinary profit and levy on excessive sales and up to 30 billion crowns for ordinary taxes.
CEZ’s net profit rose year-on-year to 81 billion last year, a record
Economic
