The company stopped at minimum dividends

Irkutskenergo, controlled by Oleg Deripaska’s structures, will still not pay record dividends. Shareholders will divide among themselves only a quarter of the net profit for 2014 - 2.53 billion rubles. Inter RAO, which owns 40% of the shares of the Irkutsk energy company, proposed to give the entire net profit to shareholders - 10 billion rubles, but Eurosibenergo did not find understanding.

Photo: Evgeny Kurskov, Kommersant / buy photo

On June 1, at the annual meeting, Irkutskenergo shareholders chose the minimum amount of dividend payments from four proposed options. The company will pay only 0.53 rubles. per share, total payments will amount to RUB 2.53 billion. For the consideration of shareholders, the board of directors also presented three more generous options for profit distribution: 1.05 rubles. per share (total 5 billion rubles), 1.58 rubles. per share (total 7.53 billion rubles) and 2.1 rubles. per share (RUB 10 billion). However, the most modest one was chosen. Oleg Deripaska's Eurosibenergo (the main shareholder of Irkutskenergo, owns 50.19% of the shares) refrained from commenting.

Oleg Deripaska is ready to share En+

“This is a completely adequate amount for today,” said Andrei Likhachev, chairman of the company’s board of directors, at the shareholders’ meeting. “Many companies in the Russian Federation do not strive to break records for dividend payments this year for obvious reasons” (which, however, is not always the case, while reducing investment plans, many companies, on the contrary, maximized dividend payments to record levels. —Kommersant ). “Society needs liquidity,” Mr. Likhachev added, “to remain resilient, to be able to respond to future challenges.” It is unclear what challenges we are talking about: Irkutskenergo does not yet have any major energy projects.

The net profit of Irkutskenergo for 2014 according to RAS is 10.06 billion rubles. By law, the company has no right to pay more than this if it does not have retained earnings from previous years. But Irkutskenergo has the latter: according to the company’s report, at the end of 2014 it amounted to 48.44 billion rubles. The generosity of dividend payments is a guarantee of calm coexistence between Eurosibenergo and the state-owned Inter RAO, which owns 40% of Irkutskenergo shares. Inter RAO has repeatedly clashed with Eurosibenergo over low dividends and Irkutskenergo's expenses on non-core assets, but it has almost never been possible to block decisions.

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A Kommersant source familiar with the voting process reported that Inter RAO voted for the maximum dividend option. The holding does not comment on the information. On Friday, Inter RAO board member Ilnar Mirsiyapov said that it was Inter RAO that proposed the maximum option, and expressed hope “that the trend of increasing dividend payments by colleagues will continue to be shared.”

But the minimum payments also exceed the volume of dividends last year by 29%: at the end of 2013, Irkutskenergo paid 0.41 rubles. per share. The same amount as now, that is, 0.53 rubles. per share, Irkutskenergo paid based on the results of 2012 - this was a record level of dividends.

Natalya Skorlygina

Irkutskenergo decided not to break records