NCSP to mull formalizing payment of 50% of net profit in dividends

NOVOROSSIYSK, Jun 14 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port will consider amending its dividend policy formalizing payments of 50% of its net profit in dividends, Rashid Sharipov, vice president of oil pipeline monopoly Transneft and a member of NCSP’s board of directors, told reporters on Friday.

“We will look into it now…They are to approve the strategy…and after that we will be able to see whether we can pay 50%. I think that we will be able to do it. But formalization of that is a matter of preference,” he said.

The shareholders of NCSP approved payment of 9.63 billion rubles in final dividends for 2018, and Sharipov said that the sale of Novorossiysk Grain Terminal to Russia’s second largest bank VTB made that payment possible.

“The 10 billion rubles that we are to pay now is the cash that we received from VTB, it’s one third of that cash. The initial plan was for us to pay 3 billion rubles,” he said.

But the cargo traffic of NCSP may fall in 2019 due to the sale of Novorossiysk Grain Terminal. “The cargo traffic will fall. If we (don’t take the sale into account), it will at least remain flat on the year, or it may even grow. The first three months were very good,” he said.

NCSP closed the 35.5 billion ruble sale of Novorossiysk Grain Terminal to VTB in late April.

(64.6314 rubles – U.S. $1)

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