Russia’s MTS board to discuss new divs policy, strategy on Apr 8

MOSCOW, Apr 1 (PRIME) -- The board of directors of Russian mobile operator MTS will consider a new dividend policy, recommendations on payments to stockholders, a strategy for 2016–2018 and changes the organizational structure on April 8, the operator said late Thursday in a statement.

MTS’s dividend policy for 2013–2015 was adopted in 2013 and stipulates a minimum amount of payments as the largest of the two amounts: at least 75% of free cash flow for the fiscal year to date under the U.S. GAAP standard or 40 billion rubles per year.

Vice President for finance Alexei Kornya said that MTS wants to keep a steady yield for shareholders.

MTS paid shareholders 52 billion rubles in total in 2015; 51.2 billion rubles in 2014; and 41 billion rubles in 2013.

Multi-industry holding Sistema owns 51.46% in MTS’s capital, while 44.79% are in free float.

The board will also discuss the current transformation of MTS’s macro-regional units.

“The company launched this process in late 2011. All regions of MTS’s presence were then ‘conceptually-united’ in several clusters depending on a region’s economy, competition level, business development and its potential,” MTS’s press secretary Dmitry Solodovnikov said.

The operator will accomplish in 2016 its shift to a “cluster” structure of management and abandon a macro-regional model, which unites regions of presence by a geographical location.

(67.8552 rubles – U.S. $1)

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