Transneft may include 1.5 bln rbl divs from units into 2019 divs

MOSCOW, Sep 5 (PRIME) -- Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft has received 3 billion rubles of dividends from subsidiaries, and iwants to include 1.5 billion rubles of the sum into its final dividends for 2019, First Vice President Maxim Grishanin said on Thursday in a conference call.

“There was discussion about interim dividends for 2019. A government’s decision…said that if we receive dividends for 2018 in 2019 from our subsidiaries in which Transneft doesn’t have a controlling stake, we have to pay 50% of these dividends additionally,” he said.

“As of today, we received about 3 billion rubles, so we have to pay 1.5 billion rubles. We suggested to the government that we add this sum to the dividends that we will pay in 2020 for 2019.”

Transneft is still considering a share split. “We have to receive opinions of foreign countries’ regulators because we are under sanctions on the one side, and pressured from foreign shareholders on the other side,” he said.

“I would like to say that we already started work on splitting our futures contract, we are doing that together with the bourse. I think that this work will be done soon,” he said.

He also said that the company will reflect reserves for payment of compensations over the Druzhba pipeline incident in its financial report for January–September. In the report for January–June, the company included a provisional reserve for that.

“Why was that provisional? It was done because we are currently unable to evaluate the amount of payments that we will make because we have not received a single formal complaint. So, we plan to create the reserve and reflect it in the report for the nine months of 2019,” Grishanin said.

The Russian government owns 100% of Transneft’s common shares, or 78.55% of the company’s shareholder equity.

(66.5002 rubles – U.S. $1)

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