The Ministry of Finance (MoF) has sent a counterproposal to ČEZ to pay this year’s dividend. The dividend amount will be decided on June 28th at the general meeting. The MoF will publish the details of the counterproposal on Monday at 14:00.
ČEZ presented the proposal for the dividend payment on March 15th. It proposes to pay CZK 44 per share to shareholders. The state would thus receive just over CZK 16 billion. The Ministry of Finance was initially supposed to respect this proposal, expecting a higher dividend next year.
However, some analysts believe that the state, which owns 70% of ČEZ and is thus the company’s largest shareholder, should receive a more significant dividend. The company expects big profits due to high energy prices. The money from the higher dividend could then be used to help households and businesses significantly affected by rising energy prices.
A prominent critic of ČEZ’s proposed dividend is, for example, its minority shareholder Michal Šnobr. “The company’s ability to pay a dividend is not only about the company’s profit for the previous financial year, but it is a complex of many criteria, including the outlook for the next years, which is more or less determined by the guaranteed energy prices for the next years,” Šnobr said in his comments to Fio Bank.
It proposes a dividend of CZK 58 per share. “It would be a justified, reasonable dividend acceptable to all. In the final analysis, it would be about ten percent higher than last year (52 crowns). It would certainly better correspond to the current situation of ČEZ when it benefits from the record growth of electricity prices. On the contrary, the proposed 44 crowns is a 15 percent lower dividend than last year,” he added.