Russian energy giant Gazprom said on Tuesday its 2022 net profit fell more than 40% to 1.266 billion rubles ($15.77 billion) from 2.093 billion rubles in 2021 due to tax increases introduced in the second half of last year , Reuters and Agerpres Report.
Under these conditions, the board of directors of the Russian-controlled group decided not to pay dividends for the whole of 2022, after last fall it paid an interim dividend of 1.208 billion rubles ($15 billion) based on the results of the first half of the year. in 2022.
Immediately after this statement, the share price of Gazprom on the Moscow Stock Exchange fell by almost 4%. Last year, Western countries imposed several rounds of sanctions against Russia and companies controlled by the Russian state over the outbreak of the invasion of Ukraine.
Gazprom’s natural gas exports, an important source of the company’s revenue, were not directly affected by the sanctions, but exports were still halved to 101 billion cubic meters in 2022.
Gazprom presents the situation as a victory
Famil Sadigov, deputy general director of Gazprom, said that although interim dividends for the first half of the year have already exceeded the target level of 50% of net profit, the board of directors decided to keep dividends for the whole year at the same level. as an intermediate level of dividends.
“We did not wait for the results for a whole year, but offered shareholders the opportunity to receive a significant amount in advance. Thanks to this, the received dividends have a higher real value than the amount paid at the end of the previous year,” said Famil Sadigov.
Gazprom is the world’s largest producer of natural gas and one of the biggest contributors to Russia’s budget, which has faced record deficits due to war spending.
Russia’s federal budget ran a deficit of 3.4 trillion rubles (40.6 billion euros) between January and April, according to preliminary data released earlier in May by the Ministry of Finance in Moscow.
Over the past month, this figure has increased by 1,000 billion rubles (about 12 billion euros) from 2,400 billion rubles in the first quarter. These latest figures, released by the Russian authorities, are huge, considering that a deficit of around 2,900 billion rubles was planned for the entire year.
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Source: Hot News
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