Zentiva to disburse record dividends of 30m euros

Drug producer Zentiva București (SCD) will pay out dividends worth a total of 125 million lei (nearly 30 million euros) from the profits of the last few years, the first amounts that the company is distributing to its shareholders since the 1999 privatisation.

Drug producer Zentiva București (SCD), currently controlled by French group Sanofi Aventis, proposes to the shareholders the distribution of a gross dividend of 0.1376 lei/share from the reserves set up from last year’s net profit and an additional dividend of 0.1622 lei/share from the reserves set up from previous years’ profits, according to the notice to attend the General Meeting of Shareholders published on the Stock Exchange.

The overall gross dividend should therefore amount to nearly 0.3 lei/share, i.e. 30% of the price at which SCD shares closed on Thursday’s Stock Exchange session, 0.991 lei. On Friday, after the publication of the notice to attend, SCD shares surged nearly 15% on the Stock Exchange, the maximum allowed during a session, ending at 1.139 lei/share. At this price, the dividend yield is around 26%.

The overall value of the dividends proposed by the pharmaceutical company amounts to 125 million lei (nearly 30 million euros), close to the value of dividends to be distributed this year by BRD, the second biggest bank on the Romanian market, and three times higher than the dividends disbursed by any of the SIFs (Financial Investment Companies).