Tauron, a Polish company, aims to restart dividends with a new 10-year strategic plan
Tauron, Poland's largest energy utility, plans to pay dividends again from 2029, under a 10-year strategy that runs until 2035.
The group stopped paying dividends in 2015, based on the profit of 2014. It then focused on investing.
The company said it now plans to pay out a dividend per share of 0.5 zlotys from the profit in 2028 and increase it by 6% per year until 2035 when it will reach 0.7 zlotys.
At 0831 GMT, shares of the company had risen 5.5% and were among the top gainers on the MWIG40 mid-cap index in Poland.
Tauron also targets a profit before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation of 13 billion zlotys (3.20 billion dollars) by 2035. This is more than double the 6.1 billion in 2023.
The company has also announced plans to decommission all coal-fired plants by 2030, except for the 910 MW unit at Jaworzno. This move comes in response to the declining profitability of its coal-fired generation fleet.
The cost of carbon emissions rights and the increasing proportion of electricity produced from renewable sources have put pressure on this.
The previous government first considered the coal asset spin-off, with the intention of combining the assets into a state-owned corporation. However, the plan was scrapped in the last year, and an alternative scenario has yet to be proposed.
Tauron plans to increase its capital expenditure between 2024-2035 to 100 billion Zlotys, with 60% of that amount going to the development and modernisation of its distribution infrastructure while 30% goes to renewable energy and electricity storage.
(source: Reuters)
