Estonian passenger ferry operator Tallink announced yesterday that it will pay out to shareholders almost EUR 33.5 million in dividends. This is the highest-ever dividend payment by a company listed on the Tallinn Stock Exchange, writes Äripäev.
The amount of dividends – 5 cents a share - that must first be approved by the shareholders at the general meeting of shareholders on May 14 came as a surprise for many analysts, most of whom expected the dividend to remain at 3 cents a share.
Infortar that is a holding company owned by Enn Pant, Kalev Järvelill and Ain Hanschmidt will earn EUR 12.06 million in dividends. Tallink’s largest private owner Enn Pant will in addition earn 0.4m euros in dividends.
Second largest shareholder Baltic Cruises Holding L.P will earn EUR 5.87 million.
Commenting the reasons behind the dividend proposal, Enn Pant, board member of Tallink says that last year was very good for Tallink and the first year when results were in line with expectations.
Pant said that there were practically no bad surprises during the year and the company even survived June and July when weather was poor and the number of passengers dropped notably.
Janek Stalmeister, another board member of Tallink, said that poor summer weather meant that the company had to adopt aggressive approach and make attractive price offers to customer.
This means that the company was unable to increase its average ticket price as much as it planned, but managed to increase income from stores and restaurants.
Pant also said that this signals a new era because while Tallink starts to pay dividends to shareholders, its main rival Viking Line announced that it will pay no dividends for the first time in 20 years.
Pant added that the Tallink fleet is now complete and the management will be focusing on investments into increasing the quality of services and customer satisfaction.
“We have become the largest passenger ferry group on the Baltic Sea and plan no major investments in new fleet in the new few years. This has brought down our loan burden and enabled shareholders to pay dividends,” explained Pant.
“We have 9 million passengers and it is clear that we cannot increase the number much further. Therefore, our objective is to increase the company’s efficiency,” said Stalmeister.
Toomas Hõbemägi
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