MAIB SHAREHOLDERS MEETING POSTPONES 2017 DIVIDEND PAYMENT

The Moldova Agroindbank will pay to shareholders dividends for 2017, but for this you need patience, said MAIB Chairman of the Board Sergiu Cebotari to bank owners.

At the Thursday's annual shareholders meeting, he explained that the National Bank of Moldova (NBM) gave a negative reply to the MAIB's address concerning the payment of dividends worth 180 lei per share. Meanwhile, the 2017 profit accounted for 460 million lei.

"The MAIB leadership proposed to direct 186,774,120 lei to payment of dividends", Cebotari said.

He explained that the dividend payment depends much on the selling of two packages of shares totaling 41.09%.

Cebotari proposed to shareholders to direct 461.7 million lei of the 2017 profit to bank development and postpone the issue on dividend payments for a term of up to 6 months. The meeting unanimously voted for these decisions.

The bank head reminded that the MAIB took a similar decision a year ago, when the regulator did not recommend the bank to pay dividend due to the same blocked package of shares. Later, however, the bank managed to pay dividends worth 84 lei per share with nominal value of 200 lei to over 3097 bank shareholders.

Answering to questions about the situation with selling the 41.09% package, Cebotari said that this asset may be sold as a single package on public market to investors.

The shareholders meeting approved the bank development strategy until 2019, implying a profit of 470 million lei in 2018 to pay dividends and capitalize the bank. According to the document, 30-50% of profit is planned to direct to dividend payment, while 50-70% - to bank development.

Shareholders unanimously voted for the 2017 financial results. Presenting the report on bank achievements, its Chairman pointed that the bank not just preserved its leading positions on the market, but managed to considerably multiply MAIB shares in its main fields of activity.

"For example the share of bank profit exceeded 30%, credits - 34%. The bank credit portfolio grew by over 2%, when its rate in country banking system kept falling - 2.6%", Cebotari said.

In 2017, the MAIB return on equity accounted for 13.2%, while return on assets - 2.1%.

"Together we managed to lower the bad credit rate to 11.6% in 2017, when in general in the country banking system it was of 18.4%", Cebotari said, adding that in 1Q2018 this rate in MAIB fell even more.

The bank lowered discounts on loan losses, directing the capital to the risk fund, bringing its size to 10.8%, when in the country banking system this rate is of 14.8%.

Infotag's dossier: MAIB finished the 2017 with a capital of 3.6 billion lei, assets of 21.4 billion lei, holding leading positions on the market. The balance cost of its shares exceeds 3600 lei. On the market its shares are bargained at the price of 1300-1400 lei. In recent years, the MAIB was regularly paying dividends. Their maximum sum reached 160 lei per a share with nominal value of 200 lei. The historical maximum of bank share price was registered at 2135 lei.