Page 78 - bne IntelliNews Country Report: Russia Dec17

energy holding and prior to that Russian shoe maker Obuv Rossii also held a successful IPO in Moscow raising $105mn in the process. Next year investment banks speculate there will be more than a dozen IPOs and SPOs.
And while the index’s performance has been lackadaisical at a corporate level some stocks have been flying. The crisis of the last few years has been a mixed blessing; it has benefited the biggest and cash-rich companies that have consolidated their position in the market at the expense of their weaker rivals and seen their share prices soar as a result.
Many of these better off companies have been sharing their windfalls with their investors and returning profits via generous dividend payments. And Russia continues to pay some of the best dividends in the world. The MSCI Russia index was trading with an average dividend yield of 5% as of the start of November -- more than double the mere 2.3% for the broader MSCI EM index.
The steel sector has been doing particularly well t his year thanks to rising prices and Novolipetsk Meatllurgical Kombinat (NLMK) is expected to pay one of the highest dividend yields in the market of 10% of profits over the next 12 months, according to BCS.
Even companies that have had a tough quarter like Aeroflot, long an investors’ darling, are still paying hansom dividend yields even if their results are weaker. Aeroflot just put in weak third quarter results, but even though its dividend yield will fall, it will fall from a heady 9% to 8% over the next year, say analysts.
Looking through the list of companies expected to pay more than 5% dividend yields over the next 12 months the other class of company that jumps out is the number of utilities , lead by Enel Russia. This is probably going to be the story for next year as many of the utilities have finished their capex programmes and so are sending more of their profits to shareholders as a result.
Russian 12 month dividend expectations >5%
Stock Price, RUB/s 12MF DY
Enel Russia 1.3 11.2%
Severstal 911 10.9%
Rostelecom pref. 53 9.7%
Norilsk Nickel (DR) 1,126 9.6%
NLMK 134 9.5%
AFK Sistema* 13.1 9.1%*
MTS 288 9.0%
Federal Grid Co. 0.16 8.7%
Aeroflot 165 <8.0%
78 RUSSIA Country Report December 2017 www.intellinews.com