Page 48 - RusRPTAug21

4.3.2 Corporate profits dynamics
Russian corporate profits were up to RUB7.3 trillion ($97.6bn) over the first fourth months of this year, the best result in five years. While economic growth is returning this year after last year’s crisis, company profitability has bounced back much more strongly than in previous crises.
In month-on-month terms profits in April were RUB2.3 trillion, more than double the RUB939bn earned last year and not quite double the RUB1.6 trillion companies earned in 2019, the first year of strong growth post the 2014 crisis.
Many of Russia’s blue chip companies are earning record amounts of profits that they are passing on to their shareholders in the form of high dividends and this trend is expected to continue through to next summer when this year’s profits will be paid out as next year’s dividends.
According to a research conducted by the FinExpertiza worldwide audit and consulting network based on data from the Russian Federal Tax Service, the number of closed individual enterprises (IE) in Russia nearly doubled in the first half of 2021 compared to the same time last year. According to the analysts, 545,800 individual companies were closed down in Russia in the first six months of 2021, about twice as many as in the first half of the 2020 COVID-19 year. The number of shuttered individual companies in Russia hit an eight-year high, surpassing the previous peak set just in January-June 2013. Individual enterprises that have come to a standstill have increased in all regions during the previous six months. Chechen companies were less sustainable, as were those in Russia’s North Caucasus (the number
48 RUSSIA Country Report August 2021 www.intellinews.com