Petrobras shareholders have threatened the company with the requirement of payment of extraordinary dividends, a specific type of dividend (profit paid to shareholders of a company) paid by the state under specific conditions. The Petrobras Engineers Association (AEPET) has denounced that the payment of required dividends can “compromise the future result” and that the current company's shareholder remuneration policy is “unsustainable”.
What happened?
Last week, the Petrobras board announced that it would not pay the extraordinary dividends to shareholders, but would normally make the payment of minimum dividends. The payment was made in the amount of R $ 14.2 billion.
Even so, the tycoons who live from the dividends have risen against the board in a leech riot. Shareholders threatened to sell their shares as a way to press the company's summit, and the state -owned company lost R $ 55.3 billion in the fictitious “market value” (based on the total sum of the company's common shares).
The government, being the company's largest shareholder, was also attacked by the Magnatas and its representatives in the “intervention in the company” press monopoly, especially after denying a half-term proposal from Petrobras's board of directors to pay half of the extraordinary dividends .
‘Future Harmful’
In this scenario, Petrobras engineers organized at AEPET denounced the current compensation policy of shareholders and the possible consequences of the payment of dividends to leeches.
In article entitled “ Petrobras direction maintains low investments and unsustainably high dividends by 2023 ”, AEPET President Felipe Coutinho explained that the dividends paid are currently far above the company's investments. This is only possible because of the investments of the past, not the current ones.
“In 2021 and 2022 the average ratio between paid dividends and net investment was 804%, in the consolidated result of 2023 was 232.63%, while between 2005 and 2020 it was 12.7%, in average terms. That is, the relationship between dividend payment and net investment in 2023 was 18 times higher compared to the average from 2005 to 2020, ”explains Coutinho. He concludes: “It is evident that raising the distribution of dividends over investments will compromise the future result.”
‘Unsustainable dividends’
For Coutinho, there is a problem in the shareholders' own compensation policy. Petrobras is the integrated oil company that most pays dividends to shareholders worldwide, and this is kept in times of low revenue.
“The relationship between paid dividends and liquid investments demonstrates, in a fullest way, how the policies of Petrobras' high direction are discrepant in relation to the management of large world oil companies. Petrobras' relationship was 4.2 times higher than the average oil officer, ”he says.
This remuneration policy designed to grant vampires of the nation, survivors of income resulting from the exploitation of national wealth for foreign interests, leads to an unsustainable framework in the company.
The measure is so severe that it can even compromise reserves replacement, maintenance of production and add value to Petrobras oil value. This is because it is only possible to maintain such a high payment of dividends with the very reduction in investments in activities such as oil production.
“In analyzing the history of Petrobras and the results of large international oil companies, it is evident that dividends that have been paid by the state's high direction since 2021 are performed to the detriment of liquid investments and, therefore, among other factors, are unsustainable . Under the direction of the Lula administration and the management of Prates, nothing has changed so far, ”concludes Coutinho.