Romanian oil & gas company OMV Petrom (BVB ticker: SNP) will start paying dividends to shareholders from last year’s profit on June 5, 2014, according to a company announcement on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB).

The company will distribute total dividends worth EUR 395 million which is 36 percent of the net profit it made last year, which was more than EUR 1 billion. This was the largest profit ever for OMV Petrom, and the largest profit ever posted by a Romanian company.

Petrom’s largest shareholder is Austrian group OMV, which owns a 51 percent majority stake and will get dividends totaling a little over EUR 200 million. The Romanian state still holds a 20.64 percent stake in the company, for which it will get EUR 81.5 million worth of dividends, while Romanian investment fund Fondul Proprietatea has 19 percent of Petrom’s shares and will get EUR 75 million. The rest of the money, which is some EUR 38 million will be split between other minority shareholders of Petrom.

The company commissioned BRD, Romania’s second largest bank by assets, for dividend payments and will support the distribution costs.

The gross dividend per share is RON 0.0308, which is some 0.7 eurocents. The dividend yield, taking into account the closing share price for 2013, is 6.5 percent. Currently, the share price is RON 0.428 per share (on Monday, May 26 closing), which is 8.8 percent lower than at the end of last year.

OMV Petrom has a market capitalization of EUR 5.5 billion, which makes it the most valuable company in Romania.

Andrei Chirileasa, andrei@romania-insider.com