The Board of Directors of Severstal, 77.03% of which belongs to Alexei Mordashov, recommended that the company's shareholders approve dividends for the second quarter of 2018 at a rate of 45.94 rubles per share. The shareholders' meeting should be held on September 14.

If the proposal of the board of directors is encouraged, then taking into account the payments for the first quarter (38.32 rubles), the total dividends for the half year are 84.26 rubles per share, which is 80% more than in 2017, when Severstal shareholders received 46 , 72 rubles per one paper. In total, 70.6 billion rubles will be allocated to pay dividends for the half-year, of which 54.4 billion rubles will be received by the main shareholder. Taking into account the current dollar exchange rate and the exchange rate at the date of dividend payment for the first quarter, this corresponds to approximately $ 806 million.

Severstal itself owns 2.67% of treasury shares through the controlled companies, another 20.3% of shares are in free circulation.

In April, the board of directors of Severstal approved a new dividend policy. It implies a transition to the payment of dividends, the average amount of which will be equivalent to 100% of free cash flow for the year. But if the net debt / EBITDA ratio exceeds the value of 1, the dividend amount is reduced to 50% of the free cash flow for the quarter until the coefficient value again reaches 1 or lower.

Free cash flow of the company in the second quarter of this year exceeded the results of the first one by more than two times and reached $ 598 million. At the same time, the net profit taking into account the exchange loss of $ 56 million was $ 557 million, which is $ 96 million more than in January-March . Despite the growth of financial performance, the company's production volumes in the second quarter decreased. Thus, the output of pig iron fell by 4% compared to the first quarter, to 2.26 million tonnes. The output of steel fell a little less - by 1%, to 3 million tons.

At the beginning of the year, another company, Mordashova, Power Machines, which was involved in the supply of Siemens turbines to the Crimea, fell under the sanctions of the US Treasury. The inclusion of the billionaire in this list is explained by the fact that she is a minority shareholder of the Siemens Gas Turbine Technology Plant, which supplied four gas turbine units to the Crimea. In May, the businessman asked the Russian government for 7.5 billion rubles to build a Russian gas turbine.