The period when companies announced the dividends they were going to disburse from last year’s profi t overlapped the best performance of the Bucharest Stock Exchange in the last four years, with the BET index having increased by 25% in March, while the SIFs gained more than 30% on average. The companies that announced they would disburse hefty dividends, with 15-20% yields, such as aluminium profile maker Alumil Rom Industry (ALU), aluminium producer Alro Slatina (ALR) and BRD Groupe Société Générale (BRD) have witnessed some of the highest increases on the Stock Exchange lately, while the SIFs (financial investment companies), which will get record dividends from BCR and BRD this year, have soared again.

This is the first time in the last few years when the investors on the Stock Exchange can get such high yields for their shares just from the dividends they generate. For instance, the dividends from Alumil give investors a 20% gross yield, higher than the interest rate offered by banks for one-year RON deposits. Another eight major companies, including Alro and BRD, offer dividends whose yields stand at 10 to 18%. The best yield of the dividends on the Stock Exchange last year amounted to 8% and the highest profit from dividends in 2007 was 5.2%. ”We have a situation we had not seen on the Stock Exchange for years. On the one hand, stock prices plummeted in the past year, as a result of the economic crisis, and on the other, we have issuers that posted high, even record high profits in 2008, so that net earnings per share are high compared with the share prices.

Under the circumstances, disbursing dividends, even though not that high, make it possible to get attractive yields, similar to those of the bank deposits. Considering dividends will be disbursed over the next six months, one may say that yields are even higher than those of deposits,” explains Alin Brendea, trading manager of Prime Transaction brokerage company.