An Aramco official: We plan to raise dividends

Ziad Al-Marshed, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Aramco, said that the company plans to increase debt and will focus on achieving value and growing dividends

Noting in an interview with Bloomberg News Agency that the company has increased its cash dividends by 4% in each of the past two years, and now pays more than $81 billion in basic dividends.

He added: “We look forward to the distributions being progressive over the years,” stressing that the company’s free cash flow covers that.

On November 7, Aramco announced the distribution of basic dividends to shareholders for the third quarter of 2023, in line with the company’s dividend distribution policy, which aims to distribute sustainable and increasing dividends, with the total amount distributed amounting to 110.18 billion riyals, including: basic dividends of 73.16 billion riyals, and performance-related dividends of 37.02 billion riyals.

The number of shares entitled to dividends amounted to 241.95 billion shares. The share of each share from the total distributed amount was 0.4554 riyals per share, including: basic dividends, with a share of 0.3024 riyals, and performance-related dividends, with a share of 0.1530 riyals.