Astarta shareholders agree not to pay dividends from last year’s income

Astarta (WSE: AST PW) shareholders at an AGM on May 28 approved the net income for 2009 of EUR 28.91 mln or EUR 1.16 per share to be reinvested into the company and not to pay any dividends from last year’s profit. Ruslan Patlavskyy: The decision came as no surprise to us given currently high costs of borrowing for domestic agricultural producers, which make ploughed back profits one of the cheapest sources of capital. We expect Astarta to continue investing into energy usage optimization in 2010 and believe that last year’s income will highly likely be directed towards this goal.