The Board of Directors of Kaspi.kz has proposed to shareholders not to pay dividends on ordinary shares for the year 2024.
On February 21, the fintech board decided to convene the annual general meeting of shareholders for Kaspi.kz on March 28, 2025. One of the issues to be presented to shareholders concerns the annual dividends: the board believes that there is no need to pay them "considering the previously paid quarterly dividends in 2024."
In 2024, Kaspi.kz paid its shareholders "bonuses" on ordinary shares three times: for the first, second, and third quarters—850 tenge per share. The total payout amount was not disclosed. It could have reached 508.7 billion tenge (if calculated based on the number of shares issued by the company). Meanwhile, the fintech's net profit for 2024, according to the reports, amounted to 1.06 trillion tenge—approximately 25% more than in the previous year. The reasoning behind the board's proposal not to pay annual dividends is not specified in the board's decision.
On February 24, 2025, Kaspi.kz published a statement about its consolidated financial results for the last quarter and the year 2024. In the section on dividends for the fourth quarter of 2024 and the first half of 2025, it states: “(…) since our IPO in London (in October 2020 - F), we have always stated that our priority is to ensure sustainable profitable growth in the medium term and that we will unhesitatingly direct our cash if a suitable growth opportunity arises. In Turkey, we now have a great opportunity to create a significantly larger business.” This refers to the acquisition by the Kazakh fintech of 65.41% in the Turkish marketplace Hepsiburada for $1.127 billion. The deal was closed in January 2025.
“At this time, we do not intend to pay dividends [for the fourth quarter of 2024 and the first half of 2025],” the statement notes. The company promised to “update information on the possibility of returning excess cash to shareholders in the second half of the year.”
The stakes of the main shareholders of Kaspi.kz as of January 1, 2025, are as follows. Mikhail Lomtadze, who ranked sixth in the list of the 50 most influential businessmen in Forbes Kazakhstan in 2024, owns 22.6%, while Vyacheslav Kim, second among the most influential and first among the richest businessmen in 2024, owns 21.4%. The third shareholder, Baring Funds, holds a 24.68% stake. In January 2024, shareholders sold part of their shares through an IPO on Nasdaq and raised $1 billion.