Rusneftegaz held our first annual general meeting since the changes to our board were instigated in February, marking the commencement of what is a new era for our organization. At the event held in Moscow on 10 April, the delegates actively debated the prospects of our firm in the years and decades ahead. Such talks are pivotal at this time, with key decisions pertaining to our future underway and set to be announced imminently. This included matters such as revising our current corporate strategy, creating a new investment plan and considering the expansion of our operations internationally. At the same time, all involved also reviewed our full consolidated financial statements for the previous twelve months, which were prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards and have been audited by a third party. This was ratified by a vote of all our stakeholders, who also opted to approve the corresponding director’s report and reappoint our auditor for this year. As to be expected, all the individuals who were nominated for directorships eight weeks ago were elected accordingly, and a ballot was similarly held to appoint a new audit committee for our fiscal reports for the next year. Conversely, a motion to authorize a dividend payment did not pass, with those against citing a desire for our enterprise to reinvest our earnings into new infrastructure in the fullness of time. This shall allow us to continue to grow and prosper and should yield even greater results at a later date. Following the yearly congress, our new Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Aleksandr Filyurin, gave these remarks:
“The board and I would like to place on record our thanks to everybody who helped us hold our annual general meeting without issue, and to be honest, I would say that it has been a great success. Since we joined, we have been mostly impressed with what we have seen so far. I have been particularly impressed with the quality of the staff here; everyone has been incredibly welcoming, and I can sense there is a desire for us to help sort everything out. Obviously, a lot of work is going to be needed to fix the problems here, but we definitely have a reasonable platform to build on. I will give you one example: although the wells that we own are small, they all have the potential to be very productive, which is exactly the position that we want to be in. Now to be fair, it is still very early days here, and it is going to be a big project, but I think that we are going to be able to turn it around. We are going to need to look at and analyze everything over the coming months and formulate a plan to see how we can improve things. It really is a mammoth task. It has obviously been a tough time for this company, but I hope that we are going to be able to draw a line under it and move forward. I am incredibly optimistic that in 2020 this company will have been completely transformed, and I am looking forward to the challenge.”
While it has evidently been a challenging period for our enterprise, our board perceives that all indicators demonstrate that our business is in robust fiscal health, with revenue being earned through a plethora of different customers. Ultimately, our corporation also managed to remain profitable, undeterred by the external economic factors of which we have no control. The long-term outlook for our oil revenues, however, will be less certain until there is a stabilization in commodity prices. By such time, our executives will have reviewed all available options for the sector and formulated a comprehensive plan accordingly. Likewise, the forecast for our petroleum operations in 2015 is not optimistic, but we have the capability and intrinsic resilience to ensure that we prosper regardless. As such, the incoming administration intends to pivot the direction of our organization away from our dependency on oil, and will instead focus more of our resources on the expansion of our power generation division to bring greater variety to our sources of income. Our management is projecting that the majority of our future growth will derive from such investments in electricity, and will commit further funds once the viability of the plan is proven. In the immediate term, this will involve an overhaul and modernization of all our existing infrastructure, before an eventual expansion of capacity and the purchase of additional plants. Sequentially, the ambition of our ownership is to expand Rusneftegaz to be one of the largest companies in both the Russian Federation and the world, and we intend to do so as soon as possible. Any queries pertaining to this subject should be submitted via the conventional channels of telephone or email, and we will send a prompt reply in due course. We necessitate your cooperation and understanding with this matter.