The board of directors of Banco Santander will vote at the next general meeting of shareholders, scheduled for March, the approval of a complementary cash dividend of 9.50 cents per share charged to 2023, which represents an increase of approximately 50% of the dividend, up to 17.60 cents. The entity has also announced that it will buy back shares for an amount of €1,459 million.
Specifically, the new share buyback program, for which regulatory authorization has already been obtained, will begin to be implemented starting this Tuesday, February 20. And once completed, the entity will have repurchased approximately 11% of its outstanding shares since 2021.
Once the two measures announced today are completed, the total shareholder remuneration with respect to the 2023 results will reach 5,538 million euros, 50% of the group's attributable net profit. Specifically, this amount is distributed in two equal parts between cash dividend (2,769 million euros) and buyback programs (2,769 million euros). In total, this amount represents an equivalent profitability of approximately 10%.
In this sense, Santander's payout (the proportion of profits distributed to shareholders) increases from 40% to 50% of the attributed profit, in line with the new shareholder remuneration policy announced a year ago.
The entity obtained a record profit of 11,076 million in 2023, 50% more than in the previous year. An evolution that he attributed to the strong growth in income and that is in line with the good results that large banks achieved last year in a context of increasing interest rates.
The board of directors of Banco Santander will also vote at the next general meeting of shareholders on the appointments of Carlos Barrabés and Antonio Weiss as new independent directors. Barrabés and Weiss will fill the vacancies left by Bruce Carnegie-Brown, who is leaving the council, and Ramiro Mato, who has reported that he is not running for re-election.
