The financial director of the Czech utilities group CEZ, Martin Novak, said on Tuesday that the group continues its strategy of selling operations to exit most foreign markets and further intends to complete the sale of assets in Romania by the end of this year, even though the declaration of the state of emergency caused some delays, Reuters reports.

Martin Novak also said that the CEZ group will decide what to do with the amounts resulting from these sales after receiving the money. Last year, the company reported that the funds could go towards debt reduction, investments in the Czech market or an additional dividend for shareholders.
“This extraordinary dividend is one of the options, but we have many other options,” Novak said, according to Agerpres.

CEZ announced last summer that it wants to sell its operations in Romania and other countries, in order to focus on the activity in the mother country, the Czech Republic.

“The sales process and negotiations with bidders continue. The final schedule including the deadline for submission of binding offers will be set according to the evolution of the situation in Romania,” the CEZ group said in the financial report published on the company’s website.

CEZ included in the market testing seven Romanian companies (Distributie Energie Oltenia, Ovidiu Development, Tomis Team, MW Team Invest, CEZ Vânzare, TMK Hydroenergy Power and CEZ Romania). The market interest testing is performed exclusively for CEZ by the investment bank Societe Generale.