Dividend policy of listed, state-owned enterprises from the power sector

Design/methodology/approach: Analysis of the literature on the dividend policy of companies and its impact on the company's value.Analysis and assessment of selected financial and nonfinancial indicators of the companies in 2019-2023 from the point of view of the justification for withholding dividend payments in these years.Findings: The analysis of selected financial and non-financial indicators showed that the analysed 4 Polish companies could and should have paid dividends in the analysed years, and not allocated retained profits to unprofitable investments.In addition, a comparison of the values of these companies' indicators with the indicators of the German company selected for comparative analysis, whose significant shareholder is the German federal state, showed that it is necessary to improve the ownership supervision over them.Research limitation/implications: Differences in the reporting rules for calculating some indicators, e.g.net debt may cause slight differences in the values of the calculated indicators, and thus limit their comparability between companies.The analysis is useful for all stakeholders of state-owned enterprises, especially politicians who are responsible for corporate governance.Originality/value: The decision of the majority or dominant shareholder, i.e. the State Treasury, not to pay dividends required the assessment of the dividend policy of the State Treasury from the point of view of minority shareholders.In turn, the comparison of financial and non-financial indicators of the 4 Polish SOEs with the German SOE selected for comparative analysis allowed for the assessment of their performance and thus the assessment of corporate governance exercised by politicians.