ProsiebenSat.1 CFO says to keep dividend payout in place

FRANKFURT, Nov 17 (Reuters) - Germany's ProSiebenSat.1 plans to keep its dividend policy in place as it targets a record result in 2013 and its big financial shareholders continue to sell down their stakes in the broadcaster, its finance chief said.

"We have a clear proposition: 80-90 percent of adjusted net profit goes to the shareholders and we are sticking to that even after the exit of the financial investors," Chief Financial Officer Axel Salzmann told financial daily Boersen Zeitung in an interview.

ProsiebenSat.1 still sees itself headed for record earnings and meeting all its financial targets in 2013, Salzmann said.

Financial investors KKR and Permira bought a controlling stake in ProSiebenSat.1 in 2006 and merged it with SBS Broadcasting, a media group they had acquired a year earlier. Since then they have been exiting their investment in stages.

The two investors on Wednesday placed 35 million shares in the broadcaster, cutting their stake to 17 percent from 33 percent and sending ProsiebenSat.1's share down sharply.

Salzmann said paying down debt or making investments were not better uses for the company's net profit than the dividend. Investments could be funded out of current cash flow, he said.

Analysts on average see ProsiebenSat.1 paying a dividend of 1.46 euros per share for 2013 based on net profit of around 390 million euros, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

ProsiebenSat.1 paid a dividend of 5.63 euros per common share for 2012, which included a special dividend that allowed shareholders to profit from the sale of its operations in Scandinavia. It paid a dividend of 1.15 per share for 2011.