Now that the dust has cleared from the 2003 CIRI Annual Meeting in Soldotna, I would like to express my appreciation to the CIRI shareholders for the large turnout, by proxy and in person, at the meeting. CIRI’s collective voice is a powerful one.
In my remarks this month, I would like to address a key issue on the minds of many CIRI shareholders - another large special dividend. Because the Alliance group has created such an expectation among shareholders, I want to re-emphasize what the company has said all along. From the standpoint of what is good for CIRI’s business, it is not wise to pay a special distribution at this time. There are a number of investment projects on the table right now that will require the capital CIRI has available. We need capital to meet prior commitments. We need capital as a reserve for taxes. And we need capital for new investments, both to pay current dividends and to generate growth for future dividends.

It is worth remembering that over the last few years, CIRI has paid out more than half a billion dollars to shareholders. And as we made these payments, we tried to make it very clear that it likely would be some time – if ever – before CIRI would be able to make such large payouts again. In other words, the CIRI Board of Directors and management are doing exactly what we’ve been telling people we would do: That is looking into investment opportunities that will benefit CIRI shareholders both now and in the future. And without the capital to reinvest, we simply won’t have the opportunity to pay out another large dividend.

A number of years ago, after our successful sale of television and radio stations, there were voices clamoring for a large payout. Fortunately, the Board saw fit to invest the funds rather than pay a special dividend; that investment led to the VoiceStream home run and the ability to increase regular dividends and pay a much larger special dividend.

Reinvestment was the prudent thing to do at the time from a business perspective, just as it is the prudent thing to do today. And not only that, the Board’s decision to reinvest those funds paid off well beyond anyone’s expectations. No other Native corporation has ever come close to matching CIRI’s performance and its aggregate payments in regular dividends and special distributions to its shareholders.