Ahtna dividends reach $16.50 a share for 2026 as its turnaround continues

Ahtna shareholders will start getting a $9-a-share dividend this month, the Glennallen-based Alaska Native regional corporation announced Nov. 3.

That brings this year's payouts to $16.50 a share, up from $10.60 in 2025. Last fall, the dividend fell to $1, and the company blamed "management and contract challenges" at Ahtna Netiye' and several of its subsidiaries. A $3.60 special dividend followed in December. In 2024, Ahtna paid $15.30 a share.

All of Ahtna's shareholder dividends come from the Ahtna Hwt'aene Trust, which the board created in 2014. Its trustees are Ahtna's directors. The $7.50 spring dividend was paid entirely from the trust's investment earnings, the company said in May. The fall announcement doesn't say what funded the $9.

The company has spent the past year in a turnaround that its CEO says isn't finished. The board brought in Paul Fioravanti, a turnaround specialist, as interim CEO in September 2025 and made him CEO May 1. In a letter to shareholders published in September, he wrote that government shutdowns, delayed awards and Small Business Administration activity had pushed significant expected contract work later than planned.

Through midsummer, Fioravanti wrote, Ahtna had positive EBITDA, a measure of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, but pre-tax income was "slightly negative." He called the improvement from the year before "meaningful" and said the company extended the maturity of its line of credit for more flexibility during a year of delayed awards. "No one should read this message as a declaration of victory," he wrote.

This spring, Fioravanti described consolidating subsidiaries and said Ahtna hoped to sell Ahtna Marine & Construction Co., a dredging and marine construction company based in Boynton Beach, Fla., and was talking with interested parties. No sale has been announced. In September, Ahtna named a new general manager for the company.

Leadership has changed, too. President Michelle Anderson, who had been with the corporation more than 15 years, stepped down July 2, and the board named former Senior Vice President Kathryn Martin interim president. Shareholders elected two new directors June 6, and the board chose Linda Pete as chair.

Elders, original shareholders 62 and older, will get a fourth $1,000 payment this year, for $4,000 each. Ahtna calls this year's $1.2 million in Elder payments "the largest annual amount ever distributed," the same description it used for the same total in 2025. Direct deposits go out Nov. 20 and checks Dec. 4. Both payments are non-taxable, the company says.