MADRID: Spanish oil company Repsol said it would cut its dividend by around 20 percent after posting its first annual loss, aiming to protect its investment grade credit rating after a plunge in oil prices.

Europe’s fifth-biggest oil company, which met ratings agencies this week, also said it had not made any decision to sell down a 30 percent stake in Gas Natural, contradicting a press report, and suggested such a move was not among its priorities.

The group reported a 1.23 billion euro ($1.4 billion) net loss for 2015 as weak oil and gas prices forced it to write down the value of assets.

It said it would pay as a result a complementary dividend of 0.3 euro per share instead of the 0.5 euro previously flagged.

This is in addition to a 0.466 euro payment made in January, making a total payout to shareholders for 2015 of around 0.77 euro per share versus 0.96 euro in the three previous years.

It is the third time in less than six months that Repsol has taken steps to prop up its finances and protect its credit rating.

In October, it said it would sell assets worth 6.2 billion euros and cut spending on exploration and production investments by 40 percent over the next four years.

A further drop in oil prices forced the group to go further in January and announce a new cut in capital expenditure to around 4 billion euros in 2016, as well as new asset sales.

“We feel confident that we’ve committed more than enough to keep our investment grade,” CEO Josu Jon Imaz said.

“We assume that perhaps we will need to take additional measures, we’re ready to do that and we have assets in our hands to go further but we will take reasonable decisions not to destroy value for the company,” he added.

Imaz’s comments were a hint that selling down the stake in Gas Natural is currently not the preferred option.

The stake boosts annual profits by around 450 million euros, generates about 270 million euros of cash from dividends and is seen as a key safety net in bad times.

Denying a report in Expansion newspaper, Imaz said Repsol’s board had not made any decision on cutting the stake.