| The state will not sell Rosneft shares until the end of next year Minister of Economic Development German Gref said yesterday that shares of the state company Rosneft will not be sold until at least the middle of next year: “We are planning an IPO next year. Most likely at the end of the year, in the third or fourth quarter,” he said. In addition, Mr. Gref noted that there is already a pool of foreign banks ready to provide a loan to the Rosneftegaz company, which owns Rosneft and 10.7% of Gazprom shares, to purchase these shares for 203.5 billion rubles. and Russian banks are not included in it. Thus, it can be argued that Rosneftegaz will partially repay this loan at the expense of Gazprom and Rosneft, or more precisely through dividends. It is possible that by that time there will no longer be a need to sell Rosneft shares: within a year, Rosneftegaz can find a comparable amount from its oil company.
Gazprom’s subsidiaries, as you know, recently transferred 10.7% of the concern’s shares to Rosneftegaz. Payment, as Gazprom reported, should take place in three tranches: the first within a month after the transfer, the third before the end of this year. The volume of trenches has not yet been reported. However, German Gref said yesterday: “It makes no sense to borrow money in advance (since these are paid funds. - Ed. ).” Thus, he made it clear that most likely Rosneftegaz will repay the first tranche with its own funds, which it can only take from Rosneft, for example, in the form of dividends for last year, which amounted to 1.755 billion rubles.
According to the market, Rosneftegaz will attract a loan of $7 billion from a pool of banks led by ABN Amro (the vice-president of whose Russian division, Sergei Alekseev, became the first vice-president of Rosneft last year). The collateral, as Mr. Gref previously said, will be the assets of Rosneftegaz. Moreover, the higher the dollar exchange rate against the ruble, the lower the loan amount (if it is in dollars). Banks, it seems, are no longer afraid of the fact that the “great-granddaughter” of Rosneftegaz is Yuganskneftegaz, which was sold last year for Yukos debts.
The scheme of the deal, announced in May by the Ministry of Economic Development, states that the loan to Rosneftegaz will be repaid through an open placement of shares (non-controlling stake) of Rosneft. However, already at that stage, some experts expressed doubts that it would come to the sale of shares. It is quite possible that the loan will be repaid using Rosneftegaz’s internal funds, i.e. "Rosneft". The state oil company has started a multibillion-dollar lawsuit with Yukos (Yuganskneftegaz is the plaintiff) and has already won 68.5 billion rubles. ($2.4 billion).
In addition, Rosimushchestvo obliged companies whose controlling stake belongs to the state (which now includes Gazprom) to allocate at least 10% of their profits to dividends (and the volume of payments cannot be lower than last year). Based on the dividends paid for 2004, Rosneftegaz can count on 1.755 billion rubles next year. from Rosneft shares and by 3.02 billion rubles. from Gazprom shares. Those. total (including Rosneft dividends for last year) - 6.5 billion rubles. This, of course, is not much - only 3% of the value of 10.7% of Gazprom shares - but for Rosneft, burdened with huge debts, even this amount is quite important. However, investment company analysts do not rule out that the gas monopoly will reduce profits at the end of this year (but by no more than 16%) and, as a consequence, payments to shareholders. At best, they believe, these indicators will remain at last year's level. But nothing prevents the state from achieving an increase in payments.
Another aspect that affects the financial position of Rosneft is cooperation with Chinese companies. As the head of the Russian-Chinese center for trade and economic cooperation, Sergei Sanakoev, told Vremya Novostey, at a recent meeting between Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao, the parties agreed to increase trade turnover between the countries by 4-5 times. Moreover, these agreements already have specific projects behind them, he says. Mr. Sanakoev especially emphasized that at the meetings of the leaders of the two states (the eighth took place yesterday in Kazakhstan), there was no talk about any specific projects related to the sale of Rosneft shares. According to him, there is no subject for such negotiations, because Russia is not selling or promising anything yet. Moreover, he continues, the heads of CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation) and Rosneft, Chen Geng and Sergei Bogdanchikov, agreed that the companies would jointly work exclusively on new Russian fields relatively close to the Russian-Chinese border, and that Rosneft would increase volume of oil exports to China. Answering a question about whether a repetition of the January scheme, when China provided Rosneft with $6 billion as payment for the supply of 48.4 million tons of oil by 2010, is possible in the future, Mr. Sanakoev said: “Technically, yes. But this is a question of the level of financial directors of both companies. The practice of concluding futures contracts is widespread throughout the world.”
Thus, it is possible that CNPC may pay for an additional volume of oil, which will again save Rosneft and its shareholder Rosneftegaz from the debt burden. Ivan GORDEEV |
|
