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against the US sanctions. Reportedly the service sent out a notification to its clients on the peninsula explaining that as a Netherlands-based company it has to comply with the EU sanctions on Crimea. Nevertheless, business travellers can still book in Crimea, making bypassing the restriction as easy as ticking the "I travel for work" option on the Booking.com website. Analysts surveyed by Vedomosti note that Booking.com has an 80% share of the market, and the limitations could increase the share of self-booked trips to the peninsula, which currently stand at about 50%. The flow of tourists to Crimea is not expected to decline as a result.
9.2.9 Utilities corporate news
Ukraine's leading coal and power holding DTEK increased power generation by 10.8% year-on-year to 16.81 TWh in January-May, Kyiv-based brokerage Concorde Capital calculated based on sector-wide data presented by the energy ministry last week. DTEK's thermal power plants (TPPs) generated 14.95 TWh of electricity, or 11.8% more y/y. The company, controlled by Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, experienced a significant shift from the use of anthracite coal (not available in Ukraine since the blockade of occupied Donbas started in the first quarter of 2017) to the available hard steam coal: the use of anthracite decreased 30% y/y to 1.01mn tonnes, while the use of hard coal increased 23% y/y to 6.51mn tonnes in January-May.
Net revenue of power GenCo Donbasnergo advanced 94% y/y to UAH2,800mn the first half of 2018 , according to its July 27 regulatory filing. The surge in its top line occurred due to a 4.8x y/y jump in power supply on the wholesale market, which was partially offset by a 60% y/y plunge in the average electricity price. Lower rates at higher output, combined with higher fuel costs, resulted in a 61% y/y decrease of the company’s EBITDA to UAH292mn in the first half of 2018 . At the same time, the company’s bottom line improved to UAH198mn in the first half of 2018 from UAH314mn in losses in 1H17, caused by one-off costs of UAH892mn, most likely related to the loss of its biggest power station in occupied Donbas.
Donbasenergo Ukraine’s fifth largest operator of coal-fired thermal power plants, is in the process of changing its owner, the epravda.com.ua news site reported on July 12, citing its sources. The company’s current owner of a 60.8% stake, Energoinvest-Holding, is very close to finalizing a deal selling the stake to a company controlled by Maksym Yefimov, a Poroshenko Bloc MP. Rumors that Yefimov, a businessman involved in wind energy, has taken control over Donbasenergo first emerged in February 2018 after his business associate, Andriy Serhiyenko, was nominated to the company’s supervisory board by a key shareholder.
Slovenian Riko will start building 10.6 MW solar plant near Zhytomyr in August The Slovenian company Riko will begin the construction of a solar power plant with a capacity of 10.6 MW near Zhytomyr in August this year, the mayor of the region said on July 31. "The plant will be built near the village of Hlybochytsia on a plot of 18 hectares. It is planned to complete the work by August 2019... Special thanks to the members of the government of the Republic of Slovenia for the issue of EUR3mn grant funds for this project," the mayor Serhiy Sukhomlin wrote on Facebook. He noted this is the second project that Riko will implement in Zhytomyr: previously Slovenia won a tender for the reconstruction of the drinking water pumping station of municipal
57 UKRAINE Country Report August 2018 www.intellinews.com