Page 105 - RusRPTSept21

as of August 18. Financial stocks are leading the charge as the banks are making even more profits than corporate, help by the fact they can retire more bad loans that is allowing them to add provisioned capital to their bottom line, but also as investors use these shares as a proxy to play on the general economic recovery.
Russia's second-largest bank state-controlled VTB posted a record net profit of RUB85.5bn for 2Q21 under IFRS ($1.2bn, jumping from 2Q20 RUB0.8bn and flat quarter on quarter) with 17% return on equity. Likewise, Russia's largest bank state-controlled Sber (Sberbank) set a quarterly record, posting a RUB325bn ($4.4bn) profit in 2Q21 under IFRS, up by 7% quarter on quarter, jumping 95% year on year on a low 2020 base. Total banking sector profits doubled in the first half of this year to RUB1.2 trillion – more than they earned in all of 2020.
But the real star of the banking sector is TCS Group the owner of Russia's only purely online bank that is as much an internet play as it is a banking stock, doubling its appeal. The bank’s stock has soared from around $20 two years ago – slightly above its IPO price of $17 in 2014 – to $99 as of the time of writing. The price of Global Depository Receipts (GDRs) of Russian banking TCS Group in London topped $100, pushing its capitalisation to over $20bn, RBC business portal wrote on August 17.
The RTS is now just shy of 1700, its highest level since March 2012, but is still well off it’s all time high of 2487.92 on May 19, 2008, just before the Great Financial Crisis of that year struck sending the index down to a low of around 500.
For most of the last six years following the imposition of Crimea sanctions, oil price shock and devaluation of 2014 the RTS has been range bound between 900 and 1,300. The index broke out above this range in the spring of 2020 only to be knocked back by another oil shock, devaluation and the start of the pandemic. However, since the pandemic began to recede after the new vaccines appear last autumn the market has started to recover.
105 RUSSIA Country Report September 2021 www.intellinews.com