Page 73 - RusRPTDec19

from Rosatom VTB will also finance the Baimsk copper and gold mine in the Chukotka region (investment estimated at RUB268bn), which was sold in 2018 by Crispian of Roman Abramovich and Alexander Abramov to Kazakh KAZ minerals. The bank could also finance the Arctic Palladium joint venture at the Taymir peninsula. The total investment in the Arctic Palladium ​joint venture of metals major Norilsk Nickel and Russian Platinum is estimated at $15bn​, as the production of platinum group metals (PGM) at the Taymir peninsula set to be launched in 2024.
One of the largest Russian banks ​Alfa Bank​ reportedly had a leak of credit card and insurance contract identities, ​RBC business portal reported on November 5. The sample of the client data has been leaked on October 31 and had already caused several fraud attempts. As reported by ​bne IntelliNews,​ Russia's largest bank and digital innovation frontrunner Sberbank has ​recently suffered from client data leaks as well​, admitting to a leak of data points on 5,000 clients. Reportedly Alfa has 3,500 credit card identities and 3,000 Alfa Insurance agreements leaked and put up for sale on specialised internet forums. RBC has tested the sample credit card data provided and confirmed its authenticity. Alfa Bank admitted the leak, but commented that no data providing direct access to the accounts has been made available.
Tinkoff Bank​ posted record earnings in 3Q19 despite a 9.1% cost of risk in 3Q19​. Within the provisioning line, secured lending was running at half the cost of risk of unsecured, and the share of secured lending rose from 2% of gross loans at end 2018 to 12% as of 9m19, and we expect 20% by end-2020. This will dilute a higher unsecured cost of risk. We also learnt that the changing loan mix is pressuring blended loan yields, and that funding costs keep heading down. We saw a sharp fall in customer acquisition cost growth as loan growth slowed; both of these trends should remain in place next year. Tinkoff remains excellent at customer acquisition, adding 600,000 new Tinkoff Black holders, over 150,000 brokerage customers and 1mn new credit accounts in 3Q19, while its mobile app's DAU and MAU are both up over 85% y/y. After a slow start to the year, fee income gained further traction in 3Q19, increasing 26% y/y and 15% q/q, with brokerage revenues more than doubling q/q, while insurance revenues jumped 55% q/q. Finally, the management sees CET1 rising to about 10% in the coming months as the SPO proceeds get fully utilized. All in all, we think 3Q19 showed that the P&L still packs a punch, even in a rising risk cost environment, and the foundations for a strong final quarter of 2019 and 2020 are in place.
Assumption changes: 1-2% lower net income. We leave our 2019 earnings forecast virtually unchanged but cut our projections for 2020 and 2021 by 2% and 1%, respectively. We expect lower NII growth than previously, on a combination of lower loan growth (34% gross loan growth) and slightly stronger yield compression. We also raise our blended cost of risk forecasts to 8.7% for 2020 and 9.2% for 2021, including an 11% credit card cost of risk. In terms of earnings sensitivity to cost of risk, for every 50 bps the cost of risk goes higher, 2020 net income would drop by about R2bn, or 4%. We are slightly more optimistic on costs, where we expect growth to slow to a respective 20% and 18% in 2020 and 2021, and fee and insurance income, where we see 30% and 25% growth, respectively. It all adds up to ROE of 41% in 2020 and 35% in 2021.
The Safmar Group of Russian billionaire Mikhail Gutseriev signed RUB135bn ($2.1bn) worth of deals on recovering assets from ​Trust (Trast) Bank and Financial Corporation Otkritie​, Vedomosti daily reported
73​ RUSSIA Country Report​ December 2019 ​ ​www.intellinews.com