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The Regions This Week
January 19, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 7
Eastern Europe
US President Donald Trump has offered to relocate the Ukraine talks on a lasting peace settlement in the Donbas region from the Belarusian capital Minsk to another venue, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev told journalists in New York after a UN Security Council meeting on January 18.
The mortality rate in Russia fell in 2017 in all age groups, Russian Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said, and life expectancy grew to its highest level in 20 years of 72.6 years, and 77 years for women.
VTB Capital has downgraded Gazprom’s shares to ‘Hold’ after they gained 26.5% over the last six months, outperforming the market by 11% to trade now at VTBC’s target price of $2.60.
The Russian recruiting company HeadHunter plans to IPO this year, three sources in the financial market told Reuters. The shares will
be listed in Moscow but might also be offered
in the US, the sources said. The privately owned company is the private equity fund Elbrus Capital, which bought the company in 2016 from Mail.ru for RUB10bn.
Lukoil will cancel 100mn treasury shares in 2018, with the rest to be used as an employee incentive programme, the company announced on January 13. At the same time Lukoil announced a $2bn- 3bn buyback programme to run over the next
five years.
Russia's largest lender, state-run Sberbank, saw its Russian Accounting Standards (RAS) net profits go up by 30.4% to RUB674bn ($11.9bn), the company said.
Russia’s total mortgage loan portfolio topped RUB5 trillion ($88bn) as of December 1, 2017, according to the Central Bank of Russia (CBR). The number of mortgages issued in 2017 were up by 13% y/y. In January-November 2017 banks
issued 935,632 mortgage loans worth more than RUB1.7 trillion.
Polyus Gold reported a positive fourth quarter 2017 trading update, with 580,000 oz produced in the quarter and strong January-September 2017 output, leading to the company beating its 2017 guidance by 2%. The 2018 guidance was increased 1% to 2.375-2.425mn oz on the back of stronger expectations of Olimpiada production and the Natalka ramp-up, VTB Capital (VTBC) said. Natalka is reportedly operating at 50% capacity already.
Russia’s outbound tourism traffic was up by nearly 20% in 2017, according to Russia’s Federal Agency for Tourism (Rostourism) Oleg Safonov. Russians made 38mn tourist trips abroad in 2017, which is close to the 2014 level before the tit-for-tat travel sanctions, with favourite destination countries such as Turkey and Egypt came into effect.
Russian retail chain Lenta delivered on 2017 organic growth targets and the outlook for fourth quarter revenue growth is strong, say analysts. Last year Lenta opened 40 hypermarkets and
49 supermarkets, thus increasing selling space 20.6% y/y. The company is chasing the skirts of bigger rivals X5 and Magnit.
Russia’s Polyus Gold has terminated an agreement to sell a stake to China’s Fosun that was due to be close next month. In May 2017, Polyus' major shareholder agreed to sell 10% of the share capital to Fosun, with the latter having an option to buy 5% more.
Russia’s Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) said that Rosneft had withdrawn its complaint on the terms of Alrosa’s gas assets auction
and confirmed that it would not initiate an investigation into them. Rosneft later has stated that it would not participate in the auction. Investors were worried that the auction would be cancelled and this would hurt Alrosa’s income.