Page 12 - Euroil Week 21 2020

EurOil INVESTMENT EurOil
Lazard’s stake in Turkey’s Tupras falls to 4.91%
TURKEY
Tupras halted production at its 220,000 bpd Izmir refinery recently because of weak fuel demand.
LAZARD Asset Management has sold 350,000 shares in largest Turkish refiner Tupras (TUPRS) at a price of Turkish lira (TRY) 82.97 per share for an overall TRY29mn, the US-based invest- ment company has notified the market in a stock exchange filing.
The transaction reduces Lazard’s stake in Tupras held on behalf of clients to 4.91% from 5.05%.
Shareholders in a Borsa Istanbul-listed com- pany are obliged to inform public disclosure plat- form KAP of any stake moving above or below the 5% threshold.
The stake sold by Lazard accounted for 0.14% of Tupras’ total share capital, 0.29% of its free- float shares and 12.4% of its average daily trad- ing volume across last year, according to Seker Invest.
In June 2018, Lazard said that its stake in Tupras moved above the 5% threshold, reaching 5.38% from 4.77%.
In February 2020, the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, said that its stake in Tupras had fallen below 5%.
As of May 22, Tupras accounted for 4.52% (as the eighth largest stock) in BlackRock’s iShares MSCI Turkey ETF (TUR), down from 5.11% (fifth largest) on February 6. TUR had $188mn of net assets as of May 22.
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund held a 1.02% stake in Tupras as of end-2019. It held the same stake size at end-2018.
Foreign investors’ stakes in the Tupras free- float fell to 58% on May 22 from 78% at end-2019. Koc Holding controls 51% of Tupras via sub- sidiaries. The remaining 49% is free-float. Tur- key’s privatisation administration has one golden
share.
Tupras had a TRY20bn ($3bn) market cap as
of May 22.
Earlier this month, Tupras reported a net loss
of TRY2.27bn (€324mn) for the first quarter versus a loss of TRY375mn in the same period a year ago.
Sales volumes recorded by Tupras declined by
14.5% on an annual basis to 6.2mn tonnes in Q1. Tupras supplies around 55% of Turkey’s petroleum product needs. It has four refining facilities located across Turkey. The petroleum product storage capacity of Tupras accounts for
57% of the country’s total storage capacity.
On April 30, Tupras said that it would halt production at its 220,000-barrel-per-day Izmir oil refinery from May 5 to July 1 having revised
down its 2020 expectations.
The refinery’s annual production capac-
ity of 11.9mn tonnes makes up 40% of Tupras’ 30mn-tonne overall capacity, with the refiner also operating capacities of 11.3mn tonnes in Izmit, 5.4mn tonnes in Kirikkale and 1.4mn tonnes in Batman.
On March 30, Reuters quoted unnamed trad- ing sources as saying that Tupras cut runs at its Izmir refinery by 50%, at its Izmit refinery by 20% and its Kirikkale refinery by 50%.
Earlier in April, the company lowered its production expectation for 2020 from 28mn tonnes to 24mn tonnes and slashed its sales esti- mate from 29mn tonnes to 25mn tonnes due to declines in demand.
On April 16, Fitch Ratings revised its outlook on Tupras to negative from stable, while affirm- ing the company at ‘BB-’, three notches below investment grade, in line with Turkey’s sovereign rating.
Fitch also advised that Tupras has a policy of distributing large dividends, “but in light of the weaker results we do not expect the company to paydividendsin2020and2021”.
In February, Tupras opted not to distribute a dividend from its TRY526mn of 2019 profit, which was down 86% y/y, since it closed the fiscal year with a TRY1.14bn loss in terms of the Tax Procedural Law records.
In March 2019, Tupras paid a TRY12.87 net cash dividend per share, marking a 12.03% div- idend yield.
In October 2017, Tupras issued $700mn worth of seven-year eurobonds (XS1686704948) with a coupon of 4.5%.™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 21 28•May•2020