Page 6 - bne_November 2020_20201104

6 I The Month That Was bne November 2020
Business
Eastern Europe
Office space sales and lease deals in Moscow in 3Q20 dropped 2.5-fold y/y to their lowest level since 2006. The post-coronavirus lockdown 3Q20 was the worst quarter for business centres in the past years, in line with the global trend.
Sweden’s Telia Company announced that it has sold the world’s largest international telecoms carrier business, Telia Carrier, to Polhem Infra – an alliance of Swedish pension funds focused on long-term infrastructure investments – for a value of Swedish krona (SEK) 9.45bn ($1.1bn) on a cash and debt-free basis.
Ukraine’s Cabinet ordered the merger of power generation company Centrenergo with some state- controlled coal mines into a new joint- stock company. The list of “efficient” mines that will be merged with the power generation company should be determined by the end of this year and their capacity should not exceed 4.2mn tonnes (mmt) of sellable coal.
EBITDA at Ukraine’s largest steelmaker Metinvest surged 3.8x month on month to $204mn in July, according to its monthly results published on October 5. The holding’s revenue gained 7.4% m/m to $910mn. Recall, Metinvest’s EBITDA was $54mn in June, plummeting 67% m/m due to accounts receivable impairments of $112mn that month.
Belarus has postponed the full launch of the first reactor at its Ostrovets nuclear power plant (NPP) by two years until 2022. Belarus was supposed to launch the Ostrovets NPP on November 7, according to embattled Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko speaking on September 16.
Central Europe
The PPF Group of the richest Czech, Petr Kellner, can take over the media
www.bne.eu
company Central European Media Enterprises (CME), as approved by the European Commission on October 6. According to the EC, the transaction would raise no competition concerns in the EEA.
A consortium of Hungarian companies has made an unsolicited offer for Budapest Airport, the fastest growing airport in Europe before the crisis. Budapest Airport is owned by GIC Singapore Investment Fund, Canadian pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and German airport operator AviAlliance. None of the owners have signalled an intention to sell their stakes.
Lithuania has seen the highest annual house price growth for 2Q 2020 among the Baltic countries, figures from Eurostat, the EU's statistical office, showed on October 7. House prices in Lithuania increased by 7% in the year’s 2Q, y/y, compared with 4% in Estonia and 1.6% in Latvia.
Southeast Europe
Turkey’s ship and yacht building sector has revised its export revenue target for 2020 upwards to $1.2bn from
the previously envisaged $1bn despite the pandemic. The industry’s export revenues leapt nearly 332% on an annual basis to $160mn in September while its exports amounted to $920mn in January- September from $726mn a year ago.
Turkey plans to expand its LNG storage capacity by adding a third floating storage regasification unit (FSRU). The facility will be operational in Saros Bay, north of the Gallipoli Peninsula in northwestern Turkey by 2021. The second FSRU, with a 20mn cubic metre send-out capacity per day, was put into service in Hatay-Dortyol in early February 2018.
Turkish companies are already facing writedowns from open foreign currency positions due to lira weakness. At
the head of the list was landline phone monopoly Turk Telekom, run by the Turkey
Weath Fund (TWF), the government’s sovereign wealth fund (SWF).
Telekom Slovenije, the biggest telco in Slovenia completed the sale
of its Planet TV for €5mn to TV2 ADRIA, a Slovenian subsidiary of Hungarian media company TV2 Media.
Eurasia
Kyrgyzstan has seen a wave of attacks on foreign-owned gold mines across the country amid the nationwide political unrest-turned-coup that is ongoing
in response to the weekend's disputed parliamentary election results, according to both local reports and foreign media.
Kazakhstan’s Agriculture Minister Saparkhan Omarov said on October
6 that his ministry expected a grain harvest in 2020 of 18.5mn tonnes and hoped to export 7-8mn tonnes. If realised, the grain harvest level would mark
a boost from last year’s 17.4mn tonnes.
Canadian oil and gas company Condor Petroleum plans to invest over $1bn
in the operation of gas fields in Uzbekistan’s Bukhara province in 2021-2024. Cooperation issues were on the agenda of a meeting between the Uzbek Ambassador to the US and Canada Javlon Vakhabov and company heads.
International visitors to Mongolia declined by 88.5% y/y in 1Q20, according to the latest estimate by the National Statistical Office (NSO) of Mongolia on October 12. Mongolia received only 60,500 international tourists after it closed its borders due to the coronacrisis.