Displaying items by tag: Eurocement
CNBM may buy shares in Russia’s Eurocement Group
27 June 2016Russia: China National Building Materials Group Corporation (CNBM) plans to become a shareholder of Eurocement Group. The companies signed an agreement on cooperation in production of construction materials in China on 25 June 2016 in the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping.
The companies have agreed to upgrade Eurocement’s cement plants and construct new production lines for dry process production of cement. The agreement also envisages establishing clusters for production of construction materials in seven Russian federal districts at the basis of the local company. Local media reports that CNBM will invest US$5bn in the project.
Eurocement targeting exports to Denmark and UK
16 June 2016Russia: Eurocement Group has said that it is targeting exports of cement at Denmark and the UK. Company chief executive officer Mikhail Skorokhod said that ‘contracts in Denmark and Britain are forthcoming’ in an interview with PricewaterhouseCoopers that was recorded ahead of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Exports by Eurocement to Finland and the Baltic states have been taking place since the end of 2015 with a gradual increase in sales volumes. In Finland the cement producer has a market share of 5%. Skorokhod added that the devaluation of the Russian Ruble has opened up export opportunities for the company. However, the company has not disclosed the volume of its exports, according to Interfax.
The overall volume of cement exports from Russia in January to April 2016 reached 230,000t with production of 13.6Mt, according to data from the Union of Cement Producers.
St Petersburg endures cement shortage
15 June 2016Russia: St Petersburg is facing a market cement shortage of 40% due to a decrease in the volume of shipments by a number of producers. Local media has attributed the deficit to the failure of equipment of main suppliers, including Pikalevskaya Soda, Cesla and Eurocement Group. Concrete producers have been forced to shut their plants down due to the shortage. Local cement prices are expected to rise consequently.
Update on Russia
01 June 2016Eurocement owner Filaret Galchev has been surprisingly candid on Russian television this week commenting on why his company offloaded shares in LafargeHolcim in February 2016. He described the move as ‘unexpected’ and a reaction to the shares losing nearly half their value in six months.
Eurocement ran a repurchase deal for the stake with Sberbank in late January 2016 before the bank sold it in early February 2016. Galchev’s wallet wasn’t the only casualty of LafargeHolcim’s falling share price. Board chairman Wolfgang Reitzle announced his plans to resign from the company at about the same time. LafargeHolcim’s share price has since rallied somewhat although it remains well below the level it commanded in the summer of 2015 following the merger.
Back on Russia, Galchev also continued Eurocement’s theme of predicting doom and gloom for the domestic cement industry. He forecast a further drop of up to 10% in local demand for cement. This is in line with previous comments Eurocement has made since at least about mid-2015. Although on the plus side the steepness of the fall in demand may be softening at least.
Graph 1 – Cement production in Russia, 2011 – 2015.
As the data above from the Russian Federal State Statistics Service (ROSSTAT) shows, cement production in Russia fell by 9% year-on-year to 62.1Mt in 2015 from 68.5Mt. This follows years of growth. Data for the first four months of 2016 seemed to show an acceleration of this trend with an 18% drop in production to 8.9Mt for the first three months of the year. However, the latest released figures, for April 2016, show that production may be picking up somewhat. We won’t get a better idea until the middle of the year. On the supply side, ROSSTAT doesn’t release any figures on cement consumption but the Russian railways were have reported that their cement volumes to consumers were down by 9.2% to 4.8Mt in the first quarter of 2016. This is a percentage drop close to what Filaret Galchev has been suggesting for 2016 as a whole.
The news from the multinationals supports this picture. LafargeHolcim reported weak construction markets in the first quarter of 2016 following sharp declines in 2015. HeidelbergCement recorded ‘slight’ decreases in its sales volumes in the period. It also noted a knock-on effect in Sweden due to lowering export deliveries to Russia.
All in all it’s a similar picture to fellow BRIC country Brazil, which we covered last week, with falling commodity prices hammering the economy and the local industry battening down the hatches. However, international oil prices are slowly creeping up and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted lower decreases in its economic output in 2016. Perhaps Filaret Galchev will have some good news to talk about on Russian television sooner than he thinks.
Russia: Filaret Galchev, the owner of Eurocement, expects that demand for cement in Russia will fall by 8% - 10% in 2016 after falling 12% in 2015. The cement producer will sell about 20Mt of cement in Russia and about 3.5Mt in other regions including Uzbekistan and Ukraine in 2016. He added that average production costs at the group will produce cement at around US$25/t.
In an interview with Rossiya 24 television reported upon by Interfax, Galchev also described Eurocement’s sale of its 6.1% stake in LafargeHolcim in February 2016 as ‘unexpected’. The Russian cement producer sold its share in LafargeHolcim after they lost nearly half of their value in six months.
"No, I did not expect it. We analysed the situation for a long time, but that is the decision that was made," said Galchev. He added that he had no issues with Sberbank, the Russian bank that restructured Eurocement’s debt after the sale of the shares in LafargeHolcim.
Originally Eurocement was a shareholder in Holcim and it received a stake in LafargeHolcim after that company was formed in a merger. The stake was subsequently transferred to Sberbank of Russia in January 2016 after the shares, which Galchev had acquired with financing from Bank of America, lost over 40% of their value in half a year. At the beginning of February 2016, Sberbank sold the 6.12% LafargeHolcim stake to investors from the UK, Switzerland, the US and other countries.
Russia: Eurocement and Sberbank CIB, Sberbank’s corporate and investment banking business have agreed on conditions for restructuring the company’s loan portfolio. The restructuring involves postponing the repayment of loans worth a total of US$592m and US$360m for up to six years, as well as optimising interest rates for the company’s loan portfolio at Sberbank.
“Sberbank CIB is a strategic partner of Eurocement. This agreement will help us cut debt servicing costs and minimise the influence of negative macroeconomic factors on our company,” commented Mikhail Skorokhod, President of Eurocement. The conditions for restructuring the debt portfolio will enable Eurocement to take a more flexible approach to financing its operational activities and help it achieve strategic goals.
Sberbank sells 6.12% LafargeHolcim stake
08 February 2016Russia: Sberbank has sold a 6.12% block of shares in LafargeHolcim Limited it received under a repo deal with Eurocement. The shares have been sold to a group of investors from the UK, Switzerland, the US and other countries. Sberbank's stake, amounting to 37,172,910 votes, was worth roughly Euro1.5bn based on LafargeHolcim share quotations on the Zurich exchange. Sberbank CIB said in a press release previously that the deal was organised to provide financing for Eurocement Holding.
Russia cement industry reacts to 2015
03 February 2016LafargeHolcim has stopped clinker production at its Voskresenskcement plant in the Moscow region of Russia. The move is part of reorganisation of the company's structure in Russia following market contraction. LafargeHolcim warned of declining cement volumes in its third quarter report for 2015 blaming a 'volatile' economic situation and low oil and gas prices negatively affecting construction activity.
Lafarge, before the merger with Holcim, reported that its cement volumes in Russia grew by 9% in 2014 compared to 2013 owing to the opening of its 2Mt/yr Ferzikovo plant in the Kaluga region in May 2014. It noted at that time that the construction market had slowed down in the fourth quarter of 2014. The Voskresenskcement plant had a Euro5m FLSmidth electrostatic precipitator fitted on one of its kilns in June 2014. This was part of a Euro60m upgrade project on Lafarge Russia's cement plants between 2008 and 2013. Also, in the run-up to the merger Lafarge Holcim sold its UralCement plant in Korkino to Buzzi Unicem.
LafargeHolcim is a relatively small player in the Russian cement industry but its experiences may be symbolic. Eurocement, the Russian market leader with 33% of cement production capacity, forecast that cement consumption in the country might fall by 5 – 10% in 2015. At that time, in June 2015, Eurocement president Mikhail Skorokhod blamed the high cost of borrowing and its effects on slowing new construction projects. Previously, the Russian Cement Association predicted that it expected domestic cement consumption to fall by 15% in 2015.
Unfortunately, it looks like the most pessimistic end of Eurocement's forecast may be correct. CMPRO data shows that cement consumption fell by 9.4% year-on-year to 49Mt in the first nine months of 2015. Data is yet to be publicly released for December 2015 but the cumulative totals for the first eleven months of 2015 hold with that decrease in cement consumption. Prior to this Russian cement production and consumption had been growing annually since 2009.
Particular declines in cement consumption for the first nine months of 2015 have been reported in the Volga Federal District, the Siberian Federal District, the Ural Federal district and the Northwestern Federal District of Russia. However, it should be noted that these regions had all had a production deficit of cement for most of 2010 to 2013 according to EY analysis. These regions all had cement oversupply problems during the boom years of growth and are now suffering even more as the market contracts. The three biggest cement producing regions in Russia are the Central Federal District followed by the Volga Federal District and then the Siberian Federal District.
Alongside all of this, Eurocement planned to sign US$280m of contracts with Sinoma in November 2014 to build new clinker production lines at three plants. This followed an earlier US$580m set of deals with CNBM and Sinoma to build new plants. On 1 February 2016 Rolt Company announced that it had started project development on four power plants for Eurocement.
Eurocement's financial status is unknown but it may now be regretting all that spending. Last week, on 25 January 2016, Sherbank CIB announced that it held 6% of LafargeHolcim's shares following a repurchase deal with Eurocement. This follows a request for a US$634m loan from Sherbank in mid-2015. Unless growth resumes in the construction market it may have paid over US$850m to build new cement plants at the peak of the Russian market. Add in currency exchange effects and 2016 may be a bumpy year for Eurocement and the Russian cement market as a whole.
Russia: Rolt Company has started project development on four power plants under a contract with Eurocement Group. The plants are intended for cement factories situated in Central and North Caucasian Federal Districts of Russian Federation.
Each power plant will have a total electric output of 100MW. Rolt Company will develop the projects of power plants construction for Lipetskcement (23.2MW), Oskolcement, Kavkazcement and Voronezhsky affiliate of Eurocement Group (15.2MW each).
Russia: Sberbank CIB, the investment banking arm of Russian lender Sberbank, has announced that it holds 6% of LafargeHolcim following a repurchase deal with Eurocement. Under the terms of the agreement, Sberbank CIB had organised financing for Eurocement Holding AG in return for 37m shares in LafargeHolcim. Eurocement has the right to buy back the shares at a specific price and on a certain date.
The agreement was implemented on 21 January 2016. No further details were disclosed. Before the repurchase deal Eurocement was among the largest shareholders of LafargeHolcim.