Displaying items by tag: Trading

Mexico: Cemex has announced the release of the collateral on its debt under its main bank agreement and senior secured notes. The release follows Cemex’s reporting of two consecutive quarters with a consolidated leverage ratio of 3.75x or less.

CFO Maher A-Haffar said “We are very pleased with this momentous milestone, which is a culmination of the substantial strengthening of our capital structure and paves the way towards an investment grade rating. This will simplify our debt structure and reduce the cost of managing our debt stack.”

Austria: RHI Magnesita has published a trading update in which it says that ‘the difficult market environment of the second half of 2019 continued into the first quarter of 2020, with limited impact from the COVID-19 outbreak.’ Demand remained consistent year-on-year, with its industrial division continuing to perform well, particularly in cement.” The company noted lower raw material costs due to ‘reduction in overall demand and uninterrupted supply from China.’ RHI Magnesita has increased its focus on cost management, temporarily closing one Mexican and three European plants, introducing short-time working and deferring at least Euro45.0m of capital expenditure in 2020.

In the second quarter 2020, RHI Magnesita said, “The trading environment has become increasingly challenging” as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, which caused a drop in ‘customer activity and order book levels.’ In spite of this, cement sector sales ‘remained relatively resilient,’ with some producers ‘accelerating maintenance work in shutdowns,’ partially offsetting the effects of project postponements.

Ireland: CRH has said that it had a ‘positive start to the year’ in the first three months of 2020. Total sales over the period rose by 3% year-on-year. In the Americas region, cement volumes rose by 4% and prices by 6%. European cement sales were ‘broadly in line with the same period of 2019’ due to general volume and price increases offset by a fall in volumes in Western Europe.

Government-implemented covid-19 restrictions on construction towards the end of the period impacted sales in Canada, the UK and France. The likely effects on 2020 profit ‘cannot be reasonably estimated at this time.’ CRH chief executive officer (CEO) Albert Manifold said, “With the financial strength of CRH and the experience of our leadership teams, we will endure through these unprecedented and uncertain times.”

India/Singapore: Shree Cement has closed down Shree Global, its subsidiary in Singapore. It said it had struck the company off the Registrar of Companies in early March 2019. Previously, the cement producer said that the subsidiary was being used to trade coal, petcoke, minerals, bags and other commodities.

Rwanda: Vincent Munyeshyaka, the Minister of Trade and Industry, says that traders who are charging too much for cement will be fined. He told the New Times newspaper that about 30 traders have been fined for cement price speculation so far. Fines range up to about US$350. The country has faced a shortage of cement since February 2018 when local producer Cimerwa started upgrade work at its Bugarama plant.

Laos: Lao Cement has started trading on the Lao Securities Exchange. It celebrated its first day of trading on the stock exchange on 2 March 2018, according to the Xinhua news agency. The cement producer is a joint venture between the Chinese and Lao governments.

Russia: The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has brought together local cement producers to develop exchange trading with cement. Attendees agreed that trading should not be limited to Moscow and St Petersburg and a proposal was made to organise exchange trading supplying goods for export. They agreed to submit proposals to FAS, which will also ask industry experts and buyers for their comments towards shaping exchange trading.

“Exchange trading is an opportunity for new players to enter the market”, said Deputy Head of the FAS Andrey Tsarikovskiy. He added that attracting new companies to the market would lead to increased competition in the sector.

Germany: HC Trading and Interbulk Trading have merged their operations to form HC Trading, following the acquisition of Italcementi by HeidelbergCement. The merger will continue the group’s international trading activities, specialising in cement, clinker, coal and petroleum-coke by expanding the trade network and improving its position in the market. The total turnover of the new trading company will be around US$1.4bn.

“We trust that, by having an enlarged geographic reach as well as an expanded product portfolio, we will be able to further enhance our efficiency to better serve the market and our business partners,” said Emir Adiguzel, the chief executive officer of HC Trading. He added that the group intends to use idle capacity from former Italcementi plants to meet demands from import facilities in Africa, North America and South East Asia.

Italy: Trading in Italcementi was suspended due to an excessive rise on 29 July 2015 after the announcement on 28 July 2015 that German rival HeidelbergCement was buying a controlling stake of 45% at a price of Euro10.60/share, according to ANSA. The share price, which closed at Euro6.59, would have shot up by 50.9%, but trading was suspended.