Most Kyiv-listed stocks continued to trade in an inactive mode amid the continued suspension of operations at the Ukrainian Exchange, the country’s largest trading platform, which has now been out of action for nearly 6 months. Small free-floats on the secondary PFTS exchange are not conducive to an active market. The political and economical news flow was neutral over the week, providing no direction for the bets of local traders. The five local blue chips finished mixed last week, with electricity generator CentrEnergo (CEEN) edging up 0.8% to UAH 17.30 ahead of a historic privatization auction scheduled for this Thursday (Dec 13). The starting price for the state stake of 78.2% was set at UAH 6.0bn (USD 215mn), implying a UAH 20.70 per share valuation. Five bidders have expressed interest in the auction but none of them can be viewed as a truly strategic investor for CentrEnergo. We assume that this situation is reflected in the CEEN stock price, which remains 16% below the starting price for the privatization auction.
The UX index, which is still being calculated on a once-per-day basis using the price of registered trades, advanced by 2.6% to 1796 points, but we attribute this gain to some kind of miscalculation of the UkrNafta (UNAF) last price. The UNAF stock was trading at UAH 125 per share last week, but the UX index price was calculated with UNAF at UAH 135.
In London, Ferrexpo (FXPO) added a firm 7.3% to close at GBp 188 after the company announced a special interim dividend of 6.6 US cents per share. The dividend will be paid on 14 Jan 2019 to shareholders on the register at the close of business as of this Friday (Dec 14). Regal Petroleum (RPT) once again showed volatility, surging 20% to GBp 52.50 per share. In Warsaw trading, Kernel (KER) edged down by 0.8% to close at PLN 52.80.
In interbank currency trading, the hryvnia regained 1.5% against the dollar after its drop of 1.6% that had occurred the preceding week due to concerns about Ukraine’s Kerch Strait confrontation with Russia. The interbank market rate closed at 27.79 UAH/USD on Friday (Dec 7)
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