Daily monitor

The Kyiv-based Credit Rating agency has affirmed the uaBBB long-term credit rating for the issue of “A” series bonds by Kyivmedpreparat [KMED UZ, BUY], the largest antibiotics plant in Ukraine. As the agency reported, this bond issuance is equal to UAH 30 mln in value.

On Saturday, October 25, the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) – Ukraine's main energy regulatory body – approved a price hike for Ukrainian gas consumers, which is an average rate of 35%. As announced by NERC Head Valeriy Kalchenko, the new tariffs take effect as of December 1, 2008.

The Netherlands development fund Financierings-Maatschappij voor Ontwikkelingslanden N.V. opened a line of credit of USD 25 mln for Astarta Holding [AST PW, BUY] for the period of 7 years.

Nikopol Ferroalloys [NFER UZ, N/R] will be forced to shut down in November. According to the CEO Vladimir Kutsin, the company is well-supplied with manganese ore, and the problem is lack of orders.

In October, Alchevsk ISW [ALMK UZ, U/R] plans to produce 130-135 thsd mt of pig iron, according to Metal Courier. We estimate that steel output will amount to 160 thsd mt, which is down 45% MoM, 62% below the 9M08 monthly average, and 51% below the 2007 monthly average.

For its operations in the period July-September, Ukraine's largest telecommunications enterprise Ukrtelecom [UTEL UZ, U/R] reported losses of UAH 211.261 mln (approx. USD 34.35 mln at 1USD = UAH 6.15).

Shareholders of Azovstal [AZST UZ, U/R], at their October 25 AGM, decided to declare dividends for 2006-2007 and dropped voting on dividends for 2002-2005.

Now that the third quarter of 2008 has drawn to a close, this past week has seen the release of quite a number of financial reports for Ukrainian companies.

Over the weekend, the IMF announced that it is ready to grant a USD 16.5 bln standby loan to Ukraine to fight the economic crisis.

The Open Joint Stock Company ‘Kyivenergo’ [KIEN UZ, BUY] announced negative financials for the first three quarters of 2008.