Russian govt agrees to split NCSP between Transneft, Summa - paper
MOSCOW. April 18 (Interfax) - The Russian government has agreed to split up the business of Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port (NCSP) , the country's biggest port operator, between its largest shareholders - Transneft and Summa Group, which own 50.1% of NCSP through Novoport Holding, business daily Vedomosti reported on Friday, citing a high-ranking federal official.
Summa could also end up with the government's stake in NCSP, the paper said.
Transneft , Russia's oil pipeline monopoly, will get NCSP's oil terminals, while Summa will become NCSP's largest shareholder, the paper said. The Federal Property Agency (Rosimuschestvo) is already working on implementing this arrangement, the paper's source said.
Following the division of the company's business, the government's 20% stake in NCSP will be sold to Summa, with the government retaining a golden share. The paper said another official on the government's finance and economics team confirmed the structure of the asset split and that Rosimuschestvo will sell its stake to Summa.
NCSP's main oil transshipment assets are the Sheskharis Oil Terminal, LLC Primorsk Trade Port, the oil products terminals of JSC IPP and JSC NMT, as well as NCSP Fleet and Soyuzflotport. The group's remaining assets will remain with NCSP.
The officials did not say when all of these transactions might take place.
Summa will become the controlling shareholder in NCSP, with its stake increasing from the current 27.7% to 63.3%. Transneft, along with the NCSP assets, will assume part of the group's debt, which stood at $1.9 billion at the end of 2013, and pay $0.7 billion-$1 billion for them, the paper reported a source close to one of the port's shareholders as saying.
Transneft's effective stake of 35.5% in NCSP was worth $414 million on Thursday according to prices on the London Stock Exchange. However, last fall Transneft subsidiary Transneft Service bought 10.5% of NCSP for 8.1 billion rubles. Based on this, Transneft's stake could be valued at $745 million.
Part of the money that NCSP will get from Transneft might be used to pay down remaining debt and some might be used to pay special dividends, all three of the paper's sources said. Rosimuschestvo is insisting on this, one of them said.
Due to these dividends, it is not clear when the state stake will be sold to Summa. The company wants to buy the state stake right away, but the government reckons it would be better to wait for the special dividends and then sell, one official said.
Summa could therefore increase its stake in NCSP to 83.3%, but the government would retain a golden share, as stipulated in NCSP's charter.
If Summa buys Transneft's shares directly, rather than the pipeline monopoly's stake in their joint venture, it would have to make an offer to minority shareholders, the head of the corporate practice at Goltsblat BLP, Anton Panchenkov said. If Summa buys the stake from Rosimuschestvo, an offer will be mandatory, the lawyer said.
One of the port's minority shareholders said they would sell their stake if the price of the offer will be attractive.
If it sells its oil handling assets to Transneft, NCSP will lose the bulk of its revenues. The company's revenues totaled $928.1 million in 2013, 62.8% of which was generated by crude oil, oil products, fuelling and fleet services.
The idea of splitting NCSP assets between Summa and Transneft was proposed by the latter's president Nikolai Tokarev, who wrote a letter about this to President Vladimir Putin at the end of 2013. Tokarev argued that the split was necessary because of the "inability to agree on a common strategy" for the development of NCSP, Vedomosti reported one source as saying.
Representatives of Summa and Transneft declined to comment, while the representative of Rosimuschestvo did not respond to questions.