7 Oct 2009 18:10

RusHydro not planning to sell treasury stock for now

MOSCOW. Oct 7 (Interfax) - RusHydro is not planning to sell treasury stock for now, acting chief Vasily Zubakin said at a briefing on Wednesday.

"It is advantageous for us to keep the treasury stock on our balance sheet and not sell it," he said.

It would be better to increase the debt burden with loans, he said.

"It would be better to borrow. If the development of the financial markets and investor interest in our company exceed a certain level, and we have an idea what that level is, then it will be of more interest to us not to increase our leverage but to sell the treasury shares," Zubakin said.

He said the decision not to sell these shares for the time being was related to the current share price and the short-term outlook for those prices.

RusHydro's treasury shares are the portion of the genco's additional share issue, which had not been purchased by the state. The state did not exercise its entire pre-emptive right to buy the shares owing to a reduction in the budget. The shares are now on the balance sheet of the RusHydro's 100% subsidiary, OJSC Hydroinvest.

The Federal Financial Markets Service (FFMS) registered RusHydro's additional share issue on September 24. The genco placed 14,681,412,135 shares at a face value of one ruble (91.75% of the total). Around 45% of the additional share issue was acquired in the rights offering.

RusHydro unites over 25 gigawatts of hydro-generating capacity. The state owns 61.93% of the shares in the company.