Rusnano made 74 billion rubles in 2021-23 from the sale of assets, and is not making new investments - CFO

MOSCOW. Feb 21 (Interfax) - Rusnano sold assets from its historical portfolio worth over 74 billion rubles in 2021-2023, CFO Vladislav Yunusov told Interfax.

After the arrival of an anti-crisis management team in 2021, a new strategy was approved, to exit the company's historical asset portfolio by the end of 2023. Rusnano adjusted its strategy for working with its historical portfolio in summer 2023, halting the exit of a number of companies considered critical to Russia.

Yunusov said that, at the beginning of 2021, the company's portfolio of assets was estimated (by management, VEB and other organizations) at 60-95 billion rubles. "Thus, based on the upper limit, the company sold 80% of its assets in value terms," the CFO said on the sidelines of the Second ACRA Russian Financial Market Forum.

Yunusov said that, in 2021-2023, Rusnano sold 21 portfolio companies, leaving 40. Some of the remaining assets are planned for sale in the near future to restore liquidity, and for some assets with a high potential for growth in value, "the company will look at the tasks set by the shareholder." These are companies such as RM Nanotech, ELVIS-NeoTek, Plakart, Fiber Optic Systems (FOS) and a number of other assets, "for which, over the horizon of several years, there can be a multiple increase in value from both organic and inorganic growth," he said.

The remaining portfolio contains "problem" assets, which are difficult to sell (for example, due to their structuring through unfriendly jurisdictions or due to seizure), and there are companies, the preservation and further development of which may result in an increase in value, which "can more than cover additional interest payments on debt obligations," Yunusov said.

He also said that Rusnano stopped investing in projects in 2021. "The volume of investments was extremely large right through 2020. And since 2021, investments have become almost zero," he said.

"As part of the 2021 strategy, the basic task was to sell all portfolio companies set up via government funding and deferred capital, which we were given via loans with government guarantees until the end of 2023. That is, this phase of the legacy strategy, we believe, is already complete. What we are doing now is taking into account the fact that a number of objective factors have occurred in the market, and a number of projects requiring joint decisions with the shareholder, we are now working on them in normal operating mode, and, as such, we will sell these assets as well," Yunusov said.