NNK sold its first major asset. Eduard Khudainatov sells NNK Sale of NNK

There are several contenders for the asset, among them are foreign investors, Rosneft, Tatneftegaz and the structures of Alexei and Yuri Khotin.

The independent oil and gas company (NOC) of Eduard Khudainatov is put up for sale, the company's counterparty, a federal official, and two people close to potential buyers told Vedomosti. The NOC representative did not answer Vedomosti's questions. A person close to the company claims that the information about the sale is not true - "there is no active search for buyers."

Offers to buy the company were received and showed interest in the asset Tatneftegaz (last year he asked to transfer Bashneft to him for 10 years), Rosneft, as well as Alexei and Yuri Khotin, two Vedomosti interlocutors say. The deal may also be of interest to foreign investors, adds another. It was not possible to contact representatives of Tatneftegaz on Sunday, the representative of Rosneft declined to comment, and the representative of the Khotins did not answer questions from Vedomosti.

The head structure of NOC is Aliance Oil by Eduard Khudainatov. In 2015, its revenue was $2.2 billion, EBITDA - $318.3 million, net loss - $153 million. For the first nine months of 2016, revenue was $1.57 billion, EBITDA - $255.1 million, and net income - $116 .4 million. At the end of September, the ratio of net debt to EBITDA was 5.6 compared to 5.2 at the beginning of 2016. In 2015, the company spent $170.5 million on debt servicing, and in the first nine months of 2016 - $122 million, part of the interest payments were capitalized, Aliance Oil said in a report.

Aliance Oil used to belong to Musa Bazhaev. But in 2014, he and Khudaynatov merged their assets. At that time, analysts estimated the assets of the joint venture at $4 billion, sources close to the deal - at $6-7 billion. Bazhaev had 60%, but in September 2014 he left the business.

How much the NOC can cost, the interlocutors of Vedomosti do not say. NOC could now be worth about $4 billion, estimates Sergey Vakhrameev, managing director of GL Asset Management. Since 2014, oil prices have dropped significantly, and the only refining asset of NOC, the Khabarovsk Oil Refinery, has been unprofitable since 2012, the expert points out. In 2015, the enterprise received 7.4 billion rubles. loss.\

It is very difficult to evaluate NOC, since the main assets of the company were purchased with borrowed funds, most of them are projects at an early stage of development, says Vitaly Kryukov, director of Small Letters. For example, in 2013, the company bought the Payakhskoye fields in Taimyr with reserves of 11 million tons of oil and condensate (in the summer of 2016, it became known that NOC failed to raise 100 billion rubles from the NWF to finance this project). In 2014, NOC bought the Saratov deposits in the Volga region and invested more than 2 billion rubles in them. and in December 2016 put into operation two fields (production began - 1 million cubic meters of gas per day), Interfax wrote. It is possible to talk about some value only after the projects are brought to their planned capacity and after the company deals with debts, Kryukov said.

Vedomosti's interlocutors are also not aware of the reasons for the search for buyers.

“Initially, it was clear that NOC would be sold at some point. This is a global practice - to collect small assets, optimize them and sell them to a major player, ”says Raiffeisenbank analyst Andrey Polishchuk. The company would be of particular interest to Rosneft, Lukoil or Surgutneftegaz, he said. Now it is quite possible to agree on a good price with buyers, Rosneft, as the Bashneft deal showed, is ready to pay, Polishchuk admits.

If the deal fails, NOCs will have to develop assets on their own, increase production levels, the expert believes.

Perhaps the high debts pushed the company to search for an investor. Taking into account the difficult financial situation, the NOC might well not have enough funds to finance investment projects and it had to look for money, Kryukov argues. On the other hand, there are examples of companies that are in a much more difficult financial situation and survive on their own, recalls Kryukov. He cites Igor Zyuzin and Mechel as an example.

Eduard Khudainatov in the "dashing 90s" in Nefteyugansk (archive) site

The owner of the Independent Oil and Gas Company (NOC), Eduard Khudainatov, offered investors to buy at least 25% of the company's shares, as well as the Khabarovsk Oil Refinery and several of the company's mining assets. RBC writes about this with reference to Vedomosti. The newspaper cites two sources close to the seller and the potential buyer, as well as a relevant federal official.

Negotiations are underway with a wide range of investors, including international ones, the interlocutors of the publication noted. However, it is not known how much money NOC plans to raise from the deal.

According to Sergey Vakhrameev, CEO of GL Asset Management, NOC is a quite stable company at current oil prices, it can be valued at about $4 billion. The sale of 25% of the shares, respectively, will be worth $1 billion.

BCS analyst Kirill Tachennikov noted that, despite the unprofitability of the Khabarovsk refinery from 2012 to 2015, last year the refinery received 14.2 billion rubles of net profit. The plant's EBITDA is approximately $250-300 million a year, the enterprise may cost $1.5 billion, but its net debt is over 64 billion rubles, Tachennikov stressed.

Rosneft bought an oil company from NOC and announced its ambitions for the Erginskoye field

NOC has already had to sell assets. In April, Rosneft bought 100% of Kondaneft from Eduard Khudainatov's company for about 40 billion rubles (about $700 million at the Central Bank exchange rate on April 11). Kondaneft is developing the Kondinsky, Zapadno-Erginsky, Chaprovsky and Novo-Endyrsky license areas in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug. The reserves of this group of fields (2P) amount to 157 million tons of oil. VTB Bank was the financial advisor of the transaction.

Earlier, Vedomosti reported that NOC was put up for sale. VTB Board Chairman Andrey Kostin told RBC that the bank is interested in expanding the number of shareholders of the Independent Oil and Gas Company. “In my opinion, the company is very promising and interesting. But this is a growing company, and it needs investments in order to master the opportunities that it has, ”Kostin said then.

Eduard Khudainatov is considered to be an associate of the chief executive officer of Rosneft, Igor Sechin. Khudainatov headed Rosneft in 2010-2012, and then ceded this post to Sechin, having worked for some more time as first vice president.

Recently, it became known from various unofficial sources that E. Khudainatov is going to sell the Independent Oil and Gas Company (NOC).

Recently, from various unofficial sources, it became known that he was going to sell the Independent Oil and Gas Company ().

The information leak happened at the beginning of February 2017, and you can’t call it accidental.

The history of NOC is a litmus test of today's Russian reality.

It is probably difficult to call an independent NOC.

The situation cleared up a little when the actions of the NOC became clear.

Companies were collecting crumbs from the oil and gas table of the Russian Federation, buying up small and medium-sized companies with seemingly good assets.

What was probably worthless to buy Rosneft, settled in NOC.

There was nothing to give loans.

The common people assumed that when NOC turned into a relatively large VIOC, Rosneft would absorb it, as happened with the assets of Yukos, ITERA, and so on.

But under the current conditions, Rosneft probably won't be able to do it so easily.

Spiteful critics from the West, who previously expressed doubts about the transparency of the recent Rosneft privatization deal, went further, saying that some offshore company of the Cayman jurisdiction was involved in the Rosneft privatization deal.

Earlier, the parties to the deal honestly stated that they shared the share of participation equally, and V. Putin even decided to have an audience with them.

Against this background, the bank fails to provide a syndicated loan, because the participants in the credit pool are worried about the transparency of the transaction and do not give money.

In this situation, Rosneft simply does not have the money to buy out the unprofitable asset represented by NOCs.

And NOCs constantly need funds to repay loans, and the authorities will not tolerate this for a long time.

Is that why the leak happened to test the market?

The independent oil and gas company (NOC) of Eduard Khudainatov is put up for sale, the company's counterparty, a federal official, and two people close to potential buyers told Vedomosti. The NOC representative did not answer Vedomosti's questions. A person close to the company claims that the information about the sale is not true - "there is no active search for buyers."

They received offers to buy the company and showed interest in the Tatneftegaz asset (last year he asked to transfer it to management for 10 years " Bashneft »), « Rosneft", as well as Alexei and Yuri Khotin, two interlocutors of Vedomosti say. The deal may also be of interest to foreign investors, adds another. It was not possible to contact representatives of Tatneftegaz on Sunday, the representative of Rosneft declined to comment, and the representative of the Khotins did not answer questions from Vedomosti.

The head structure of NOC is Aliance Oil by Eduard Khudainatov. In 2015, its revenue was $2.2 billion, EBITDA was $318.3 million, and the net loss was $153 million. For the first nine months of 2016, revenue was $1.57 billion, EBITDA was $255.1 million, and net income was $116. .4 million At the end of September, the ratio of net debt to EBITDA was 5.6 compared to 5.2 at the beginning of 2016. In 2015, the company spent $170.5 million on debt servicing, and $122 in nine months of 2016 million, part of the interest payments were capitalized, Aliance Oil said in a report.

Aliance Oil used to belong to Musa Bazhaev. But in 2014, he and Khudainatov merged their assets. At that time, analysts estimated the assets of the joint venture at $4 billion, sources close to the deal - at $6-7 billion. Bazhaev had 60%, but in September 2014 he left the business.

How much the NOC may cost, the interlocutors of Vedomosti do not say. NOC could now be worth about $4 billion, estimates Sergey Vakhrameev, managing director of GL Asset Management. Since 2014, oil prices have dropped significantly, and the only refining asset of NOC, the Khabarovsk Oil Refinery, has been unprofitable since 2012, the expert points out. In 2015, the enterprise received 7.4 billion rubles. loss.

It is very difficult to evaluate NOC, since the main assets of the company were purchased with borrowed funds, most of them are projects at an early stage of development, says Vitaly Kryukov, director of Small Letters. For example, in 2013, the company bought the Payakhskoye fields in Taimyr with reserves of 11 million tons of oil and condensate (in the summer of 2016, it became known that NOC failed to raise 100 billion rubles from the NWF to finance this project). In 2014, NOC bought the Saratov deposits in the Volga region and invested more than 2 billion rubles in them. and in December 2016 put into operation two fields (production began - 1 million cubic meters of gas per day), Interfax wrote. It is possible to talk about some cost only after the projects are brought to the planned capacity and after the company deals with debts, Kryukov said.

Vedomosti's interlocutors are also not aware of the reasons for the search for buyers.

“Initially, it was clear that NOC would be sold at some point. It is a global practice to collect small assets, optimize them and sell them to a major player,” says Raiffeisenbank analyst Andrey Polishchuk. The company would be of particular interest to Rosneft, Lukoil or Surgutneftegaz, he said. Now it is quite possible to agree on a good price with buyers, Rosneft, as the Bashneft deal showed, is ready to pay, Polishchuk admits.

The independent oil and gas company of Eduard Khudainatov, traditionally considered close to Rosneft, sold it for 40 billion rubles. its major oil asset, Kondaneft. The deal bolstered rumors of a sell-off of NOC's business, saddled with high debt due to aggressive acquisitions. Experts consider the price comfortable for Rosneft, but doubt that it will take all the assets of NOC.

Rosneft announced the acquisition of 100% of Kondaneft, which owns licenses for the Kondinskoye, Zapadno-Erginskoye, Chaprovskoye and Priobskoye oil fields, from NNK. The deal amounted to 40 billion rubles. The PRMS reserves of these fields are estimated at 157 million tons of oil equivalent. The blocks of the Kondinsky group are located 100 km from the Priobsky field of Rosneft, and also adjoin the largest of the unallocated blocks, the Erginsky field, which is claimed by Rosneft and Gazprom Neft (the auction is scheduled for summer 2017).

Now Rosneft hopes for the accelerated commissioning of the fields of the Kondinsky group, in 2016 NOC itself expected to launch the Kondinsky field in the fourth quarter of 2017. According to various estimates, the "shelf" of production can amount to 3-5 million tons of oil per year. The total investment in the project was estimated at 200 billion rubles.

Together with Kondaneft, Rosneft also got its net debt, according to Alexander Kornilov from ATON, about 25 billion rubles. At the same time, he considers the deal, based on an estimate of $1 per barrel of reserves, "very successful" for Rosneft. Andrei Polishchuk from Raiffeisenbank is of the same opinion: for example, Rosneft itself sold shares in Vankorneft and VCNG to Indians and Chinese, respectively, at an average of $3 per barrel. According to the expert, "Kondaneft" after the start of commercial production will cost twice as much as the current estimate. "The emergence of new production capacities for Rosneft is expedient from the point of view of the attractiveness of exports," SBS Consulting experts believe, adding that "the assessment seems, if not fair, then at least interesting for Rosneft."

Kondaneft is the first asset NNK exits, although market participants have been talking about a possible sell-off for at least the last year and a half. Two sources of Kommersant in the industry know that serious cuts began in NOCs in 2016. The company, for various reasons, left three key vice-presidents Alexei Strelchenko, Dmitry Bashunov and Sergei Lobachev (later the board of directors of Bashneft entered), and no one replaced them. This year, a number of NOC employees, in particular Vice President Vladimir Chernov, moved to Rosneft.

NOC, created by the ex-president of Rosneft Eduard Khudainatov at the end of 2012, was quite aggressively buying up assets, including the Khabarovsk Oil Refinery in the Far East. Mr. Khudainatov, who is considered close to the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, promised to create a full-fledged vertically integrated company. However, after the fall in oil prices and the tax maneuver, the profitability of the NOC business fell sharply, serious debts accumulated, mainly to VTB. It was not possible to contact the representative of NOC, Mr. Khudainatov told TASS that with the current credit burden, it turned out to be very expensive to develop the asset. Revenue of Alliance Oil (NOC's main asset) for 2015 is $2.1 billion, EBITDA is $318 million, net loss is $211 million.

On the market, NNK has traditionally been perceived as a company friendly to Rosneft. This, in particular, was connected with the filing of an application by NOCs for the privatization of Bashneft, since the possibility of Rosneft's participation in privatization was initially excluded. Kommersant's interlocutors found it difficult to guess who, besides Rosneft, could become a buyer of NOC assets, given their high assessment by the company itself. The Khabarovsk Oil Refinery looks like the most problematic asset. According to Kirill Tachennikov from BCS, he can hardly be of interest to Rosneft due to low efficiency. He notes that "after the takeover of Bashneft, Rosneft itself thought about optimizing refining capacities."