According to daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna citing its own findings, KGHM, chemical group ZA Tarnow and fund Lotus are among potential buyers of troubled Polish airline LOT. The participation of ZA Tarnow in the purchase would be designed to discourage Russian chemical firm Acron from taking over Tarnow, according to a chemical sector insider. The Dziennik article goes on to quote Polish State Treasury spokesperson Katarzyna Kozlowska as saying the ministry knows nothing about the interest of these companies in LOT and that Poland is looking for a sector investor for the airline. However, the spokesperson did not deny that a state-owned firm could potentially become an investor in LOT.
Our view:
So far there have been no firm statements that KGHM is to become involved in the rescue buyout of LOT airlines from the Polish State Treasury. However, any rumors regarding potential investments outside the core copper business are worrying as they create the risk of KGHM burning money on unprofitable investments: LOT has been a loss-maker since 2008. Moreover, the airlines business model has nothing to do with copper mining and as such we would consider it as a sheer nonsense for KGHM to pour money into such a project. We view the news as highly disturbing and clearly negative for the stock’s share price today.