Local press asked CEO Jan Fabian of OKD how long the coal company’s 176 mln. EUR cash reserves will last at today’s coal prices, and he said OKD is doing all it can to survive the situation. He added that the Paskov mine is one of the most costly in the world and loses 1.5 bln CZK (60 mln. EUR) per year at a price of 92 EUR/ton for coking coal. Nobody wants the mine even for 1 CZK, he said. Closing it, he added, would cost 1-1.5 bln. CZK. GGE of Slovakia showed interest in OKD, he said, but he said he told it that OKD is not for sale. /just FYI/
Prime Mininster Rusnok said in Ostrava yesterday that OKD is a private company and that the state cannot deal with its problems for it. For this reason, he said, the cabinet is definitely not addressing the possibility of buying any coal mines. The main responsibility still lies with the owner, he said. /slightly NEGATIVE, although we expect there were just a minimal portion of market players hoping Czech state could buy Paskov mine. /
Moreover, CEO Alexander Frolov of Evraz of Russia said that his company wants to sell its Czech division, Evraz Vitkovice Steel, by the end of this year. / We expect that selling the steel division would be difficult in current weak steel production environment in Europe. There is a theoretical link to NWR as ArcelorMittal Ostrava (AMO) sells about one-third of its pig iron to Evraz and AMO, in turn, buys 34% of the coking coal of NWR. Nevertheless, we haven’t notice any notably lower external sales of NWR’s coking coal during last couple of Evraz temporal closures.