The Industry Ministry’s spokesman I. Mravinac yesterday denied earlier comments by Industry Minister M. Urban that the IOC consortium (ConocoPhillips, Shell and Agip) plans to exercise its option to buy Unipetrol's 51% stake in Ceska rafinerska, the largest Czech refinery (the IOC already owns 49% in Craf). Mr. Mravinac said that, "they have indications that the option will probably not be exercised". Source: Bloomberg
Note that the IOC has an option to buy the majority stake if Unipetrol's majority owner changes. A possible exercise of the option would be rather surprising given PKN's previous comments on promising talks with some of the IOC members regarding their future cooperation. By excising the option, the privatization transaction price might change according to an undisclosed mechanism, which should however basically reflect a difference between PKN's valuation of Craf and the option exercise price of USD 235m. However, PKN's valuation is unknown.
Separately, PKN yesterday paid the first instalment of CZK 1.3bn, i.e. 10% of the purchase price to be paid for the state's 63% stake in Unipetrol.
Jan Hajek