Ukraine in January-March this year increased the export of pig iron in physical terms by 0.2% compared to the same period last year – up to 449.511 thousand tons.
According to statistics released by the State Customs Service (SCS), exports of pig iron in monetary terms amounted to $166.174 million for the period.
In this case, exports were carried out mainly to Poland (56.83% of supplies in monetary terms), Spain (18.61%) and Italy (11.75%).
In the first quarter of the year, Ukraine imported 10 tons of pig iron worth $22 thousand from Germany.
As reported, Ukraine in 2022, Ukraine reduced the export of pig iron in volume terms by 59% compared to the previous year – to 1 million 325.275 thousand tons, in monetary terms by 61.1% – to $638.774 million.
In 2022, Ukraine imported 40 tons of cast iron worth $23 thousand, while in 2021 – 185 tons of cast iron worth $226 thousand.
Exports were mainly to the United States (38.47% of supplies in monetary terms), Poland (32.91%) and Turkey (8.12%), and imports were from Germany (100%).
MHP Agroholding, Ukraine’s largest chicken producer, managed to make $38 million in net profit in the fourth quarter of 2022, 2.4 times better than in the fourth quarter of prewar 2021.
The agriholding said in its annual report to the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday, while it ended the year as a whole with a net loss of $231 million, compared with $393 million in net income in the previous year.
According to the report, MHP’s revenues in the fourth quarter of 2022 increased by 6% to $766 million, and for the year as a whole, by 11% to $2 billion 642 million.
Including export revenue for the quarter reached 64% ($491 million) compared to 61% ($1 billion 601 million) for all of 2022 and 53% ($1 billion 265 million) for all of 2021.
“The war in Ukraine is ongoing and could escalate in the coming months. There are constant risks to the company’s operations due to repeated attacks on critical infrastructure in Ukraine. However, as of today, all of MHP’s production facilities in Ukraine continue to operate at nearly full capacity. After transforming its logistical arrangements in response to changing wartime circumstances, the company is once again exporting to more than 70 countries worldwide, supplying grain, vegetable oils and poultry around the world,” the document states.
According to it, to date, MHP facilities have suffered no physical damage as a result of the war.
At the same time, the group has incurred significant war-related expenses since the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, estimated at $69 million for the year ending Dec. 31, 2022. They include donations in support of the community, write-offs of stockpiles and biological assets, and other specific expenses related to the war. Specifically, MHP donated about 12,000 tons of poultry products to the people of Ukraine.
It is specified that the operating profit in the fourth quarter of last year decreased by 12% – to $90 million, and for the year – by 49%, to $255 million, EBITDA – respectively by 16%, to $109 million and by 41%, to $384 million.
As noted, in January-March 2023, the agricultural holding managed to almost fully maintain production capacity.
“Since the overall situation in Ukraine remains unstable, we cannot give any meaningful forecasts about the prospects of the poultry segment for the whole of 2023. In the grain segment, the spring sowing season starts this month. Since all of our land is outside of the war zones, we hope to be able to harvest the same 360,000 hectares as we did in 2022,” MHP also pointed out.
According to the report, given the current risks and uncertainties following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resulting need to preserve liquidity to support ongoing business operations and support the country’s population, MHP’s board has decided that dividend payments are unlikely while the war continues.
Bitcoin continues to rise in price on Tuesday and is worth more than $30 thousand, MarketWatch reports.
The bitcoin exchange rate is up 3.2% to $30,074 thousand during trading, according to CoinDesk. The day before, quotes reached $30.321 thousand, exceeding the $30 thousand mark for the first time since June 10, 2022. Since the beginning of the year, the cryptocurrency has soared by 81%.
Bitcoin is supported by the fact that some investors perceive cryptocurrency as a protective asset and invest in it amid the banking crisis, said David Tavil, president and co-founder of ProChain Capital.
“I believe there has also been an influx of liquidity from Asia, especially from Asian high-tech companies looking for a place to invest,” wrote Truflation founder Stefan Rast.
Bitcoin has reached $30 thousand, having overcome a serious level of resistance, Bloomberg reports. From the point of view of technical analysis, the next targets for the cryptocurrency may be $30,800 thousand and $31,200 thousand.
Index of optimism of leading Chinese economists calculated by Yicai.com declined to 51.65 points in April from 52.3 points in March, but remained above 50 points, which indicates that the positive mood remains.
Experts polled by the newspaper forecast an average increase in GDP in China by 3.99% in the first quarter of this year and by 5.47% for the year as a whole.
The average yuan exchange rate, according to their estimates, will be 6.65-6.69 yuan/$1 this year. It stands at 6.8742 yuan/$1 as of 1 p.m. Moscow time Thursday.
Economic indicators show that China’s economic recovery accelerated in March, but the labor market is still weak and more than a third of industrial companies remain unprofitable, said Zhou Xue, chief economist for China at Mizuho Securities.
China’s foreign trade situation is challenging, and some industries need more support to boost trade with other countries in the region, including ASEAN nations, according to a Yicai editorial.
Chinese exports in the first two months of 2023 were down 6.8 percent compared with the same period a year earlier, while imports fell 10.2 percent.
However, exports increased after February, judging by the flow of cargo traffic to the country’s major ports, the article noted.
Official data on China’s foreign trade dynamics for March will be released on April 13.
China needs to stabilize its exports to maintain its position as the world’s largest producer as well as to help developed countries cope with high inflation, Yicai writes. Beijing should build an institutional system to promote trade and investment instead of using ad hoc measures, the article notes.
Chinese state-owned companies are leading the wave of spinning off operations into independent entities and then placing their shares on the open market, Securities Daily wrote Monday.
According to the paper, 73 companies listed on mainland China stock exchanges are moving forward with deals to spin off businesses and then list them. More than half of the 73 companies are state-owned.
Separating operations and listing new companies on the market is a good way to unlock the value of each unit and expand financing channels, said Hu Conghui, an associate professor at the business school of Beijing Normal University, cited by Securities Daily.
Such deals have a positive effect on the market value of state-owned companies and allow the government to raise capital, said Wu Wanying, an analyst at Tianyi Digital Economy.
Spin-offs are most common in semiconductor equipment, new energy sources and other technology segments.
Oil prices are rising Tuesday morning, recovering from a sharp decline the day before.
The value of June futures for Brent on London’s ICE Futures Exchange stood at $84.73 a barrel by 8:05 a.m., $0.55 (0.65%) above the previous session’s closing price. Those contracts fell 94 cents to $84.18 per barrel at the close of trading on Tuesday.
The price of WTI futures for May at electronic trades of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) is $80.33 per barrel by that time, which is $0.59 (0.74%) above the final value of the previous session. The day before, the contract fell by 96 cents to $79.74 per barrel.
The publication of reports by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the International Energy Agency and OPEC will be key events for the oil market this week.
Investors are also waiting for data on U.S. inflation in March. Analysts polled by Trading Economics forecast that the pace of consumer price growth in the U.S. slowed to 5.2% in March from February’s 6%.
The spread between Brent futures for December of this year and December next rose to $5.5 a barrel from $2.5 a barrel three weeks earlier. This indicates that the market fears a reduction in inventories, notes Bloomberg.
Ukrainian companies in January-March this year increased exports of scrap ferrous metals 5.7 times compared to the same period last year – up to 40.255 thousand tons.
According to statistics released by the State Customs Service (SCS), the export of scrap metal for the period amounted to $11.725 million in monetary terms.
However, there was an increase in exports of scrap metal in March: 24.8 thousand tons was exported in the first two months of this year, including 8.280 thousand tons in January, and 15.5 thousand tons in the third month of the year alone.
Exports of scrap metal in January-March 2023 was carried out in Poland (96.65%), the Netherlands (1.31%) and Slovakia (0.95%).
In the first two months of the year, the country did not import scrap metal, but in March it imported 46 tons of scrap metal worth $16 thousand from Slovakia.
Earlier, the president of Ukrmetallurgprom Alexander Kalenkov in his column on the Interfax-Ukraine noted that scrap metal is exported through the European Union, which has a preferential export duty of EUR3, and from there the raw material is redirected to the real customers. To export raw material directly to customers would cost EUR 180 export duties, and the Ukrainian budget has already lost 350 million hryvnias on it.
According to him, the State Bureau of Investigation has already taken interest in such export schemes.
The head of “Ukrmetallurgprom” urged to temporarily ban the export of scrap ferrous metals to provide the strategically important raw materials in the ongoing war.
“If scrap metal will remain in the country – more than 500 thousand people will have jobs, and the country will have millions of foreign exchange earnings from the export of steel. At the same time, the military also benefits – because metallurgists help the fighters a lot, buying for them equipment and cars, and even producing body armor. Nobody benefits from the export of scrap metal. That is why now the authorities should be proactive and temporarily ban the export until the situation stabilizes and stops threatening the national economic security”, says Kalenkov.
He noted that 1 ton of scrap metal, processed into steel, provides the budget 10 times more than the export duty in the EU – about $300 per ton.
As reported, Ukraine in 2022, reduced exports of scrap ferrous metals in 11.5 times compared to the previous year – up to 53.557 tons, in monetary terms down to 12.4 times – to $ 19.271 million. At the same time last year, the country reduced the import of scrap metal in kind by 12.6 times – to 1.824 tons. Imports of scrap metal in 2022 was carried out mainly from Turkey (78.92% of supplies in monetary terms), Russia (13.25%) and Cyprus (5.08%), while exports – to Turkey (38.97%), Poland (34.25%) and Greece (10.12%).
