The State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” has increased its profit to UAH 2.6 billion in the first nine months of operation, according to the company’s CEO Yuriy Bolokhovets.
“This is ten times more than the industry earned before the reform, in the days of state forestry. We direct the lion’s share of our profits to the state budget. These are funds for new weapons, ammunition, and military salaries,” he said.
According to the company’s press service, over the past nine months, Fores of Ukraine transferred UAH 4.7 billion to the state budget, which is UAH 1.1 billion more than last year. The company invested hundreds of millions of hryvnias in new equipment for the Armed Forces.
“Record profits were achieved in a declining market. The situation on the timber market has not improved. Compared to last year, the average selling price of an impersonal cube of unprocessed wood fell from UAH 1.8 thousand to UAH 1.7 thousand. We have also abandoned our own processing – sales of sawn timber by the SOE’s branches decreased from UAH 2.8 billion to UAH 2.1 billion,” explained Bolokhovets.
According to the company’s CEO, the SOE’s profits have increased due to de-shadowing and increased efficiency of the state-owned enterprise. Most of the procurement was transferred to Prozorro, which made it possible to eliminate the loopholes in timber sales related to direct contracts – products are sold at prices set by competitive markets.
The company emphasizes that its customers are offered additional services, including loading and customs clearance of products. The fulfillment rate of exchange contracts has increased to almost 90%. Contractors’ services for procurement and other work have been standardized, and ceiling prices have been introduced.
In addition, the electronic accounting system has been improved, making it more difficult for illegal timber to enter the market, which has increased demand for legal products. Also, all untargeted expenses of the branches, such as “laying pavement”, were reduced.
SE “Forests of Ukraine” has standardized the staff of its branches and reduced unnecessary administrative apparatus, resulting in the replacement of almost half of the branch managers.
The company has also decided to sell subsidized facilities through the State Property Fund.
“We are really counteracting fictitious works and services that were common in the days of forestry. We have abandoned the use of expensive and inefficient financial instruments that used to often lead to the leakage of funds from state forestry enterprises, such as renting equipment at unreasonable rates,” Bolokhovets summarized.
As reported, the state specialized economic enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” is one of the largest forest users in Europe and the largest in Ukraine. It is managed by the State Agency of Forest Resources of Ukraine. The company manages 6.6 million hectares of state forest land.
The profit of the state-owned Ukrgasbank in January-September 2023 amounted to UAH 2.92 billion, while the bank ended the same period in 2022 with a net loss of UAH 3.36 billion, according to the financial institution’s website.
“The target was exceeded by more than UAH 1.05 billion,” Ukrgasbank commented on the financial result.
The operating profit before taxation and deductions to reserves for January-September of this year amounted to UAH 3.25 billion, in particular, in September the bank received UAH 530 million of operating profit, and net operating profit amounted to UAH 299.6 million.
The press service noted that Ukrgasbank is among the five banks with the largest increase in customer accounts: the growth of the hryvnia portfolio of individuals and legal entities in January-September amounted to UAH 2.8 billion and UAH 18.4 billion, respectively.
According to the National Bank of Ukraine, as of September 1, 2023, Ukrgasbank ranked 4th in terms of total assets (UAH 168.6 billion) among 64 banks operating in the country, its net profit for the first half of the year amounted to UAH 2.6 billion.
In the third quarter, the state-owned bank’s network decreased by one branch and now includes 218 structural units across the country.
Blackstone Group Inc. the world’s largest alternative investment management company, recorded strong net income growth in the third quarter of 2023 and an increase in assets under management.
According to a company press release, net income for the July-September period totaled $552 million, or 73 cents per share, compared with $2.3 million, or less than 1 cent per share, for the same period a year earlier.
Meanwhile, distributable earnings fell to $1.2 billion from $1.4 billion.
Revenue jumped to $2.54 billion from $1.06 billion.
The volume of assets under management of Blackstone at the end of the third quarter amounted to $1.01 trillion, up 6% over the year.
The company will pay a dividend of 80 cents per share at the end of the third quarter.
Blackstone’s stock price is down 5.8% in Thursday trading. Since the beginning of this year, the company’s capitalization has increased by almost 30% to $124.3 billion.
The Verkhovna Rada on Friday adopted in the first reading the finalized bill (#9656d) on temporary doubling – up to 36% in 2024-2025. – rate of tax on profits of banks.
According to the first deputy head of the relevant committee, a member of the faction “Golos” Yaroslav Zheleznyak, 247 people’s deputies voted in favor with the required minimum of 226 votes.
He specified that the bill also prohibits for this period the crediting of profits against the losses of previous periods.
“In the budget of 2024, the adoption of this law is laid down as +9.9 billion UAH”, – reminded Zheleznyak.
According to the National Bank, the net profit of 64 operating Ukrainian banks for the first eight months of this year amounted to 95.1 billion UAH, profit tax – 17.0 billion UAH, including PrivatBank – 39.2 billion UAH and 9.0 billion UAH, and four other state banks – 20.6 billion UAH and 0.4 billion UAH.
In 2022, Kremenchuk Steel Plant JSC (Kremenchuk, Poltava region), part of the industrial assets of TAS Group, posted a net profit of UAH 50.281 million, while it ended 2021 with a net loss of UAH 56.833 million.
According to the agenda of the company’s general meeting of shareholders published in the information disclosure system of the National Securities and Stock Market Commission (NSSMC) on November 13, the company’s uncovered loss as of January 1, 2023 amounted to UAH 56.886 million.
The shareholders intend to amend the charter, review the reports of the supervisory board for 2021 and 2022, consider the conclusions of the audit reports, approve the results of the company’s financial and economic activities for these years, determine the procedure for distributing profits (compensation for losses), approve annual reports, hold elections of the supervisory board, and consider other issues.
As reported, Kremenchuk Steel posted a net loss of UAH 22.81 million in 2020.
Kremenchuk Steel is a leading Ukrainian foundry producing steel castings for freight cars and heavy trucks.
According to the second quarter of 2023, Defano Investments Ltd (Cyprus) owns 48.4421% of the shares of PJSC “KSP”, FinEuroVector Financial Company LLC – 18.8392%, Alfa Cross Financial Company – 24.9%, Alta Finance LLC – 5.7276%.
TAS Group was founded in 1998. Its business interests include the financial sector (banking and insurance segments), industry, real estate, agriculture, and venture capital projects. The founder and major shareholder of the group is Sergey Tigipko.
State-owned Oschadbank quadrupled its net profit in January-August this year compared to the same period in 2022 – from UAH 2.3 billion to more than UAH 9.4 billion, including a net profit of UAH 1.2 billion in August.
“The final financial result was also affected by the revaluation of financial instruments in the securities portfolio: it added about UAH 1.5 billion to the total profit,” the press service of the financial institution told Interfax-Ukraine on Monday.
The state-owned bank notes an improvement in all key financial indicators. In particular, its net interest income increased by 39% to UAH 12.1 billion compared to the figures for 8 months of 2022, and net commission income by 30% to UAH 4.4 billion.
Operating profit amounted to UAH 7.8 billion, which is more than twice as much as in the same period last year.
In addition, as noted in the press service, Oschad has sufficient liquidity and capital at its disposal.
According to the information provided, the regulatory capital adequacy ratio of the financial institution as of September 1 this year amounted to 18.48%, while the established standard of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) is 10%.
At the same time, the bank has so far refrained from forecasting its financial results for this year.
According to the NBU, as of July 1, 2023, Oschadbank ranked 2nd in terms of assets (UAH 324.74 billion) among 64 banks operating in the country, and first in terms of the number of branches in the country (1183).
