OREANDA-NEWS. October 24, 2008. According to the results of the Expert 400 rating, Belon has won the ‘Fast Growth of the Company’s Market Value’ nomination. That was announced by the rating organizers on October 17, 2008 at the 4th Annual Big Business Forum ‘Expert 400: Who Creates the Russian Economy?’

The forum was held by the Expert RA Rating Agency and the Expert magazine, which evaluated business activities of the largest Russian companies in 2007.

About 1,000 companies from virtually all the economic sectors were selected to participate in the Expert 400 rating. A rating position was determined by ranging the companies by their sales revenues in 2007.

In this rating, Belon was first represented in the coal industry sector, not in the wholesale sector, as before. The Group’s transfer to this category is attributed to the fact that in 2007 (under IFRS) the share from selling coal products amounted to 53% in the Group’s total revenues. In the perspectives of 2008, this share may reach 75%.

In the complete list of all the companies relating to different economic sectors, Belon takes the 277th position for the product sales, having risen by 7 points from the 284th position in the rating of  2007. Among the coal companies, Belon occupies the 5th position, with its revenues in 2007 being 13,557.0 million rubles (under IFRS). In this rating, Belon follows SUEK (72,688.4 million rubles), Kuzbassrazrezugol (31,808.3 million rubles), Raspadskaya (20,057.1 million rubles) and Sibuglemet (16,342.8 million rubles). For the growth rates, though (30% from the results of 2006), Belon takes the second place after Raspadskaya mine, the growth rate of which amounted to 57.4 %.

Under the Expert 400 rating, a list of the largest companies was also determined for September 1, 2008 regarding their market value (capitalization). According to this list, Belon occupies the 66th line in the rating list, against line 127 in capitalization rating 2006. The capitalization figure (41,836.2 million rubles) puts Belon Group onto the 3d position among the rating’s coal companies, the group being preceded only by Raspadskaya (117,260.5 million rubles) and Yuzhny Kuzbass (69,039.4 million rubles). Thus, the Company’s rating growth for capitalization has nearly doubled during the year. This factor made Belon a rating winner in the ‘Fast Growth of the Company’s Market Value’ nomination.