OREANDA-NEWS. December 14, 2009. KAMAZ Inc. – the largest heavy truck producer in Russia, the CIS and Eastern Europe – published IAS reports for the first half year of 2009.

According to IAS, the proceeds of the group for the first half year of 2009 formed 25.43 billion roubles, that is by 50% less than in the analogous period of 2008. The loss made 1.84 billion roubles as against the proceeds of 4.2 billion roubles a year earlier. At first sight there is no reason for optimism, but experts have another opinion.

The review of Moscow’s Bank: “Against the background of the recently published reports of the largest Russian automobile producer – AvtoVAZ, [the reports of KAMAZ] turned out to be quite positive”. The experts noted that AvtoVAZ had lost 19.4 billion roubles, and the proceeds of KAMAZ – 25.4 billion roubles – are less by half, and the Russian motor car market fell only by 49% for a half year, whereas the Russian truck market fell by 70%. KAMAZ’s total debt as of the end of July made up 21.04 billion roubles in comparison with 22.40 billion roubles at the beginning of the year. The floating charges went down to 17.1 billion from 18.9 billion roubles. “The results of KAMAZ are low as it was expected, - said the analyst of VTB Capital Vladimir Bespalov, – but with account taken of the serious downfall on the truck market which began already in the fourth quarter of 2008, the situation could have been much worse”.

The expert of Moscow’s Bank Mikhail Lyamin considers that KAMAZ Inc. managed to develop a good immunity during this year in spite of the sales decline and the crisis situation in the industry. Thus, crisis-management measures enabled the company to cheapen production by 45.8% (to 22.08 billion roubles), and the administration and commercial costs were cut down by 41% (to 1.85 billion roubles). To add to this, the shown loss is basically “on the paper”, the company formed reserves for accounts receivable of 1.5 billion roubles. At the same time KAMAZ wasn’t sparing of investment, keeping the costs on the last year level. “This is positive, because it is dangerous for the Russian automobile industry to stop modernization”, – asserted the expert.

Besides, in June the enterprise spent 225 million roubles for the purchase of 51% share in India’s Tatra Vectra Ltd. which will organize production of KAMAZ vehicles in India next year (the planned production capacity is 5 thousand units per year). The experts consider these costs reasonable, but under the condition that the company won’t have problems with attraction of borrowed funds in the future. KAMAZ is trying to cope with it now: state banks have already issued about 7.2 billion roubles on state guarantees, and till the end of the year Vnesheconombank can allocate 2.5 billion roubles more.

“According to KAMAZ’s data, in the first half year 10 635 trucks were realized. However, despite the fact that the workload of production capacities was lower than 50%, KAMAZ managed to show almost zero EBITDA profitability”, – added the expert of Otkritie FC Kirill Tachennikov.

But with the whole stability of the situation it can’t be named unclouded. As it was mentioned above, according to the results of the half year the company’s total debt formed 21 billion roubles, and over 80% falls on floating charges. The costs for debt service according to the results of the half year grew 6.5 times to 1.8 billion roubles. As Interfax Agency informs, the largest floating charges of the enterprise are concentrated at Commerzbank – for 5.39 billion roubles, and Sberbank – 3.7 billion roubles. The debt to the Ministry of Finance of the RF to the tune of 1.02 billion roubles, in security for which there is 51% of shares of KAMAZ-Metallurgy, is among fixed liabilities of the company. But again, this is not a cause for panic. Due to optimization of reserves and accounts with outside organizations according to the results of the half year the operational cash flow of the company made 4.9 billion roubles which is more than enough for debt service and settling with creditors.