President Volodymyr Zelensky has held an all-day-long marathon, answering questions of several hundred of domestic and foreign journalists.

WSE-listed Kernel Holding, Ukraine’s largest sunflower oil producer and one of the largest grain exporters, priced its new $300m Eurobond maturing in 2024 at 6.625%. The company plans to use the proceeds to refinance its debt and replenish working capital.

Consumer prices rose 0.7% m-o-m in September following a 0.3% drop in August, causing y-o-y inflation to slow to 7.5%, from 8.8% in August. Core inflation, an indicator adjusted for regulated utility tariffs and prices of raw foods and energy, rose 1.2% m-o-m in September after a 0.1% dip in August and slowed to 6.5% y-o-y, from 7.2% in August.

Following the June LCIA ruling in favor of holders of Privatbank’s senior bonds (two issues with $335m LPNs outstanding, due in 2018), the High Court in London is to start hearing the case in late February, at the request of the trustee to make a judgement regarding the pari passu legal clause.

According to the head of the State Bureau of Investigation, the CEO and majority shareholder of Ferrexpo Konstantin Zhevago was put on the wanted list in Ukraine and the request for international warrant is currently pending. Zhevago reportedly failed to appear to receive the notice of suspicion. The Bureau asked the court for an arrest warrant.

WSE-listed Kernel Holding, Ukraine’s largest sunflower oil producer and one of the largest grain exporters, informed that, on Oct. 3–7, 2019, Namsen Limited, a legal entity directly controlled by Andrii Verevskyi, the chairman of the Board of Directors of the company, had acquired a total of 36,898 shares in Kernel Holding S.A. at an average price of PLN 42.74 per share. As of Oct. 9, Namsen Limited held 32,753,673 shares in the company, which accounts for 39.97% of the total share capital, having increased its stake from 32,716,775 shares (39.93%).

Following a tiny UAH 76m placement last week, the Ministry of Finance sold UAH 2.0bn of hryvnia-denominated bonds at an auction yesterday, primarily via placing UAH 2.0bn of 3-year bonds at 15.42% p.a. (-10bp to the previous placement on Sep. 17). In the meantime, volumes of 6-month and 12-month papers were tiny, amounting to UAH 27m at 15.65% p.a. (-24bp to the previous placement on Sep. 24) and UAH 15m at 15.09% (flat w-o-w), respectively. Taking into account today’s sizable maturity of UAH 6.4bn, this week’s net redemption totals UAH 4.4bn vs. a tiny net redemption last week.

According to the local media, on Oct. 17, the first instance court of Kyiv might take the final decision regarding demands of Privatbank’s former shareholders to cancel the purchase of the bank’s shares by the state as part of its nationalization.

WSE-listed Ukrainian agricultural producer IMC reported that the company had completed harvesting of oilseed crops. Sunflower seeds were harvested from 22,800 ha, with the crop harvest at about 84 kt and a record high yield of 3.7 t/ha (+6% y-o-y and 60% above the average yield in Ukraine). In turn, soybeans were harvested from 10,800 ha, with crop harvest at 28 kt and an average yield of 2.6 t/ha (-13% y-o-y and 10% above the average yield in Ukraine).

LSE-listed JKX Oil & Gas has reported strong 3Q19 and 9M19 operating results, posting a 13% q-o-q increase in total production, to 11.7 kboepd and bringing the 9M19 daily production to 10.7 kboepd. Production in Ukraine was up 16% q-o-q in 3Q19, to 6.2 kboepd, bringing the 9M19 production volumes up 51%, to 5.5 kboepd. At the same time, production in Russia was up 10% q-o-q, to 5.5 kboepd, and 9M19 production was down 1%, to 5.1 kboepd.

NBU gross foreign reserves declined 2.6% m-o-m (-$0.6bn), to $21.4bn in September, following a 0.8% pick-up in August. On a YTD basis, reserves rose by 3.0% (+$0.6bn), currently being equivalent to 3.4 months of 12-month trailing goods and services imports.

LSE-listed Ferrexpo reported 3Q19 pellet production of 2.5 Mt, down 9.8% q-o-q and 4.5% y-o-y, with production of higher-quality 65% pellets down 12% q-o-q and 2% y-o-y, to 2.4 Mt (96% of total output), and output of 62% pellets down 10% q-o-q and 43% y-o-y, to 95 kt. The company produced pellets only from in-house iron ore over the period. In 9M19, total pellet production thus rose by 2% y-o-y, to 7.9 Mt, with 65% pellets up 4%, to 7.6 Mt, and 62% pellets down 36%, to 311 kt. Ferrexpo provided a production guidance in the range of 10.4-10.6 Mt vs. the previous guidance of 10.6 Mt and 2018 production of 10.6 Mt.

WSE-listed Kernel Holding, Ukraine’s largest sunflower oil producer and one of the largest grain exporters, has reported a 5% stake threshold crossing notification. According to the notification, Kairos Partners Sgr Spa and Kairos International Sicav increased their holdings to above 5.0% of the total number of votes on Oct. 1 (to 5.57% of total votes from below 5% before the transaction).

On Oct. 7, 2019, WSE-listed Ovostar Union, one of the largest shell egg producers in Ukraine, received a notification from Generali PTE, informing that, as a result of the transaction conducted on Oct. 3, 2019, Generali OFE represented by Generali PTE increased its share in the capital of Ovostar Union to above 10% in line with the previously published information.

The Anti-Monopoly Committee of Ukraine has started an investigation against DTEK’s subsidiary power generating company Zakhidenergo for breaching competition laws by withholding sales of electricity on day-ahead and intraday markets in order to sell electricity at the higher priced balancing market.

It was another week of bearish mood on the market. KP-Dragon index was down 3.3% w-o-w, and local UX index dropped by 2.3% in UAH and by 5.0% in USD on the reversed trend in hryvnia. There was a sharp stock price drop in an illiquid and now illiquid Milkiland (-19% w-o-w), while most other abroad-traded names also closed in the red: Astarta -9.6%, IMC -3.8%, Ferrexpo -3.0%, MHP -2.8%, Kernel -0.7%. Polish and Ukrainian stocks were hit by weaker local currencies, as UAH was down almost 3% last week alone and PLN dropped by nearly 2% vs. USD. Thus, UX-traded stocks were all down last week with Centrenergo losing 11%, Turboatom 5.4%, Ukrnafta 4.1% and other names remaining flat in UAH, but down 2.8% in USD terms.