Metallurgical holding Evraz, which is under UK sanctions, plans to sell the American division, which generates $320 million in EBITDA per year. The company intends to collect applications and enter into negotiations with the British regulator OFSI regarding the approval of the transaction. If the deal goes through, it will be the next in a series of sales of US assets by Russian metallurgists who bought these assets amid high prices. According to experts, the American division could cost $700 million.
Evraz of Alexander Frolov, Alexander Abramov and Roman Abramovich has launched a collection of applications for the acquisition of assets of the North American division (Evraz North America, ENA), the company said in a statement. Evraz emphasizes that the collection of applications is carried out in accordance with the general license issued by the UK Financial Sanctions Enforcement Authority (OFSI). A possible transaction would require regulatory and corporate approvals, compliance with applicable sanctions laws, and approval by sanctions authorities, including OFSI.
Evraz North America is a vertically integrated holding producing steel products for the railroad, energy, industrial and construction markets in North America. The holding includes two electric steel-smelting plants, four steel mills, eight pipe plants and a scrap collection network of 17 enterprises. The construction of a new rail production is also underway, which will replace the existing one and will produce 100-meter rails. Russian slabs from Evraz’s Nizhniy Tagil plant were used at the company’s Portland plant, but their volume dropped every year. In 2019, deliveries of slabs from the Russian Federation to Portland in monetary terms amounted to $154 million, in 2020 – $26 million, in 2021 – $8 million, follows from the company’s financial statements. At the end of 2021, the division’s revenue amounted to $2.4 billion, and adjusted EBITDA was $320 million. In 2021, all of Evraz received $5 billion of IFRS EBITDA. In 2021, ENA produced 1.88 million tons of steel products.
Under the sanctions of the UK and the EU is the largest shareholder of the company Roman Abramovich, who owns 28.64%. The company itself was included in the UK sanctions list in May.
The government explained the sanctions against the holding by the fact that Evraz provides 28% of the Russian market’s demand for railway wheels and 97% for rails, which is critical, since Russia uses the railway to supply ammunition and military personnel to Ukraine.
At the same time, a specially issued OFSI license applies to North American assets, which allows transactions with them until September 2 this year.
The departure of Russian metallurgists from North America was a trend long before the Ukrainian crisis. Metallurgists bought American assets amid high prices, but because of the 2008-2009 crisis, they were forced to reconsider their strategies. Severstal completed the sale of US assets in 2014. In 2015, Mechel got rid of the only North American asset of the Bluestone coal company on very unfavorable terms: the company was bought in 2009 for $676 million, and sold by a Russian company for $5 million. division to shareholders with a subsequent IPO. In 2020, TMK sold its subsidiary IPSCO Tubulars to Tenaris for $1 billion. Vladimir Lisin’s NLMK remains to work in the US, which supplies these plants with semi-finished products from the Lipetsk site.
Russian metallurgists are one of the most affected industries from Western sanctions that have closed the European market for them. The SDN list includes Severstal and MMK. Since the company of Alexei Mordashov was more export-oriented, the restrictions have a greater effect on it. Against this backdrop, complex negotiations are underway with the Russian government on tax adjustments.
Evraz’s North American capacity is good, says NRA’s Sergey Grishunin. Even taking into account the upcoming decrease in the profitability of metallurgy, we can talk about the company’s capital estimate at $1-1.5 billion.
Taking into account the debt in the region of $500-700 million, the value of the assets could be up to $700 million, but the company’s being under sanctions means the risk that the sale price will be lower than the fair one.
According to the analyst, large American steel companies US Steel or Nucor could become the buyers of the assets.
Boris Sinitsyn, head of the Renaissance Capital analytical group for metallurgy and mining, notes that until 2018 there was a connection between American and Russian assets – direct supplies of semi-finished products from Evraz’s Russian plants were responsible for 20-30% of the volume of steel production of the North American division. But since the introduction of U.S. import tariffs in 2018, the division is self-sufficient, with most of its production coming from its own steel and a small amount of third-party semi-finished products. The asset occupies its own niche – the largest manufacturer of rails and large diameter pipes in North America, therefore, the expert believes, there will definitely be interest in it, despite the laborious regulatory process.