Russian stocks rise backed by ruble, ahead of dividend period

MOSCOW, May 15 (PRIME) -- Russian stocks rose on Friday supported by the ruble strengthening after its Thursday fall on the central bank’s decision to resume foreign currency purchases and in anticipation of a start of dividend payouts, analysts said.

The MICEX rose 0.83% to 1,691.46 and the RTS increased 1.88% to 1,074.73

“It is important to note that all negativity triggered yesterday by the central bank’s decision to resume foreign currency purchases safely disappeared,” Alexander Yegorov, an analyst at TeleTrade, said, adding that the regulator already bought U.S. $181 million and that this move was ignored by the ruble rate.

The MICEX was significantly supported by an upcoming period of dividend payouts and increased despite the last trading session before the weekend and flat oil trading, Timur Nigmatullin, an analyst at Finam, said.

The ruble rebounded to below 49.7 against the U.S. dollar after weakening on Thursday due to the central bank’s decision, Nigmatullin said. Considerable strengthening of the national currency in the middle term is unlikely as the regulator is expected to cut the key rate further in 2015, he said.

Coal producer Raspadskaya rose 7.55% backed by strong financial results published on Friday, as its net loss narrowed 92% to 141.5 million rubles in January–March, as calculated under Russian Accounting Standards, Anton Fomin, an analyst in InstaForex said.

State-run VTB Bank rose 5.03% after its supervisory council decided to recommend paying 18 billion rubles in dividends for 2014 against 15 billion rubles paid for 2013, Nigmatullin said.

Oil and gas company Surgutneftegas rose 2.88% as its board of directors recommended paying 8.21 rubles per preferred share and 0.65 rubles per common share in dividends for 2014, Raiffeisen Capital analyst Sofya Kirsanova said.

Below are the MICEX’ five most active stocks on Friday:

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	+1.00	75.05	4.950
Surgutneftegas pref	+2.88	39.10	4.192
VTB	+5.03	0.06843	4.079
Gazprom	+0.78	152.98	3.144
Lukoil	-0.58	2595.00	1.763

(50.0774 rubles – U.S. $1)

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