Russian stocks rise on positive environment, higher oil price

MOSCOW, Jun 7 (PRIME) -- Russian stocks increased on Tuesday supported by growth of oil prices and a positive mood of foreign investors inspired by statements of U.S. Federal Reserve System’s (Fed) Chairwoman Janet Yellen, analysts said.

The MICEX rose 1.86% to 1,951.26 and the RTS increased 2.81% to 948.87.

“The local market is reacting to improvement of the general background. The Brent oil futures hit a new 7-month high, which played in favor of Russian bulls. Moreover, the estimation of the Eurozone’s gross domestic product in January–March was unexpectedly raised to 0.6% from 0.5%, which prompted a wide-range increase of main European stock indices,” Vitaly Manzhos, senior analyst at Bank Obrazovanie, said.

Andrei Dirgin, director of Alfa-Forex’ reseach department, said that it looks like the increase of the Fed’s key rate is delayed for an uncertain period of time.

“Yellen made a speech on yesterday evening…Yellen acknowledged the fact of poor labor market statistics. But still, she said that the key rate hike may be appropriate if the macroeconomic situation is not depressing. But the current American data is nothing but depressing, so we may forget about the Fed’s key rate increase in the foreseeable future,” Dirgin said.

Bogdan Zvarich, an analyst at investment company Finam, said that investors understood that the Fed is unlikely to raise the key rate until September, which maintained demand for risky assets and supported the oil price and the Russian market.

Manzhos said that common and preferred shares of Russia’s biggest bank Sberbank outperformed the market and grew 4.46% to 139.97 rubles and 5.50% to 97.21 rubles, respectively as the bank reported tripled net profit under Russian Accounting Standards in January–May.

Shares of power holding Inter RAO rose 2.90% to 2.199 rubles as the company completed the first stage of a sale of a 40% stake in power utility Irkutskenergo to En+ Group owned by businessman Oleg Deripaska. The company has received 45 billion rubles of the deal’s total price of 70 billion rubles, Manzhos said.

The shares of metals giant Norilsk Nickel looked weaker than the market and increased only 0.07% to 8,974 rubles as CEO Vladimir Potanin said the company’s net profit may fall in 2016, Manzhos added.

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

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	+4.46	139.97	13.958
Gazprom	+0.92	147.75	3.711
Lukoil	+2.62	2681.50	3.317
Rosneft	+1.54	328.85	2.170
Sberbank prefs	+5.50	97.21	1.994

(65.7894 rubles – U.S. $1)

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