ASTANA – Kazakhstan is set to sell 877 companies, including 215 assets of the Samruk Kazyna Sovereign Wealth Fund, through the 2016 to 2020 second wave of privatisation of state-owned companies, according to official data. Following the results of the first wave of privatisation in 2014 and 2015, 37 facilities were sold. The starting price was 47.3 billion tenge (US$147.57 million), the selling price 49.9 billion tenge (US$155.68 million).
“The privatised facilities of the fund are located in Astana and Almaty, 14 regions of Kazakhstan and 19 countries. Samruk Kazyna plans to conduct a public offering of shares and bring at least six companies to the Initial Public Offering (IPO): Kazatomprom, Air Astana, Samruk-Energy, KazMunayGas, Kazpost and Kazakhstan Temir Zholy,” finprom.kz reports.
According to the data from the first nine months of 2017, the most profitable enterprises slated for sale are KazMunayGaz, Kazakhstan Temir Zholy and Kazatomprom, whose shares will be listed through IPOs.
“Kazakhstan Temir Zholy is the most profitable among the top three with a gross income of 130.77 billion tenge (US$408 million) over nine months last year. The increase reached 3.8 percent compared to the same period of 2016. However, the company experienced a loss of 29.5 billion tenge (US$92.04 million) over the reported period. For comparison, net profit was 23.5 billion tenge (US$73.32 million) a year earlier,” according to finprom.kz’s report.
KazMunayGas comes in second with a gross income of 104.5 billion tenge (US$326.04 million) in 2017, 29.45 percent or 43.63 billion tenge (US$136.12 million) less compared to a year earlier. At the same time, net profit amounted to 444 billion tenge (US$1.38 billion), which is twice as much as a year earlier. The positive value here is due to profit after taxation from discontinued operations.
Finally, the gross income of Kazatomprom at the end of September 2017 was 52.74 billion tenge (US$164.55 million), which is 44.11 percent less than in the previous year. The net profit was 36.43 billion tenge (US$113 million) or 60.63 percent less per year.
