Russia’s largest privately-held company LUKoil saw its stock rise 1.3 percent at the opening of the MICEX-RTS trading session on Tuesday on news the company would make a $2-3 billion buy-back offer.
As of 10:23 a.m. Moscow time (06:23 GMT), LUKoil’s stock was up by 1.29 percent compared with a 0.89 percent growth in the ruble-denominated MICEX stock index and a 0.71 percent rise in the dollar-denominated RTS index.
LUKoil Vice-President Leonid Fedun announced at a company presentation for investors on Monday the oil firm had repurchased stock worth $5 billion on the market from shares sold by U.S. energy giant ConocoPhillips, which had previously held a 20 percent stake in LUKoil, and was willing to buy more.
“Now the epoch of (LUKoil stock) sales is over. LUKoil has repurchased shares worth $5 billion but we are not halting the buy-back and will repurchase another $2-3 billion worth of shares to maintain share prices, including the purchases by (LUKoil) managers),” Fedun said.
The company and its management consider LUKoil to be an attractive investment asset and the oil giant expected more Russian investors to buy the company’s stock, Fedun said, adding the current ratio of domestic to foreign investors was one to nine.
LUKoil’s US GAAP net income grew 15 percent in 2011 year on year to $10.357 billion.