Moody’s Upgrades MMK to 'Baa3'; Outlook Positive

Andrey Eremin, MMK’s Director for Economics, commented: “We at MMK are satisfied with the increased issuer rating. This is a proof that MMK has correctly formulated its strategic development priorities and introduced quite efficient tools to implement its strategy. Our priorities today include focusing on the key markets, internal efficiency, regular return on investors’ equity and corporate investment appeal.”

Moody’s action follows a sovereign rating action on the government of Russia which took place on 25 January 2018, during which Moody's changed the outlook on Russia's Ba1 long-term issuer and senior unsecured debt ratings to positive from stable. The change in the outlook on Russia's Ba1 ratings was driven by the following rating factors:

• Growing evidence of institutional strength. Russia's macroeconomic framework coped well with the oil price shock and with the impact of sanctions imposed to date, and enhancements have been made to the government's rule-based fiscal framework; and
• Relatedly, increased evidence of economic and fiscal resiliency that has reduced Russia's vulnerability to further external shocks arising from geopolitical tensions or from renewed declines in oil prices.

In a related decision, Moody's has raised Russia's country ceilings for foreign currency debt to Baa3/P-3 from Ba1/NP to reflect diminished concerns that the government might impose capital controls or otherwise ration foreign exchange reserves.

Moody's also raised the country risk ceilings for local currency-denominated debt and deposits to Baa2 from Baa3. A country ceiling generally indicates the highest rating level that any issuer domiciled in that country can attain for instruments of that type and currency denomination.

Notes for editors:

MMK is one of the world's largest steel producers and a leading Russian metals company. The company's operations in Russia include a large steel-producing complex encompassing the entire production chain, from the preparation of iron ore to downstream processing of rolled steel. MMK turns out a broad range of steel products with a predominant share of high-value-added products. In 2016, the company produced 12.5 million tonnes of crude steel and 11.6 million tonnes of commercial steel products. MMK Group had sales in 2016 of USD 5,630 million and EBITDA of USD 1,956 million.

Contacts:

Investor Relations Department:

Andrey Serov, Head of IR
tel.: +7 (3519) 24-52-97
e-mail: serov.ae@mmk.ru

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