Streetwise Professor

Yesterday Rosneft was the target of a cyberattack (ransomware to be specific). The company ominously tweeted:

So the first thing that came to mind was that some legal adversary (presumably Sistema) was hacking Rosneft in retaliation for Rosneft’s lawsuit?

How weird is that? Paranoid? A threat? A paranoid threat?

This is even more bizarre because multiple companies–including Russian companies like Evraz and several banks, Ukrainian companies, and major international firms like Maersk–were hit simultaneously and the news spread rapidly. But apparently those running Rosneft’s social media live in a bubble and think (a) everything is about them, and (b) their commercial enemies are out to get them (which could well be a clinical case of projection). The Tweet certainly suggests that the Sistema litigation is a huge deal at Rosneft, which is telling in its own way.

Regardless of the explanation, this has to be the most bizarre corporate Tweet I have ever seen. And I’ve read some of Elon’s (before he blocked me!)

In other news that makes me question the competence of the management of Russian oil companies, consider this gem from Russneft:

Russneft, Russia’s mid-sized oil producer, is looking to clinch an oil hedging deal with VTB, Russia’s second biggest bank, Russneft Senior Vice President Olga Prozorovskaya said on Tuesday.

Mikhail Gutseriyev, a Russneft co-owner, told an annual shareholders meeting separately that he had earned $700 million on a previous oil hedge deal. Sources told Reuters earlier that Gutseriyev had been hedging at Sberbank.

“We are waiting for (the right) moment … and we will do (oil) hedging in the nearest future. We will hedge in such a way that we will get a couple of hundreds of million dollars in profit,” Gutseriyev said. [Emphasis added.]

Perhaps something was lost in translation, but on its face the statement makes no sense: hedging is not a profit making activity, but is a risk reduction activity. Indeed, in most markets a short hedger (which an oil producer would be) lowers average profits by hedging (because hedging pressure generally depresses the forward price below the expected spot price), but may choose to hedge nonetheless because of the benefits of lower profit variability (which arise from factors such as financial distress costs, agency costs, and taxes).

So methinks Gospodin Gutseriyev is unclear on the concept of hedging.

Attempting to be charitable here, perhaps what he means is that by selling forward its anticipated output Russneft will lock in a profit in the hundreds of millions. Dunno, but read literally the statement suggests that Russneft needs some schooling on what hedging can actually achieve.