20/06/2018

Press release: Gazprom’s investor and shareholder relations strengthening further

The Gazprom Board of Directors commended the Company’s efforts with regard to investor and shareholder relations.

Gazprom fulfills all of its information disclosure obligations in a timely manner and makes substantial efforts toward further engagement with the investment community using various formats and instruments.

The ongoing dialogue with the shareholders of Gazprom, investors and analysts allows the Company to provide timely updates on Gazprom’s operational and financial results, development strategy and key projects, to analyze feedback and offers, to increase capitalization, and to reduce the costs of external financing.

An essential tool in investor relations is Gazprom’s Investor Day. In 2017, it took place in Singapore and Hong Kong, bringing together some 200 portfolio managers and analysts from major global investment funds and credit institutions. In 2018, it was held in New York and London. Each of the events was also broadcast online.

Members of Gazprom’s top management and representatives of its key offices, together with investor relations experts, actively work with investors via road shows at the foremost global financial centers and via meetings at international investment conferences. The Company also regularly conducts telephone conferences for analysts and investors following the publication of its financial reports.

Also in 2017, members of the investment community visited the Group’s production facilities in the Nadym-Pur-Taz region, namely the Zapolyarnoye, Urengoyskoye and Novoportovskoye fields.

An important outcome of the Company’s interactions with investors and shareholders is the fact that investment analysts considerably upgraded their recommendations with regard to Gazprom’s stock last year, with six analysts of leading investment banks upgrading their recommendations and a new bank embarking on analytical coverage of Gazprom with a ‘buy’ recommendation. The percentage of Russian and foreign investment banks that recommend to ‘buy’ and to ‘hold’ in their analytical reports on Gazprom’s shares went from 80 to 90 per cent last year.

In the course of 2017, the Company achieved great results in the Russian and international debt capital markets. Through fruitful cooperation with its debt investors – major international investment companies and financial institutions – Gazprom managed to sign a number of successful deals to place Eurobonds and secure bank loans.

Gazprom’s credit ratings as determined by the world’s top credit rating agencies were commensurate with the sovereign rating of the Russian Federation as of the end of 2017.

A crucial positive development in early 2018 was an upward revision of the credit ratings by Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s. Today, Gazprom has an investment grade rating from three top agencies (Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s, and Fitch), which entails a wider range of investors for the Company’s debt instruments and bigger opportunities for securing external financing and reducing its costs.

The Management Committee was instructed to take further measures for improvement with regard to Gazprom’s investor and shareholder relations.

The Board of Directors took note of the efforts to improve Gazprom’s corporate governance practices throughout 2017, including the data on the Corporate Secretary whose functions were performed by the Company’s structural subdivisions.

It was highlighted that Gazprom’s corporate governance system was in compliance with Russian legislation and best domestic and international practices, as evidenced by an independent audit performed by external experts in 2017. The Company’s structural subdivisions carry out the functions of the Corporate Secretary in an efficient manner.

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