10.11.2010

Nordic markets pulled back somewhat in late session and ended the day down half a per cent. Some less than scintillating pulp and steel import data from China coupled with renewed speculation concerning the cooling off measures from Chinese authorities were worrying the markets.

Danish business conglomerate A.P. Møller – Mærsk reported its Q3 result. The company CEO said that Maersk had exceptional period. The net result was 4.2 billion USD profit. The company is the largest container ship- and supply vessel operator in the world. The container business was particularly satisfying for the management. Maersk upgraded its full-year profit expectations considerably from over 4 billion to around 5 billion. The company expects lower Q4 result in Oil and Gas operations due to higher exploration costs. The Group also expects a seasonal decline in container activities towards the end of the year. The company still says there is uncertainty in 2010 outlook. The stock market reaction was flat.

SAS was crying foul over the EU sanctions from participating in a Cargo cartel. Yesterday news of EU sanctioning 11 airliners, including Air France KLM, British Airways and Japan Airlines to name a few, for colluding from 1999 to 2006 in fuel and security surcharges hit the newswires. SAS’s legal department was already moaning yesterday that the size of the fine was not proportional to the actions. Naturally it should go without saying that such anticompetitive actions do carry a larger fine than the received benefit was, for otherwise there would be too big of an incentive to engage in illegal activities. The 660 million Krona fine pushed the result deep in the red. Other participating airliners said they had already taken a provision charge loss for an impending fine much earlier. Rumours run amok that Lufthansa, which escaped without a fine after ratting about the cartel, might opportunistically seek to buy into SAS. SAS slumped nearly 8% in today’s trading.

Talvivaara Mining Company’s CEO Pekka Perä continues to be very optimistic that he has a world class asset in his reins. The company did manage its first positive result in Q3; 10.9 million Euro operating profit. The company expects to be able to hit a speed of 30,000tpa annualised production rate of nickel by the year end. The current full speed target is 50000tpa/year but the company is considering capacity expansion (see blog item 27.10.2010). The stock market reaction was very positive, mainly because the investors are now more convinced than before that the bioheapleaching process is commercially viable. There are comments concerning that in the Q3 report as well.

Nuna Minerals announced promising results from its late season phase 1 drilling exploration project in South Greenland. The analysts have been giving Nuna a target at around 225 with the presumption that there may be not good news just as easily as good news. Lately there were some semi-promising REE results and now this result, where the company found ” Very high gold grades up to 1013 g/t gold in multiple quartz veins ”. Nuna gained over 20% on the news.

Some news in brief: Hurtigruten lost much of the recent gains on disappointing quarterly report. Biphausia’s report created some buying interest in the stock. Yara lost on news that the maintenance stop in its fertilizer plant in France will be prolonged until late Q1 2011. Lundin Mining lost nearly 5% on an insider sale. Opcon gained 16% on a better than expected earnings.