The school tablet “from Chubais” turned into billions of dollars in debt: Rusnano warned of bankruptcy

The government will have to pay for revolutionary innovations

One of the first high-tech domestic companies, Rusnano, warned of a possible imminent bankruptcy. The corporation’s borrowed obligations, as well as the costs of servicing loans, exceeded the financial reserves of the holding. The current management of the company places the blame for the accumulated debts on the previous top management, headed by Anatoly Chubais, who left the country, and is confident that it is impossible to save the situation without another subsidy from the state.

Due to the increase in debt (loans and bond issues) due in 2023, it is “objectively impossible” for Rusnano to fulfill its financial obligations in full from its own funds, the company said in a statement. Based on all the signs of insolvency and insufficient property, in the terminology of the Federal Law of the Russian Federation, the holding falls into the category of commercial enterprises that warn market players about their “insolvency,” that is, their proximity to bankruptcy. According to official Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the government is dealing with this issue: measures are being taken within the corporation to “improve the situation.” “The topic is well-known, there are problems there. This is an issue that the Cabinet of Ministers is closely dealing with,” said the presidential press secretary.

The pre-default state of Rusnano has not caused investors much surprise for a long time. Three years ago it became known that despite more than ten years of federal subsidies, which at that time exceeded about 400 billion rubles, Rusnano managed to get into even more noticeable debts. After the departure of Anatoly Chubais, who headed the company almost from the moment of its founding (from 2008 to December 2020), the net loss of Rusnano amounted to almost 53 billion rubles, and the volume of liabilities approached the mark of 150 billion rubles. Investors’ distrust in the stability of the holding’s economic position and disappointment in the successful implementation of its planned projects only grew in the future: in the fall of 2021, trading on all issues of state-owned company bonds worth more than 70 billion rubles was suspended on the Moscow Exchange, after which a new team of managers began negotiations with creditors about the possibility debt restructuring.

Then it was possible to conclude a settlement agreement, but the following year the holding’s credit obligations began to grow again, and at the end of 2022, coupons on Rusnano bonds, for the first time in the history of the Russian corporate credit market, had to be repaid by the Ministry of Finance, since the company itself had no money there was no money for these purposes (approximately 30 billion rubles). By the beginning of this year, the balance of the state corporation’s debts had dropped to 100 billion rubles, but taking into account the costs of servicing existing loans, the company will have to pay an additional at least 135 billion rubles by 2029.

The chances that Rusnano will be able to cope with its debt burden on its own are almost zero. The growth of the corporation’s net income for the first half of 2023 will not even reach 3 billion rubles – which is two orders of magnitude lower than its total debt obligations. “Last year, at the expense of the budget, the state repaid Rusnano bonds in the amount of 28 billion rubles,” explains Anton Kulikov, debt markets analyst at BCS World of Investments. “The reputational risks of paying off current debts without the help of the treasury are too great for the entire market as a whole.”

Rusnano’s historical debts, indeed, were distributed absolutely unevenly. “Of the total monetary state support of the company over the entire existence of the holding, about half of the funds were allocated for direct financing of about 110 projects. Another amount was sent for state guarantees on loans, and a very small part (about 20 billion rubles) was sent to the “subsidiaries” of the technology giant, says investment strategist of Arikapital Management Company Sergei Suverov. “According to unofficial information from internal and external sources, at the time “After Chubais left the post of head of Rusnano in 2020, more than a dozen projects of the corporation showed zero or close to negative revenue, and the same number went bankrupt or were liquidated, turning out to be unprofitable.” According to the expert, most of the investments – up to 80 billion rubles – have actually now acquired the status of non-refundable.

Suverov recalled the most high-profile projects of Rusnano under the leadership of Chubais, which were loudly advertised, but ended in nothing. Among them, the “Solar Silicon” project provides for the creation of a national polysilicon production facility in the Irkutsk region (this element is widely used in chemistry, metallurgy and electronics, its main production is located in the USA, Europe and Asia – “MK”). After several experiments, it was recognized that our products did not look competitive for the global market. In 2013, the government considered the innovation unpromising, which allowed the investments made in its promotion to be written off as losses.

Another example is the creation in Russia of the first large-scale production of lithium-ion generators. The total investment in the project was expected to be 15 billion rubles. True, very quickly foreign partners, in particular from China, refused to participate in the agreement, and in 2014 the company stopped production and fell under bankruptcy proceedings.

The so-called “tablet for schools,” a sample of which Chubais demonstrated about ten years ago, also made a loud splash. The domestic device was supposed to appear in all schools and replace textbooks in literally all subjects. But its declared cost turned out to be beyond the means of either schoolchildren’s parents or state financial institutions, so it was never possible to put such a tablet on production line.

“It is worth taking into account the political realities of that time,” notes candidate of economic sciences and financial analyst Mikhail Belyaev. — The management of a state corporation like Rusnano was assigned to Chubais, whose authority no one disputed, so representatives of his management quite simply arranged government funds. Let’s see how similar connections and similar investment understandings will be established with government institutions, as well as with domestic and foreign partners, now with new people and in completely new conditions.”