Areva remains sole master of its mines
The 2011 results of Areva, released Thursday evening, were sealed by its activity "mines". The nuclear giant has indeed devalued its uranium mines over 1, 45 billion euros. This loss comes from the assets of the company Uramin, acquired in 2007.
Areva does not yet puts into question its interest in the mining activity. Luke Oursel, CEO of Areva, has even said on Friday that "there is no scheduled opening of the capital of the mine." This scenario was discussed for several months, and a decree issued in late 2011 had approved the hiving Areva Mines, conducted in the wake.
World number one
The persistent interest of Areva is due: it is the world's largest uranium mines, alongside the Canadian Cameco. Moreover, this branch shows a strong margin. In 2011, EBITDA was 450 million euros to 1.29 billion revenue. The margin was nearly 35%. For the whole of society, the EBITDA exceeded 1 billion euros for 8.87 billion euros in turnover, representing a margin of 12%.
The difficulties Uramin however, show that this activity is risky. To reduce these risks, does not exclude Areva to partner on specific fields, as was done with EDF on February 10 for the Imouraren mine in Niger. "We always open the possibility of associating partners, mainly utility customers, contributing to project funding and in return remove the corresponding uranium production," confirmed Luke Oursel.
The desire not to enter a minority shareholder at the central level does not prevent the group, looking for cash, to carry out arbitrage in its holdings. He signed Friday an agreement with Cameco for the sale of the participation of 27.94% stake in Areva mining project Canadian Millennium for 150 million Canadian dollars (about 112 million euros). And the sale of the stake in Eramet seems a matter of days.
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