May temporarily shut down a machine at Skogn facility
“Neutral” on CDS (both 5Y and 3Y). Avoid the notes given the covenant overhang amidst weak operations
According to Bloomberg, a spokesperson for Norske Skog indicated yesterday that the company may temporarily shut down one of three machines at its Skogn facility in Norway, due to difficult market conditions and the need to adjust production to market demand. In case of a shutdown, Norske would temporarily cut its workforce as well. A decision is expected to be taken in the next two weeks. The spokesperson further said that a shutdown would remove at best c. 30,000 tons from the market for a short duration (vs. 560k tons annual capacity for the Skogn mill as for FY 2010 AR). We expect the curtailment to be executed, however, we still believe that being the European market leader in newsprint, Norske should be more proactive in terms of managing capacity (including permanent reductions where possible) and consolidation. UPM recently announced a large scale capacity shutdown in fine paper; we believe that steps of such order are required to attain a viable and efficient news print market. Unfortunately, the financial position of Norske is weak and it may not be able to sustain even one-off costs associated with such capacity reduction programs, at least for the time being, given the overhang of maturities and debt covenants. We maintain our “Very High Risk” assessment on the LARA scale