Culture and local sport

Coming up on a month now, and the past week saw quite a bit of activity - 1) work got exciting 2) local pro hockey and tennis was exciting 3) karaoke initiation was...something.

1) At work, we released our first "quarterly trading update release" (⇦ at the link, choose "Eng" in the top right). From an investor relations perspective, I've become used to planning my life around four quarterly releases per year - as in "for one month after the end of each quarter, don't plan to have much of a life."

With Kazatomprom, it's slightly different - one month after the quarter, there will first be a trading and operational update with no financials (the company's structure with 13 mines, 13 subsidiaries, a huge fuel cycle plant, multiple international partners, all very complex to consolidate financially, so not possible in 30 days. We get core results out first so we're not so out-of-sync with others in the market, and can talk at conferences about some new information, while the finance group takes another week or two to finish statements (quarterly), and a Management's Discussion and Analysis (only 2x year instead of 4). Also important, as we're the National Operator with a share in every mine, we're releasing details allowing the government to report and talk about what they need to about the quarter, while staying onside with disclosure rules because we put it out publicly first)

Added complexity - had to build a disclosure committee in the company to ensure all the right functions are vetting the information, then write the release in English, then translate to Russian (most disclosure committee not comfortable editing in English) and Kazakh (because it's the second national language). Then, over the course of two weeks, get comments and re-writes (coming back in all three languages), and CONTINUOUSLY editing. If looking at the website link above, and flipping in the top right from "ENG" to "RUS" and "KAZ" languages...don't be fooled into thinking there's some Google Translate voodoo going on - each translation is manual! Google does NOT work for Russian and Kazakh, especially for technical areas! The translation is painstaking and time consuming - at times, I had a sentence with ~15 words...and decided I wanted to use a different adjective in English. Passing the edit to the team...they deleted the ENTIRE sentence in Russian and Kazakh and rewrote it (with totally different words) to convey the new meaning!

Excitement this first time around came when the ministry provided a "statement" to Bloomberg two days earlier (when media asks for information here, government must provide for ultimate transparency). The reporter misinterpreted some facts (that were not facts) and wrote a piece that was counter to our publicized strategy of decreasing production. Controlling 40% of world production means it was big deal - North American uranium company shares dropped...coming back up when our release corrected the statement. It was a good lesson for all on the task at hand - I'll be educating colleagues about how a publicly traded company operates, I'll be training government folks on how a national company must manage it's information flow when it's traded outside the country, and I'll be teaching local media that they now have a direct point of contact within a national company (no other company has had IR) that will happily answer questions at any time!


2) In sports - hit an Astana Barys game (KHL) against league-leading St. Petersburg! Huge arena and great atmosphere, crowd cheered for every rush like it was a goal.

 In what can only be described as a bizarre twist...no beer, and no food or drink allowed in the stands. I guess there's a history of throwing everything you can on the ice if there's a bad call...!


Style of hockey was very back-and-forth with no trap, and big hits - like the NHL used to be when it was fun to watch. Barys lost, but former Saskatoon Blade Darren Deitz picked up a nice goal on a slap shot, with some excitement waiting for a review from upstairs to determine if it was offside!



Like I said - hits were big, and I'm thinking pretty common, since the guys with the spine board actually beat the trainer out to load up the Russian player and get him off the ice to the game could get moving again!

Big boss also invited me out to catch some Tennis - Kazakhstan vs. Portugal in the Davis Cup qualifiers. Kazakhstan took it all 3-1 and moved on to the world finals in Madrid!

 

3) Karaoke was something else - this particular place was high end and called "grammy" - VIP rooms with their own systems and soundproof, while the main floor was $200/table (minimum spend). Every table gets two songs with cordless mics passed around - took about 90 minutes to come back to you. Colleague missed his calling (song is in Russian, and they have a professional singer as well doing accompaniment throughout). They had VOLUMES of binders to pick songs, and I can guarantee I was the first to sing the Canadian hit "If I had a $1,000,000" by the Bare Naked Ladies at this venue, maybe in Astana. No, there will be no published video.

 

Have a fine week...