Zacks.com submits:

Russian mining company Mechel OAO (MTL) recorded a net income of $657.2 million in full year 2010, comprehensively beating last year’s consolidated net income of $73.7 million, a jump of 791.2% year over year. Revenues in the year 2010 soared 69.4% year over year to $9.7 billion based on the company’s relentless efforts to increase production; and were above the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $9.3 billion.

Throughout 2010, the company made concerted efforts to enhance the coal production volumes by modernizing production facilities, perfecting the marketing structure, developing new high value-added products and lastly, by implementing strategic investment projects, which strengthened its market position.

Operating profits in 2010 climbed more than six times 2009’s profit and amounted to $1.5 billion, compared with the operating income of $245.6 million in 2009. Operating margin was 15.72% in 2010 versus 4.27% in 2009.

Segment Performance

Mining Segment: The segment’s revenue from external customers

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Kurt Wulff (McDep Associates) submits:

The rising importance of oil in global economic growth is good for buy-recommended Lukoil (LUKOY.PK) and its home country, Russia. By our analysis, Lukoil stock has 105% unlevered appreciation potential to estimated Net Present Value (NPV) of $150 a share, where the McDep Ratio would be 1.0. NPV corresponds to an unlevered multiple of cash flow (PV/Ebitda) at just 6 times, at the low end of the range for large cap companies.

Normally, the longer life of Lukoil’s reserves would justify a premium multiple. Nor does NPV presume much improvement in the untypically low cash flow margin for oil production clocked at 19% in 2010, according to our interpretation of latest results released on March 10 in New York . At the same time, we see increasing alignment of interest between the Russian government and Lukoil and between management of Lukoil and investors in the stock.

Russia has a wide

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Tom Lydon submits:

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Jim Pyke submits:

I previously wrote an article on investing in Eastern Europe which concluded that most ETF products essentially provided exposure to the Russian market. Hence it would be worthwhile to look a closer at some investing options in Russia. One of the major Russian stocks is Gazprom (OGZPY.PK), which posts a $185 billion market capitalization and offers exposure to the Russian oil and gas market. The focus of this article though will be on the Russian ADRs listed below:

Source: Yahoo Finance

Unfortuntately, only these four are listed on the U.S. stock exchanges. However, there are many other options available over the counter.

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Craig Pirrong submits:

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Carnegie Endowment submits:

Russia’s economy grew by close to 4 percent in 2010. Compared with developed economies, this was a robust achievement, given the uncertainties faced by the global economy and the continuing debt crises in some small European economies. These economies could still endanger the stability of the European economy more widely, and thus cast a shadow on the prospects of Russia’s major trading partner.

Still, Russia’s growth was about 1 percentage point lower than was generally expected a year ago. Inflation was slightly higher. These differences can be explained largely by the extreme summer weather and numerous forest fires that plagued the country. As a result, Russia’s grain harvest was about 25 percent below the recent average. While Russia has emerged as a major exporter of grain — especially of feed wheat — in past years, it banned grain exports last August; the ban remains in effect until this summer.

On

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Frank Holmes submits:

The Russian MICEX Index, which increased 22.5 percent in 2010, has jumped 15 percent so far in 2011, significantly outperforming many other markets.

China is the second-best performer of the BRICs, rising more than 5 percent, while India (down over 10 percent) and Brazil (down over 2 percent) have lagged. Overall, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index has dropped just over 1 percent.

This has effectively recoupled Russia with the other BRIC countries. The Russian economy lagged out-of-the-gate once the global recovery began, leading some to question whether it belonged in the same category as Brazil, China and India. Those sentiments seemed premature and symptomatic of an anti-Russia mindset.

Russia’s outperformance has been driven by several factors. First, the Russian ruble has appreciated 7 percent against the U.S. dollar, boosting stock market performance for U.S. investors. This development also has a long-term benefit as a strong ruble benefits the country’s domestic

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Jim Pyke submits:

Eastern Europe might not always be readily associated with free markets and capitalism. But a quick look shows that there are opportunities to capture some benefit from these markets. This article will examine a couple of ETFs associated with former Eastern Bloc countries, Russia, and some general emerging market Europe ETFs. I’ve also included some countries that are now referred to as Central Europe or even Western Europe. The terms are pretty loosely used and very open to debate as to whether a given country is in a given region of Europe. I’ve also excluded Turkey from this review.

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Kurt Wulff (McDep Associates) submits:

Buy-recommended Gazprom (OGZPY.PK) offers unlevered appreciation potential of 88% to a McDep Ratio of 1.0 where stock price would equal Net Present Value (NPV) of $56 a share. A long awaited contract to furnish natural gas to China may be finalized by mid-year. Agreement has been reached to tie the price to crude oil, the customary unbiased standard in natural gas-starved Asia. The final issues to be resolved include timing and penalties for not meeting a schedule.

Seeing Russia as a solution to China’s pollution, we think that a profitable relationship with China would be a strong, long-term positive for Gazprom stock. Patiently skeptical that the two hard negotiators could reach quick agreement, we were encouraged to hear the first-hand impressions of Deputy Chairman Alexander Medvedev at Gazprom’s Investor Day in New York on February 17.

Meanwhile, third quarter results by international accounting disclosed on February 11 met our volume

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Stockerblog submits:

Did you know that the Market Vectors Russia Exchange Traded Fund (RSX) has significantly outperformed the S&P 500 over the last two years. It has also outperformed over the last year, the last six months, and the last three months. Where has all this strength come from?

Russia has the world’s largest reserves of mineral resources and energy resources. It also has the world’s largest forest reserves. According to what the Russian government reports, the literacy rate is 99.4%. Of all the major economies, it has one of the lowest foreign debts. In addition, it has the fourth largest amount of farmland in the world, the world’s largest natural gas reserves, the second largest coal reserves in the world, the eighth largest oil reserves in the world, and is the fifth largest renewable energy producer in the world.

The following are some of the companies that are based in Russia

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