Russia's OGK-3 buys $560 mln to hedge rouble fall

MOSCOW, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Russian electricity producer OGK-3 (OGKC.MM) has converted more than $560 million worth of roubles into dollars to hedge against a devaluation of the local currency, its financial director Dmitry Katiev said on Tuesday.

"We understand that a devaluation is possible, and in order to have funds for our capital expenditures, we are changing to other currencies, which is to say, we are hedging," Katiev told Reuters.

On Nov. 12, it purchased $362.6 million at a rate of 27.575 roubles per dollar from Gazprombank, the banking arm of gas export monopoly Gazprom (GAZP.MM). On Nov. 13, it purchased another $205.6 million from Gazprombank at 27.726 roubles per dollar, the company said in a statement earlier on Tuesday.

The rouble traded around 27.43 per dollar on Tuesday RUB=.

Last year, OGK-3 raised $3.1 billion from the sale of 65 percent stake to metals miner Norilsk Nickel (GMKN.MM), giving it a cash pile large enough to weather the global financial crisis more easily than most of its peers.

Katiev said OGK-3 has so much cash available that banks have actually asked the company for loans.

"We haven't been meeting those requests so far," Katiev said, declining to name the banks.

He added that the firm will not need to take out any major loans until at least 2012. "I expect our company's debt will not be significant in the coming years," Katiev told Reuters.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called on regulators last week to help stem the tide of net private capital outflows, which reached $50 billion in October.

There are also signs that Russians are growing less confident in the rouble, with banks seeing outflows from rouble deposits and inflows into foreign currency ones.

Most analysts reckon that the outlook for the rouble remains negative and the central bank's one percent devaluation of the currency versus a euro-dollar basket last week RUS=MCX will be followed by more of the same.

"We are not speculators. We are not trying to get an extra profit, but are simply counting on avoiding the devaluation of the assets we have," Katiev said. (Reporting by Olga Popova, writing by Simon Shuster; Editing by Hans Peters)