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Fondul Proprietatea marked the 10th anniversary of its listing on the Bucharest Stock Exchange in January.
Next steps for Romania’s Fondul Proprietatea
a ceremony in January to mark the 10th anniversary of its listing.
“The push for positive changes across the Fund’s portfolio companies has unlocked significant value over the past decade. It has been a rewarding journey, in which the team has innovated, opened new avenues, and helped contribute meaningfully to the progress of the local capital market,” said Johan Meyer, portfolio manager and FP.
Unsurprisingly FP, which acts as a proxy for major Romanian listed companies, has suffered a hit from the pandemic. FP made a net loss of RON102.9mn (€21.13mn) in 2020, compared
with a RON3.1bn net profit in 2019, which it attributed to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The main contributor to the loss was the negative net change in fair value of its equity investments, though this was partly netted off by gross dividend income from portfolio companies of RON1.2bn, the fund said.
The fund also reported a strong perfor- mance of its share price in the second part of 2020, following the rebound of global stock markets. This led to a his-
Clare Nuttall in Glasgow
Romania’s Fondul Proprietatea (FP) celebrated the tenth anniversary of its listing on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) earlier this year. Since 2011, several of its portfolio companies have also listed on the exchange and the long-anticipated IPO of its largest portfolio company, hydropower producer Hidroelectrica,
is finally expected in late 2021 or
early 2022.
FP listed on the BVB the year after US-based investment firm Franklin Templeton took over as the fund manager. This was followed in 2015 by a secondary listing on the London Stock Exchange, where portfolio companies electricity distribution company Electrica in 2014 and gas company Romgaz in 2013 had already carried out dual listings.
Today FP, originally set up to compensate Romanians who had
lost property and other assets under the former communist regime, is the most-weighted company on the BVB’s blue-chip BET index, just ahead of the largest local bank, Banca Transilvania.
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It is also the most traded stock on the BVB – its traded volume represented 35% of the total equities volume on the BVB between 2011 and 2020 – and it
“FP was originally set up to compensate Romanians who had lost property and other assets under the communist regime"
is the fifth largest listed company on the exchange. It was the first company to introduce buy-back programmes, tender offers and accelerated bookbuild offerings on the exchange which, it said, later become popular among
local issuers.
“The fund has not only generated excellent returns for its shareholders, but has also, under the professional and diligent stewardship of the
fund manager, made a significant contribution to the development of the capital market in Romania,” said Piotr Rymaszewski, chairman of board of nominees of Fondul Proprietatea, at
torical high share price of RON1.450 per share on December 30, 2020, while the discount to the NAV dropped to a low of 9.71% on the same day.
Long-awaited IPO
The IPO of Hidroelectrica – accounting for around half the size of the fund by value – is anticipated in late 2021 or early 2022, the company's CEO, Bogdan Badea, said in January. FP owns a 20% stake in the hydropower company that according to Fondul Proprietatea’s estimates has a market value of around RON26bn (more than €5bn) in total.
The government decided back in 2013