Page 17 - bne_newspaper_November_16_2018

Eurasia
November 16, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 17
Kazatomprom valued at $3bn in London, Astana IPO
Kanat Shaku in Almaty
A 15% stake in Kazakhstan’s Kazatomprom, the world’s largest uranium producer, was on November 13 sold in a dual-listing offering on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and the new Astana International Exchange (AIX) that valued the company at $3bn.
The listing valuation was at the bottom of
the state-owned company’s pricing range — Kazatomprom’s officially announced pricing range of $11.60-$15.40 per global depository receipt listed in London implied its market capitalisation would stand at $3bn-$4bn. Kazakh sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna said the offer was 70%-oversubscribed and Kazakh investors purchased 47.5% of the offered stock.
The listing marks the first initial public offering (IPO) made by a Kazakh company in over a dec- ade. The first Kazakh company to list in London was copper miner Kaz Minerals in 2005. The Kazatomprom IPO will be seen as a pilot exercise ahead of more IPOs to be made by state-owned Kazakh companies.
The next company preparing to float is state-run oil and gas company KazMunaiGas. It is hoping
to raise $6.5bn from its offering, which would value the whole company at $25bn-$26bn. The
oil and gas producer is planning to sell 20%-
25% of its shares. Other companies working on plans for upcoming international listings include national carrier Air Astana and near-monopolist of Kazakhstan’s telecoms market Kazakhtelecom.
Kazatomprom celebrated Nuclear Industry Workers' Day in late September.
Kazatomprom also noted that Samruk-Kazyna, which will continue to own the rest of the com- pany’s shares, would raise between $400.8mn- $451.3mn from the sale, contingent on whether the over-allotment option was exercised. Samruk-Ka- zyna added that a total of 49 foreign and 16 Kazakh institutional investors have bought Kazatomprom stock, as well as 2,700 Kazakh retail investors.
Uranium has been one of the best performing com- modities of 2018. It rose nearly 40% after hitting lows in April and gained to its highest level since March 2016 on November 2 at $28.75 per pound.
Kazatomprom’s output accounts for 20% of the world’s uranium production.
The listing of Kazatomprom on the LSE demon- strates Kazakhstan’s commitment to finally mak- ing the long talked about IPOs of state companies happen after numerous delays in recent years.
Each company scheduled for an IPO is set to go through a dual listing, as the recently launched AIX hopes to draw liquidity to succeed in creating a fully functioning stock market in Kazakhstan. The country’s first stock exchange, the Kazakh- stan Stock Exchange (KASE) in Almaty, has failed to make the grade due to a lack of liquidity stem- ming partially from barriers to entry for foreign in- vestors. The AIX is 25.1%-owned by the Shanghai Stock Exchange. US investment bank and finan- cial services firm Goldman Sachs recently bought a 4.1% stake in the Astana bourse.