Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 14
By Rashid Shirinov – Trend:
Kazatomprom has become the first national company of Kazakhstan to float successfully in the international stock exchange, National Welfare Fund Samruk-Kazyna said in a message.
The national company has successfully placed 15 percent of its shares (38,903,491 items) for $451 million on the London Stock Exchange. The demand exceeded the supply by 1.7 times.
As many as 49 foreign and 16 domestic legal entities as well as 2,700 citizens of Kazakhstan participated in the IPO. Kazakh investors acquired 47.5 percent of the shares of the total number of the securities placed.
“Despite the volatility observed on the global stock markets since early October, we have performed our task and issued IPO, as we consider it to be a long-term growth prospect. Kazatomprom is the first quasi-state company to enter the international IPO both on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and the AIFC (AIX)," said Akhmetzhan Yessimov, CEO of Samruk-Kazyna JSC.
He added that the status of a public company will make Kazatomprom more transparent and understandable for investors.
Kazatomprom's IPO is the first key element of the state property privatization program approved by the Kazakh government in 2016. The program is implemented within the framework of the task set by President Nursultan Nazarbayev to reduce the state’s share in the national economy to 15 percent of GDP.
Kazatomprom is the world’s largest producer of natural uranium with priority access to one of the world’s largest resource bases. The company is Kazakhstan’s national operator for the export and import of uranium and its compounds, nuclear power plant fuel, special equipment and technologies.
Samruk-Kazyna, which is wholly owned by the government of Kazakhstan, has previously been the sole shareholder of the company.
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