Metlen shares jump on £5bn London debut
Metlen Energy and Metals had a strong first morning as a London Stock Exchange constituent, after the Greek industrials giant opted to shift its primary listing from Athens.
The group’s shares opened at €48 (4180p) – 1.8 per cent higher than the stock’s closing price in Athens of €47.16 – and continued to rise throughout its inaugural session.
Shares in the €6bn firm rallied by as much as 3.9 per cent through the morning, before paring back some of those gains to be up 2 per cent at 4pm BST.
The mining group confirmed in June its plans to move its primary listing to London; a move that the firm made in order to reflect its increasingly international footprint, but which could see it form part of the FTSE 100 as soon as September.
And its successful first day will act as a fillip to London’s listings-starved bourse and an early vindication of its decision to list in the UK.
Chairman and chief executive Evangelos Mytillineos previously said London had pipped Amsterdam as the firm’s new financial home thanks to the added “visibility” the capital gives firms and the group expanding its business in the UK .
Over 10 per cent of Metlen’s €5.6bn turnover now comes from operations in Britain, where it is one of the biggest members of the consortium behind the £2.5bn east coast subsea electricity cable in Scotland. It is also overseeing the construction of four gas-fired electricity plants and completed a major solar farm in Kent earlier this year.
London ‘the best option’
Mytillineos said on Monday that London was “the best option” for his firm, which can trace its roots back to 1908, when it was established as a family-run metal extraction business.
“We are happy that London is going to make a comeback, and we’re going to be part of it,” he told Bloomberg TV.
He added: “The City has been through rough times after Brexit, no doubt. And Frankfurt, Milan, Paris, Amsterdam tried to take a big chunk out of [the Square Mile’s] business. But in the end, the City never lost supremacy in the financial markets.
“Therefore, even though it was the most difficult stock exchange to get… our decision was for London.”
Metlen’s listing could mark the second fresh listing in a string of new commodities constituents in London, after Anglo American spin-off Valterra opted to join the UK stock market in June. Uzbek gold miner Navoi Mining is also said to be ramping up plans for a bumper £4bn London IPO in 2025, having used the LSE to carry out a £750m bond issuance last year.
Metlen rebranded from its eponymous Mytilineos Energy and Metals, after investment bankers working on the listing said the name would be too difficult to pronounce.
Mr Mytilineos has also agreed to split up his role as both chair and chief executive of the firm in the coming months to conform with LSE rules, though he has not confirmed which of the roles he will surrender.
Trump’s tariffs headache
In the same interview, the group’s longstanding boss conceded that Trump’s capricious tariff regime was likely to have a detrimental effect on his firm, which is a major aluminium exporter.
But despite the 50 per cent duties on the metal, the firm’s share price remains up over 60 per per cent in the year to date, and Mytilineos added the lack of a domestic aluminium market meant Americans will be worst affected by the policies.
“We are a big exporter of aluminium, but we have to consider that the US is a big importer of aluminium,” he said. Therefore, for us, that makes no change, because the Americans will have to buy the same amount of aluminium that they used to buy before the tariff increase. The ones who will have to pay will be the American consumers.”