Petrom to try its luck on the Stock Exchange

The largest company in Romania, Societatea Nationala a Petrolului (National Oil Company-SNP) Petrom, will be listed on the Stock Exchange as of this month, market sources told Ziarul Financiar.

The quoted sources said the red herring was ready and the small shareholders would start being notified as of next week. Petrom management on Wednesday said “the application for the listing was submitted to the Bucharest Stock Exchange on June 14, 2001.”

The brokerage companies appointed to handle the listing are ING Baring Securities, part of the Dutch ING Group and Global Valori Mobiliare (Global Securities) part of the Turkey-based Global Group.

Petrom is to issue a release next week, the same sources say, to officially announce the shareholding structure, the companies part of the group, the deadline for the trading to begin, the confidential code of the shareholders and data about the number of shares on each coupon.

Petrom was formed by the merger of several companies (the Peco distribution network, Arpechim and Petrobrazi refineries, drilling companies etc.).

The shareholders of each of those companies got stock in Petrom according to the weight held by their original stakes in the share capital of the new group formed back then.

“Because of the merger and of successive share capital increases, not a single coupon has the same number of shares any longer. We will set this number according to certain indices,” the quoted source said.

At present, 7% of Petrom shares are held by investment funds and natural persons. The remaining stock is held by the Romanian State through the Ministry of Industry and Resources (93%).

Petrom has 18,824bn lei in share capital. The capitalisation of the Stock Exchange currently reaches 22,139bn lei ($763.257 million), with BRD registering the highest capitalisation.

SNP Petrom last year made 2,228bn lei in net profit ($98.1 million), with total revenues amounting to 57,854bn lei and total expenses to 55,805bn lei.

Petrom is one of the most powerful companies in Romania, so that when it goes public, it will draw everybody’s attention, especially foreign investors’, brokers say.

Foreign investors are always complaining about Romania not having large companies traded on the Stock Exchange, in which they could invest several million dollars without making a definite impact on the market or on the price.

According to unofficial evaluations, Petrom is worth more than $2bn. This value will not be reached on the Stock Exchange right away, because only a small stake (7%) will be available on the market at first.