Glencore is considering ditching its primary listing in the UK in favour of New York or another venue where it can “get the right valuation” in a potential blow to the London Stock Exchange, which has been hit by a string of high-profile departures.
Chief executive Gary Nagle said the company was assessing whether other exchanges were “better suited to trade our securities”.
“We want to ensure that our securities are traded on the right exchange, where we can get the right valuation,” he said on a call on Wednesday morning. “If there’s a better one, and those include the likes of the New York Stock Exchange, we have to consider that.”
Glencore listed in London in 2011, in what was the biggest London IPO at the time.
A departure by the FTSE 100 company, one of the 20 most valuable on the London Stock Exchange, would be a fresh setback for the bourse that has been hit by a series of departures of resources companies that complain of low valuations.
Last year, 88 companies delisted or transferred their primary listing from London’s main market with only 18 taking their place, according to the London Stock Exchange Group.
Defectors have included gambling group Flutter, which owns Paddy Power, and building materials company CRH.
Miner BHP switched to a secondary London listing in 2022, a move that saw it drop out of the FTSE 100. Fellow mining group Rio Tinto has recently come under pressure from an activist shareholder campaign to move its primary listing from London to Sydney, and the company has launched a review of its options.
Glencore had previously planned to split off its coal business and list the unit in New York, where it believed listing conditions would be more favourable. But it shelved that plan last year and decided to keep its coal assets within the group.
Profits at Glencore, the largest western coal miner, have been heavily affected by a recent slump in thermal coal prices, which have fallen to their lowest levels since mid-2021.
In its annual results, the company said the drop in coal prices wiped $3bn off its earnings in 2024, compared with the previous year, and that it was reviewing possible coal production cuts given the market dynamics.
Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation were $14.4bn for the full year, down 16 per cent from 2023.
Glencore’s shares fell 6.7 per cent in early trading in London on Wednesday, leaving the group with a market capitalisation of about £40bn.
The company reported a $1.6bn loss for 2024, compared with net income of $4.3bn the previous year.
The loss came after it booked several impairments, including $1.5bn on zinc and copper smelting assets, and a $600mn writedown in its South African coal operations.
Glencore also announced dividend payments of $1.2bn, slightly lower than analysts’ expectations, along with a $1bn stock buyback.
Nagle also laid out plans for developing an additional 1mn tonnes of annual copper production.
Glencore last year held brief merger talks with Rio Tinto, and recently held preliminary discussions over the potential sale of its copper and cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“We continue to be open and alive to M&A [mergers and acquisitions], at all levels of this business, in a value accretive way,” said Nagle, in a call with analysts. “This company was built on M&A — it is in our DNA.”
María Margarita Zuleta, a Colombian lawyer and former deputy justice minister, is joining Glencore’s board.
