Chilean salmon under pressure in Oslo
Newly registered shares worth over USD 43 million were traded in the first hour of Salmones Camanchacas’ IPO day at the Oslo Stock Exchange on Friday. The volume made IT the most-trade stock in Oslo on Friday morning.
So far, shares in Salmones Camanchaca (ticker SALMON) have balanced out at just under 42 NOK by bookmaker, DNB Markets: this, despite a trickle of news during and after the trading launch that indicated three Chilean counties were seeing increased mortality blamed on an influx of the deadly algae, Alexandrium catanella — better known as Red Tide.
The Web page of radio station BioBioChile had reported the president of industry body SalmonChile, Arturo Clement, as saying that some 11 percent of salmon producers in southern Chilean regions of Los Lagos, Aysen and Magallanes had experienced losses attributed, in part, to the deadly algae.
Conversations SalmonBusiness has had with analysts and stock brokers at several brokerages on Friday morning indicate that it’s precisely this extraordinary mortality occurrence that’s grabbing attention, becoming a topic of conversation and pressuring the Salmones stock.
While Chilean salmon farmers struggle with increased numbers of fish deaths, their Scandinavian counterparts made gains on an otherwise flat day of trading. SalMar was up 2.43 percent by noon in Oslo, followed by NRS (2.2 percent); Bakkafrost (1.99 percent); Marine Harvest (1.65 percent) and Leroy (1.36 percent).
