Chilean salmon farmer, Multiexport Foods, has said the company is shelving plans to list in Oslo, as it commits to using finance put in place for its expansion into the Magallanes region on the southern tip of South America.
“Right now, our projects are financed, but the next time we need capital, we’ll see,” chief exec, Andres Lyon, was quoted by Undercurrent News as saying. The company, one of Chile’s largest producers of Atlantic salmon, had publicly said it was evaluating joining compatriot company, Camanchaca, on the Oslo Stock Exchange.
Norwegian E24, citing Undercurrent, wrote that Santiago-listed salmon farmers had been dropped, after the last algae bloom in 2016. If investor fears linger, then Multiexport, which is a quarter owned by Japanese trading house, Mitsui, might one day be compelled to list in Oslo.
For now, however, the company balance sheet is rock solid without help from Oslo’s seafood-focused investor community.
“We are, thus far, only listed on the Santiago Exchange,” SalmonBusiness reported Lyon saying recently. Confident, he added that the company’s earnings of USD 500 million made it “Chile’s most profitable company”. In 2017, company EBIT per kilogram reached USD 1.75.
Multiexport is targeting a harvest volume of 76,000 tonnes in 2018. Most, or about 85 percent of it, will be Atlantic salmon.
“We have the concessions to produce 100,000 t by 2020, 2021,” he said, the signal for growth of a formidable 31 percent in two to three years.
