Kew Soda mulls listing on London Stock Exchange, ponders public offer

(Alliance News) - Kew Soda Ltd on Wednesday said it is considering floating on the London Stock Exchange, marking a stark change from recent trends which have seen high-profile names opt for New York listings.

Kew Soda is also know as WE Soda, meaning West East Soda. It is the world's largest natural soda ash producer. Based in London with production facilities in Turkey, the company manufactured 5.0 million metric tonnes of product last year, including 4.6 million metric tonnes of the alkali salt ingredient.

Soda ash an ingredient used for glass manufacturing, but also in solar photovoltaic glass, the production of lithium carbonate used in electric vehicle batteries, and silicates and other sodium chemicals.

WE Soda will seek a premium listing on the London Main Market, making it eligible for inclusion in FTSE UK indices. It will have a free float of at least 10% of shares, and a further 15% may be sold as part of an over-allotment option. The initial public offering is being led by JP Morgan Cazenove, BNP Paribas and Goldman Sachs.

WE Soda didn't provide a total target IPO value or date for listing, saying further details will be provided in the offer prospectus.

As part of the IPO, WE Soda is considering a share offer to retail investors in the UK via the PrimaryBid platform of up to EUR8.0 million. We Soda said it will announce the terms of the retail offer in due course.

The offer will consist entirely of existing shares sold by its current 100% owner, the Ciner Group, one of Turkey's largest industrial groups. Ciner in turn will repay loans made by WE Soda to affiliates within the group. This indirect fund raise will be used by WE Soda to reduce its own debt and for general corporate purposes, it said.

WE Soda is chaired by Ikbal Didem Ciner, and Alasdair Warren is chief executive officer.

"WE Soda is an extraordinary business supplying essential products to support the energy transition," Warren said, adding: "We believe we are investing more and growing faster than any other company within our industry, and we plan to invest approximately USD5 billion and add a further 6 million metric tonnes of new production capacity, more than doubling our production by 2030, mainly through new growth projects in the US."

For 2022, WE Soda reported adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of USD838 million on revenue of USD1.77 billion.

By Holly Beveridge, Alliance News reporter

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