Razvan Popescu, Romgaz: “We want to access the local stock market to finance our investments”

Romgaz celebrates 10 years since the company’s shares are traded on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.

“10 years after the BVB listing, we have managed to be more and more transparent, we manage to have better and better liquidity. We want to increase liquidity and become a more important company on the Stock Exchange. Last year we reached the trading maximum of 52.2 RON, which led to a maximum capitalization of 19.93 billion RON,” Razvan Popescu, CEO of Romgaz, said during an event organized by the Bucharest Stock Exchange.

“It is a time to adapt a business model, we have to go to international markets, we have a CAPEX to finance. Romgaz must become an engine of sustainability.

It is important to access the Romanian market because investors know the company very well. There are more and more institutional investors in the company’s shareholding, and we will have to access the Romanian market first. There is liquidity in the market, and we must see if the market will be able to absorb the entire size that we thought of. For this reason, we want the bonds to be international bonds.

We want, 20 years after the listing, Romgaz to have gas flowing from Neptune Deep, to have a business model adapted to the market context, to have investments in renewables, with a program to reduce carbon emissions and methane emissions. We want Romgaz to be a modern and sustainable company.”

“We are celebrating one decade of operation on the local exchange of a company seen as a benchmark in the Romanian economy, Romgaz, which has an extensive background, laying the foundation for the natural gas industry in Romania. Today, firmly anchored in the dynamic of the present times, Romgaz is the largest producer and main supplier of natural gas in Romania, implementing national projects and diversifying its business, thus standing out as an example of a successful issuer which draws the attention of institutional investors. At the Bucharest Stock Exchange, Romgaz, whose major shareholder is the Romanian State, is one of the most traded companies, while its shares cover a significant rate in the BVB indexes. Given the good liquidity of SNG in the last period, we hope to soon see Romgaz also present in the indices of global index provider FTSE Russell for emerging markets, and we also expect Romgaz to play an important role in the potential promotion of the Romanian capital market to emerging market status from MSCI. With a stock capitalization increase of 52% compared to its IPO, with a total yield of 171%, Romgaz is definitely an illustrative example of the performance a State-owned company can achieve on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.”, stated Adrian Tanase, CEO of the Bucharest Stock Exchange.

Romgaz was listed on the BVB Regulated Market on 12 November 2013, after it had successfully implemented a cumulated initial secondary public offering of RON 1.7 billion, on the local exchange and the London Stock Exchange. For Romania, the company listing was one of the highest offers for sale of shares gained by the Romanian State through BVB.  In the 10 years of listing, investors have performed over 549 thousand transactions with over 326 million shares, amounting to more than RON 10 billion. At the end of the trading session of Friday, 10 November, the capitalization of Romgaz amounted to RON 17,9 billion, which means over 50% increase compared to the capitalization from the IPO. Also taking into account the dividends distributed by the company over these years, the investment made in SNG shares has brought a yield of 171% since listing to date, while the yield of the company share price is 52%. In the 10 years since listing, the company has distributed dividends worth RON 13.4 billion. The largest shareholder of Romgaz, with 70% shareholding, is the Romanian State, through the Ministry of Energy.

Since December 2013, Romgaz has been added to the BET reference index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, which includes now top 20 most traded companies on the local exchange. It has also been added to the BET-XT, BET-BK and BET-NG indexes. In the BET-NG sectoral index, which shows the trend of companies listed on the BVB regulated market, whose main business is energy and related utilities, Romgaz ranks third, with a rate of 17.37%. The company shares are also included in the BET-BK, BET-TRN, BET-XT, BET-XT-TR, BET-XT-TRN and BETPlus indexes. Moreover, Romgaz shares are included in the MSCI Frontier IMI (Investable Market Index) indexes dedicated to frontier markets. Since 16 May 2023, Romgaz has benefited from the Issuer Market Marker services provided by Raiffeisen Bank International.

Romgaz is also a partner in the BVB Research Hub project, which is an initiative of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, launched as a platform offering fundamental analysis reports about the companies listed on the local stock exchange, information and educational materials about capital markets and ESG data.