Marian Năstase, Alro: Listing has brought us a lot of value

Listing on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) has brought a lot of value to the company, said Marian Năstase, president of Alro Slatina, yesterday, on the occasion of the event that marked six decades of production and almost three decades of presence on the capital market of the aluminum producer from Slatina.

Marian Năstase said: "The stock exchange is an institution that generates trust. It shocks me that we do not understand the role of the stock exchange as a trusted provider for the political segment. If we brought more companies that have state capital to the stock exchange - maybe some do not necessarily need financing, because maybe they are cash rich (ed. with large amounts of available liquidity) - we would bring more trust by making them transparent. This is, in addition to raising capital, one of the most important aspects of the stock exchange in a border country like Romania. There are companies that have majority state capital, which, if they were brought to the stock exchange, would become transparent, which means that all the discussions and criticisms today surrounding these companies would fade away”.

In the opinion of the Alro president, there are two categories of companies that need to resort to the mechanisms of the capital market. "There are family businesses that have been built over the last 30 years and for which there is no internal succession. In these cases, the founders can exit partially through the stock exchange or even completely, transforming the company publicly. In the second category, there are companies that want to expand and for that they need transparency, they need capital and partners who prefer to enter through the stock exchange”, said Marian Năstase.

The President of Alro added: "Trust seems to us to be a fundamental concept for the stock exchange. Alro has been listed on the stock exchange for 28 years, it does not intend to delist, and the fact that we were listed has brought us a lot of value. It has brought us value towards commercial partners, suppliers, customers, lawyers and external partners, through transparency. We are not able to generate and provide as much liquidity for the stock exchange as we would like, but we are trying to be an example of good practices in terms of corporate governance, ESG reporting. Good practices have helped us a lot in our activity, as we have a lot of exports. In fact, we don't really fight on the domestic market, we fight on foreign markets, where the rules are extremely strict".

Alro Slatina celebrated yesterday six decades of uninterrupted activity in the aluminum industry and 28 years since the listing of its shares on the Regulated Market of the Bucharest Stock Exchange. Alro was listed in 1997, being one of the companies with the longest uninterrupted stock market presence. Almost three decades after that moment, the company reached a capitalization of over one billion lei and generated, from 1997 to the present, over 220,000 transactions with over 510 million shares, with a cumulative value of 1.4 billion lei. At the same time, investors benefited from gross dividends totaling 2.65 billion lei, according to a BVB press release.

In the middle of last year, the Vimetco Group owned 54.2% of Alro, while Pavăl Holding and Fondul Proprietatea each had 23.2% and 10.2% of the Slatina-based aluminum producer.