Canadian Valeura Earns London Share Listing
Canadian junior Valeura Energy said April 17 the UK Listing Authority has approved a prospectus related to the proposed admission of its common shares for trading on the main market of the London Stock Exchange (LSE).
Subject to final approval from the listing authority, Valeura expects the admission to become effective on or around April 25, at which time unconditional dealing in Valeura’s shares will be expected to start under the ticker symbol VLU. Shares will also continue to trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE) under the ticker symbol VLE, where about 86.5mn common shares are outstanding.
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“There is no money being raised with this listing,” Valeura CEO Sean Guest told NGW. “It is just intended to establish us in what we believe is a much better market for investors, as well as to be ready should we need to raise money at some time in the future.”
Valeura first hit upon the idea of listing on the London exchange in the wake of a C$60mn financing on the TSE about a year ago, Guest said. Most of that equity issue was taken up by institutional investors in the UK.
“What we could see was that the focus for international oil and gas was in London,” he said. “The UK institutions have a much better understanding of Turkey and European gas, in particular, so we feel that our story will receive a much better audience over in that area.”
Many more UK institutions were interested in participating in that 2018 raise, Guest said, but were unable to participate because Valeura didn’t have a listing on the LSE.
Guest said Valeura has no intentions at this time to do a London equity issue – the 2018 issue provided all the capital the company needs to carry its drilling, stimulation and testing program on its basin centred gas accumulation (BCGA) project in Turkey’s Thrace basin into 2020.
“It will be a matter of completing our program with Equinor in the next six months or so and then based on that news determining what is the next step for the project,” he said.
Valeura is currently drilling its third well in the BCGA program, Devepinar-1, and expects to release results of that well “in the near term,” Guest said. Stimulation and testing work is also continuing on the first two BCGA wells, the Yamalik-1 discovery well and the Inanli-1 appraisal well.