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Shares in China’s only uranium miner triple on Shenzhen debut
China’s only uranium miner raised around 4 billion yuan ($570 million) as it debuted on the Shenzhen exchange on Wednesday, with its shares more than tripling in value.
The initial public offering comes as China aggressively expands its fleet of nuclear power plants. It has the highest number of reactors in operation and under construction in the world, and may surpass the US and France as the biggest atomic power operator by 2030.
China National Uranium Co., the only firm granted rights to mine the element that’s used as fuel in nuclear reactors, offered 248 million shares at 17.89 yuan each, according to an exchange filing. The stock closed at 67.99 yuan. The company plans to allocate the proceeds to four uranium mines and a handful of other associated minerals, according to another statement.
Uranium prices have rallied over the past four years in anticipation of a surge in demand for the nuclear fuel. The US, Japan and France are among several nations that have pledged to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050.
Meanwhile, China’s domestic fuel supply has fallen short and the country has relied on imports to meet more than 70% of its demand.
“We will push for global deployment and enhancing supply capacity and competitiveness,” China National Uranium chairman Yuan Xu said, according to Xinhua.
The firm, with a market value of 141 billion yuan, is owned by the state-run China National Nuclear Corp. It mines natural uranium and some other chip-making materials like molybdenum and rare earth chlorides. Its net income rose about 16% to 1.5 billion yuan in 2024 from a year earlier, according to the filing. It acquired a 69% stake in Namibia’s Rossing uranium mine, the world’s sixth-largest, from Rio Tino in 2019.
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