Jake Greenberg, the entrepreneur behind the £938 million uranium specialist Yellow Cake, is preparing to launch an electric vehicle battery materials investment company on the London market, with commodity giant Glencore on board as a cornerstone investor. Cobalt Holdings, which Greenberg leads as chief executive, is expected to list as early as May.
Industry sources suggest the new vehicle aims to raise £180 million to fund an initial purchase of cobalt worth $200 million from Glencore, part of a six-year supply deal. The FTSE 100 mining and trading group is understood to be taking a 10 per cent stake in Cobalt Holdings at launch.
The timing of the flotation has reportedly been influenced by February’s decision by the Democratic Republic of Congo—responsible for about three quarters of the world’s cobalt output—to suspend exports for four months. The move is intended to bolster global prices for the blue metal, used in electric vehicle batteries and smartphones, after they tumbled to $10 per pound, a quarter of cobalt’s peak in 2022.
If the listing proceeds as anticipated, it will be among London’s first flotations of the year. Appetite for new issues has been muted since the flurry of IPOs in 2021. Only last month it was reported that Baker Tilly, the accountancy firm, might pursue a £300 million-plus flotation on AIM this year.
Greenberg, 46, plans to replicate the successful model he established with Yellow Cake, which buys physical uranium. The new enterprise will purchase and hold physical cobalt, aiming to capitalise on any price appreciation in its net asset value over time. Yellow Cake’s own shares have soared by 112 per cent since listing in 2018, and the uranium investor is now valued at £938 million. It holds 21.7 million pounds of uranium under a ten-year supply agreement with Kazatomprom, the world’s largest uranium producer.
A former head of natural resources sales at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Greenberg also runs Sage Enterprises, a commodity-focused consultancy. Citi is understood to be leading the fundraising for Cobalt Holdings, with more details likely to emerge in the coming weeks as preparations for the IPO gather pace.
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Greenberg’s Cobalt Holdings lines up London float with Glencore as cornerstone investor