The exodus from the Irish stock market ramped up to turbo speed this year, with Dalata Hotel Group and FD Technologies being acquired, and Datalex, Corre Energy and Molten Ventures delisting.
With departures vastly outstripping initial public offerings over the past decade, the committee that reviews membership of the Iseq 20 found itself scraping the bottom of the barrel earlier this month to fill a vacancy in the once-proud index.
The solution?
Promote Great Western Mining, an explorer with a market capitalisation of just €4.3 million. Yet to generate any meaningful revenues in two decades chasing gold, silver and copper in Nevada, the company officially joins the index on Monday.
READ MORE
Investors in fellow miner Kenmare Resources – which has been producing ilmenite at its Moma mine in Mozambique since 2007 – could be forgiven for wishing their company had taken the opportunity to exit the index this year.
While Kenmare’s shares surged as much as 37 per cent in the first half on hopes of a sale to its founding managing director Michael Carvill and Abu Dhabi private equity firm Oryx Capital Partners, the collapse of those talks and a series of subsequent setbacks have left the stock on track to end 2025 down by about a third.
That would make Kenmare this year’s Iseq 20 laggard – aside from new entrant Great Western, which has shed almost 90 per cent of its value following a deeply dilutive share sale.
Carvill, who exited the business in August 2024, was told to take a hike by his successor Tom Hickey in June after he and Oryx indicated they would only proceed with a bid below their initial – and rejected – £473 million (€540 million) proposal.
Hickey said on a podcast a week later that he had since spoken to holders of more than 60 per cent of the shares, who were overwhelmingly “very comfortable” with the decision. He later told The Irish Times the process had “shone a light” on the fundamental value of Moma – a mine that produces about 6 per cent of global titanium feedstocks and is estimated to have another 100 years of life at current output rates.
Ilmenite, the main mineral extracted by Kenmare through dredging titanium-rich sands in mining ponds, lacks the allure of the precious metals Great Western Mining is pursuing in the mountains of western Nevada. But it is a workhorse material, used in everything from paints and plastics to ceramics and textiles.
The problem is price. Ilmenite, which surged amid tight global supplies in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has fallen by more than a fifth over the past three years to about $286 a tonne, as new supply – particularly from Chinese-backed producers operating in Africa – has flooded the market.
Hickey said in late summer that prices were “bottoming out” and that some producers – especially those that have not invested in the costly machinery Kenmare uses to maximise extraction – would be forced to exit. That has yet to materialise.
Davy analysts now expect ilmenite prices to fall for a fourth consecutive year in 2026, to about $255 a tonne.
Operational issues have compounded the pressure as Kenmare completes a $341 million project to upgrade and relocate its main processing facility – the wet concentrator plant known as WCP A – to Moma’s large ore zone. The company has cut its 2025 ilmenite production guidance three times in as many months.
The initial downgrades were attributed to delays in commissioning the plant, while the latest – announced this week – was blamed on problems managing the slimes generated by dredging titanium-rich sands from mining ponds.
More troubling for investor sentiment, however, is Kenmare’s failure to agree a new production and export royalties deal – the so-called implementation agreement – with Mozambique following the expiry of its previous 20-year arrangement just before last Christmas.
Talks with the authorities have dragged on for more than three years and lost momentum after last year’s presidential election triggered months of civil unrest.
“We think Kenmare will be in a transitional year in 2026 and needs to execute operationally, as well as secure an updated implementation agreement, for the shares to de-risk and re-rate,” German investment bank Berenberg said in a report this week.
Uncertainty around the agreement was a key sticking point for the financial backers of the Carvill-Oryx consortium.
If a deal is finally struck with Mozambique, might Carvill be tempted to mount another approach?
Much would depend on whether investors would then give Kenmare credit for what analysts see as the company’s underlying value. The shares currently trade at around half of net asset value, Berenberg noted.
Ultimately, though, what may determine whether Kenmare has a future as an independent listed company is the plan Hickey devises over the next 12 months for deploying the cash it will generate after emerging from its largest investment cycle – beyond dividends and buy-backs.
Few have more riding on a strong plan to reignite investor interest in Kenmare than the Iseq 20 committee, fast running out of companies to prop up a waning index.
