Hidroelectrica is under attack by fake news! Some ill-informed and ill-intentioned individuals and journalists have published all sorts of deliberately distorted interpretations in the press. I did not expect that Mr. Mircea Kocea, a professor of economics, would express value judgments such as “The stock market is a complex business. (…) The stock market is a matter related not only to professional training, but also to a whole series of information that a country like Romania, with a small access to the market, cannot receive in time, which means that it is a safe victim”,

The scholarship is not difficult and available to everyone. The condition is to inform yourself. I think this is the only chance for my generation (50+) to save money knowing we can’t count on a state pension. Many of us missed the beginning of the II level of pensions and are forced to take our lives (pension) into our own hands! Mr. Cosea, as the former president of the supervisory board of Transelectrica (he took over from Carașol as CEO), probably the most important energy company listed on the stock exchange, should know more!

What he says about Hidroelectrica: “The risk in Hidroelectrica is not only to lose capital, but also to be left without an object of work, because others are stronger and can become owners of your own property. (…) After entering the stock market, how does the state guarantee that Hidroelectrica will not be absorbed? There are no such guarantees. Because the state is a weak state from the point of view of capital, and in the stock market you have no opportunity to compete when the capital increases, and the information is strictly in a zone different from the sphere of your interests and you lose”

I do not understand what those who declare and publicize falsehood are aiming at. Probably the current Minister of Energy, or the current government, or National Energy. The current attack resembles the messages of extremist-nationalist-sovereignist groups. (my first article on the privatization of Hidroelectrica is dated June 2020)

Let’s analyze it step by step. The Romanian state has not sold any of its shares in Hidroelectrica. The shares that are currently on the stock exchange represent the former package owned by Fondul Proprietatea.

In 2019, the oldest news about the possible sale of the Hidroelectrica stake owned by FP.

It must be said that Romania has undertaken through PNRR to bring Hidroelectrica to the stock market. He didn’t! Good luck with the Proprietatea Fund.

The listing operation was launched in 2022, and the only institution that had a say in the listing was the ASF, which eventually gave its approval. The sale offer took place in the spring of 2023 and was exceeded at the level of 104 lei/share.

Hidroelectrica’s first trade on BVB took place on July 3rd and the development was growing.

The maximum registered price was 137.3 lei at the end of 2023. The minimum price was fixed in August 2023 – it was a holiday.

The share price can change depending on many factors. In the case of H2O, the valuations were based on the energy market. Hidroelectrica owns almost 99% of hydropower production. Energy produced at hydroelectric power stations accounted for 31% of total consumption. Let’s not forget that today, after wind and solar, hydropower is the cheapest, the production price reaches about 100 lei/MWh.

It follows that everything that means production capacity from hydroelectric power stations is extremely profitable if the energy was sold on the OPCOM market for 1300 lei / MWh.

Stock market investors have actually priced stocks correctly when looking at the energy market.

But the valuation of a company (and therefore a stock) does not always mean how much profit the company makes and how much profit it distributes per share. It also means the state of the company’s assets, the investments and forecasts for the technologies it owns, the training of the management team…

There are great benefits for registered companies. (a good article on this topic can be found here) The biggest advantage is transparency. Until the summer of 2023, Hidroelectrica was a closed company about which we knew little, as information that should in principle be public was censored due to poor legislation and management. That’s how I found out that at one point Hidroelectrica went bankrupt after who knows how many guns were fired by “smart energy” with energy that was bought cheap and then sold high or through reconstruction done so that certain companies could make money.

After the listing on the stock exchange, the obligation to be transparent with the shareholders forced us to obtain any information from within the company. Those who know the Romanian energy industry knew something about Hidroelectrica from analyses, forecasts and reports coming from the Ministry of Energy, ANRE or Transelectrica. However, they had to be combined to get a complete picture of the company. Today, Hidroelectrica is also in the focus of large portfolio investors from outside Romania, which is good: the Romanian stock market is waiting for such investments to strengthen. The more registered companies and the more investors, the better. I wrote about the geopolitical advantage of Hidroelectrica’s listing in June 2023: it is a great achievement to get on the map of international investors. _ Read the entire article and comment on it on Contributors.ro