Kazatomprom puts Uranium One supply contract back to shareholders
Ballots run from 25 November to 9 December, after 88.34 per cent of the votes cast were withheld in October; the company says the terms are unchanged.
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Kazatomprom's board has called a second shareholder vote on a contract to supply natural uranium to Uranium One Group, the company said in a 23 October notice, after the first attempt failed because holders of most voting shares abstained.
The extraordinary general meeting will be held by absentee ballot. The list of shareholders entitled to vote will be compiled on 17 November at 00:00 Astana time, ballots can be submitted from 25 November until 18:00 on 9 December, and the votes will be counted by 18:00 on 10 December, the notice says. The board convened the meeting by minutes No. 14/26 of 22 October.
The single agenda item is a major transaction in which Kazatomprom has an interest: the contract for the supply of natural uranium in the form of U3O8 with Uranium One. The company said it began a new review of the deal after certain technical amendments to the contract, and that the amendments do not affect its material terms. "The commercial and other terms of the transaction remain unchanged," the notice says, adding that the parameters are consistent with current market conditions. It does not describe the amendments.
The first vote was counted on 7 October. The contract drew 12,248,357 votes in favour (5.39 per cent), 14,261,586 against (6.27 per cent) and 200,867,174 withheld (88.34 per cent), and was not approved because a simple majority of votes was required, the company said on 8 October. Holders of 227,377,117 of the 229,197,526 voting shares took part. The same meeting approved a spot-term sale to a Chinese buyer, as Boards and Capital reported at the time.
The meeting can decide only if shareholders owning in total 50 per cent or more of the voting shares are registered by the closing date for ballots, the new notice says. Ballots must name the shareholder, give the number of voting shares and mark one option; a ballot that is not signed is invalid, and a legal entity's ballot is signed by its chief executive or a representative with a power of attorney. Meeting materials will be available at the company's headquarters in Astana at least ten days before the meeting.
The abstaining block in October was larger than the stake of Samruk-Kazyna, Kazatomprom's majority shareholder. The fund held 163,377,456 ordinary shares, according to the 21 August notice for the first meeting, against 200,867,174 shares withheld. That August notice described Uranium One as a group within the management framework of Rosatom and a shareholder in three Kazatomprom joint ventures, with delivery to the Siberian Chemical Plant in Russia, and said pricing, volumes and delivery schedules could not be disclosed because of confidentiality terms. The new notice does not say who abstained in October or how any shareholder intends to vote.
Samruk-Kazyna's representatives sit on several state company boards at once, a pattern the companies' own pages show. On the Kazatomprom board they include Zhandos Kairgeldi, elected at the October meeting.
Kazatomprom's global depositary receipts trade in London and on the Astana International Exchange, where its shares are also listed, under the tickers KAP and KAP.Y. The company describes itself as the world's largest uranium producer.