Australia’s Woodside Energy to end London listing

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Woodside Energy, Australia’s largest oil and gas developer, will delist its shares from the London Stock Exchange next month, in the latest blow to the UK market’s status as a natural resources hub.

Perth-based Woodside listed shares in the UK when it merged with BHP’s oil and gas assets in 2022, to allow British shareholders in the mining company to maintain their exposure to the assets. 

Yet the company, which has a market capitalisation of A$47bn (£24bn), said on Wednesday that the cost of maintaining the secondary listing was no longer justified. 

Meg O’Neill, chief executive of Woodside, told the Financial Times that the UK listing accounted for only 1 per cent of Woodside’s issued share capital, and that most of its large UK-based institutional investors opted to hold its ASX-listed stock. 

The decision comes after BHP moved its primary stock market listing to Australia in 2022 as part of a plan to unify its dual corporate structure, depriving the FTSE 100 index of one of its biggest constituents. The shift was announced the previous year, when the miner unveiled the deal to sell its petroleum business to Woodside.

London fell behind New York, Toronto and Sydney this year as a global venue for mining company listings, with investors warning it was in danger of being “sidelined” by a sector it once dominated if a few major groups headed overseas.

Rival Rio Tinto, which has a dual listing with shares on both the LSE and ASX, has also come under pressure from an activist investor to unify its share structure on the Australian exchange, but has argued against the move. 

Woodside shares boomed after the merger with BHP as the price of liquefied natural gas soared following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Its UK stock has fallen back by about 30 per cent in the past 12 months and the company has looked for other deals to boost its growth profile. It held talks with local rival Santos before acquiring two US assets this year. 

The UK-listed Woodside shares have been slightly weaker than the ASX stock over the past year. The former are expected to stop trading on November 19.

Australian property listings company REA planned to launch a secondary listing in London as part of its cash-and-shares offer to acquire UK rival Rightmove earlier this year but could not strike a deal with its target. 

Woodside raised its production forecast for the year on Wednesday and lowered its guidance for capital expenditure spending, which pushed its revenue for the third quarter above analyst expectations.

O’Neill said that while the oil price had been under pressure over concerns about Chinese demand, the LNG price had been stronger heading into winter in Europe and Asia. “The market is finely balanced,” she said.