THARISA, a JSE-listed chrome and platinum group metals miner, has raised the prospect of moving its primary listing to London in order to attract a broader pool of investors.
“We do have the opportunity to migrate to a premium main market listing on the LSE, and it’s under consideration as we speak,” said Phoevos Pouroulis, CEO of Tharisa.
“It is very much part of our thinking in terms of optionality and accessibility to a broader investor community, and ideally to reach indexation levels so that we can get funds tracking our equity,” he added.
Pouroulis was responding to a question at the firm’s interim results announcement regarding the firm’s recently launched ADR programme in the US. Tharisa said today it had appointed JP Morgan as the depository bankk for a Level 1 ADR programme.
Said Pouroulis: “We will have seen our ADR one programme go live in the US, and that remains an attractive jurisdiction.
“We’re looking at optionality over time in terms of promoting our equity story in the US, on the back of huge interest around critical minerals and strategic minerals, of which all of our commodities fall into both categories. We have noticed heightened interest from US and European strategic investors.”
The platinum markets have become increasingly interesting to the US after they were included in a list of 60 critical metals in terms of President Donald Trump’s Project Vault initiative. In addition, the possible onset on tariffs motivated traders to move metals pre-emptively to markets such as Comex in the US.
Platinum warehouse stocks rose from around 140,000 ounces at end-2024 to 631,000 oz by March 2025 ahead of tariff announcements, according to Metals Focus, a UK market consultancy. Stocks then fell to 275,000 oz by July, before increasing again as policy risks resurfaced to end the year above 600,000 oz, said Metals Focus.
Tharisa reported a five-fold increase in headline share earnings of 16.6 US cents per share (2025: 2.9c/share). The earnings were partly driven by an improvement in PGM production while chrome output was unchanged. This production performance was despite inclement first quarter weather which affected grades.
But the larger part of the earnings increase was market related, especially a strong year-on-year recovery in platinum group metal prices which averaged $2,599/oz (2025: $1,403/oz). The chrome market was also robust. Tharisa reported an average metallurgical grade chrome price of $284/t compared to $253/t) previously.
