Biggest alumina refinery operator in Greece Mytilineos anticipates 2019 sales to top 2.2 billion euros

Greek-based industrial conglomerate Mytilineos chairman said on Thursday, November 29 that the company anticipated its sales to top 2.2 billion euros in 2019 from 1.5 billion euros this year. Special mention he made about Mytilineos’ growing alumina business and new projects in Libya and Ghana because of which the company expected the imminent growth.

Besides those two projects, Mytilineos, the operator of the biggest alumina refinery in Greece, is expecting to finalise a US$400 million investment in its home country to build a new alumina plant, but no decision is made yet.

“We want very much to see it materializing,” Mytilineos said, telling investors to be patient and that the group would take its final investment decision after an ongoing engineering study was concluded.

The group has not released results for this year yet but expecting to report 2018 EBITDA in line with last year or slightly better, Evangelos Mytilineos said in a presentation to institutional investors.

This will expectedly allow the group to pay a dividend of 0.36 euro per share on 2018 profits, up from 0.32 euro last year, said the company itself. Last year, EBITDA of the company had stood at 306 million euros.

Local media is speculating Mytilineos to be able to seek a foreign listing as well in the next year.

Asked about this, Mytilineos said: “It’s a little bit early to comment,” and expressed dissatisfaction with the performance of Greek shares. So far this year, the Athens Stock Exchange index reportedly lost 25 per cent.

However, besides the growth in alumina business, Mytilineos expects its aluminium division to have a good year in 2019 since most of its output has been hedged during the US sanctions of Russia.