Kazatomprom Affected by Trump's Trade War

Uranium, one of Kazakhstan's key export commodities, is rapidly declining in value, and shares of the national nuclear company Kazatomprom are also falling, Orda.kz reports.

The trend is linked to broader volatility across global markets.

At a press conference on KASE’s first-quarter results for 2025, Deputy Chair of the Exchange Dana Amanzholova noted that uranium had shown the sharpest drop in value among key assets since the start of the year.

It fell by 11.4%. In contrast, Brent crude edged up by 1.3%, gold increased by 18.6%, and natural gas rose by 25.2%.

On global commodity markets, the biggest gains were demonstrated by natural gas and copper futures, which rose by 25 and 24%, respectively. Uranium and wheat showed the biggest declines in the quarter,said Dana Amanzholova. 

Kazatomprom’s shares are among those most affected. However, according to Natalia Khoroshevskaya, Chair of KASE's clearing center, this decline is not a crisis for the company.

In fact, the sharp drop in prices was not only for Kazakh uranium. Now we see that the economic policy of the United States of America is completely unpredictable, so prices on all commodity markets are quite volatile. But this is not the first high volatility in the history of financial and commodity markets. It happens,commented Natalia Khoroshevskaya. 

Responding to a question from Orda.kz, KASE representatives explained that companies focused solely on the domestic market tend to fare better during global economic instability.

Export-oriented companies like Kazatomprom, which are central to global energy supply chains, are more exposed to external pressures. They said the ongoing turbulence in global markets stems largely from the unpredictability of U.S. economic policy and tariff decisions under the Trump administration.

Companies that provide services or sell products on foreign markets, of course, experience pressure from these very foreign markets. Kazatomprom is one of the flagships of Kazakhstan's industry, it is very globalized. The company sells uranium to foreign markets, its shares are traded on foreign markets, it has gone through an IPO, it has many investors - of course, such companies take the brunt of the blow in such situations. There can be no questions about the company's sustainability, about the assessment of its quality by domestic investors. It's just that the global market is volatile now - it will fall sharply and, I hope, rise sharply. Accordingly, companies like Kazatomprom will be caught in these storms,said Khoroshevskaya. 

Amanzholova also pointed to the company’s strong financial performance. According to Kazatomprom’s consolidated report for the previous year, revenue grew by 26% to 1.8 trillion tenge, while net profit nearly doubled, up 95% to 1.3 trillion tenge.

Fitch has maintained the company’s credit rating at BBB with a stable outlook.

Analysts say investors have no urgent reason to sell off Kazatomprom shares despite their current decline.

Original Author: Nikita Drobny

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