Mitsubishi Materials registers to divest completely from Masan High-Tech Materials

Mitsubishi Materials Corporation (MMC) Group, an arm of Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi, has registered to divest completely from Masan High-Tech Materials (MHT), a major tungsten provider owned by Vietnamese private conglomerate Masan Group.

In a Wednesday announcement, Masan High-Tech Materials said Mitsubishi Materials had registered to sell 109.9 million shares, or all of the latter’s 10% ownership in the former. The expected value of the transaction is VND1,099.2 billion ($43.1 million).

The divestment is part of a restructuring to its investment portfolio, Masan High-Tech Materials said. The expected trading time is from May 30 to June 10, via order-matching and/or put-through transactions.

In October 2020, Masan High-Tech Materials and Mitsubishi Materials established a strategic alliance in the tungsten industry. As part of the alliance, the latter subscribed for 109.9 million newly-issued ordinary shares in the former via a private placement for a total cash consideration equivalent to $90 million.

Once completed, Mitsubishi Materials held 10% of the fully diluted share capital of Masan High-Tech Materials, and became the second-largest shareholder in the firm.

The move followed Masan High-Tech Materials’s acquisition of H.C Starck (HCS), a leading global mid-stream tungsten business, in June 2020. Earlier this month, the company announced that it had reached a framework agreement with Mitsubishi Materials for the latter to acquire 100% of HCS.

Masan High-Tech Materials clarified that it intended to sell 100% of HCS to Mitsubishi Materials to focus on optimizing its domestic operations, also due to regulatory constraints limiting its ability to import tungsten scraps into Vietnam to implement its recycling strategy.