PARIS (Reuters) – Holcim climbs on the Zurich Stock Exchange on Monday as the Swiss construction giant announced its intention to split its activities in North America and list them on the New York Stock Exchange.

The group plans a valuation of around $30 billion (27.70 billion euros) for its North American activities and has announced that Miljan Gutovic, current head of activities in Europe, will replace Jan Jenisch as general manager on 1 may.

On the Zurich Stock Exchange, around 09:20 GMT, Holcim shares advanced 4.89%, leading the Swiss benchmark SSMI index which gained 0.17% at the same time. The stock is on track to record its best performance since September 2022.

“We are going to carry out a complete capital separation of our activity in North America and therefore we will introduce 100% of the activity on the New York Stock Exchange,” declared Jan Jenisch on Sunday.

This North American activity plans to increase its annual turnover from around 11 billion dollars currently to more than 20 billion by 2030 and generate an operating profit of more than 5 billion dollars by that date, Holcim said. .

Holcim’s activities outside North America will remain listed on the Zurich Stock Exchange.

For Stifel, the spin-off of the North American business is “good news” for the stock price, “if and when the market buys the upside.”

Vontobel also sees the Holcim split as consistent, adding that a U.S.-based management and board will help the North American business grow.

Jan Jenisch told journalists on Monday that Holcim would consider share buybacks as part of the proposed split.

“We have a lot of room to make the right decisions for an optimal capital structure for both companies and also, of course, for returns to shareholders,” he said.

“We are prepared to contribute to this process by carrying out share buybacks if necessary.”

(Written by Augustin Turpin and Bertrand Boucey, with contributions from John Revill and Louis van Boxel-Woolf, edited by Blandine Hénault)

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