Investors put a price tag of 3.9 billion euros ($4.4 billion) on power plant and energy trading firm Uniper on Monday, giving shareholders in former parent E.ON an insight into the potential writedowns it faces.
E.ON, which holds 46.65 percent of Uniper after the spin-off, said last month it valued the division at some 12 billion euros in its books and warned further charges might follow once Uniper started trading on the stock exchange.
Having already taken more than 18 billion euros in writedowns on power generation assets since 2014, E.ON will be forced to book more for Uniper, hitting its weakened balance sheet and curbing its scope for future investment.
Still, the market value of Uniper and E.ON combined was 1.6 billion euros higher than E.ON's standalone value last Friday. The German utility hoped that spinning off Uniper would in turn improve the valuation of the core businesses it retained: gas and power grids, renewable energy and retail clients.
"We have proven wrong those that said the spin-off won't work," E.ON Chief Executive Johannes Teyssen told reporters.
In a market debut closely watched by investors, Uniper's shares traded at 10.65 euros apiece at 1212 GMT, above the opening price of 10.015 euros and toward the upper end of potential valuations given by analysts. E.ON slumped 14 percent.

INDEX TRACKERS
Uniper CEO Klaus Schaefer is hopeful its coal- and gas-fired plants will still be needed to ensure 24/7 baseload power for Germany's economy as it moves toward greater use of intermittent renewable energy.
, while Uniper also has stakes in profitable hydropower plants and network grids.
"Investors look at our shares because they understand that Germany's energy shift is the biggest challenge that we have in the market," Schaefer told Reuters TV. "I have no concerns about the future based on our portfolio."
By midday, about 27 million shares in both companies had changed hands, accounting for about half of all trading activity among German blue-chips.
"We see a major buying opportunity in Uniper because of the near-term share price volatility based on forced index related selling and investor rotation following the demerger," Macquarie analysts said, starting the company with an "outperform" rating.
Due to selling by index trackers, who got Uniper stock by virtue of being E.ON shareholders but have to dump it because it will be excluded from Germany's DAX index, analysts had expected Uniper to trade anywhere between 5.50-13.00 euros.
E.ON's smaller rival RWE is in the process of listing its power grids, renewables and consumer business, a company dubbed Innogy. RWE said on Monday it would sell some of its existing shares in Innogy in a secondary offering, alongside a planned capital increase.

Source: Arab News