ZCCM – is the Zambian mining giant finally awakening?

Four years ago, I pointed my readers towards the stock of a "forgotten" African mining giant.

My prediction that the company (and its stock) would awaken from a multi-decade slumber proved to be early – but ultimately correct.

The stock has been on the move lately, and management now wants to radically modernise the company's stock market listing.

For anyone willing to invest a bit of time in digging deeper, this could prove to be a wonderfully "weird" and potentially lucrative research project.

ZCCM Investments Holdings.

ZCCM-what?

In June 2022, I published: "Forgotten microcaps (part 1): ZCCM – the secret mining giant of Africa".

As I said back then, even hardened micro-cap investors were unlikely to have heard of ZCCM Investments Holdings (ISIN ZM0000000037, Euronext:MLZAM).

With a market cap of just EUR 233m (USD 250m) at the time, and only 7% of its shares in free float, this was never a liquid stock that you could easily buy and sell. There was also no conventional analyst coverage.

However, the company came with a strong endorsement.

When I asked my old friend Axel Krohne of Krohne Capital about the company, he called it "the most undervalued (copper) mine in the world".

Axel is a world-travelling investment sleuth of the highest order and runs a fund specialising in frontier markets. As it happened, he had just returned from Zambia when I contacted him and had met with ZCCM's management.

Besides Axel's assessment, what attracted me was the company's remarkable history and its potential role in Zambia finally coming into its own as one of the world's major copper producers.

ZCCM Investments Holdings traces its origins to the Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines. During the British colonial era, mining operations in the region that today encompasses Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, and parts of South Africa were gradually consolidated.

In 1968, what had previously been the British protectorate Barotziland-North-Western Rhodesia became the independent nation of Zambia. The new government took control of mining operations that had previously been run by foreign companies. Following several rounds of reorganisation, Zambia ultimately decided in 1982 to merge these assets into a single entity – the giant Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM).

Following several further rounds of restructuring, the company is today known as ZCCM Investments Holdings. As the name suggests, it primarily serves as an investment holding company. It owns stakes in many of Zambia's leading mining and energy operations, alongside a number of ancillary assets such as real estate.

Source: ZCCM unaudited financial statement 2025.

Sadly, those early ambitions never fully came to fruition. Newly independent Zambia eventually became one of the world's most indebted nations, while the country's copper production did not grow but instead fell by two-thirds.

ZCCM was caught up in this decline. During the early 2000s, its shares traded as low as 9 cents. They also reached much higher levels in 2007, before subsequently surrendering most of those gains.

So why did I write about the company in 2022?

Multiple European listings

Unusually, ZCCM has long maintained listings on multiple stock exchanges: Lusaka (Zambia), Paris (Euronext), and London.

These listings date back to the 1970s, when European investors were eager to gain exposure to Zambia's mining sector.

Zambia possesses an exceptional range of natural resources, including copper, cobalt, silver, uranium, lead, coal, zinc, gold, and emeralds. The country holds around 6% of global copper reserves, making it Africa's second-largest and the world's tenth-largest copper producer.

When ZCCM was created in its current form, the Zambian government essentially transferred a wide variety of mining and energy assets into the company. This broad-brush approach left ZCCM with some of the country's choiciest natural resources – including assets that may still not be fully understood or appreciated outside specialist mining circles.

Around that time, I noticed that Zambia's new political leadership had begun actively promoting fresh investment into the country. At the same time, it had started cleaning up some of its complicated joint ventures with companies such as Glencore and First Quantum Minerals.

Further research revealed that the Zambian government, as ZCCM's majority shareholder, and the company's board had agreed upon a new six-year strategic plan. They updated the governance model and positioned the company to deliver greater shareholder value – or at least that was the ambition. The plan also called for extracting more value from the existing portfolio through means other than dividend income. As I wrote back then, "the message is loud and clear: Zambia would like its stake in ZCCM to be worth more".

I also highlighted the obvious risks:

"Zambia has a dire track record overall... It's now been 16 months since ZCCM's six-year strategic plan was passed, and the company's website doesn't even include the most basic, up-to-date information."

Nevertheless, I concluded that "the undervaluation of the stock and the potential of Zambia in the resource sector are potentially so vast that these factors could well outweigh everything else. ... In summary, ZCCM is a long-forgotten company that may well be about to embark on an exciting new era. Its stock is still trading 75% off its 2007 high, and its chart looks like the decades-long downward trend could be broken."

As is so often the case with my research, I was simply too early. The stock traded mostly sideways over the following three years. Recently, however, it finally took off. At EUR 3.22, the share price is now almost 2.5x higher than when I first highlighted the company.

ZCCM Investments Holdings.

What's more, management now appears to have a serious strategy – and an ambition to increase the company's value by another fivefold over the coming decade.

Even larger players have started to take notice.

ZCCM gets rediscovered

I rubbed my eyes when I saw ZCCM pop up on the Financial Times website last week.

The Pink One published an extensive article on 26 June 2026 under the headline: "Zambia's state-owned miner seeks to revive London listing

Zambia's state-owned mining group is planning to revive its London listing and boost its freely traded shares, as it works to tap international capital markets to grow its production and expand into metals trading. ... Kakenenwa Muyangwa, chief executive of Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines Investment Holdings, said the group had appointed advisers to help improve the attractiveness of its securities .... adding that he wanted to increase ZCCM’s market capitalisation from about $1.4bn to around $7bn within a decade."

No wonder the stock has been on the move.

Further research led me to a 19 June 2026 article published by Mining Weekly: "Zambia's ZCCM says CopperTech IPO could speed up $2.7bn expansion project".

As it stated:

"Vedanta is preparing the US listing of CopperTech Metals, a US-domiciled integrated copper and cobalt producer, which will operate its 79%-owned Konkola Copper Mines in Zambia's copperbelt province. ZCCM owns the balance of the shareholding."

These are significant steps towards unlocking the value embedded in ZCCM's portfolio.

Mining Weekly also reported:

"ZCCM, which is listed on the Lusaka, London and Euronext stock exchanges, said it was considering a stock buy-back to shore up its share price, which it says is significantly undervalued on the European bourses."

Will the recent upward trend continue?

I believe this is a question worth examining further, for three reasons:

• Zambia's President Hakainde Hichilema has positioned himself as considerably more business-friendly than his predecessors and has actively sought to attract investment into Zambia's mining sector. As the world wakes up to its growing need for copper, Zambia is well placed to benefit – and ZCCM could become the obvious proxy for international investors seeking exposure.
• ZCCM's European listings have historically traded at a discount to the shares listed in Lusaka. The Financial Times noted: "The company's overseas shares generally trade at a big discount to those on the Zambian exchange, partly reflecting lower liquidity and volatility in the country's currency, the kwacha. Its shares in Euronext are less than half the price of those listed in Lusaka." This deserves further investigation, but it could represent another interesting angle to the investment case.
• ZCCM owns a VAST range of assets. Even a quick review suggests that some of them may be worth considerably more than first appears. Today, more than ever, the precise composition and value of ZCCM's investment portfolio remain complex and somewhat opaque – and that is precisely where a bit of investigative work could uncover genuine alpha. As I wrote back in 2022: "There is a lot for stock market sleuths to uncover, including a range of 'legacy real estate assets' that the company also inherited along the way."

Equally, this is probably still a story with a lot of hair on it. For example, it would require careful analysis to determine whether the various lawsuits and arbitration proceedings involving the company could ultimately hurt the investment case.

Do you want to take the research further?

If you would like to dig deep into ZCCM, why not take the opportunity to present your findings as a guest speaker at my next online event?

ZCCM strikes me as exactly the sort of opportunity that belongs at "Weird Shit Investing" – which, for the first time, is going online in just over three weeks, on 28 July 2026.

Weird Shit Investing Online will be a full day dedicated entirely to outlier investment ideas that no one else is talking about – such as ZCCM back in 2022.

The programme will feature 20 speakers, most of whom have previously presented at one of the in-person Weird Shit Investing conferences in Hong Kong, London, or New York. Each will present a fresh investment idea that has not previously been discussed at one of those events.

Each presentation consists of:

• 20 minutes presenting the investment case.
• 10 minutes of live Q&A with the audience.

There is no charge for speaking slots.

If you think you would be the right person to tackle ZCCM, drop me a line and tell me why.

Alternatively, if you would simply like to attend and hear 20 thoroughly unconventional investment ideas, tickets are currently available at the early-bird rate (USD 50 off the regular ticket price).

NB: you can also lock in this price even if you cannot attend on the day and simply want access to the full recordings.

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