Four years ago, I pointed my readers towards the stock of a “forgotten” African mining giant.<\/p>\n
My prediction that the company (and its stock) would awaken from a multi-decade slumber proved to be early \u2013 but ultimately correct.<\/p>\n
The stock has been on the move lately, and management now wants to radically modernise the company’s stock market listing.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
![\"ZCCM](\"https:\/\/www.undervalued-shares.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/zccm-chart-5y.webp)
<\/source><\/picture>\nZCCM Investments Holdings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
ZCCM-what?<\/h4>\n
In June 2022, I published: “Forgotten microcaps (part 1): ZCCM \u2013 the secret mining giant of Africa<\/a><\/em>“.<\/p>\n As I said back then, even hardened micro-cap investors were unlikely to have heard of ZCCM Investments Holdings <\/strong>(ISIN ZM0000000037, Euronext:MLZAM).<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n However, the company came with a strong endorsement.<\/p>\n 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<\/em>“.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u2013 the giant Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM).<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Source: ZCCM unaudited financial statement 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n So why did I write about the company in 2022?<\/p>\n Unusually, ZCCM has long maintained listings on multiple stock exchanges: Lusaka (Zambia), Paris (Euronext), and London.<\/p>\n These listings date back to the 1970s, when European investors were eager to gain exposure to Zambia’s mining sector.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u2013 including assets that may still not be fully understood or appreciated outside specialist mining circles.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u2013 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<\/em>“.<\/p>\n I also highlighted the obvious risks:<\/p>\n “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.<\/em>“<\/p>\n 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.<\/em>“<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n ZCCM Investments Holdings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What’s more, management now appears to have a serious strategy \u2013 and an ambition to increase the company’s value by another fivefold over the coming decade.<\/p>\n Even larger players have started to take notice.<\/p>\n I rubbed my eyes when I saw ZCCM pop up on the Financial Times<\/em> website last week.<\/p>\n The Pink One published an extensive article on 26 June 2026 under the headline: “Zambia’s state-owned miner seeks to revive London listing<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n 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\u2019s market capitalisation from about $1.4bn to around $7bn within a decade.<\/em>“<\/p>\n No wonder the stock has been on the move.<\/p>\n Further research led me to a 19 June 2026 article published by Mining Weekly<\/em>: “Zambia’s ZCCM says CopperTech IPO could speed up $2.7bn expansion project<\/a><\/em>“.<\/p>\n As it stated:<\/p>\n “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<\/em>.”<\/p>\n These are significant steps towards unlocking the value embedded in ZCCM’s portfolio.<\/p>\n Mining Weekly<\/em> also reported:<\/p>\n “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.<\/em>“<\/p>\n Will the recent upward trend continue?<\/p>\n I believe this is a question worth examining further, for three reasons:<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n ZCCM strikes me as exactly the sort of opportunity that belongs at “Weird Shit Investing” \u2013 which, for the first time, is going online in just over three weeks, on 28 July 2026.<\/p>\n Weird Shit Investing Online<\/a> will be a full day dedicated entirely to outlier investment ideas that no one else is talking about \u2013 such as ZCCM back in 2022.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Each presentation consists of:<\/p>\n There is no charge for speaking slots.<\/p>\n If you think you would be the right person to tackle ZCCM, drop me a line and tell me why<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"ZCCM](\"https:\/\/www.undervalued-shares.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/zccm-structure.webp)
<\/source><\/picture>\nMultiple European listings<\/h4>\n
![\"ZCCM](\"https:\/\/www.undervalued-shares.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/zccm-chart-1y.webp)
<\/source><\/picture>\nZCCM gets rediscovered<\/h4>\n
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Do you want to take the research further?<\/h4>\n
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