Our Story
metronuclear LLC is a deep value social impact principal investment partnership that awaits then exploits market dislocations, uses algorithms to make investment decisions, and engages management teams to reduce price-value gaps and to improve social impact and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Originally established to supply physical uranium concentrates to US nuclear plants receiving state-level subsidies, metronuclear invests in systemically important public companies that are overlooked and undervalued.
Our Journey
Our founder pioneered uranium trading at two global investment banks and later launched metronuclear when New York and Illinois approved annual ratepayer subsidies for nuclear power plants. We have engaged practically every corporate owner of a nuclear power plant fleet in America. In each case, metronuclear was singularly responsible for the owner’s nuclear fuel team meeting its diversity team for the first time ever. While waiting for these corporate owners to make their nuclear fuel supply chains more diverse, inclusive, and thus more resilient, we pivoted to deep value investments, and specifically European bank shares (and/or proxies thereof) that traded at historically large discounts to their tangible net asset value.
Our Investments
metronuclear’s main investment is in Commerzbank Aktiengesellschaft, Germany’s second-largest private bank. Commerzbank is the market leader in Mittelstand lending, a pioneer in the field of sustainable finance, and the parent of leading digital bank-broker comdirect. Its mBank subsidiary is Poland’s fourth-largest bank. And its CommerzVentures venture capital platform has invested successfully at an early stage in fintech unicorns such as Marqeta, eToro, Mambu, and Bought By Many.
We have initiated a constructive dialogue with Commerzbank and are fully supportive of its management team and corporate strategy. metronuclear has introduced the #BetOnBettina hashtag to #Commerzbank Twitter in support of Commerzbank’s Chief Financial Officer. The bank has achieved accelerated transformation progress under the stewardship of its results-oriented Chief Executive Officer and in turn has announced a new Capital Return Policy and the potential to return up to five billion euros of capital to shareholders by 2024.
metronuclear correctly anticipated Commerzbank’s reascension to Germany’s DAX 40 blue-chip index. In our view, positive operating leverage from significantly higher net interest income and lower inflation-adjusted post-transformation costs could boost Commerzbank’s earnings and capital return potential. Commerzbank’s conservative earnings guidance assumes a European Central Bank deposit facility rate of 2.25 percent, which is 175 basis points below the published forecast of Commerzbank Research. Commerzbank’s conservative estimate of approximately 950 million euros in incremental net interest income in 2024 on a deposit base of around one quarter of one trillion euros implies net interest margin expansion of around 40 basis points, which we believe very substantially understates the potential positive net interest income impact of up to 450 basis points of cumulative frontloaded increases in the European Central Bank deposit facility rate by summer 2023.
Our Team
Roy Adams
- Founder and Chief Investment Officer of metronuclear
- Originates, executes, and manages the partnership’s deep value investments
- Performs research function for geopolitics, macroeconomics, equity markets, and DEI
- Engages management teams of target companies to measurably improve DEI and social impact
- Scaled partnership’s investment in Commerzbank shares during extreme volatility events
- Developed partnership’s deep value algorithms and uranium term and option pricing models
- Pioneered uranium trading at Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers in UK and US with customers spanning 5 continents
- Financial Times: Adams left Deutsche Bank to work with two non-profits and later to invest privately in uranium-linked and European bank shares
- Reuters: Deutsche Bank’s global uranium trading business was a long-term supplier of uranium to utilities, profitable each year of its existence, and later sold to Australian bank Macquarie
- Originated and executed first-ever long-term physical uranium supply contract between a bank and a nuclear utility
- Traded first-ever financially-settled uranium swap with institutional investors
- Arranged first-ever financially-settled uranium swap with a nuclear utility, covering a quarter of its annual fuel requirements
- Graduate of NYC public schools, Mathematics and Science for Minority Students Program at Phillips Academy Andover, Yale College, and Tuck School of Business (Edward Tuck Scholar)