As a small forest owner, I looked into what the price per hectare of Stora Enso’s Swedish forests would be if bought through the stock exchange. I roughly divided 1.2 million hectares by the share count of 788 million shares, meaning 650 shares would correspond to one hectare of forest. At the current share price, the cost would be about €6,730. For comparison, I did the same calculation for SCA, which owns a staggering 2.6 million hectares of forest. 702 SCA shares would correspond to one hectare of forest, which at the current price would be 32,508 SEK or €3,023.
Although you get a forest hectare for less by buying SCA shares, the location of the forests must be taken into account. Stora’s forests are located in Sweden’s most favorable region for forestry, north of Karlstad and south of Sundsvall, with the largest concentration in Värmland.
SCA’s forests, on the other hand, are relatively far north: the largest concentration is in Jämtland, but the northernmost plots in Lapland are at the same latitude as Kolari in Finland. https://tradevenue.se/@aktiepappa/var-ager-de-svenska-skogsbolagen-sin-skog-1613
Compared to forest prices in Finland, both of these are relatively inexpensive, considering that the industrial business and wind farms are included on top.
The taxation side is what makes me wonder, as I am not familiar with Swedish forest taxation at all. Some kind of tax is likely paid to Sweden on timber sales. Let’s imagine then that the profit was distributed as dividends to the owners of a new forest company, in which case capital gains tax would still have to be paid on the dividends. So, in the worst-case scenario, double taxation of capital income if everything were paid out as dividends.