Saudi Aramco shares will start trading domestically next Wednesday, the Riyadh stock exchange said after the energy giant raised $25.6 billion in the world’s biggest IPO.
Aramco on Thursday priced its initial public offering at 32 riyals ($8.53) per share, the high end of the target range, surpassing the $25 billion raised by Chinese retail giant Alibaba in its 2014 Wall Street debut.
Saudi Arabia's
Tadawul Stock Exchange
The world’s largest public company Aramco will now trade in Riyadh on December 11 Wednesday pic.twitter.com/hdN46DFZAo
— D.A. Market Online Trading (@itradeph) December 7, 2019
“The Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) announces that the listing and trading of the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) will start on Wednesday,” the bourse said in a statement Friday.
Aramco shares will trade within a fluctuation limit of plus or minus 10 percent, the statement added.
Aramco said the sale of 1.5 percent of the firm, the bedrock of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious strategy to overhaul the oil-reliant economy, was oversubscribed nearly 4.7 times.
The IPO also comes with oil prices under pressure due to a sluggish global economy hit by the US-China trade war and record output by non-OPEC crude exporters
Aramco will sell three billion shares, and the company said Friday it could exercise a “greenshoe” option, selling additional shares to bring the total raised up to $29.4 billion.
The market launch puts the oil behemoth’s value at $1.7 trillion, far ahead of other firms in the trillion-dollar club, including Apple and Microsoft. But the scaled-down IPO is still a far cry from the blockbuster originally planned by Prince Mohammed.
The much-delayed stock sale, first announced in 2016, was initially expected to raise as much as $100 billion from the sale of up to five percent of the company.
Read more: Saudi Aramco valued at $1.7 Trillion following record breaking IPO
Its plans to raise additional funds by listing on a major international market are also on hold.
The IPO is a crucial part of Prince Mohammed’s plan to wean the economy away from oil by pumping funds into megaprojects and non-energy industries such as tourism and entertainment.
But sceptics say the IPO’s proceeds would barely cover the kingdom’s budget deficit for a year. The IPO was heavily focused on Saudi and other Gulf traders.
Saudi Aramco shares will start trading domestically next Wednesday, the Riyadh stock exchange said, after the energy giant raised $25.6 billion in the world’s biggest IPO
International investors have remained sceptical about the secretive company’s targeted valuation, even though it fell short of Prince Mohammed’s desired figure of $2 trillion.
The IPO also comes with oil prices under pressure due to a sluggish global economy hit by the US-China trade war and record output by non-OPEC crude exporters.
Read more: Saudi Aramco unlikely to be the Blockbuster it hoped to be!
The OPEC+ group, including both cartel members and other major exporters, reached a deal Friday to cut production by 500,000 barrels per day in a bid to prop up prices.
AFP with additional input by GVS News Desk.