Saudi Aramco execs go on the road to promote share sale
Saudi Aramco executives are traveling this week to recruit international investors for the oil company’s $12 billion secondary offering, a departure from its IPO held five years ago that was marketed primarily to the home crowd.
Aramco CEO Amin Nasser and CFO Ziad Al Murshed will be attending roadshow events in London while others are planning to join presentations in New York, Bloomberg reports.
Institutional investors can submit orders until June 6 for the $1.8 trillion company’s share sale that began the booking process on Sunday and was oversubscribed within hours.
Before Aramco’s $29.4 billion IPO in 2019, overseas investors showed limited interest, leaving the government reliant on local buyers.
The kingdom scrapped a roadshow event in London and decided against presentations in the U.S. and Japan, choosing instead to focus on its enthusiastic domestic audience, who made the IPO the largest in history.
Saudi Aramco offering could raise as much as $13 billion
Saudi Aramco’s long-anticipated secondary offering, which could raise as much as $13.1 billion and rank among the most lucrative share sales since the company’s own IPO five years ago, gets underway next week.
The government filed papers on Thursday to start the booking process for investor orders that will lead to the sale of a 0.64% chunk of the world’s largest oil producer on the Tadawul Stock Exchange in Riyadh. Aramco will start taking orders from institutional investors on Sunday, June 2.
State-owned Aramco will earn about $12 billion if it chooses to sell the shares at the top of its indicated pricing range and could add another $1.1 billion by exercising the so-called greenshoe option in the likely event that demand from investors is high.
“The offering provides us with an opportunity to broaden the shareholder base amongst both Saudi and international investors,” Aramco Chief Executive Amin Nasser told reporters on a call after the announcement, Reuters reported. “It also offers us an opportunity to increase liquidity and to increase our global index weighting.”
Selling the shares will provide the kingdom with cash to fuel Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s $1.5 trillion Vision 2030 campaign to diversify the economy amid the global transition from fossil fuels. The government has recently extended the timeline for Neom and some of its mega-projects because of funding shortfalls as oil production cuts have reduced Aramco revenue.
At the top end of the price range, the Aramco deal would be the sixth-largest share sale since the company raised $30 billion in its 2019 initial public offering, Bloomberg reports.
Saudi Aramco prepares for $10 billion share sale amid oil cuts
Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, is generating renewed energy among investors as it moves forward with a secondary offering.
The share sale is currently being planned to start on Sunday with the booking process to take orders and could raise more than $10 billion, making it the largest offering of its kind in years, Bloomberg reports.
No final decisions have been made on the offering period and terms of the deal, including its size, could still change, according to the news agency.
Aramco didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The offering is set to come days after Aramco’s stock dropped to the lowest level in over a year.
The deal’s opening will coincide with next week’s OPEC+ meeting to discuss oil output policy, where the group is expected to maintain supply curbs.
Saudi Arabia’s production is close to its lowest level in three years.
