Saudi Aramco is about to debut on the Saudi stock exchange. In Riyadh they say they are ready, but the fear of chaos is on the lips of many analysts. A company that is too big in a stock market that is too small can only cause uproar. After the largest IPO in history, Wednesday, December 12, the oil giant will be listed at a price of 32 riyals (about $8,53) with the symbol 2222.
Tadawul, Saudi Arabia's stock exchange has already announced countermeasures. A daily price fluctuation limit of 10% has been set. On the day of the debut, the opening auction will last half an hour longer: from 9.30 (7.30 in Italy) to 10.30. Then it will kick off the continuous trading which will end at 15.00.
These are the rules set for Saudi Aramco, while for all the other stocks nothing will change: opening from 9.30 to 10.00 and trading from 10.00 to 15.00.
Overall the size of the offering is 3 billion shares, 1,5% of the capital of the group which, through a statement, announced the final results of the placement: requests from institutional investors reached 106 billion dollars. Adding them to those of individual investors we get total orders of $119 billion, i.e. 465% of the shares put up for sale in total.
Meantime funding from the IPO rose to 29,4 billion of dollars from the initial 25,6 billion. Saudi Aramco has in fact exercised the greenshoe option to sell 15% more shares. He reports it Reuters citing as a source a manager of one of the banks involved in the operation.
“Wassim Al Khatib, head of investment banking at one of Saudi Arabia's largest banks, the National Commercial Bank, said the state-owned oil giant had exercised its over-allotment option,” the news agency wrote.
"The final number of shares sold is 3,450 billion and the final value of the transaction amounts to 29,4 billion dollars," Khatib specified.
