Elm, a digital security firm owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, drew $57 billion in orders for its IPO from institutional investors, according to Bloomberg, in what appears to be the latest evidence that the appetite for middle east stocks continues to run strong.
Elm drew orders worth an astonishing 213.2 billion riyals from the institutional part of its IPO, “which was 69.5 times oversubscribed. Local investors placed orders worth 206 billion riyals,” according to Bloomberg. Elm is selling 24 million shares at 128 riyals apiece, an offering that may raise as much as $820 million. Riyad Capital is the financial adviser and underwriter for the IPO, which opens for retail investors for four days from Feb. 3.
Elm is just the latest Saudi company to find success in its capital markets debut. The Saudi stock market itself, the Tadawul group, debuted in 2021. Another IPO, that of ACWA Power International, surged on its debut in Riyadh after raising more than $1.2 billion – the biggest Saudi Arabian listing since Aramco.
Saudi Arabia topped the region in terms of intial public offering issuances in 2021, with 15 out of 20 GCC IPOs debuting on Tadawul’s main and parallel markets. Saudi IPOs raked in almost 62 percent of the offerings in the GCC last year, at around $4.65 billion.
