Aramco’s recent share sale attracted over $65 billion in orders, exceeding expectations with foreign investors estimated to hold around 60% of the shares sold, a significant increase from Aramco’s 2019 IPO.
Following it’s sale of shares on Sunday, June 2, Saudi Aramco released the breakdown of shareholding post-allocation.
Of note is that the government of Saudi Arabia retains 97.62% of issued shares.
For the share sale on June 2, Saudi Aramco reports that:
“Pursuant to the final allocation of the fully marketed offering of 1.545 billion shares (the “Offering”), in which the majority of the shares constituting the institutional tranche of the Offering was allocated to investors located outside of the Kingdom, as of 9 June 2024, the public shareholders of Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) (the “Company”) are comprised of: (i) international institutional investors (approximately 0.73% of issued shares), (ii) domestic institutional investors (approximately 0.89% of issued shares) and (iii) retail investors (approximately 0.76% of issued shares).”
What this means is that foreign investors were allocated about 60% of the shares on offer with international institutional investors now holding .73% of the company.
According to Matthew Martin and Julia Fioretti reporting for Bloomberg/Yahoo, “the deal generated strong demand from the US and Europe, according to the people, who declined to be identified as the information is private. Funds from the UK, Hong Kong and Japan also backed the share sale that drew orders worth more than $65 billion in total… The secondary offer drew about 450 funds, and more than 125 new international investors, people familiar with the matter said.”
This is in contrast to Saudi Aramco’s 2019 IPO when, “overseas investors had largely balked at valuation expectations and left the government reliant on local buyers. The $29.4 billion IPO drew orders worth $106 billion, and just 23% of shares were allocated to foreign buyers.”
