Riyadh, June 9 (EFECOM).- The Saudi Government and other public institutions continue to maintain control of the state oil company Aramco, the largest in the world, with 97.62% of the capital at the closing of the public sale offer this Sunday. (IPO) of 1,545 million shares aimed at national and international institutional investors and with which it raised more than 11,200 million dollars.
As reported this Sunday by the energy giant on its website, “as of June 9, 2024, Aramco’s public shareholders are made up of international institutional investors (0.73%); national institutional investors (0.89%) ), and retail investors (0.76%) of the issued shares.”
The rest of the holdings, “including those of the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, comprise approximately 97.62% of the issued shares,” the note added.
He explained that those “other holdings include shares owned by the Government, shares acquired or transferred to entities owned by the Government, subsidiaries, officers, directors and any other persons who would normally be considered insiders.”
Aramco last week offered a total of 1.545 million shares, setting the price of each of them at 27.25 Saudi riyals ($7.27) in a process to raise more than $11.2 billion.
The purchase option was limited to Saudi institutional investors, foreign institutional investors who are recognized by Saudi investment regulations in the country and Saudi retail buyers or other Saudi partners in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – United Arab Emirates United States, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman -, according to the alert.
Aramco first went public in Saudi Arabia in December 2019 with about 1.5% of its shares in an IPO that was valued at about $25 billion.
The company made this latest move at a time when the Arab kingdom seeks to diversify its sources of income and reduce its dependence on oil, in addition to financing a series of leisure and tourism megaprojects with that same objective.
The Saudi crown prince and prime minister, Mohamed bin Salmán, already announced in 2021 that the government would seek to sell more shares of the oil giant, a measure framed in its foreign investment plan to diversify the economy.
Aramco earned a total of $27,272 million in the first quarter of 2024, which represented a 14.4% cut compared to the almost $31.9 billion it achieved in the same period last year, according to results announced last May.
In 2023, it obtained $121.3 billion in net profits, 24.7% less than the previous year, although that figure was the second largest in history; as well as produced an average of 12.8 million barrels of oil per day and fulfilled 99.8% of its delivery commitments for crude oil and other derivatives. EFECOM
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