Dangote Petroleum Refinery & Petrochemicals FZE said its ongoing initial public offering had attracted subscriptions from investors in more than 90 countries, including 51 of Africa’s 54 nations, as the NGN2.15 trillion ($1.61bn) share sale enters its final week, The Punch reported on October 19.
The Nigerian company, whose refinery near Lagos has refining capacity of about 700,000 barrels per day (bpd), has not disclosed the total value of subscriptions, the number of applicants or a country-by-country breakdown.
Dangote has described the geographical spread as making the transaction a pan-African offering. The share sale is registered as a public offering only in Nigeria, however, leaving investors elsewhere subject to their domestic securities rules or approved cross-border arrangements. Reuters reported on October 9 that the fragmented accesshighlighted continuing barriers to cross-border investment in African capital markets.
The arrangements vary by market. Kenya’s Capital Markets Authority has approved a short-form prospectus for a global depositary receipt route allowing eligible investors to participate in up to about KES39bn ($300mn) of the offer, although creation and listing of the receipts remain subject to the offer and associated approval process. Ethiopia’s capital-market regulator has restricted the proposed offering there to qualified investors, while Uganda’s regulator has limited marketing and distribution to high-net-worth and professional investor
The company said the IPO broke a Nigerian capital-market record on its opening day and surpassed what it called the previous African record within its first 10 days. It has not published interims. subscription values or identified the benchmarks supporting those claims.
The base offer comprises 4.1bn newly issued ordinary shares at NGN525 each and would raise NGN2.1525 trillion before costs if fully subscribed. The shares represent about 3.3% of the refinery’s enlarged capital.
The offer opened on September 14 and was originally due to close on October 13 before Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission approved an extension to October 27. Dangote said the additional time would support cross-border distribution and depositary-receipt programmes and allow prospective investors to complete account opening, identity verification and other regulatory requirements.
A 30% overallotment option could lift gross proceeds to about $2.1bn if exercised and approved.
Source: Intellinews