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The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is poised to raise at least $11.2 billion from the ongoing secondary offering of shares in Saudi oil giant Aramco, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing anonymous sources with knowledge of the matter.
The Saudi government is expected to sell the 1.545 billion shares of Aramco on offer, or about 0.64% of the company’s issued shares, at $7.27 (27.25 Saudi riyals) per share, according to Bloomberg’s sources.
Aramco has set a price range of between 26.70 and 29 riyals apiece in the offering.
Thursday was the deadline for potential investors to submit bids in the secondary offering.
Aramco’s stock offering, the biggest such deal globally for three years, is set to generate more than $11 billion in proceeds for the Kingdom, whose Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman looks to transform Saudi Arabia into a modern digital and tourism economy diversified from oil.
Currently, the Saudi government owns about 82% of Aramco, while the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), has around 16% of the oil giant.
Saudi Aramco made its debut on the Saudi Stock Exchange in December 2019 and raised around $30 billion in a share listing which became the world’s largest ever.
Since the IPO, the Saudi rulers, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have said on several occasions there would be more Aramco shale sales in the future.
The secondary offering was launched on June 2 and sold out in hours, according to sources who spoke to Bloomberg last weekend.
The share sale has drawn strong demand from foreign investors, sources with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg on Thursday.
Demand from foreign investors will be carefully gauged by market analysts to see if the Saudi oil giant has managed to draw interest from abroad this time, after the little enthusiastic foreign investors during the IPO in 2019.
