IPO: Dangote Refinery Targets 10 million Retail Investors

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals FZE is targeting up to 10 million retail investors as it opens its Initial Public Offering (IPO) on September 14.

Mr Ukandu Eme Ukandu, the chief executive of FirstCap Limited, which advised the listing, at the landmark signing ceremony on Monday, noted that the issuer had set the retail investor target to bring many into the fold.

Under the offer, about 4.1 billion ordinary shares of Dangote Refinery, with a nominal value of $0.000013 each, will be available for subscription at N525 per share.

The offering could raise about N2.15 trillion if fully subscribed, while the company’s focus on attracting as many as 10 million retail investors signals an attempt to significantly broaden public participation in the ownership of the refinery.

On his part, the owner of the oil facility, Mr Aliko Dangote, said the company wants workers and ordinary Nigerians, including its drivers, cooks and managers, to have an opportunity to become shareholders.

“What we are trying to do is to make sure the majority of our drivers, cooks, servants, managers, everybody, will have an opportunity to have a stake in this refinery,” Mr Dangote said.

He said the IPO is for ordinary Nigerians to invest in the country’s biggest private-sector industrial project.

The listing will be sold at the flat rate of N525, which could potentially draw millions of new participants into the equities market.

The 650,000-barrel-per-day refinery, built at a cost of about $20 billion on the outskirts of Lagos, has transformed Nigeria’s fuel market and expanded its presence in international petroleum-product markets.

The refinery has also emerged as a major beneficiary of supply disruptions linked to the Iran war, exporting jet fuel to markets across Africa and Europe.

On his part, the chief executive of the refinery, Mr David Bird, said the company has seen positives, including helping to ease challenges from the US-Iran and Russia-Ukraine wars.

“I’m incredibly proud of our operational performance over the last six months as we have been able to alleviate and mitigate some of the impacts of the supply crisis from the Middle East and Ukraine,” he noted.