Dangote Targets 10 Million Investors in Africa’s Biggest IPO

The Dangote refinery in Nigeria is going public as Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, is targeting 10 million retail investors in the “IPO for the people” pitch of Africa’s biggest initial public offering.

The Dangote group this month launched a widespread marketing campaign to attract retail investors as part of the IPO planned to raise $1.6 billion and valuing the largest refinery in Africa at $47 billion.

The ‘IPO for the people’ could boost the number of retail shareholder accounts in Nigeria fourfold.

Currently, the most populous country in Africa, with 243 million residents, has about 2.7 million active investors, Jude Chiemeka, CEO of the Nigerian Exchange, told Bloomberg.

“With a minimum subscription of just 10 shares, the offer is designed to give ordinary Nigerians and Africans an opportunity to own a stake in the refinery,” Aliko Dangote said at the IPO launch earlier this month.

“The IPO is positioned not simply as a capital-raising exercise, but as an opportunity for workers, entrepreneurs and everyday Nigerians to participate in the refinery’s future growth,” according to Dangote.

The IPO subscription period ends on October 13, while proceeds are expected to be invested in a $14-billion plan to double the refinery’s crude processing capacity from nearly 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) now to 1.4 million bpd by 2029.

Investor demand has been strong at the start of the IPO subscription period, so strong that Nigeria-based digital investment platforms were overwhelmed with traffic within minutes of the IPO launch and many apps suffered outages.

One of the largest such platforms, Bamboo, suffered outages after traffic on the app surged to 10 times the usual levels within 30 minutes of the IPO launch, co-founder and chief operating officer Yanmo Omorogbe told Reuters.

Even after the IPO, Dangote will still control more than 80% of the shares, and his wealth could jump by 64% to as much as $58.6 billion, Bloomberg has calculated.

Source: Oilprice