On the second day of the 24th World Petroleum Congress held at the Big 4 Building in Stampede Park in Calgary, Canada, on September 18, 2023, Aramco (formally known as Saudi Arabian Petroleum Group, Saudi Arabian Oil and natural gas company) logo.
Artur Vidak | Noor Photos | Getty Images
Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil giant Aramco launched a secondary public offering on Sunday as the company hopes to raise about $12 billion.
At the opening of trading on Sunday morning, offers ranged from 26.70 Saudi riyals ($7.12) to 29 Saudi riyals per share. Saudi Aramco announced on Thursday that it planned to sell 1.545 billion shares, with a shareholding ratio of about 0.64%. At the midpoint of that range, sales would total about $11.5 billion, but could end up reaching $13.1 billion.
Four other banks also participated in the share sale, including Credit Suisse Saudi Arabia and BNP Paribas, Reuters reported on Sunday.
This is the company’s second stock sale after it first entered the public markets in 2019 and sold a 1.5% stake in the company to investors. The sale raised a record $29.4 billion, making it the largest IPO in history to date. Aramco is the world’s largest oil company in terms of daily crude oil production and market capitalization.
The latest proposal comes at a good time for Saudi Arabia, which in early May posted a sixth straight quarter of budget deficit due to high spending on multi-trillion-dollar mega projects and a simultaneous drop in oil revenues.
But economists say even a windfall from another Aramco stock sale won’t be enough to touch the cost of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 diversification plan, which includes new cities Such large-scale projects, and all the infrastructure required – are expected to cost more than a trillion dollars.
—CNBC’s Ruxandra Iordache contributed to this report.
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