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Saudi Arabia’s state oil giant Aramco could be preparing to launch a secondary offering of its shares as early as Sunday, which could raise between $10 billion to $20 billion, according to multiple media reports.
The Saudi government and the state-backed Public Investment Fund (PIF), which are Aramco’s largest shareholders, have plans to run a book-building process to gather investor interest, with the size of the offering largely depending on the appetite of international investors for Aramco stock, the Wall Street Journal reported.
A separate Bloomberg report added that the stock sale has attracted informal interest from investors across the Middle East and Europe, totalling over $10 billion, citing people familiar with the matter who wished not to be named.
The new sale will follow on Aramco’s first-ever public offering in 2019, which raised a record $29.4 billion at the time.
The Aramco sale comes at a pivotal time for Saudi, which has been heavily infusing capital into its economy to fund a series of giga projects and an ambitious Vision 2030 plan to diversify its GDP from oil and gas; plans that include a $100 billion investment opportunity in its ever-expanding aviation sector and multiple tourism developments.
In January, the kingdom also tapped debt markets for a $12 billion dollar-denominated bonds issue.
(Writing by Bindu Rai, editing by Seban Scaria)
