Saudi Arabia said on Friday that it will sell a second tranche of billion-dollar shares in its state oil company, Aramco. This is the country’s first equity sale after its 2019 IPO.
In an online corporate declaration, Saudi Aramco, formerly known as the Saudi Arabian Oil Co., recognized the stock sale. It is estimated that 1.545 billion shares will be made available at a price ranging from $7.12 to $7.73 per share.
That would put the share value at approximately $11.9 billion at the upper end of the valuation range. Institutional investors will buy them on Sunday, while individual investors will buy them on Monday.
With a market valuation of $1.8 trillion, Aramco is ranked as the sixth most valuable corporation in the world, behind Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
Since the 2019 IPO, a tiny portion of the company—just 1.73%—has been traded on the Tadawul, the stock exchange in Saudi Arabia. This extra offer amounts to 0.64% of the total shares held by the corporation.
Laptops 1000The kingdom’s sovereign wealth funds also own shares of Aramco, which the Saudi government mostly owns. This is part of the government’s ongoing efforts to quickly diversify the Saudi economy away from the oil industry.
Saudi Arabia is among the most affordable countries in the world to extract crude oil due to its abundant oil resources, which are situated near the country’s surface.
Aramco’s stock closed Thursday’s trading at about $7.75 per share. Since the beginning of the year, the value of Aramco’s shares has decreased by about 12%.
Due to reduced energy prices, Aramco reported making a $121 billion profit last year, which was less than its record from 2022.
