Chairman of Dangote Industries Limited, Aliko Dangote, has disclosed that the initial public offering (IPO) of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery failed to meet its target of attracting 10 million investors.
Speaking in Lagos at the 25th annual conference of Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ), Dangote said the offer, however, recorded significant participation, attracting millions of investors.
According to him, the company is yet to establish the official number of subscribers as reports are still being compiled.
“We cannot tell the figure right away because we have not reported to this, but we’ve gotten an amazing demand from various people,” he said.
He compared the participation with previous major public offers, including GTBank, Safaricom in Kenya and Saudi Aramco.
“If you look at it, the largest participating shareholders, like here now, was I think GTBank. When they did their own, it was 200,000. Okay, we are talking about millions of people that participated,” he said.
“Even in Kenya, Safaricom was the largest, less than 900,000. Saudi Aramco worldwide was about five million. So, and I’m sure we are not that far away,” he added.
Dangote attributed the shortfall to time constraints and limited awareness of the subscription process.
“We didn’t hit the 10 million because of time constraint, and a lot of people, they didn’t know how to access,” he said.
Despite missing the target, he described the response as evidence of growing public confidence in African businesses.
“But it’s the shared trust of public enterprise that we have today in Africa, and that’s why people are now beginning to remove that money under their mattresses to go and invest,” he said.
The refinery’s public offer, branded The People’s IPO, comprised 4.1 billion shares priced at N525 each, with a minimum subscription of 10 shares amounting to N5,250.
It opened on September 14 and was extended until October 27.
Before the commencement, Dangote had said the company was targeting 10 million retail investors to widen ownership beyond institutional and high-net-worth investors and to deepen participation in the capital market.
