Reuters news agency reported according to financial advisers for the IPO on Tuesday that the institutional tranche of Saudi Aramco’s planned initial public offering (IPO) has been almost three times oversubscribed, receiving orders worth 189.04 billion riyals ($50.4 billion).
Aramco plans to sell 1.5% of its shares in a deal that could raise up to $25.6 billion.
The state-owned Saudi oil giant has received subscription orders for around 5.9 billion of shares so far from institutions in the first 17 days of the IPO, Samba Capital, NCB Capital and HSBC Saudi Arabia said.
Typically, IPOs in Saudi Arabia tend to be subscribed many times over, although the unprecedented size of Aramco’s listing means it is harder to benchmark the level of demand.
The biggest IPO in Saudi Arabia, before Aramco, was for the National Commercial Bank (NCB) in 2013, which sought to raise $6 billion and was oversubscribed many times over.
Aramco has previously said 0.5% of the offering will be allocated to retail investors, leaving 1% - or 2 billion shares - for institutional buyers.
