Aliko Dangote, Chairman of Dangote Industries Limited, has disclosed that the initial public offering (IPO) of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery failed to meet its target of attracting 10 million investors.
Gatekeepers News reports that Dangote made this known at the 25th annual conference of Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ) in Lagos, where he said the offer attracted millions of investors despite falling short of the target.
He attributed the shortfall to time constraints and difficulties prospective investors encountered in accessing the offer.
“We didn’t hit the 10 million because of time constraint, and a lot of people, they didn’t know how to access,” Dangote said.
He added that the company was yet to establish the final number of investors but described the level of participation as encouraging.
“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.
Dangote compared the participation with other major public offers, noting that GTBank’s share offer attracted about 200,000 investors, while Safaricom in Kenya recorded fewer than 900,000 participants. He also cited Saudi Aramco’s global IPO, which attracted approximately five million investors.
The billionaire businessman said the response demonstrated growing confidence in African businesses and people’s willingness to invest locally.
He said, “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.”
Asked whether the IPO had changed his perception of Africa’s ability to mobilise capital from within the continent, Dangote responded: “I think yes, it has actually changed. It has changed things dramatically. Things are really changing very fast.”
The refinery’s public offer, tagged The People’s IPO, involved 4.1 billion ordinary shares priced at N525 each, with a minimum subscription of 10 shares valued at N5,250.
The offer opened on September 14 and was extended to October 27.
Despite missing its investor target, the IPO attracted orders worth approximately N6.4 trillion, about three times the N2.15 trillion offer size. More than two million investors had subscribed through digital channels before the offer closed.
