Aliko Dangote, Chairman of Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), has said the initial public offering (IPO) of the company’s refinery business failed to attract its target of 10 million investors, blaming the shortfall on time constraints and difficulties accessing the offer.
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Dangote disclosed this at the 25th annual conference of Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ) in Lagos. The offer attracted millions of investors, he said.
The businessman said the exact number of participating investors had not been officially determined.
“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.
Comparing the participation with other public offerings, Dangote said the refinery IPO attracted more investors than some prominent African and international offers.
He recalled that Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) attracted about 200,000 participating shareholders during its own offer, while Kenya’s Safaricom offering recorded fewer than 900,000 investors. Saudi Aramco’s global offering, he added, attracted about five million investors.
“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 described the response as evidence of growing public confidence in investment opportunities and the ability of African businesses to raise capital from within the continent.
“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 added.
The refinery share sale, tagged ‘The People’s IPO’, offered 4.1 billion shares at N525 each. The minimum subscription was 10 shares, valued at N5,250.
The offer opened on September 14 and was later extended to October 27. Before its launch, Dangote had set a target of attracting 10 million retail investors to broaden ownership beyond institutional and high-net-worth investors.
Reuters reported that more than two million investors had subscribed through digital channels before the offer closed. The IPO also attracted about N6.4 trillion in orders from Nigerian retail and institutional investors, nearly three times the targeted offer size.
Dangote said applications came from 120 countries, including all 54 African countries.
Asked whether the IPO had changed his view of Africa’s ability to mobilise capital locally, he said the experience had altered his outlook.
“I think yes, it has actually changed. It has changed things dramatically. Things are really changing very fast,” he said.
