Aliko Dangote signed the offering documents for his refinery in Lagos on Monday, which puts Africa's biggest ever share sale about a week away from opening.
Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals is offering 4.1 billion ordinary shares at 525 naira each, which raises about 2.15 trillion naira if it all sells. That is roughly $1.6 billion. The offer runs from 14 September to 13 October, and the listing is expected in November.
The money has somewhere to go, and some of it is already in. The plant runs at about 700,000 barrels a day and the plan is to double that to 1.4 million by 2028. A private placement ahead of the listing brought in $2.5 billion, at 3.7 times its target, with Africa Finance Corporation and Afreximbank among the buyers.
Ten million retail investors
The offer is built for ordinary Nigerians rather than institutions. FirstCap's Ukandu Eme Ukandu said it targets ten million retail investors, and Vetiva's Chuka Eseka put the minimum subscription at ten shares, which at 525 naira apiece works out at about $4. If the book is oversubscribed the company may issue up to 30% more shares than the base offer, subject to regulatory approval. Stanbic IBTC Capital, Vetiva Advisory Services and FirstCap are running the deal.
Why a Lagos listing matters in Johannesburg
The size is the part worth noticing from here. A single African company raising this much on a domestic exchange, at a valuation Bloomberg puts at $49 billion, is a different order of thing from what African capital markets are usually assumed to be able to absorb. Nigeria's equity market is up 73% in dollar terms this year, second globally only to South Korea's, and the JSE has spent recent years on the other side of the listings question.
The refinery cost about $20 billion and, on Bloomberg's count, eleven years to build, and it has already turned Nigeria from a net importer of fuel into an exporter, shipping jet fuel across Africa and into Europe while the Iran war disrupted supply elsewhere.
Dangote told the signing ceremony he wants the plant to be the world's largest single-train refinery by 2028. The offer opens on 14 September.
