Aliko Dangote told the WIMBIZ conference in Lagos on November 8 that the Dangote Petroleum Refinery share offer did not reach its target of 10 million investors. He blamed the time available and investors not knowing how to access the offer, and said the final count is still being compiled.
The shortfall was in reach, not demand. The offer of 4.1 billion shares at 525 naira each, worth 2.15 trillion naira with a minimum subscription of 10 shares for 5,250 naira, attracted about 6.4 trillion naira of orders, roughly three times the shares available. It opened on September 14 and was extended from an October 13 close to October 27.
Subscription data reported by Business A.M. put unique online retail subscribers at about 1.55 million, placing some 2.2 million transactions worth more than 860 billion naira, with an average online subscription near 555,000 naira, more than 100 times the minimum. The 10 million target was always larger than the base it had to come from: Nigeria has about six million central securities clearing accounts, only about a tenth of them regularly active.
Refinery chief executive David Bird had said in early October that the company wanted to beat Saudi Aramco’s 2019 retail record of 4.5 million investors. The offer was marketed across Africa but was not registered as a public offering outside Nigeria, and a Kenyan depositary receipt approval arrived only eight days before the close, which limited the cross-border retail reach the branding promised.