Aliko Dangote, Chairman of Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), has disclosed that the initial public offering (IPO) of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery failed to meet its target of attracting 10 million investors, despite receiving significant public participation.
Speaking at the 25th annual conference of Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ) in Lagos, Dangote said millions of investors subscribed to the offer, although the company was yet to establish the final figure.
“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 response with previous major public offers, Dangote said the refinery’s IPO attracted more participants than several prominent offerings in Nigeria and abroad.
“If you look at it, the largest participating shareholders, like here now, was I think GTBank. When they did their own, it was 200,000. Okay, we are talking about millions of people that participated,” he said.
He also cited Safaricom’s public offer in Kenya and Saudi Aramco’s IPO, noting that both recorded fewer investors than the refinery’s anticipated participation.
“Even in Kenya, Safaricom was the largest, less than 900,000. Saudi Aramco worldwide was about five million. So, and I’m sure we are not that far away,” he said.
Dangote attributed the failure to reach the 10 million target to time constraints and limited awareness among potential investors about the subscription process.
“We didn’t hit the 10 million because of time constraint, and a lot of people, they didn’t know how to access,” he said.
Despite missing the target, he described the response as a sign of growing public confidence in African businesses and investment opportunities.
“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’s public offer, branded The People’s IPO, was designed to broaden ownership of the facility by giving retail investors an opportunity to acquire shares.
The offer comprised 4.1 billion shares priced at N525 each, with a minimum subscription of 10 shares, amounting to N5,250.
It opened on September 14 and was initially scheduled to close earlier before the deadline was extended to October 27.
Before the offer commenced, Dangote had announced a target of 10 million retail investors as part of efforts to expand ownership beyond institutional investors and wealthy individuals.
The initiative was also aimed at encouraging wider participation in Nigeria’s capital market and allowing ordinary Nigerians to benefit from the refinery’s growth.
Although the target was not achieved, Dangote maintained that the millions of participants represented a significant response to the company’s effort to broaden share ownership and deepen public investment in African businesses.
