By Stellamaris | Anambra
The Chairman of Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), Aliko Dangote, has disclosed that the initial public offering (IPO) of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery failed to reach its target of attracting 10 million investors.
Speaking in Lagos at the 25th annual conference of Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ), Dangote said the public offer still recorded significant participation. Millions of investors took part, even though the projected figure was not reached. He said the company is yet to establish the official number of investors who participated, because the necessary reports are still being compiled. He said he could not give a figure right away, but that demand from various people had been amazing.
Dangote compared the level of participation in the refinery’s IPO with previous major public offers, including those of Nigerian and international companies, and argued that the number of subscribers was substantial. He said the largest local offer he could recall was GTBank’s, which drew about 200,000 participants.
By contrast, he said, the refinery’s offer involved millions of people. He also referred to Safaricom’s public offering in Kenya and the Saudi Aramco IPO, noting that both attracted fewer investors than the refinery’s anticipated participation. He said Safaricom, the largest in Kenya, had fewer than 900,000 investors, while Saudi Aramco’s offer drew about five million worldwide. He said he was sure the refinery’s numbers were not far from that level.
Explaining why the refinery missed its 10 million-investor ambition, the industrialist pointed to two main factors: the limited duration of the offer, and the fact that many potential investors did not know how to access it. Despite the shortfall, Dangote described the response as evidence of growing public confidence in investment opportunities offered by African businesses.
He said it reflects the shared trust in public enterprise across the continent today, and that people were beginning to take money “from under their mattresses” to invest. The Dangote refinery public offer, branded The People’s IPO, was designed to widen public participation in the ownership of Nigeria’s largest refinery. It gave retail investors the chance to acquire shares in the business.
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, but it was extended until October 27.
Before the IPO began, Dangote had announced that the company was targeting 10 million retail investors. The move was meant to expand the refinery’s ownership base beyond institutional investors and wealthy individuals.
The initiative was also presented as a chance to encourage wider participation in the capital market and let ordinary Nigerians benefit from the growth of the refinery business. Although the target was not achieved, Dangote maintained that the millions of participants were a significant response to the company’s effort to broaden share ownership and deepen public investment in African enterprises.
