Shares in Saudi Arabia’s mortgage lender Amlak International for Real Estate Finance will start trading on the Tadawul stock exchange on Monday as the company completes its IPO process.
The company is floating 27.18 million shares, or 30 per cent of its total, with an indicative price range set at 15-17 Saudi riyals (Dh14.7-Dh16.6) per share. Proceeds of the offer are being used to repay selling shareholders.
The offer, the first major listing to take place on Tadawul since the coronavirus outbreak, has been significantly oversubscribed, with a total coverage ratio of 7.67x, according to NCB Capital, which is advising on the listing. Demand from institutional investors, to whom 90 per cent of the shares have been allocated, was covered 4.98x, while the retail element was oversubscribed 26.9x.
“We are pleased by the extremely healthy response to our IPO, which is evidence of the long-term view that the investment community has taken towards the Saudi economy and our company," Abdullah Al Sudairy, chief executive of Amlak International, said last week following the closing of its offer to retail investors.
"The attractive fundamentals that exist for our industry remain in place, and we are looking forward to delivering on the expectations of investors, having provided the first-ever opportunity for exposure on Tadawul to the Kingdom’s non-bank real estate financing sector.”
Amlak International was set up in 2007 and is a non-bank lender, mainly of property loans. It is licensed by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority to provide Sharia-compliant lending to corporate, high net-worth and individual clients. The company reported revenue of 296 million riyals and pre-tax earnings of 102m riyals in 2019.
Driven by population growth and a supportive government policy, housing demand in the kingdom is expected to increase to 188,000 units a year until 2021, then to 203,000 a year from 2022 to 2025 and eventually to 219,000 a year from 2026 to 2029, the company said.
The Ministry of Housing intends to disburse 204,000 individual contracts for housing this year, up from 179,217 contracts worth 79 billion riyals in 2019.
The size of Saudi Arabia's real estate financing market is expected to grow by a compound annual rate of 8.7 per cent to exceed 1 trillion riyals by 2029, the company said.
Shares in Amlak International's IPO will be allocated on a pro-rata basis to individuals who subscribed to the offer, depending on the size of their request, NCB Capital said.
Red Joan
Director: Trevor Nunn
Starring: Judi Dench, Sophie Cookson, Tereza Srbova
Rating: 3/5 stars
The specs
Engine: Four electric motors, one at each wheel
Power: 579hp
Torque: 859Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh825,900
On sale: Now
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If you go
The flights
There are direct flights from Dubai to Sofia with FlyDubai (www.flydubai.com) and Wizz Air (www.wizzair.com), from Dh1,164 and Dh822 return including taxes, respectively.
The trip
Plovdiv is 150km from Sofia, with an hourly bus service taking around 2 hours and costing $16 (Dh58). The Rhodopes can be reached from Sofia in between 2-4hours.
The trip was organised by Bulguides (www.bulguides.com), which organises guided trips throughout Bulgaria. Guiding, accommodation, food and transfers from Plovdiv to the mountains and back costs around 170 USD for a four-day, three-night trip.
Some of Darwish's last words
"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.
The specs
Engine: 2x201bhp AC Permanent-magnetic electric
Transmission: n/a
Power: 402bhp
Torque: 659Nm
Price estimate: Dh200,000
On sale: Q3 2022
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The chef's advice
Troy Payne, head chef at Abu Dhabi’s newest healthy eatery Sanderson’s in Al Seef Resort & Spa, says singles need to change their mindset about how they approach the supermarket.
“They feel like they can’t buy one cucumber,” he says. “But I can walk into a shop – I feed two people at home – and I’ll walk into a shop and I buy one cucumber, I’ll buy one onion.”
Mr Payne asks for the sticker to be placed directly on each item, rather than face the temptation of filling one of the two-kilogram capacity plastic bags on offer.
The chef also advises singletons not get too hung up on “organic”, particularly high-priced varieties that have been flown in from far-flung locales. Local produce is often grown sustainably, and far cheaper, he says.
The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
