Our favourite supermarket chain and food producer is getting ready to go public. Gourmet has submitted a request to the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) to IPO on the EGX, a source with direct knowledge of the transaction tells EnterpriseAM, confirming a report in the domestic press earlier this week.

What could the transaction look like? Gourmet could announce in the coming weeks a plan to offer up to 40%. The company, backed by high-profile private equity outfit B Investments, has been exploring a potential IPO for more than a year now, as we’ve previously reported. In August 2024, B Investments, which owns 53% of Gourmet, was reportedly considering a partial selldown, a full exit, while founder Jalal Abu Ghazaleh, who as of 2024 held 47% of the grocer, had engaged EFG Hermes to advise on a potential stake sale.

!_SuHed_! Our take

“We see this as a deliberate choice to lean into market momentum,” Mirette Ramez, managing director of Nexus Capital, which has multiple ongoing engagements with family-run businesses, told EnterpriseAM. She notes that Gourmet is becoming a textbook case study for family businesses that “build scale, open their capital structure to a seasoned financial investor (B Investments), and tap public markets for liquidity.”

This could be the exit B Investments has been waiting for, with Chairman Hazem Barakat previously signaling the 1Q 2026 window for a selldown. B Investments acquired 40% of Gourmet in 2018 for EGP 65 mn, implying a valuation of roughly EGP 160 mn, before raising its stake to 53% through a capital increase. With the company valued at an estimated EGP 1.5 bn in 2024, the private equity firm is looking at a healthy exit.

Barakat had suggested in 2023 that a sale to a foreign strategic investor could be in the cards, but the transaction stalled when the potential buyer revised its strategy. Heading to the EGX now suggests B Investments thinks it can lock in a healthy valuation — and that there’s enough liquidity in the market to pull off a successful transaction. The delay in pursuing a foreign buyer only strengthened Gourmet’s equity story, as 30-40% y-o-y growth in 2024 reinforced the rationale for going public, according to Barakat.

Advisors: Our friends at EFG Hermes are reportedly quarterbacking the transaction, with White & Case acting as counsel. EnterpriseAM haven’t yet gotten callbacks on who is advising — we’ll let you folks know when we do.

GO DEEPER- Abu Ghazaleh is now running AM Foods full-time since stepping back from Gourmet. AM Foods was his first business and is now exporting baladi bread to the United States under contract to a major national supermarket chain. We caught up with him a couple of weeks ago. Read: Food entrepreneur Jalal Abu Ghazaleh on cracking the US export market.

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