Egypt, Turkey, and India proposed safe passage for grain ships at Ukrainian and Russian ports, but Russia refused, Zelenskyy says

Good morning, friends. It’s an IPO morning at the EGX. MNT-Halan takes its first bow, and Banque du Caire has already lined up foreign money behind its own offering.

From the bourse: Banque du Caire has lined up four foreign cornerstones, Helikon, Redwheel, Sustainable Capital and Waha, for up to USD 256 mn, covering roughly 60% of its base offering. The institutional book sold out within hours of opening.

AND- MNT-Halan starts trading this morning at EGP 24.50 apiece, after an order book that came in roughly 16x covered — retail 43.6x, institutions 11.2x. It gets a 40% move limit on debut and a stabilization fund to cushion retail. Today will be the first test of whether demand holds up once the shares are on screen, particularly from foreign investors who are treading carefully during geopolitical disruptions. But the sources we spoke to seem optimistic this listing could pull them back in.

Speaking of big commitments: Fertiglobe is studying a phosphate fertilizer complex worth more than USD 1.5 bn in Ain Sokhna. The Adnoc-controlled producer would be the latest to join a growing list of projects processing Egypt’s phosphate at home, instead of exporting the raw rock.

And the state is closing in on trial runs at its first three strategic warehouses in Fayoum, Suez, and Luxor. The EGP 6.64 bn build adds 225k pallets of storage — part of a four-year push to cushion Egypt against global price spikes. We talked to a senior government official who told us four more warehouses are on the table for the private sector too.

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Flags of convenience

Egypt, Turkey and India have proposed letting ships flying their flags carry food to and from both Ukrainian and Russian ports, and Kyiv is ready to sign on, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Bloomberg. The plan is “one ship heading to our port, and the other to Russian,” he said. Russia has refused despite repeated calls from the three intermediaries, he added, keeping Ukraine’s main grain route shut for a third month. Cairo hasn’t commented on the proposal so far.

Why it matters: Russia and Ukraine supplied roughly 84% of our wheat imports in January-August, and the alternatives cost more. By mid-August, other origins (including Australia and the US) were quoting USD 305-320 per ton against USD 260-280 for Black Sea cargoes. On 26 August, Platts’ benchmark for wheat delivered to Egypt hit a record USD 301 a ton. At the time, private grain stocks covered about a month and state stocks about six months, S&P Global estimated.

The state has stepped back from the market. Neither the General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC) nor Mostakbal Misr has taken a shipment since May, and the halt may run to November, Asharq Business reports, citing a government official. That left private importers to bring in all of Egypt’s wheat in 3Q, when imports fell to 1.3 mn tons from 7.7 mn tons in the first half. The Cabinet’s media center said last week that the strategic reserve is secure and covers several months of needs, pointing to the nearly 5 mn tons of wheat the state bought from local farmers this season.

Egypt’s corn importers, by contrast, have already found a way around the problem. No Ukrainian cargo has arrived since May, and Brazil and Argentina supplied 88% of corn imports as of mid-September, as we reported last month. Ukrainian grain now takes more than a month to reach Egypt, against about 12 days before, and small-vessel Black Sea freight jumped from USD 50 to USD 130 a ton within 60 days.

IN CONTEXT- Earlier attempts haven’t gone far, either. Ukraine floated a shipping ceasefire in August, but Moscow rejected it, wanting a broader agreement, and Turkey’s own push stalled. On 31 August, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara had prepared a plan and was in contact with both sides. The UN-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative moved 32.9 mn tons before it was terminated on 17 July 2023. After that, Ukraine ran its own route without Russia and shipped more than the UN agreement ever did — until it stopped working in July. Russian attacks on port infrastructure and vessels have halted shipments since August.

Egypt has looked for ways to keep Black Sea grain flowing ever since regional supply routes were first disrupted. It tried to secure Ukrainian wheat shipments via Poland in 2022, pushed for the grain pact’s restoration in 2023, and pitched the Suez Canal Economic Zone as a storage and re-export hub for Ukrainian grain in 2025.

Building the last leg for Cronos

Eni and TotalEnergies are budgeting USD 100-120 mn to link Cypriot gas to Egypt’s Damietta LNG plant. The roughly 40 km onshore pipeline will run from the Zohr gas processing facilities in Port Said to Damietta, completing the Egyptian leg of the export route for Cyprus’ offshore Cronos field, Asharq Business reports, citing an unnamed government official. Construction is set to start in early 2027 and is expected to take about 12 months from the signing of execution contracts, which puts the first Cronos gas in Egypt in 1Q 2028, starting at about 500 mmscf / d.

The pipeline puts Egypt’s idle gas capacity to work: Cronos gas will travel by subsea pipeline to Zohr’s existing facilities for processing, then overland to Damietta for liquefaction and re-export to Europe. Egypt has more than 2 bcf / d of spare processing capacity on the Mediterranean coast and 1.9 bcf / d of export capacity at Idku and Damietta, within a network that can carry around 9 bcf / d. Cairo expects about 1.3 bcf / d of Cypriot gas from Cronos and Aphrodite by end-2028, according to the official.

Cronos is one of three Cypriot developments that Egypt has agreed to route through its infrastructure. It will buy the entirety of the 3.7 tcf Aphrodite field’s output under a 15-year agreement via a USD 2 bn pipeline Cyprus is funding in full. ExxonMobil and QatarEnergy’s Pegasus and Glaucus fields (with 7 tcf of estimated recoverable reserves) are targeting 1 bcf / d by 2030. The hub play fits Egypt’s plan to resume gas exports and lift domestic production to 6.6 bcf / d from around 3.9 bcf / d today, but the near-term goal is more modest: adding just 330 mmcf / d by year-end, mostly from Zohr and West Mina.

REMEMBER- The commercial terms are already set: Egypt signed the agreements covering transport, processing, and liquefaction of Cronos gas in October 2025, and Eni took a final investment decision on the field in July.

Happening today

Shares of MNT-Halan start trading on the EGX in a couple of hours at EGP 24.50 apiece, after the IPO drew an order book roughly 16x covered last week. The stock can move as much as 40% in either direction today, double the usual limit, with no circuit breakers on debut day, which gives it plenty of room to find its footing. On offer are 320 mn existing shares, a 20% stake sold by parent MNT Investments B.V.

The downside is cushioned for retail. A stabilization fund will keep a standing buy order at the EGP 24.50 offer price for the first 30 calendar days of trading, funded with the full c. EGP 1.18 bn raised from the public tranche, according to the prospectus, and covers only the 48 mn shares offered to retail investors.

REFRESHER- The EGP 7.84 bn IPO, anchored by CIB and London-based Redwheel, covers only MNT-Halan’s Egyptian business. The offering drew demand of EGP 125.9 bn (c. USD 2.4 bn), with the retail tranche closing 43.6x covered, and the institutional slice 11.2x oversubscribed. That’s roughly three times the combined demand for this year’s other two IPOs, Gourmet and Korra Energi.

Today is the first test of whether that demand holds once the shares are on screen, and Banque du Caire’s bankers will likely be watching, with BdC’s own books open since yesterday. We have long pegged MNT as the listing that could pull foreign funds back to the EGX after most of a year of net selling. The order book showed the appetite was there, with more than 300 funds from over 10 countries putting in orders, though how much of the institutional allocation went to foreigners hasn’t been disclosed yet.

Foreign investors tend to be more cautious during geopolitical tensions, Randa Hamed, managing director at Okaz for Portfolio Management, tells EnterpriseAM. Still, she says Egypt’s “macro picture and ratios look very attractive” and could help draw them back, and new tools like derivatives and short selling will make the market easier for them to navigate.

BUT- The stock is debuting into a bruised market. The EGX30 fell 2.6% on Sunday to 50,896 points, its lowest close since 1 July, with international investors the sole net sellers. That wiped out the two-session rebound that closed last week. The index clawed back just 0.4% yesterday to 51,099, leaving its YTD gain at 22.2%, down from 27.4% on 6 October.

Fund managers have been selling holdings to free up liquidity for the IPO pipeline, three analysts told us last week. Hamed puts about half the selling down to that and the other half to fears that geopolitical tensions could escalate further. She still expects MNT to close its first day up “anywhere between 10-20%,” after a volatile session in which the price shoots up early, settles and possibly dips at some point.

PSA-

WEATHER- Another copy-and-paste autumn day in Cairo, with a high of 27°C, and a low of 18°C, according to our favorite weather app.

It’s the same on the coast in Alexandria too, with a high of 26°C and a low of 17°C.

The big story abroad

AI cloud computing company Nscale is negotiating to sell computing power to Anthropic. This transaction could be worth approximately USD 45 bn for a second facility at Nscale’s Monarch data center campus in West Virginia, which would provide 460 MW of computing power via Nvidia’s Vera Rubin AI chips.

A big wager on law: Private equity group Charlesbank has invested in civil litigation defense company Wood Smith Henning & Berman, in one of the largest law firm deals in the US. The agreement, which reportedly values the firm at about USD 700 mn, could potentially lead to similar investments in US liability defence firms.

French unrest dies down: Protests largely subsided in France after authorities implemented stricter security measures, including curfews, following demonstrations that escalated into violence, vandalism, and looting. Following calls from Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, local authorities imposed an 11 pm curfew in several parts of Paris and introduced restrictions in other cities.

*** It’s Going Green day — your weekly briefing of all things green in Egypt: EnterpriseAM’s green economy vertical focuses each Tuesday on the business of renewable energy and sustainable practices in Egypt, everything from solar and wind energy through to water, waste management, sustainable building practices and how you can make your business greener, whatever the sector.

In today’s issue: Following the controversy over Cairo’s felled trees, we look into where Egypt’s charcoal actually comes from.