Valu clears secondary sale to institutional investors

Institutional investors love Valu: “An accelerated bookbuild (ABB) involved a sale of 53.8 mn shares, owned by one of the shareholders of Valu, representing 2.55% of Valu’s share capital, has been successfully placed and sold mainly to institutional investors,” EFG Hermes Co-Head of Investment Banking Maged El Ayouti told EnterpriseAM. EFG Hermes acted as the financial advisor and bookrunner on the sale, which we believe took place last week.

From an in-house startup, Valu has transformed into an EGX mainstay, with its share price up 40% at the close of trading yesterday from the EGP 8.88 at which it closed on its first day as a listed company in June 2025.

Why it matters: The placement of a more than 2.5% stake in the fintech pioneer is another sign that investors (including some international names) are looking at Egypt once again. The benchmark EGX30 is up a hair over 18% so far this year, outpacing the DFMGI (-3%), the ADX (flat), and the Tadawul’s all-share index (+9%).

So, who sold? EFG Holding isn’t saying. The finance unit of EFG Holding is the largest single shareholder with a stake of c. 67%, while global retail and computer giant Amazon exercised a three-year-old option to take a 3.95% stake when Valu made its EGX debut last year.

We think the transaction cleared on Tuesday, 14 April, when when a substantial 55 mn shares traded hands. At Tuesday’s EGP 11.21 close, the sale likely penciled out to around EGP 603.1 mn.

Uhm, Enterprise? What’s an ABB? Think of an ABB as a flash sale for institutional investors that prevents the swings in share price that could go hand-in-hand with a paced-out selldown on the open market. Because these shares are placed so quickly — brokers line up buyers in just a few hours, often overnight — and in such high volume, they often clear at a slight reduction to the previous close.

Vindicating EFG Holding’s spinoff strategy: The move comes a little under a year after the fintech's unconventional spin-off listing on the EGX, which saw corporate parent EFG Holding distribute Valu shares to its own investors as a dividend to create an instant public float. “The market was not fully valuing Valu within EFG Holding’s stock price, and this helps correct that imbalance,” EFG Holding Group CEO Karim Awad told us in the run-up to the listing.

ZOOMING OUT- Is the market lull officially over? The ABB can be seen as a signal that the EGX is open for business again after a choppy few weeks. “It stands among a series of offerings that have reignited investor appetite for equities, a continuation of the momentum for new listings and follow-on offerings, following muted ECM activity during last month against a backdrop of elevated geopolitical risk,” Al Ayouti said in a statement.