Egypt + Saudi IPO pipeline rebuilds as Gulf appetite holds

As is often the case with our Monday column, it’s an Egypt-and-Saudi heavy kind of morning, with plenty of color on what the future IPO pipeline might look like in the wake of Omifco’s successful listing in Oman.

UP FIRST- Hassan Allam Holding is thinking about public markets — for its subsidiaries, not itself. The group is weighing listings for some of its real estate and infrastructure subsidiaries on Gulf exchanges, the EGX, or both, while the parent stays private, Chairman and CEO Hassan Allam said on the sidelines a gathering at the London Stock Exchange.

The Cairo-headquartered construction, engineering and green energy giant, a unit of which also runs the Grand Egyptian Museum, has a USD 10.5 bn backlog split evenly between Egypt and its foreign markets. Saudi is the largest of the latter at c. USD 2 bn in active contracts — and is where real estate arm Grova launched its SAR 3.3 bn Noor Khuzam project. Hassan Allam Holding has denied chatter that a SPAC (a so-called “blank cheque” company that’s a speedy route to a listing) it put on the EGX is a backdoor listing for the construction arm.

MEANWHILE- Egypt’s Tatweer Misr is lining up an EGX debut next year, CEO Ahmed Shalaby told a press conference we attended — stake size and use of proceeds are still under wraps. The company is in talks with Egyptian banks on debt for Salt, its EGP 70 bn North Coast flagship and also recently launched an EGP 20 bn, five-year securitization program.

AND- Egypt’s private equity industry has spent five years building K-12 school platforms and is now edging toward its first cash-out. The Egypt Education Platform, an EFG Hermes-backed venture, has filed with the EGX to list 199.4 mn shares ahead of what could be the sale of 25% next May. Education stocks are trading at 20-22x earnings right now.

The catch, per Al Ahli Capital’s Mahitab Orabi: Sector valuations track EGX dynamics and macro sentiment more than school fundamentals, which makes timing the whole game.

FURTHER AFIELD: Tadawul gets SPACs. The CMA amended its securities offerings rules to give private Saudi firms a route to the public market through a merger with a listed shell rather than a full IPO, it said in a statement.

E& is now fully out of Vodafone and looks like it’s about to kick off a shopping spree. The Abu Dhabi-based tech and telecom giant signed a binding agreement to sell its entire 16.2% stake in Big Red to Vega, an acquisition vehicle owned by French telecom billionaire Xavier Niel’s family group, for c. AED 21.8 bn (USD 5.95 bn) in proceeds including Vodafone’s final FY 2026 dividend, according to a filing to the ADX (pdf). The exit closes a four-year run that began with USD 4.4 bn for an initial 10% in May 2022 and made e& the British telco’s largest shareholder; Niel now gets that crown.

The goodbye math: Vega is paying a 13% premium and e& will book a net return of c. AED 4.7 bn (USD 1.3 bn).

The big question on our minds: What does e& do with USD 6 bn — more AI? Deeper geographic expansion, after a year that trimmed its Careem holding back to Uber while its Slovak JV bought UPC and the group opened a wholesale hub in Miami? The company has flagged that it likes infrastructure, enterprise tech, fintech, and AI.

Burjeel Holdings’ debut sukuk shows investors have plenty of appetite for first-time Gulf issuers: The USD 500 mn offering on the London Stock Exchange, completed 7 July under a USD 1.5 bn program, was more than 3x oversubscribed. Despite wartime volatility, “We did not want to wait for somebody else” to go first, Chairman and CEO Shamsheer Vayalil tells us.

Burjeel will use the proceeds mostly to refinance bank debt, but the next issuances are earmarked for growth — a Saudi expansion built on day surgery centers rather than hospitals, starting with c. USD 100 mn for two facilities in Khobar (early 2027) and Riyadh, scaling to as many as 10. It is earmarking an additional AED 1.4 bn over the next two to four years for a medical school, research center, and digital health investments in Abu Dhabi.

Saudi private equity is nibbling at the edges of the fashion industry. ZYA, the SAR 300 mn fund Merak Capital launched in April with the Cultural Development Fund, is targeting growth-stage Saudi brands with capital and commercial support to go regional and international, Merak Principal Abdulaziz Alsaid tells us.

The pitch isn’t import substitution, but a bigger Saudi share of a fashion-and-beauty market that already contributes 2.6% of GDP and that the latest Saudi State of Fashion report says is the largest in the Gulf at USD 36.8 bn. ZYA is looking for companies with consistent revenue growth and “a credible path to profitability.”

ALSO WORTH KNOWING THIS MORNING-

The Abu Dhabi Investment Council has committed c. USD 1 bn to Deem Global, a London macro hedge fund launched in 2022 that now has USD 3.8 bn in assets under management, Bloomberg reports. It’s the third big Abu Dhabi hedge fund move in as many months, after ADIC backed ExodusPoint’s USD 2 bn raise in June and began weighing a USD 15 bn hedge fund portfolio.

Tadawul-listed industrial silica sand miner Mohammed Hadi Al Rasheed & Partners signed an agreement to buy 50% of Taif Shipping — the oilfield-services firm that transports and blends silica sand and chemicals for oil and gas customers — for SAR 92.5 mn, per a Tadawul filing.

Market Snapshot

Tadawul 0.1% • ADX 0.6% • DFM 0.9% • EGX30 -0.1%

Brent USD 78.49 / bbl • Gold USD 4,081 / oz • USD / SAR 3.75 • USD / EGP 50.00