Dubai is offering up to a 25% stake in recently-established car parking space manager Parkin in an IPO on the DFM in March, according to a Dubai Media Office statement. The Dubai Investment Fund will be selling 749.7 mn shares, according to a prospectus (pdf) published yesterday. The IPO will be the first of the year.

ICYMI:Dubai’s Road and Transport Authority (RTA) established Parkin in January, just a few months after saying it would go public with its taxi and parking assets in 2023. The company designs and manages public and private parking spaces in the emirate, and issues parking permits.

The bookbuilding process starts next Tuesday, 5 March,with the subscription period for retail investors concluding on 12 March. Institutional investors’ subscription period will wrap on 13 March. 10% of the shares on offer will be allocated to retail investors, while 90% will go towards institutional investors.

Shares are expected to begin trading on 21 March, according to details on the IPO picked up by Bloomberg.

Advisors: Rothschild & Co ’s Middle East division was tapped as independent financial advisor. Emirates NBD is the lead receiving bank of the IPO, with several national banks, including the Commercial Bank of Dubai, First Abu Dhabi Bank, and our friends at Mashreq, also acting as receiving banks.

REMEMBER- The RTA’s Dubai Taxi IPOraised AED 1.2 bn on the back of heavy investor appetite last December, with orders covering the transaction 130x. The IPO followed that of

Salik, another RTA unit, which raised USD 1.2 bn from the sale of a 25% stake.

Part of a wider privatization program:The government said back in November 2021 that it would list 10 state-backed companies on the Dubai bourse in a bid to match competition from capital markets in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh. Five companies have debuted on the market so far, with state-owned Tecom, Salik and Empower collectively raising AED 8.1 bn in 2022. Dubai Electricity and Water Authority also raised AED 22.32 bn from its market debut in April 2022, which set a record for largest IPO in the Gulf region since 2019.

EXPANSION PLANS-

Parkin is looking to branch out and offer its services to private establishments, including shopping malls, airports and other high-traffic areas, according to a statement. “It is feasible for the company to expand operations at shopping malls, given that Parkin is managing 91% of all [public and private] of Dubai’s parking operations,” Parkin CEO Mohammed Al Ali told Khaleej Times.

Parkin’s operations in private establishments could be free of charge, as the decision to charge for the service will be up to each development’s management, Chairman Ahmed Hashem Bahrozyan told reporters, confirming that Parkin is “planning to expand to private developments and properties.” The company has already signed seven contracts with private developers to run some 18k parking spaces.

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