Dubai (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s Lumi on Friday set the price of its initial public offering (IPO) at the top of a range announced last week, reflecting strong appetite for Saudi flotations after the IPO window opened following a summer lull.
Lumi, one of the largest auto rental firms in the kingdom, said the price for its shares was set at 66 riyals, giving the company a valuation of 3.63 billion riyals ($967.8 million).
The company is set to raise 1.089 billion riyals for its offering, which consists of a sale of 16.5 million shares, equivalent to 30% of its issued share capital.
Last week, Lumi disclosed a price range between 62 riyals and 66 riyals per share the IPO.
Lumi said the institutional book-building process generated an order book of about 102.9 billion riyals and was 94.5-times oversubscribed.
Lumi is a wholly owned unit of Seera, a Saudi travel company formerly known as Al Tayyar Travel Group (1810.SE).
The auto rental firm ranked itself as the third-biggest operator in the country with a market share of about 7%, based on its fleet size in 2021, according to its IPO prospectus.
The listing comes at a time where IPO activity in the Gulf is expected to pick up after a slow start last year, when Dubai’s privatisation programme went quiet and Saudi Arabia had a slow start.
Companies in the region raised $21.9 billion through IPOs last year, more than half the total for the wider Europe, Middle East and Africa region, Dealogic data shows.
Companies in the Middle East raised $5.3 billion in the first half of this year, the most in 15 years, with the exception of 2022, which was an exceptional year for IPOs.
Twenty-three stock market debuts were recording during the first half of 2023, more than any other first-half total since 2008.
