Tadawul Group’s share price is 10% higher than the opening price on the first day of listing in Riyadh

Due to rising interest in listings in the Gulf region, the share price of Saudi Tadawul Group, which is the owner of a $2.5 trillion exchange in the country, soared by more than 20% when it debuted on Wednesday.

“Today, we mark an important milestone in our transformation,” Khalid Al Hussan, CEO of Saudi Tadawul Group, told CNBC’s Dan Murphy on Wednesday.

The stock exchange operator’s share price is 105 rials (27.99 US dollars) per share, which is 121 times oversubscribed, and its opening price on Wednesday was 115.4 rials, which is 10% higher than the company’s listed price.

“Demand is important to all types of investors-local, [regional] And international,” Al Hussan said, adding that public funds, Saudi companies and sovereign accounts, and retail investors in the Gulf and the world have participated in the acquisition.

The stock sale raised as much as US$1 billion for the group’s sole shareholder public investment fund whose mission is to invest to diversify the Saudi economy and advance the country’s Vision 2030 agenda.

Tadawul Group’s initial public offering, at least Five years in the makingIt is the second largest public company after the public utility company ACWA Power went public for US$1.2 billion in October last year. The September IPO of Saudi Telecom’s Internet Service Department also aroused great interest from investors, highlighting the strong demand for Saudi listed companies.

“The momentum of the Kingdom’s transformation and the opportunities for Saudi companies to grow and benefit from this transformation have provided great comfort for investors to invest in these companies,” Al Hussan said.

Both the Dubai Financial Market and the Abu Dhabi Exchange announced plans to change the trading day from Sunday to Thursday to Monday to Friday in response to the UAE government’s Decided to change the work week From next year. Saudi Arabia and the rest of the region currently follow a trading schedule from Sunday to Thursday.

Al Hussan stated that the exchange operator is “closely watching” the UAE’s decision to change its market trading day, but has not yet made a decision to follow the UAE.

“We will not react to the decision made by the UAE yesterday,” Al Hussan said.

“We continue to monitor our trading hours,” he added. “From a capital market perspective, as we said, we have not seen international investors worry about the gap between the trading days in the United States and Saudi Arabia.”

Economy Competition between the UAE and Saudi Arabia Exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

Dubai, the regional business capital, plans to list 10 state-backed companies in the next few years, and Abu Dhabi also has a series of high-profile IPOs this year, and there may be more IPOs that will help boost the exchange’s rise by nearly 80%. %-To date.