PIF-backed Americana Restaurants floating IPO; Empower ups issue size
Americana Restaurants International, which manages KFC and Pizza Hut outlets across the Middle East and North Africa region, is looking to list up to 30% of its shares on two regional bourses—the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange and the Saudi Tadawul.
Americana Restaurants is owned by Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, and Dubai-based Adeptio Investments AD Ltd. Adeptio is led by Dubai real estate baron Mohamed Alabbar, founder of Emaar Properties. It acquired Americana Restaurants in 2016. Later that year, PIF bought a 50% stake in the company.
Adeptio will sell 2.53 billion ordinary shares of the company in the initial public offering. The offer will begin on November 14 and is expected to last until November 21 for UAE and Saudi retail investors and for a day longer for institutional investors.
Such a concurrent listing is the first of its kind for both the UAE and Saudi Arabian capital markets. The shares are likely to list on both exchanges on December 6.
“With macroeconomic and demographic tailwinds that support our accelerating growth, this is an exciting time to be inviting investors in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and internationally to share in our onward journey of success,” said Alabbar, who is also chairman of Americana Restaurants.
From 2023 onwards, Americana plans to adopt an annual dividend policy, distributing a minimum of 50% of net profit attributable to its parent, with “the intention to further distribute any cash not specifically reserved for general corporate purposes, growth investment or M&A activity”, it added.
Empower
Meanwhile, Dubai’s state-owned district cooling company Empower has increased the size of its initial public offering by 50%. It will now list 15% of its shares instead of 10%, following strong investor demand.
The new offer size will be 1.5 billion ordinary shares compared with the 1 billion announced earlier, with Empower now potentially raising $540 million from the offering.
The second tranche—for qualified investors—will increase in size from 900 million ordinary shares to 1.4 billion ordinary shares. The retail tranche will remain unchanged as will the subscription period.
Empower’s shareholders Dubai Electricity and Water Authority and Emirates Power Investment, who are selling the stake, will continue to own 59.5% and 25.5% of Empower’s share capital, respectively, following the revision of the offering size. Empower said they could still decide to amend the size of the offering before the end of the subscription period.
On Monday, Empower set the price range at between AED 1.31 and AED 1.33 per share.
The UAE Strategic Investment Fund, Shamal Holding and Abu Dhabi Pension Fund are the cornerstone investors in the IPO with a total commitment of up to AED 335 million.
