Tadawul’s market cap increases 24% to $3.19tn in first quarter

Total value of shares traded on the exchange reached $144.7bn during the first three months of the year

The kingdom accounted for 15 out of 20 IPOs in the GCC last year, according to Kamco Invest. Reuters

The market capitalisation of Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul Exchange grew 24.21 per cent annually to reach 11.96 trillion riyals ($3.19tn) in the first quarter of 2022, as the Arab world’s biggest stock market continues to have increased momentum.

The Tadawul All Share Index closed at 13,090.40 points at the end of March 31, up 32 per cent by 3,182.58 over the same period of the previous year, the exchange said in a statement on its website on Sunday. The highest close level for the index during period was 13,101.36 points on March 29.

The bourse is up 16 per cent in the year to date, according to Kamco Invest.

The total value of shares traded in the three months to March 31, 2022 decreased by 22.15 per cent to 542.81 billion riyals compared with the same period last year.

The total volume of shares traded during the period also dropped by 40.98 per cent, to 12.87 billion.

The total number of transactions executed on the Tadawul during the first quarter was down 14.33 per cent to 23.64 million, the statement said.

Saudi Arabia has been seeing growing interest for initial public offering issuances and topped the GCC last year in terms of the number of listings.

The kingdom accounted for 15 out of 20 IPOs in the region, with the listings taking place both on Tadawul’s main market and its Nomu parallel market, Kamco Invest said in a report.

The country also accounted for about 62 per cent of the value of the region’s offerings, at about $4.65bn.

Energy company Acwa Power’s IPO last year, which raised $1.2bn, was the kingdom’s largest listing since state oil company Saudi Aramco went public in 2019.

The pipeline for this year also looks strong: Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange has 50 applications from companies for IPOs in 2022, its chief executive said in December.

Tadawul, which is among the top 10 global stock markets, became the third publicly traded regional stock exchange when it listed in December 2021, after the Dubai Financial Market and Boursa Kuwait.

The bourse, majority owned by the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund, raised 3.78bn riyals through the IPO, which was 121 times oversubscribed. The company sold 36 million shares representing 30 per cent of its issued share capital to institutional and individual investors.

Saudi Tadawul Group, the owner and operator of the kingdom’s stock exchange, posted a 17 per cent increase in annual net income in 2021.