Americana IPO: UAE retail offering doubled due to strong demand

Institutional investors tranche is reduced to 80% from 85% of the total offering

Customers eat fast food at a KFC restaurant at the Dubai Mall. Americana has the Middle East franchises for KFC, Pizza Hut, Hardee’s, TGI Friday’s, and Baskin-Robbins, among others. Bloomberg

Americana, the largest quick-service restaurant operator in the Mena region, has doubled the size of its UAE retail tranche in its initial public offering to 10 per cent due to strong demand.

The retail segment of its offering in Saudi Arabia remains unchanged at 10 per cent of the total offering. The institutional investors tranche has been reduced to 80 per cent from 85 per cent of the total offering, the company said in a statement on Friday.

The overall offering size remains unchanged, representing 30 per cent of the company’s issued share capital.

The company is selling more than 2.52 billion shares in an offering that runs from November 14 until November 21 for retail investors in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. For institutional investors, it will close on November 22.

The price range was set at Dh2.50 and 2.55 Saudi riyals ($0.68) to Dh2.62 and 2.68 Saudi riyals ($0.71) per share, implying an equity value for the group of $5.73 billion to $6.01 billion.

The final offer price is expected to be announced on November 23.

Americana may raise as much as $1.8 billion from its IPO, with the company eventually being dually listed on Saudi Arabia's Tadawul and the UAE's Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, the two biggest bourses in the Arab world. Shares are expected to start trading on or around December 6.

The company, which is the largest out-of-home dining operator in 12 countries across Mena and Kazakhstan and operates restaurant chains such as Pizza Hut and KFC, is the latest among regional companies seeking to raise funds through equity markets amid higher oil prices, greater liquidity and strong investor confidence.

Unlike global markets that have had subdued investor sentiment amid soaring inflation and rising recession fears, the Middle East and North Africa region has had strong IPO activity this year and in 2021.

The Mena region had 24 IPOs in the first half of this year. The UAE was the biggest IPO market in terms of the aggregate value of deals, while Saudi Arabia led volume with five IPO deals in the first six months of the year, according to EY data.

Middle East IPOs have raised $18 billion this year, the highest share for the Gulf region after 2019, when Saudi Aramco went public in a $29 billion offering, the world’s largest, according to Bloomberg data.

Saudi Arabia's main Tadawul exchange had two IPOs and the Nomu-Parallel Market drew three, which raised $490 million in proceeds in the third quarter.

Americana intends to maintain a “robust dividend policy” and make a partial dividend distribution of about 75 per cent of its net profit attributable to the parent company for the second half of this year.

It expects to pay the dividend in cash during the first half of next year.

From 2023 onwards, the company intends to adopt an annual dividend distribution policy and plans to distribute a minimum of 50 per cent of its profit in dividends.

Rothschild & Co is acting as independent financial adviser on the IPO.

First Abu Dhabi Bank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, SNB Capital are joint global co-ordinators and financial advisers.

FAB is the lead manager and listing adviser in the UAE, while SNB Capital is lead manager in Saudi Arabia.