Saudi Arabia’s Lumi to list 30% stake on Tadawul

The initial public offering will include the sale of 16.5 million shares

An aerial view shows the skyline of Riyadh. Lumi recorded revenue of 524.8 million Saudi riyals in the first nine months of 2022. EPA

Saudi Arabia's Lumi, an auto rental subsidiary of Seera Group Holding, plans to proceed with the listing of its 30 per cent stake on the kingdom’s Tadawul stock exchange.

The offering, the latest in a series of public floats in the kingdom in recent quarters, will include the sale of 16.5 million shares, Seera said on Sunday in a statement to the Saudi bourse, where its shares are traded.

It gave no further details of the planned transaction or when the listing will take place.

Saudi Arabia, the Arab world's biggest economy, and the wider GCC region have seen a flurry of initial public offerings amid strong investor demand as economies rebound at a quicker pace from the pandemic-induced slowdown and liquidity has been shored up by high oil prices.

The listing activity in the Middle East and North Africa region continued to gather momentum in the second quarter of 2023, as the volume of IPOs on regional bourses climbed by 44 per cent annually amid robust economic growth, according to global consultancy EY.

Growth in the Mena IPO deals was driven by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the top regional economies, EY said in its Mena IPO Eye Q2 2023 report earlier this month.

The number of IPO transactions rose to 13 during the three-month period to the end of the June, bucking the global slowdown in equity capital markets activity. However, proceeds from Mena listings dropped by 80 per cent to $1.8 billion, according to EY data.

The IPO drive in the Middle East has continued to gather pace in 2023 after the region registered 48 listings last year that raised more than $23 billion, compared with $7.52 billion from 20 offerings in 2021.

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, which holds stake in a number of private and public sector companies at home and abroad, last year said it would buy a stake in the travel and tourism unit of Riyadh-based Seera Group for more than 1.55 billion riyals ($413 million).

Lumi recorded a revenue of 524.8 million Saudi riyals in the first nine months of 2022, up from 375.8 million riyals in the same period a year earlier, it said in its IPO prospectus to the Capital Market Authority, the Saudi market regulator.

Lumi’s fleet grew to 24,730 by the end of April this year from more than 19,600 at the end of September 2022, the prospectus said.