Phoenix starts trading on Abu Dhabi bourse after $370m IPO

Company became the first privately owned crypto and blockchain entity to be listed on a Middle East stock market

Executives from Phoenix and the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange during the company's trading debut on Tuesday. Photo: ADX

Abu Dhabi-based blockchain and crypto solutions company Phoenix Group has begun trading on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange following a $370 million initial public offering that was 33 times oversubscribed.

Shares of the company rose as much as 18 per cent to hit Dh2.03 on Tuesday.

Founded in 2017, Phoenix’s initial public offering concluded last month. The offering attracted significant attention from retail investors, who oversubscribed by 180 times, and professional investors, who contributed to a 22-fold oversubscription.

“Our IPO symbolises a leap forward for Abu Dhabi as a nexus of digital transformation across various sectors,” Bijan Alizadehfard, co-founder and group chief executive of Phoenix, said.

Phoenix offers a range of services, such as cloud mining, data centre hosting, crypto trading, and Web3 game publishing and distribution.

With a total installed capacity of more than 725 megawatts, it develops, operates and manages crypto mining data centres across the UAE, Oman, US, Canada and Commonwealth of Independent States countries.

It is also the exclusive distributor of mining equipment MicroBT.

IPO activity in the wider Middle East and North Africa region continued to gather momentum in the second quarter of 2023, as their volume on regional bourses surged 44 per cent annually amid robust economic growth, data from global consultancy EY showed.

The Phoenix listing marked an important development for ADX, as it was the first privately owned crypto and blockchain entity to be listed on a Middle East stock market.

The listing boosted the “diversity of products” and signalled the “growing interest in the digital economy and financial technology investments in Abu Dhabi and the UAE”, Abdulla Alnuaimi, chief executive of ADX, said.

In August, Phoenix began collaborating with Muscat-based Green Data City to develop a $300 million crypto-mining farm in Oman. The 150MW farm will be one of the largest crypto-mining data centres in the region.

Overall, the cryptocurrency industry has struggled with continued price declines since last year.

Bitcoin, the first and biggest cryptocurrency, fell below $16,000 in November – a year after it hit a peak of almost $68,000 – following a series of events that rattled the industry. It was trading 0.18 per cent down at $41,917.90 on Tuesday.