The Dangote Petroleum Refinery initial public offer has exceeded the digital subscription volumes recorded during the public offers of MTN Nigeria and GTCO within a single day, according to Chapel Hill Denham.
Lanre Buluro, Managing Director for Capital Markets at Chapel Hill Denham, made the disclosure on the Follow The Money podcast hosted by Ugo Obichukwu, a few days after the four-week offer opened.
Buluro said the refinery's IPO reached investor participation levels that earlier landmark offers took weeks to achieve. He noted that GTCO's public offer was reported to have attracted about 150,000 investors through digital channels and had previously held the record for the largest digitally driven public offer in Nigeria. The MTN Nigeria offer, which he helped execute, drew between 120,000 and 130,000 subscribers and led to the creation of about 130,000 new Central Securities Clearing System (CSCS) accounts.
"The MTN, the GTCO, those offers were for like four weeks. So it took them four weeks to get those numbers. And we did it in a day already," Buluro said.
On the target of 10 million investors, Buluro said the offer team initially projected between two million and three million investors based on the distribution channels and partnerships assembled for the transaction. He observed that First Bank currently holds Nigeria's largest shareholder register, with slightly more than one million shareholders, while Access Holdings has approximately 900,000 shareholders.
Buluro said the 10-million investor ambition was partly inspired by Saudi Aramco's IPO, which attracted about 4.9 million investors. He explained that Saudi Aramco benefited from its status as a national asset, with Saudi citizens encouraged to participate and supported through government-backed financing initiatives.
He attributed the strong early response to the digital infrastructure provided by the Nigerian Exchange (NGX), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the CSCS, and the offer's distribution partners. The distribution network includes:
- PiggyVest - Moniepoint - MTN MoMo - Bamboo - Paga - Flutterwave - Cowrywise - InvestNaija - Commercial banks and their branch networks
