GCC a ‘bright spot’ for IPOs in 2022; $23bln proceeds

GCC a ‘bright spot’ for IPOs in 2022; $23bln proceeds

The GCC initial public offering (IPO) market witnessed strong activity throughout 2022 and surpassed its previous year's achievements, despite volatility in secondary markets, a report says.

The total number of IPOs from the GCC jumped to 48 issuances in 2022 from 20 issuances in 2021, as per Kamco Invest analysis. Proceeds for 2022 from GCC issuers went up by 3.1x to $23.38 billion from $7.52 billion in 2021, based on data from Bloomberg and stock exchanges.

IPO markets remained buoyant despite volatility in secondary market indices such as the MSCI GCC (H1- 2022: +1.2%, H2-2022: -7.5%) and oil prices (H1-2022: +55.1%, H2-2022: -30.9%), as issuers remained confident of their business fundamentals, communication to the market, and investor appetite for their issuances.

There were a host of other reasons why IPO markets in the region outperformed other geographies such as the relative resilience and immunity to global geopolitical events such as the Ukraine-Russia war which drove passive index flows and index compiler weightings in favor of regional stock exchanges in the GCC, Kamco Invest said.

Debuts of marquee UAE names catapult GCC IPO proceeds; Saudi led IPO deals numbers

Saudi Arabia maintained its leadership position for IPO issuances from the region in 2022, as 34 out