Talabat Rises in Dubai Debut After Gulf’s Biggest IPO for 2024
(Bloomberg) — Talabat Holding Plc advanced in its Dubai trading debut after raising more than $2 billion in the largest initial public offering for the tech sector this year.
Shares in Delivery Hero SE’s Middle Eastern unit rose to 1.72 dirhams ($0.47) each shortly after trading opened on Tuesday. That’s up 7.5% from the offer price of 1.60 dirhams per share, which was at the top end of a marketed range. The rally gave the company a market capitalization of about 40 billion dirhams.
Delivery Hero raised close to 7.5 billion dirhams by increasing the shares on offer to the equivalent of a 20% stake in the unit, up from an initial 15%, citing sizable anchor orders from global long-only and technology investors. The IPO was also the largest for 2024 in the Middle East, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The Persian Gulf has continued to be a busy hub for new share sales this year, with firms raising more than $12 billion through IPOs, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. This included a slew of private sector companies from a variety of areas such as retail, financial services and health care, amid efforts by regional governments to deepen and diversify their capital markets.
Population growth in hubs such as Dubai has helped cement the performance of consumer-facing businesses.
Talabat operates across eight countries – United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Bahrain. It has cemented its position in the region helped by Delivery Hero’s acquisition of Indian firm Zomato’s food delivery business in the UAE in 2019 and online grocery platform InstaShop in 2020.
Emirates NBD Capital PSC, JPMorgan Securities and Morgan Stanley acted as joint global coordinators and joint bookrunners on the Talabat offering. Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Barclays, EFG-Hermes, First Abu Dhabi Bank, Goldman Sachs, ING Bank and UniCredit were joint bookrunners.
–With assistance from Omar Tamo.
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