Dangote Refinery plans to launch its much-anticipated Initial Public Offering (IPO) in September, with investor demand already approaching $2 billion ahead of the official market offering.
President and Chief Executive of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, disclosed this after leading Chairman of First HoldCo, Femi Otedola, and senior executives of the group on a tour of the refinery complex in Lagos.
“We are trying to make sure that by September, we’ll be out there in the market to sell the IPO,” Dangote said.
He revealed that the planned offering has attracted strong investor appetite even before its formal launch, with prospective buyers already positioning for access to shares.
“Right now, when we even say we are going to do private placement, already we have people who have actually requested to buy. And we have an amount of almost $2 billion,” he said.
“We are not selling after that, but we’ll see what we can allocate to them. We can see what we can allocate to an IPO.”
Dangote said the refinery listing is being structured to give ordinary investors and a broader section of society an opportunity to own a stake in what is expected to become one of Africa’s biggest industrial businesses.
“Our target really is to get the larger part of the society to buy, yes,” he said.
He added that the company wants investors to come in at what he described as an early value stage, giving them room to benefit from future growth.
“What we are trying to do is actually bringing in people when it is at this low level and for them to have an upside,” Dangote stated.
“We want it to be like when you buy Amazon or you buy Apple. All those people, everybody has become a millionaire. And that’s what we want to bring into Africa.”
In a strong show of confidence, billionaire businessman and First HoldCo Chairman, Femi Otedola, announced plans to personally commit $100 million to the refinery.
“On a personal note, I’ve appealed to him… I’ve been here with him 25 times, so my compensation is he’s going to allocate to me shares worth $100 million in the private placement,” Otedola said.
“That’s one of the reasons I sold my stake in Geregu, to come and invest my proceeds in the IPO of Dangote Refinery.”
Located in the Lekki Free Zone, Lagos, the 650,000 barrels-per-day refinery remains Africa’s largest single-train refinery and a critical part of Nigeria’s downstream oil sector. Since commencing large-scale production of diesel, aviation fuel and petrol in 2024, the facility has increasingly shaped domestic fuel supply and reduced reliance on imported petroleum products.
The planned IPO, which could rank among the largest capital market transactions in Africa, is expected to deepen public participation in Nigeria’s industrial sector, with reports indicating a valuation of up to $50 billion and a possible sale of about 10 per cent equity to investors.