Nahdi Medical Company, a major retail pharmacy chain in Saudi Arabia, has set the final offer price for the initial public offering (IPO) at SR131 ($34.8) per share, implying a market capitalization of SR17,030 million ($4,541 million).

The company, along with HSBC Saudi Arabia and SNB Capital as joint financial advisors, has announced the completion of the institutional book-building process in compliance with the guidelines of the Capital Market Authority (CMA).

The book-building process generated an order book of SR299 billion ($80 billion)  and resulted in a subscription of coverage of 59x of the total offered shares.

The total offering size is SR5,109 million ($1,362 million), comprising 39,000,000 existing ordinary shares of the company to be sold by the current shareholders (offer shares). 100% of the offer shares have been provisionally allocated to the participating parties having participated in the book-building process.

This may be reduced to 35,100,000 offer shares (representing 90% of the total offer shares) depending on the level of demand by individual investors. The final number of offer shares allocated to the institutional investors will be clawed-back accordingly based on subscriptions from individual investors.

Saudi Arabian nationals, foreign residents in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and GCC nationals (individual investors) will be able to subscribe for shares in the retail offering between March 13-15 through the appointed receiving agents Saudi National Bank (SNB), Saudi British Bank (SABB), Al Rajhi Bank, Riyad Bank, and Arab National Bank.

Yasser Joharji, Chief Executive Officer of Nahdi Medical Company, said: “We, at Nahdi, are humbled by the exceptionally strong demand for the company’s shares by institutional investors, reflecting their confidence in our people, our business, and our financial performance.”

“Since day one, we have sought to disrupt conventional ways of delivering value to our Guests by keeping them firmly in the centre of all our efforts. Today, Nahdi is the largest retail pharmacy chain in Saudi Arabia and our omnihealth platform will help deliver further value to our Guests through an integrated ecosystem consisting of our omnichannel retail pharmacy and our primary healthcare services including polyclinics, express clinics, telemedicine, testing labs, and home healthcare.

“At this significant milestone in Nahdi’s history, we are honoured to expand our shareholder base to a diverse group of respected investment institutions. In addition, we look forward in the next few days to welcoming individual investors into our enlarged and diversified shareholder base. Their interest and support during the retail subscription period will be critical as the Company embarks on the next exciting chapter of its journey of adding beats to Guest lives every day and everywhere,” Joharji added. – TradeArabia News Service