RIYADH, 16 August 2006 — Saudi International Petrochemical Company (Sipchem) will float 30 percent of its 150 million shares as part of the Initial Public Offering (IPO) on Sept. 9. The IPO will remain open for subscription for a ten-day period till Sept. 18, according to the company’s spokesman. He said the share capital of Sipchem is SR1.5 billion, consisting of 150 million fully paid ordinary shares with a nominal value of SR10 each.
Sipchem will be offering 45 million shares, Rashid Al-Dossari, general manager and head of the company’s corporate and PR affairs, told Arab News. He said that a minimum of ten shares and a maximum of 25,000 shares would be available to subscribers. The National Commercial Bank will act as financial advisor, lead manager and lead underwriter of this offering.
Sipchem, one of the leading private sector petrochemical companies in the Kingdom, was founded in December 1999, for investing in basic and intermediate petrochemicals. It started with a capital of SR500 million and increased it in 2003 and 2005 to reach SR1.5 billion for funding its projects. Approximately 85 percent of its founders are individual investors and institutions from the Kingdom and the rest are from the GCC.
The company has successfully completed two large plants owned and operated by its subsidiaries, International Methanol Company (IMC) and Gulf Advanced Chemical Industries Company (GACIC).
IMC started its commercial operation in December 2004 producing one million metric tons of methanol per annum, a chemical used in applications like wood products, resins, gasoline additives, as well as films, fibers and polyester. GACIC is the first company to produce butanediol in the Middle East which went on stream in March this year with an annual capacity of 75,000 metric tons, a specialty chemical used in the manufacture of Polyurethanes, engineering plastic, air bags, as well as in a wide range of spare parts for the automotive and packaging industries.
In 2005, Sipchem recorded a profit of SR325 million, compared to SR6 million the year before, while its total assets surged to SR4.4 billion against SR2.6 billion the year before. Also, its shareholders’ equity went up from SR736 million in 2004 to SR1.9 billion last year.
In the first half of this year, Sipchem achieved a net profit of SR219.6 million compared to SR174.6 million for the same period last year. During the second half of this year, construction will begin at Sipchem’s new acetyls complex, which consists of three plants. Located in the company’s site in Jubail Industrial City, the launch of this additional facility demonstrates the company’s aggressive expansion program, which aims to make the company one of the largest, fully-integrated, petrochemical complex in the Middle East owned and operated by the private sector.
