Dangote refinery public offer logs 1.48 trillion naira in one hour

Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals FZE opened a public offer of 4.1 billion ordinary shares at 525 naira each at 08:00 in Lagos on Monday. The books close on 13 October. If the base offer is fully taken up it raises 2.15 trillion naira, about $1.6 billion at the 1,324 naira exchange rate Reuters used. A 30 percent greenshoe can lift the sale toward $2.1 billion.

Nigerian Exchange Group posted a figure that set the tone for the day. In the first hour it recorded 402,634 transactions worth 1.476 trillion naira across about 55 approved electronic channels. Those channels include 20 banks, two mobile-money firms, NGX's own Invest platform and 32 fintech and investment houses. The minimum ticket is 10 shares, or 5,250 naira, before charges. Chapel Hill Denham's Lanre Buluro told reporters an application can be finished in two to three minutes with a bank account, a Bank Verification Number and a phone.

The plant in Ibeju-Lekki processes 700,000 barrels a day. Dangote Group says it wants 1.4 million barrels by 2029. Construction took about ten years and about $20 billion. Operations began in 2024. The refinery now supplies most of the petrol made inside Nigeria and has sold jet fuel into African and European markets that tightened after the Iran war disrupted usual supply lines.

A private placement in July sold $2.5 billion of stock and was 3.7 times subscribed, raising $3.7 billion before $1.2 billion was returned so that shares remained for the public offer. That sale cut Aliko Dangote's stake to about 87 percent and implied a valuation near $42 billion. The public offer price implies about 63 trillion naira, or $47.6 billion, for the whole company. Forbes put Dangote's fortune near $51 billion after the private round and ranked him 36th on its real-time list, up from 76th. The public sale, if taken up, would take his holding toward 84.4 percent, or 83.5 percent if the greenshoe is used.

Dangote struck the ceremonial gong at NGX headquarters and described the offer as a way to widen ownership rather than a scramble for cash. The prospectus is public. Allotment is not guaranteed. Oversubscription means some applicants will be scaled back. Trading is pencilled for late November.

Africa has not seen an IPO of this size. The political weight sits in the same sentence as the financial one. Nigeria still imports refined products even as this plant runs. A listed refinery with hundreds of thousands of retail shareholders is harder to starve of crude or of foreign exchange without a public row. It is also a test of whether Nigerian digital rails can carry a national share sale without failing the BVN and wallet layer.

The Iran war is inside the earnings story. Jet fuel demand from airlines that can no longer draw easily on Gulf barrels has favoured a West African barrel that is already on the water. That tailwind can reverse if Hormuz and the Red Sea ease. Investors who clicked buy on Monday are underwriting both the expansion to 1.4 million barrels and the chance that product cracks stay wide.

Risks are listed in the prospectus and are not subtle. Single-asset concentration. Regulatory fights over pricing and crude supply. Currency. The same man still owns the controlling block. A retail army with a 5,250-naira ticket does not change that. What it does change is the number of Nigerians who will see a daily mark on their phones if the stock lists in November.

Institutional names from the July round, including the Africa Finance Corporation, already sit on the register. The public offer is the attempt to put market structure underneath a plant that was built as a private industrial bet. Whether 1.48 trillion naira in the first hour becomes a fully sold book by 13 October is now a measured question. NGX will publish the rest of the tape. The price is fixed. The demand is not.

For a country that spent a decade waiting for this refinery to start, the new fact on 14 September is simpler than the valuation maths. Anyone with a bank account and a BVN can apply for ten shares in the plant that now sits at the centre of Nigeria's fuel system. The books are open for 30 days.