*Aliko Dangote, President and Chief Executive of Dangote Industries Limited, acknowledges though the Dangote Refinery’s missed the 10 million subscribers’ target due to some factors, the level of demand for the offering at the time was significant across the world
Isola Moses | ConsumerConnect
The Dangote Petroleum Refinery’s recent Initial Public Offering (IPO) has missed the 10 million subscribers’ target due to time constraints and difficulties some prospective investors encountered in accessing the offer within the stipulated period.
ConsumerConnect reports Alhaji Aliko Dangote, President and Chief Executive of Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), disclosed this development when he spoke at the 25th Annual Conference of Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ) in Lagos.
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Earlier, the Dangote Refinery IPO, tagged: “The People’s IPO”, had offered 4.1 billion shares for subscriptions at N525 each, with a minimum subscription of 10 shares valued at N5,250.
The offer opened September 14, 2026, and was subsequently, extended to October 27 this year.
Dangote, at the WIMBIZ forum in Lagos, explained how the IPO of the company’s refinery business failed to meet its target of attracting 10 million investors from Nigeria, the rest of Africa, and the world.
Dangote, however, said the offer recorded participation from several millions of investors.
He equally described the level of demand for the offering at the time as significant despite falling short of the projected target.
The Nigerian billionaire businessman also emphasised that the exact number of participating investors across the world was yet to be officially determined as of the time of the forum.
Dangote further stated: “We cannot tell the figure right away because we have not reported to this, but we’ve gotten an amazing demand from various people.”
Comparing the level of participation with other major public offerings, Dangote said the Refinery IPO had attracted millions of investors, exceeding the participation recorded in some previous prominent African and international offers.
He further explained: “If you look at it, the largest participating shareholders, like here now, was I think GTBank.
“When they did their own, it was 200,000. Okay, we are talking about millions of people that participated.”
Dangote as well referenced Kenya’s Safaricom offering, which attracted fewer than 900,000 investors, and Saudi Aramco’s global offering, which recorded about five million investors.
He declared: “We didn’t hit the 10 million because of time constraint, and a lot of people, they didn’t know how to access.”
The President and Chief Executive of Dangote Group, therefore, described the response as evidence of growing public confidence in investment opportunities and the capacity of African businesses to mobilise domestic capital.
He said: “But it’s the shared trust of public enterprise that we have today in Africa, and that’s why people are now beginning to remove that money under their mattresses to go and invest.”
It is recalled that the oil-refining company before the IPO commenced had announced a target of 10 million retail investors as part of efforts to broaden ownership of the refinery beyond institutional and high-net-worth investors.
Insight into IPO subscriptions
Reuters reported that over two million investors had subscribed through digital channels before the offer closed, while the IPO attracted about N6.4 trillion in orders from Nigerian retail and institutional investors, approximately three times the targeted offer size.
Dangote also disclosed that applications came from 120 countries, including all 54 African countries.
On whether the IPO experience had changed his perception of Africa’s capacity to mobilise capital from within the continent in any way, Dangote said the experience had significantly altered his outlook, report said.
He averred: “I think yes, it has actually changed. It has changed things dramatically. Things are really changing very fast.”