Oil giant Saudi Aramco offers a second stock tranche

Storage tanks are seen at the North Jeddah bulk plant, an Aramco oil facility, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on March 21, 2021. Saudi Arabia said Friday, May 31, 2024, it will sell a second sliver of stock in its state oil giant Aramco worth billions of dollars, its first tranche since its initial public offering back in 2019. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Saudi Arabia said Friday it will sell a second sliver of stock in its state oil giant Aramco worth billions of dollars, its first tranche since its initial public offering back in 2019.

Saudi Aramco, formally known as the Saudi Arabian Oil Co., acknowledged the stock sale in a corporate disclosure online. It put the number of shares being offered at 1.545 billion, priced at between $7.12 and $7.73 a share.

At the high range of the valuation, that would make the shares worth some $11.9 billion. They’ll begin being sold on Sunday to institutional investors and on Monday to retail investors.

READ: Major Chinese investors in talks to take Aramco stake – sources

Aramco has a market value of $1.8 trillion, making it the world’s sixth most valuable company behind Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA, Google owner Alphabet and Amazon respectively.

$121B in profit

Just 1.73 percent of the company, a narrow sliver, has been traded on the Tadawul, Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange, since the company’s 2019 IPO. This additional offer represents 0.64 percent of all the company’s shares.

The Saudi government remains the dominant shareholder in Aramco, with shares also going toward the kingdom’s sovereign wealth funds as part of its efforts to rapidly diversify the country’s economy away from oil.

Saudi Arabia’s vast oil resources, located close to the surface of its desert expanse, make it one of the world’s least expensive places to produce crude.

Shares in Aramco stood around $7.75 a share in trading Thursday. Aramco shares have lost nearly 12 percent of their value since the start of the year.

Aramco reported making a $121 billion profit last year, down from its 2022 record due to lower energy prices.