Emaar Malls share price soars on debut

Dubai: Share price of Emaar Malls Group jumped as much as 21 per cent in its Dubai Financial Market debut on Thursday, following an initial public offering last month that was oversubscribed manifolds.

Emaar Malls group listing its shares on the DFM following a bell ringing ceremony led by Mohamed Alabbar along with DFM chairman Essa Kazim. — supplied photo

Despite 1.68 per cent decline in Dubai Financial Market General Index, the share price of the unit of UAE’ biggest listed developer climbed to as high as Dh3.50 and closed Dh3.25 — more than 12 per cent higher.

The scrip was the volume leader of the day on the DFM as more than 535 million shares transacted. But its parent company Emaar Properties declined by 4.7 per cent to close at Dh11.15.

Earlier, Emaar Malls Group listed its shares on the DFM following a bell ringing ceremony led by Mohamed Alabbar, Chairman of Emaar Malls.

Talking to reporters, the chairman revealed that Emaar Properties plans to float its Egyptian unit in June next and may also take its hotels subsidiary public after the successful listing of its malls and retail business.

“Emaar Hospitality is going to go public when the board of the company decides. The percentage, size and when — all of that I will come back to you with. But the intention is to move forward as soon as possible,” Alabbar explained to reporters.

The company will also launch an IPO for Egypt Misr, the chairman said at Africa Business forum in Dubai. “The company is going to go public about in June,” he said, disclosing the value of the unit between Dh3 billion and Dh4 billion.

The shares of Emaar Malls were priced at Dh2.90 per share, at the top end of the range, giving a market capitalisation for it on listing of approximately Dh37.7 billion ($10.3 billion). In total the order book was oversubscribed 30 times at top end of the range for the Institutional tranche and 20 times for the Individual tranche.

Final allocations were approximately 70 per cent to Institutional investors and 30 per cent to Individual investors. Consistent with one of the strategic objectives of the IPO of diversifying the investor base of Emaar Malls, orders were received from a wide range of institutional investors from the region and around the world. The geographic split of allocations to institutional investors based on the number of institutions was approximately 35 per cent to UAE, 39 per cent to other Mena and 26 per cent to RoW (including US, UK, Europe and South East Asia), which was in line with the number of related orders received from each location.

Talking about the listing, Alabbar said: “Today is the beginning of a new era for Emaar Malls and a landmark day for the Dubai Financial Market. Over the last few weeks, the response from investors to the offering has surpassed our greatest expectations and is testament to the confidence in the Emaar Malls business and the UAE’s financial markets. We are fortunate to have a very high quality share register comprising blue-chip investors from the UAE, MENA and rest of world. We welcome all new shareholders to Emaar Malls and look forward to creating value for them as we continue to grow and develop as a listed company.”

— abdulbasit@khaleejtimes.com