Oil giant Saudi Aramco offers a second stock tranche worth billions of dollars

Saudi Arabia said on 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.

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.

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 on Thursday.

Aramco reported making a $121 billion profit last year.

Associated Press