Zain Bahrain IPO struggles to generate positive interest and participation

Zain Bahrain saw weak demand from investors for its initial share sale despite doubling the amount of time for subscriptions, with only just over a third of the offering sold to the public.

The telco was the first company to go public in Bahrain since 2010, selling a 15 per cent stake at BHD 0.19 (US$0.50) per share to raise BHD 9.1 million.

Money raised from the offering will be used to fund upgrades of Zain Bahrain’s network infrastructure as well as expand its super-fast 4G LTE offering in the kingdom.

Only 16.7 million shares, equivalent to 34.8 percent of the offering, was sold to retail and institutional investors, according to figures provided by Zain Bahrain.

The remaining 31.3 million shares will be acquired by the investment banking arm of Gulf International Bank, which underwrote the initial public offering.

The result came despite the initial two-week subscription period for the share sale being extended by a further two weeks to Sept. 30.

The kingdom’s bourse suffers from poor liquidity, with trading activity the lowest in the Gulf region this year, making it unattractive to companies to list.

However, Zain had to list part of its operations in Bahrain as part of its licence agreement signed in 2003.

Zain held 63 percent of the Bahraini unit prior to the IPO and will maintain majority control following the sale of new shares.